Sometimes when I let my mind wander to the bad place and I begin to wonder what happens if Trump wins? How could it get worse. Are there any branches of the government or departments which have no already been hopelessly corrupted? Are there any norms or governmental regulations which have not been debased or shredded? Is there anything left for him to destroy? How, honestly, could it get worse? I suppose if his cronies and fellow mobsters were competent, that would be about it. That would be worse.
And then, I wait a little bit, and as if reaching out to personally answer my question, they do shit like this:
Stone argued that “the ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshalls and taken from the state” because “they are completely corrupted” and falsely said that “we can prove voter fraud in the absentees right now.” He specifically called for Trump to have absentee ballots seized in Clark County, Nevada, an area that leans Democratic. Stone went on to claim that “the votes from Nevada should not be counted; they are already flooded with illegals” and baselessly suggested that former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) should be arrested and that Trump should consider nationalizing Nevada’s state police force.
Beyond Nevada, Stone recommended that Trump consider several actions to retain his power. Stone recommended that Trump appoint former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) as a special counsel “with the specific task of forming an Election Day operation using the FBI, federal marshals, and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity.”
Stone also urged Trump to consider declaring “martial law” or invoking the Insurrection Act and then using his powers to arrest Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, “the Clintons” and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity.”
So I guess the good newsis it could get worse.
Soprano2
I read that earlier tonight. I swear, they’re all insane. How can anyone take that seriously? I do agree it’s concerning that he’s saying stuff like this, because too many of Orange Man’s supporters hear stuff like that and nod their heads in agreement.
MattF
It’s the Bad Place. And it’s not a comedy. Looks more and more like we’re barreling into it.
ETA: To bed.
moops
The problem is not that Roger Stone is a ratfucking lunatic. It is that he has power and an audience. 30% of this country believes a nut like this.
Kay
He’s bragging about an extrajudicial killing of an American on Fox:
The President is saying that US Marshals murdered someone as “retribution”. I don’t know where this ends – it gets worse every day. How can we ever trust the people in the federal government who went along with this again? Even if we get rid of him we’re still stuck with them. They’re all such incredible cowards.
Jerzy Russian
Christ, what an asshole!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Soprano2: “How can anyone take that seriously? ”
Are you being serious? They’re Republicans intent on seizing power across the nation, they will justify it by claiming that they are stopping the Democrats from doing what they are doing.
It’s existential to them now, they have made Democrats out to be the enemy of America when it’s them and their party that is intent on destroying our nation.
Kay
Horrifying to watch the Fox ghoul too. He’s babbling on and on about the federal government executing someone without trial and how if he loses it’s an “insurrection” and how he’ll declare marshal law and arrest everyone and she’s nodding and smiling along like a freak, eagerly anticipating the mass political arrests, I guess.
They always must have been horrible. That’s the thing. People just don’t go from decent people to whatever this is in 3 and a 1/2 years. This is what they wanted all along. Lawlessness, corruption, hundreds of thousands dead- they’re excited by it.
RaflW
Stone doesn’t seem to understand that Facebook is actually helping Republicans. The algorithms hump all the RW disinfo sites & grifter media stars.
On a more serious note, a whole lot of us need to be thinking now about a likely need for large-scale general strikes, and that the RW nuts with a lot of guns will probably use them. Which is a terrifying combo, but of course that’s why they’re out waving ’em now. To try to enforce inaction.
Kay
If we get thru this- and I do mean “if”, I would like a real investigation into the shooting of that suspect. A real one, conducted by ethical professionals who follow laws.
We can’t keep the people who were corrupted by him in our employ in the federal government. They have to go. I’m sorry that they were weak and easily corrupted but that’s not our fault and they must find employment elsewhere.
RaflW
@Kay: If this vision of America holds (and if t could), we’ll be a giant ass shitty Argentina del Norte in no time.
Eventually, when Covid isn’t the threat it is now, borders will open. But who the fuck is gonna come here? Migrants? For this shit? And certainly not tourists.
End-state capitalism is fucking crap.
Now I should try to sleep.
Soprano2
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I understand what you’re saying, I’m thinking more about people who aren’t up on politics who hear that. They would think he’s crazy.
randy
The Bad Place brings its own liberation. As old and co-morbid as I am, win or lose I can stop worrying about how to endure.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Oh, it could get much worse. And Trump’s base will cheer him on, even as he rounds up people and jails them. We cannot afford to lose this election. This one is like 1860. This is the big one.
Kay
On a side note, there’s very little coverage of Joe Biden’s campaign. Maybe they decided they’re incapable of covering the Democrat after ’16 so have decided instead to do a blackout and just give us 24/7 blaring coverage of every word douchebag utters.
The Bloomberg reporter is covering the Biden campaign and she does a good job.
Jennifer Epstein. If you’re interested in what a person other than Donald Trump is saying. she’s got Biden campaign coverage. At least there’s one, right?
Kent
Honestly. As much as the problem is Trump. It’s also that over 40% of the country still supports him. Despite the Mount Everest shitpile of evidence that he is the worst and most unfit president in history. I’m related to a shitload of them across the county on both sides of my family. The past four years have really made me reconsider my mindset of them being mostly good people. They brought this on us and they are eager for another four years. Fuck every last one of them.
Trump is basically a magic mirror that you hold up so someone to determine who they REALLY are. The fact that Romney is the ONLY GOP politician out of thousands who passed the test tells you all you need to know about how deep the rot really goes. It’s the GOP, the churches, much of the business community. Even the universities across half the country which have turned themselves into COVID factories for football and student dorm room money and to keep main street college town businesses happy.
Fuck all of them.
James E Powell
@Kay:
This is who they’ve always been and they see this time as the last time they might get what they want.
Our most serious problem is the ~42% that believes as they do, or much worse. Years ago, I used to drop in on right-wing radio just to hear what was up in their world. What we see now is a Republican Party made up entirely of the right-wing radio audience.
Citizen Alan
Yeah, this is pretty much where I was this time last night. Wallowing in a deep bottomless pit. And I’m pretty much still there.
piratedan
@Kay: this is because it’s “the travelling road show!” something new and outrageous every day! the clicks! the views! the horrors! Its no wonder he can pull back his advertising dollars, he just trots his raggedy old ass out there and the media will faithfully record each lie and broadcast it because it’s “news” the President said it.
SoupCatcher
As someone whose people bleeds Every. Single. Fucking. Time. The. Klan. Rises. let me tell you… It can always get worse.
Kent
@piratedan: He outruns the media coverage.
As soon as he commits some career-ending gaffe like outrageously dissing the soldiers he’s off committing some other crime or horror and everyone seems to just move on like in a trance.
I don’t know what you do about that other than just win the damn election. At least we aren’t seeing endless coverage of fake Biden scandals like in 2016 so at least there’s that.
lofgren
@Kent: I strongly suspect you could get 40% of any country to support authoritarianism most of the time. I don’t even think they care about what Trump believes. Yeah, there are the racists, and the sexists, and the generally evil, but I think the majority of them would support a Leftist totalitarian if it was offered. They’re fed up with democracy, not pro-Trump.
piratedan
@Kent: I know, it’s daunting as fuck. If we do defeat him and we carry his ass outta the office, I sure hope that we’re ready to prosecute the entire fucking crew. No more of this shit. The piper gets paid, union scale even plus OT.
I want not only these perpetrators, but the whole enabling shit pile. There’s time to try and heal the country and mend fences… this isn’t it, because these fuckers will think its just “bidness as usual”.
Eljai
It’s so heartbreaking for people like you, people like us, who actually care about one another. It’s easy to spiral into worst case scenarios because the stakes are so high. But consider that Trump could also lose. He could lose in a landslide. Imagine…
I worry about what can happen but it seems only right to give equal time to other possible outcomes. At least it helps me sleep at night and, goddess knows, we need to be well rested to get through the next few months.
Aleta
Of course it can get worse. The people who’re running schools and health care and government and natural resources “like a business,” which to them means manipulative communication and spending on ads, competitive administrators and media influence, have too much control. They’re not going away. They’re political in their thinking and maneuvering, and believe that’s the job. They have bad values. They’re doing more damage by the day. They’re not honest. They believe in gloved force.
Citizen Alan
@lofgren: Easily the most depressing thing about all this is that I keep hearing the echo of Obama’s stirring words about how “there’s no Red America and Blue America — there’s just America.” And it makes me want to vomit how naive he was. There is a Red America and there is a Blue America. And we fucking despise each other.
lumpkin
@RaflW:
I’m sure he does understand that fb helps republicans. Criminal enterprises continue to threaten and even harm those who help them because it keeps them all in line.
mdblanche
The pessimist says “things couldn’t possibly get any worse.” The optimist says “oh yes they can.”
Ruckus
@Jerzy Russian:
Christ, what a fucking asshole!
You left out a word.
rikyrah
@Kay:
No lie told.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Yep. Gotta go??
Ruckus
@Kay:
May I suggest that if they have gone along with shitforbrains in illegal activities, that employment should be prison labor at $1.50/hr.
smike
@Kent:
I believe BJ protocol is “fuck ’em all.”
rikyrah
@Citizen Alan:
Get out of the pit and find 10 casual voters that you will hound from now until Election Day
rikyrah
@lofgren:
Leftist totalitarian???
Nope?
rikyrah
It would get worse, Cole.
I admit that.
That’s why we are fighting so hard.?
Kent
@Eljai: Ex-presidents get paid a pension of $220,000/year plus a bazillion other perks. He will never be penniless.
lumpkin
@lofgren:
They would only support a herrenvolk leftist state. Like the National Socialists. That’s been obvious from the beginning, which is why they believed trump’s promises that he would protect social security and replace Obamacare with something better and even raise taxes on the rich. They probably believe he will deliver a herrenvolk utopia once they clear the non white non christians out of the way.
VeniceRiley
Yeah I’m >thisclose< to risking a Covid plane ride out of dodge the day after my mail in ballot comes. Trying to be patient and wait for a treatment for this thing is like poking my thigh with a needle. Add the fires and the protests and the fact that somone just rocked up and shot two deputies sitting in their SUV in Compton. I figure I can tough it out a couple more months, but my fiance is getting lonely.
Kent
@smike: I believe BJ protocol is “fuck ’em all.”
Or as they would say in Texas: “Fuck All Y’all.”
Ian
Well, yeah, anyone who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity should generally be arrested (if the punishment for said crime involves a prison sentence). It seems fairly unusual that they want the Federal government specifically the FBI and DOJ to carry this out, as we already have police officers for this. Also, don’t we normally charge people/ have probable cause before an arrest? If Stone thinks that tech company leaders and the Clintons have committed crimes and are not being charged, should that not be an argument against the current people running the show?
I get that he isn’t arguing in good faith and just wants conservative boogiemen thrown in jail, but this entire weird rant seems to forget that this apparent breakdown in law and order is happening on Trump and Barr’s watch.
Eljai
@Kent: Trump inherited at least $400 million from his old man and his businesses filed for bankruptcy six times. He’s 74 years old and he’s not gonna get better at this. Even Trumps mentor, Roy Cohn, got away with crap until one day, he didn’t.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: Are you familiar with garnishment?
Kent
No they wouldn’t. The minute a leftist totalitarian government offered them free health care they’d be unpacking the AR-15s and taking to the streets.
John Revolta
Well this is some kinda Saturday night in here
Enjoy yourself! (It’s later than you think)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA2-6ZlOXeg
Kent
Creditors can’t generally garnish pensions. But the IRS can. So I guess we do need to see those tax returns.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: There is a good portion of the country that does just want things to get done. All they see arguments and nothing getting fixed. So, would they be in for a dictatorship where the shit they want gets done? Sure. The problem is half of those folk want shit done one way and the other half want it done a different way.
Ruckus
The entire point of trump is that he only knows one thing, one way. Being president was his get out of jail free card, to act like the absolute ass that fred raised him to be.
We are some what lucky to see what 30 yrs of faux news, the federalist society, conservative politics in general is really all about. It’s not governing, it is grift, on an unprecedented scale, in every corner of the country. Some have seen this prior but convincing anyone of how shitty, unethical, immoral and lawless they are is impossible without proof. Now we just have to convince enough people that what they are seeing is real and really bad. Because few could imagine that that 30-40% of the country has swallowed the bullshit whole. Because other than that, what is the next move? We can whine and cry and yell but that isn’t going to change shit. This country is supposed to be better than that. At least the words are better than that. We need to make the words that started this place mean something again. We need to say out loud that the country is better than the almighty fucking dollar. We need to say that what the basis of this country is, that we do not work for the president, or congress, they work for us. ALL OF US. I’ve seen over the years that we’ve gotten away from what the words say and mean, that we added restrictions, like being the wrong color and we have to once and for all remove that concept that white makes right. The majority of the police do not seem to understand that in the least.
We have to change this or this experiment in governance is over. Authoritarian leaders around the world want us to fail because it means they won’t have to work so hard to be the assholes they are. This was supposed to be a great country and it’s up to us to show that it can be.
I’m not sure exactly how to do that but the first thing we need to do is to be proud of what we stand for and who we want to work for us to make the country better.
Kent
90% of the country probably wants to get shit done. But there is zero agreement on what that “shit” is.
New freeways in the suburbs or green mass transit?
Federal subsidies for religious schools or rebuild inner city schools?
Green energy and electric cars or coal mines, fracking and “drill baby drill”?
And so it goes.
Citizen Alan
@rikyrah: I live in Mississippi. If I were to ask 10 random people to vote for Biden, 9 of them would spit on me and 1 or 2 might try to shoot me.
randy
Use anger to create energy. Depression is mostly inaction. Find your duty, even if it is just listening to my despair. Do your duty, even if it is just hiding until the moment to strike.
I am angry and depressed, but it is too soon to despair while we are still visibly winning. And when if despair does hit me then my strategy and tactics get more radical, my time and effort more concentrated.
Our pain has the meaning that we give to it, if we decide to give it some meaning. And if pain is meaningless then we have nothing to lose. I am the Pollyanna from Hell, and I am coming to cheer you not up, but down to Earth, and down to the Bad Place if I have to.
I am as weak and broken as anyone from the lead poisoned generation. It cheers me up to see that some of you are still human and breakable. It cheers me up to see that some of you are still fighting.
Yutsano
@Kent:
?
And it’s kind of fun, although it is a last resort sort of thing. What will be his biggest problem when he dies are all the liens that have been filed against him go to his probate hearing and go “ahem” especially any state or federal liens he has. Remember: bankruptcy does not automatically relieve anyone from federal tax obligations. It could be that the clock has run out on a lot of these, but it’s also possible some are still valid. And I have seen the audit department open cases that are decades old. So beyond what he owes the foreign creditors there’s probably other obligations that need their money too.
oclib
I firmly believe there will be a peaceful transfer of seats come Jan 3, 2021….I also firmly believe there will be a peaceful transfer of power on Jan 20, 2021…..now, the blender is full and I’m looking for that shaker of salt….
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: We saw the same thing in here in California in 2003. We recalled our Governor and one of the 135 candidates to replace him who previous career was making films and pumping iron promised to “blow up all the boxes” and make stuff just work. It was so appealing to the fellow citizens of my state that he was elected. People are really frustrated by politicians just arguing back and forth. We are here as well, we can see where the bottlenecks are, but most of our fellow citizens just blame politicians or Congress. To be quite honest, if you take the party labels off stuff, there might actually be a lot agreement.
smike
@Kent:
Being from Texas, sounds ’bout right.
Brachiator
This is the criminal who got a pardon, right?
piratedan
@?BillinGlendaleCA: well the biggest change in our national discourse is the removal or the fairness act in broadcasting (imho) because that has led to Ruperts propaganda machine (and its many emulators in print, online, and the airwaves TV and radio) pumping misleading hateful bullshit 24/7. That switch being flipped has led to untold fuckery, brainwashing of millions, turning them into fucking zombies, devoid of reason, devoid of empathy. Not saying things were perfect beforehand, but this is something that I would give serious consideration to, the dismantling of the RW propaganda outlets and I’m not saying turning us into a soviet style media system, but news is news, and a national, not for profit news organization (like VOA) where people can just read what is going on, sans spin and if you want to be a news organization then you better be reporting news, not propaganda or “your version” of events.
Kent
Fixed that for you.
Latest Mississippi presidential poll from a few weeks ago is Biden 43 Trump 53 according to 538.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@piratedan: The Fairness Act only applied to over the air broadcasts(via their FCC license), it never would have covered Fox News which is cable only even it was still in effect
ETA: However Rush Limpdick did benefit from the repeal of the Fairness doctrine.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
At the height of the Great Depression, with tens of millions starving in bread lines and living in tin shanties, with WWI veterans being murdered at the Bonus March, do nothing Hoover still got 40% of the vote. They didn’t even have a culture war to distract the plebs and fundies.
Goldwater was probably the worst campaigner in modern history and he still got 40% of the vote.
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
Can an ex-POTUS’ creditors garnish his pension?
VeniceRiley
Probably not what anyone wants to read while they’re choking on ash` but interesting
https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen
Eljai
I like.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
“In your guts, you know he’s nuts.”
Kent
Only the IRS can for back taxes. And also for back child support. Private creditors can’t generally garnish public pensions.
Eljai
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Updated for 2020: In your bowel you know he’s foul. Ok, I’ll work on it.
Origuy
@VeniceRiley: They’re right, of course, but if you listen to the self-appointed forestry experts on Twitter (who are probably also self-appointed epidemiologists) what we need is more logging. Which doesn’t do anything but make more dried slash on the ground to catch fire. Mature trees need a really hot fire to ignite.
But controlled burning is expensive, especially close to developed areas. No one wants what happened to Los Alamos in 2000 to happen on their burn.
NB Not a forestry expert.
opiejeanne
@oclib: Thank you. This will help me sleep tonight.
patrick II
I was in Bootcamp in 1967. I had a man who was essentially a fascist drill sergeant. We were isolated from news and taught only to obey. I was amazed how easily people turned into little fascists themselves — beating up people at night for getting “hits” on our inspection and making our drill sergeant look bad. I am not surprised at what people can do given the right circumstances, and our country has been building towards this for a while now.
Kent
@Origuy: The environmental rules are also really burdensome. You can’t just deliberately cover a populated area with smoke. People with respiratory disease can actually die. So the Forest Service has to do long expensive and detailed environmental reviews with lots of public comment and such. And you can’t really wave them without waiving them for every coal mine and clear cut logging project as well.
It’s the flip side of the folks who want to “drill baby drill” in the arctic without environmental review
For that reason I don’t think we’ll ever see widespread controlled burning of forests to the extent that would make a difference.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@VeniceRiley: So what they’re saying is we should rake with FIRE! //
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent:
So, we’ll just get widespread uncontrolled burning of forests.
Aleta
@oclib: I think he’s a coward; he likes fights as long as other people are the targets and risking themselves. When he loses, he’ll be the target. Especially if there’s a wide margin and huge popular vote loss, he’ll split as soon as he can and continue making a lot of noise a safe distance away from DC. He’ll choose security instead of being a target. Besides, the enablers and fixers he depends on will leave as soon as his legal power dissolves.
oclib
@Aleta:
I’m mostly with you on that, but for my sanity, I have to throw a little humor into it. I really do think it’ll be a peaceful transfer….with some bluster…..
Sebastian
@RaflW:
A few thoughts:
– Strike: Government requires the consent of the governed and I am pretty confident that a HUGE part of the country is simply not going to accept four more years of Trump, especially if it is obvious the election was rigged. The easiest way to bring the American machine to a halt is a consumer strike. Buy nothing (as if anyone would) and pay no bills. It’s also something that doesn’t require anyone to specifically do something but rather the opposite, all people need is safety in numbers. Like the wave of foreclosures in 2008, when too many people do something the system cannot punish them without breaking the system.
– Trump’s Taxes: We are going to see how broke this motherfucker before the election. Bet on it. There is no fucking way it won’t get leaked.
– Trump’s Health: The guy is already with one foot in the grave, I’d be surprised if he survives until November. Election night alone might give him a stroke and a heart attack. The GOP has turned into the party of Trump, there is no hierarchy or machine, with him gone there will be chaos. Although, I’d watch Ivanka closely. She is dangerous.
– Trump’s voters’ health: Shitgibbon is back to getting his rally fix. Has anyone considered that this could lead to a significant number of his base dying or being sick during the election?
– Disasters: We are being hammered with fires which are mostly in red areas. It won’t matter that much in OR and CA except for State and Congress races but will those voters be able to vote? What about disasters in other states? Hurricane season is terrible this year, what happens if Florida gets hit hard and he and his crew fuck up the response?
Honestly, I’d prefer us to win because we have huge problems to fix: disinformation war, global corruption, global warming, social and racial injustice (national and global), COVID and other pandemics, distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunity, and a whole list of other shit.
But waiting out 4 more years? I don’t think anyone of us has the energy for it.
Nelle
Our neighborhood, designated Turf 7 of our precinct, has 63 households of registered D out of approx. 125 households. My neighbor, a retired educator like I am, is responsible for 28 of those households; I’m responsible for the rest. We can’t door-knock but we put info under door mats and we’re both cheerfully assertive in meeting people when out and about.
We regularly get data on who has turned in a request for an absentee ballot. When I’m out walking, people I’ve just met call out that they’ve sent in their request.
We plan out next contacts around that info and we’ve requested info to separate those who are frequent voters from occassional voters. In my county, with this kind of organization, as of last night, 44% of registered Democrats have requested absentee ballots. Also, the party is gathering new registrations regularly from popup voter registration stands at least three days a week.
I’ve lived in this state a year and a half. My neighbor who works with me on this moved here from three hours away just two years ago. This is a comfortable middle class neighborhood on the edge of a formerly red suburb, now, if not blue, a strong purple. We were both initially uneasy about the lack of diversity.
Except, it turns out that at least 12 households are Muslim, mostly from Bosnia, but one from Palestine (the father and husband at one house was massacred in Srebrenica). Three were refugees from Vietnam. A family from India here, one from Mexico there. And there is one woman who is a big introvert who doesnt want to have to interact with others but cheerfully writes mountains of postcards, day in and out. Which reminds me to go buy more postage and give it to her.
I know this is lengthy. But I wanted to give you a sense of the work being done in one place in Iowa by two old women, by some well organized GOTV people, by a superb county organization, in a metropolitan area.
Work is an antidote to despair.
Sebastian
@VeniceRiley:
Was about to post the same article. Really good overview of the complications.
ChrisH
If Trump wins reelection I don’t think there’s anything I can do but just full Juggalo. What it means to go full Juggalo, I don’t know and hope I don’t have to find out.
Anne Laurie
Stone is acting out a Tough Guy performance for an increasingly desperate & addled audience of death-cultists. Within a few months, with or without a Trump ‘win’, the odds are very high that he’ll be in federal prison or dead (possibly by suicide, so he doesn’t have to report to prison).
He’s become an older, more perverted Milo Yiannopoulos — remember when that guy was a Far Right ‘thought leader’?
Don’t let his frantic kabuki (further) dispirit you.
Sab
@Nelle: I don’t know if postcards are all that effective, but I do know that a well-timed postcard has changed my vote on several occasions. Phone calls just annoy me.
Nelle
@Sab: I won’t answer unknown numbers as I seem to be the target for Social Security scams. So, in a time of Covid, I put postcard messages under their doormats. And chat on the sidewalks, at a distance, of course.
I’ve been doing an experiment with the mail. I bought a box of 100 botanical print postcards and have been mailing them all over the country (I’ve lived in eight states, so lots of old friends all over). Recipients let me know how long it too to reach them. Between 3 and 12 days, but some never arrive. I also think people should get something pretty and handwritten in the mail from time to time.
CarolDuhart2
I’ve never forgotten the Trump Inaugural and its empty seats. Great (or at least passible), and magas didn’t show up. The easiest thing to do and the cheapest, and they couldn’t be bothered to do that much. His rally in Tulsa. Even the Maga groups carrying guns didn’t turn out that much. And these are relatively risk-free things to do. The stuff an angry Stone suggests require risk and possible jail time, and definitely getting shot by sometimes and someone.
And what are they doing now is performative stuff-car rides around 1-275 and rallies. Not voter registration and early voting. And by the way it looks like Democrats are developing a massive margin in early voting (both requests and soon to be actual votes), so much so that I think this thing may well be truly over by October 1st.
CarolDuhart2
@Sab: Also, unlike phone calls, postcards have some longevity. They can be read over and over again, passed to other members of the household, and memorized.
Sab
@CarolDuhart2: The longevity and passing around is a good point.
West of the Rockies
@oclib:
Jimmy Buffett!
Matt McIrvin
@CarolDuhart2: Early votes won’t necessarily be counted early. They may not be counted at all. That’s the problem.
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie: Stone successfully stole a presidential election once already.
Sloane Ranger
I am old enough to remember when Americans would look the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and boast that it couldn’t happen there because of the Constitution and Americans loving individual liberty, unlike those Prussians who just followed orders.
Unfortunately, the sad truth is that it doesn’t matter if you have a written Constitution or not, laws or not, love of liberty or not. Democracy is not dependent on those. It is dependent on strong social and political norms, with each political group accepting the others as legitimate and being prepared to cede power to them if that is the outcome of an election.
What fringe groups and Russia have done over a period of time is use the advent of social media and ,in some cases, the naivity of individuals, about how those work, to delegitimise political views that differ from your own and persuade many people that the others are an existential threat to everything they hold dear.
What will happen if Trump loses, I don’t know but I think that the DOJ will try every legal shenanigans that Barr’s fertile imagination can conjure up and that there will be some uncoordinated outbreaks of RWNJ violence. I just hope that the Biden/Harris campaign have people who have gamed this out and have a plan and that Democratic Governers and maybe some Republican ones like Hogan in Maryland have done likewise.
CarolDuhart2
@Matt McIrvin: By interrupting the counting of votes in Florida. But that was the recount, not the initial count in a state that had a candidates brother as governor presiding over that recount. And Florida is typically bad at this stuff anyway. Nevada isn’t like that.
CarolDuhart2
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx
H.E.Wolf
Amen.
Nelle is right. Join in with the millions of people who have been working since the 2016 election, in myriad ways, and are helping to turn this around.
Remember what the 2018 elections accomplished at local, state, and national levels – and the mid-mid-terms in 2019? That happened because of individuals all across the country, pitching in.
Dip a toe into that water. :) If you can persuade yourself to take one positive, concrete action, you are part of the rescue effort.
H.E.Wolf
I have good news! The Nazis weren’t leftist. It’s a disinformation campaign from modern-day ultra-right-wingers. https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/
From that article, which is packed with useful information if anyone is ever on the receiving end of a sealion-esque challenge to cite one’s sources:
“Despite co-opting the name, some of the rhetoric, and even some of the precepts of socialism, Hitler and party did so with utter cynicism, and with vastly different goals. The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality.”
Anne Laurie
The first time is the easiest. I think even the most gullible Democrats have gotten a lot more sophisticated about our Republican neighbors over the last 20 years!
Also, what a fifty-something Roger Stone could do at the height of his powers / immunity, and what a seventy-something Stone can do with a Federal judge breathing down his Nixon-tattooed neck, are very different achievement levels.
H.E.Wolf
The Civil Rights movement is on line 1 for you. :-)
The women’s suffrage movement is on line 2.
The AIDS activists would also like a word. Line 3.
I apologize to all the members of those multi-generational movements for being flip about the time and energy they put in. But the idea that no one has the energy for 4 more years of effort? Oh yes we do….
Gvg
@CarolDuhart2: Florida isn’t that bad at it. Florida is typically really close, has swung back and forth, and is a big prize for winning. What that means is, the GOP puts a lot of resources into lawyers and opinion influencers so they can make things go their way. If Trump wasn’t such a disaster, they would be trying to get the state counted faster, not slower.
Since 2000 the democrats have put more into lawyers in all states.
H.E.Wolf
And now I’m going to send my most heartfelt love to all of you, and go write another 1 or 2 postcards in my current 12-card batch*, due to the post office on Monday.
* Big tasks paralyze me. Tiny ones… those, I can do. :)
Arm The Homeless
@ChrisH: If I remember my Protocols of the Elders of Shangri-la that involves punching yourself in the crotch–repeatedly–and musing on the mystery of how magnets work, right?
lowtechcyclist
“When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, ‘Cheer up, things could be worse.’ And sure enough, they get worse.” – Robert Asprin
Baud
I really appreciate that I never see any of our many wonderful candidates set their hair on fire. Nose to the grindstone. Eyes on the prize.
Geminid
@Nelle: Thank you for your encouraging report. Virginia suburbs have been realigning from red to blue. Much of it is demographic- more 1st through 3rd generation immigrant families, more college grads in an economically dynamic state. And some of it is because of the radical “populists,” including evangelical dominionists, who have displaced the Chamber of Commerce types who used to call the shots in the republican party.
Nelle
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks for this. Centuries of fighting for rights and watching the infrequent white “allies” go home to their privilege, when there is no home to go to if you are Black?
Learn the words to at least three verses of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” And sing it regularly. Be tutored by the long and noble example of so many leaders. Read biographies of Nelson Mandela and John Lewis. Become their students. Best counter I know of to the Russian/Republican effort to demoralize you and drive you to despair
The phrase is Yes WE can. The project is longer than the next election.
Chris Johnson
Was. I’ve seen this with YouTube, too. There was a time when the algorithms ran wild and the technocrats went hmm, this is interesting. Are they paying us?
And now, the fucking braindead psychopaths are biting the hands that literally fed them.
YouTube isn’t the only place where unaccountable programmer people have gone ‘yes, this isn’t optimal, let’s ADJUST things a little’. There was a time when it was a Nazi funnel, and it’s been documented not long ago that it changed: these days you can’t do that, you get centrist takes and the Nazi pipeline is gone.
Facebook could go either way, but I guarantee that Mark Zuckerberg, already defensive, is hearing about this Roger Stone rant, about having HIM arrested, and Zuck is like ‘you fucking WHAT now?’. Zuck is WAY more powerful than Stone. Stone done fucked up now.
And this is not a good way to run the world… but it is the way our world is currently being run. I am pleased that these monsters don’t have the sense to avoid biting their strongest allies. I guess it follows, since these wingnuts simply cannot do anything collectively or cooperatively.
debbie
@Kay:
At last, we see the true Christian in Donald Trump.
debbie
@Arm The Homeless:
Especially when you’ve stuck them up your nose.
Sebastian
@H.E.Wolf:
I hear you but this is a bit different, isn’t it? In the examples you mentioned we were able to modify the existing system to be more just and including.
What we are facing now is the complete destruction of the rule of law and all institutions. There is no rebuilding after that unless you mean creating a new nation with new constitution and starting from scratch. That would be a nightmare.
Warblewarble
tRUMP and all his enablers should be put in chains and sent to rake forests as they burn.
frosty
@Nelle: This is a great approach to canvassing!!! I haven’t seen this in any election in PA, going back to 2004. I show up, get a walk list and start knocking on doors wherever they send me. Different doors every election, too.
What organization put it together?
Chris Johnson
@Sebastian: EVERY time the rule of law and everything is destroyed you have to rebuild. I’m not sure where you’re getting this feeling that it can’t be done.
Look at the burning of Black Wall Street. And now here we are: if we’re going to have another Civil War, bring it. Some things just will not stand. There are times in history that just go too far. Was there rule of law in Tulsa when Black Wall Street was destroyed?
All of history is the coming back. Coming back from the Great Depression gave us decades upon decades of increasing prosperity and made us the most powerful country in the world for a while there.
The pendulum is swinging around again. These are the times when we earn it. We earn the peace and prosperity and justice and all that stuff we represented when we rolled into WWII against the Nazis, because THESE are the times when we define ourselves.
All else is slow deterioration, and all this has happened before, uncountable times. This time instead of Nazis, we have the Nazis at home and the next (or at least A next) big enemy is probably climate change. It does capture the attention when the world burns, or explodes in hurricanes etc.
This is where we fight back to sanity and get ready to face real problems and overcome them. We can obviously do it.
SFAW
@Anne Laurie:
I’m not trying to be glib or flippant, but: what are you talking about? And why would he care, anyway? Assume (for argument’s sake) that his ratfuckery helps the Traitor-in-Chief get re-“elected”; if he’s successful, who would prosecute him?
My apologies if I’m missing something obvious.
Nelle
@frosty: I’m not sure how much is the county Democratic organization, which is superb, and how much is a couple in our large suburb, who decided, in their retirement, to flip our suburb from red to blue, not by going after the unpersuadable, but to get more D voters and get people to the polls. They got me when out on a walk, saw my sign for Mike Franken for Senate and saw I was sitting on my porch and before I knew it, I was a turf leader. That couple has made it more than a full-time job. Each precinct has an organizer and below that turf leaders. Our precinct has regular Zoom meetings to discuss the changing face of voting regs in a time of pandemic and post office dysfunction
The organizers are going through training to pick up absentee ballots, issue a receipt, and put them into issues lock boxes before delivering them directly to the Election office.
Every year, the county D’s organize a fundraising Steak fry in Sept., and every four years, all the presidential candidates come and speak. Last year, there were 12,000 attendees, including someone from every state. They have mad organizational skills. We had this year’s last night, with 1000 tickets sold. We were all in our cars, spaced apart and staggered rows. Meals delivered to the cars, signs handed out, trash picked up. Big screens like a drive in movie. All candidates spoke and headliners were Pete (who won the Iowa caucus), Pelosi, and Kamala. We all happily honked our approval. Lots of honking.
The Moar You Know
I looked up Roy Cohn. Not terribly familiar with the guy. This will be my favorite Donald Trump anecdote of all time:
A Ghost to Most
I’ve been warning about this for years, on this blog, and been treated like a lunatic for the privilege. I predicted this in 2002, and we have taken concrete steps ever since to prepare.
But y’all go on having your time, convinced that the election will change things. The shitshow BEGINS on Nov. 4.
OGLiberal
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Yup. These fucking people believe the Podesta brothers harvested Madeline McCann for her adrenochrome or whatever the fuck it is they think the Demonrats are killing kids for. This isn’t me joking…they actually fucking believe that.
At least 40% of the people we live with are fucking nuts. Not just wrong – and they are wrong – but crazy, like insane. I don’t know how you fix crazy. We can win elections – and we will – to help stop them from acting on the crazy but they will still exist and crazy as ever. And a lot of them ain’t that old.
I watched a video of these lunatics running towards barricades to get close to Trump. While Macho Man played in the background. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@A Ghost to Most:
People like you and all of the hair on fire “we’re doomed!1!” takes are why commenters leave
sanjeevs
From the Financial Times:
Republican donors are pouring an unprecedented amount of cash into some of the country’s most hotly contested Senate races in a sign that the party’s backers are increasingly focused on holding on to the second chamber in case Donald Trump loses the presidency.
So far, eight of the most competitive Republican Senate campaigns have raised a combined $128m in this cycle, according to a Financial Times analysis of Federal Election Commission data. That is more than three times as much as the $41m they had raised at this point in their previous races.
Officials on several of the campaigns told the FT they were on track to blow past their last quarterly fundraising hauls when they reveal their third-quarter numbers next month. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for South Carolina, who is facing a well-funded Democratic challenger, has raised $26.4m for his campaign, almost four times as much as he pulled in at this point in his previous race. Susan Collins in Maine has raised more than three times as much as she did last time.
Elizabelle
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): And why we have the Eeyore cupcake. And all the pies.
@A Ghost to Most: You are sometimes “treated like a lunatic” on this blog because you are one fucking jackass. You have your good sides too, to be sure, and have made some perceptive and even funny comments, but the jackass overwhelms. Way too often.
frosty
@Nelle: Sounds like you’re in Iowa? That might make a difference in organizing, but it really sounds like your neighbors took charge.
I hope you don’t mind but I’d like to send this to a couple of our local precinct(?) people*, paraphrased. I have a bad feeling I could be asked to lead it though. It would beat making phone calls though, which is all I’ve been asked to do so far and which I won’t do.
* who aren’t the campaign organizers who parachute in every four years then disappear.
H.E.Wolf
Humbly inspired to walk the path with you. <3
[ETA there is a formatting glitch on the final line of each verse; apologies.]
Lift ev’ry voice and sing
‘Til earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast
God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land
Songwriters: J. Rosamond Johnson & James Johnson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Every_Voice_and_Sing
Ruckus
@OGLiberal:
Well simply put they were deluded by a couple of issues. First a con man, second, what the con man is selling – racism. This is sort of the price we paid 155 yrs ago for not fighting racism and have been paying ever since. We thought it was about the confederacy and slavery but it was always about racism and it’s festered. People thought it was a much smaller localized issue, but it is an infection that has been raging for over two centuries. And people still die from this regularly.
We wonder why anyone would believe shitforbrains and the reason is – he’s a massive asshole racist. He’s one of them. They got their man elected president. We for sure have had racist presidents before. We for sure have had people of means as presidents. But we’ve successfully hidden their worst traits behind a veneer of acceptability. But now we have a full on racist asshole as president. That he’s not the wealthy dude he’s presented himself as isn’t important to them. That he’s got less common sense than a fruit fly isn’t important to them. That he is a racist through and through is. He’s one of them, he’s vindicated all of their hate and stupidity and that is the most important thing to them. The wealthy screwing them? That’s normal, hell they might be one of the wealthy themselves. But at their base, they are racists and he’s one of them. I propose that the republicans who have backed him do so because they are no different than he is.
eddie blake
@OGLiberal:
dude, they’re actually NOT mentally ill, and it’s really shitty of you to slag an entire community of rather vulnerable people with that suggestion.
people with MI can be for the MOST part, successfully treated and have many of their symptoms abated, with the proper medication and therapy.
some need to be institutionalized, like tang the conqueror- because they’re dangers to others, like tang the conqueror.
but don’t imply that the bulk of the fascists have MI. that’s fucked up.
and made up.
being ignorant and being a selfish asshole isn’t being mentally ill.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: I believe that what you said here is the truth. He is what they really wanted and didn’t get with other Republican presidents, or at least not as much as they wanted.
I knew someone who said that his 65 yo mother had just moved to a new apartment and was still figuring out who to hate. She needed someone to hate so she would know who and what she was, she needed an enemy in order to be, not happy, but content.
Elizabelle
@Nelle: I love your suggestions. Thank you very much.
Rand Careaga
A bit of nitpickery here: Stone turned sixty-eight a couple of weeks ago. This “degenerate geriatric* fop,” as Rick Wilson called him the other day, has long had, as Orwell once put it, the face he deserves.
*I’m a month older than Stone. Thanks a bunch, Rick.
SWMBO
@Nelle: Jesus on toast. Can you move to Florida and show the state party how to get it done? I’m serious. This place is more disorganized than an elementary school end of year party.
SWMBO
@H.E.Wolf: I love you. Come sit a socially acceptable distance from me (wear a mask please).
All of you are an antidote to the doldrums. And I appreciate each and every one of you.,
lofgren
@Kent: To think this is to badly misunderstand the way that human identities are formed, in a way that is very harmful to society.
The GOP are offering them what they want, and the GOP are saying healthcare is bad, so healthcare must be bad. You can see evidence of this even in your comment, where you imply that the same people who support the NRA necessarily oppose the Affordable Care Act and similar efforts. But why should it be so? It could just as easily be that the gun nuts all want free healthcare and the people who think healthcare is tyranny think guns should be banned. There is absolutely no reason for these two ideas to be bundled, other than the fact that our society provides a ready-made identity for this person. The same goes with opposing civil rights and thinking climate change is a hoax. That could have gone the other way too.
If a Leftist totalitarian appeared on the scene, all of these identities wold shift in an instant. Just like plenty of people who voted for Obama “suddenly” realized that they support everything Trump was saying. They were just racists, and Romney was not offering a White supremacist vision of America, so they voted for Obama like they have been voting for Democrats for decades. But suddenly here is Trump, saying that we can recreate a White America, and they find themselves 100% in favor of everything he says even when it is totally disconnected from the racism that they actually value. For god’s sake, unions that had never endorsed a Republican and were totally aware of Trump’s history of mistreating workers endorsed him, even though they knew that Republican policies were materially bad for them, because they didn’t like having to work a job site with Mexicans on the crew.
Most people just want to live and work and raise their families. If a politician offers them that and promises to take care of everything else, 40% of people will line up without asking questions.
Ruckus
@Chris Johnson:
Part of what this is, is that the world has been run this way for a very long time. When there really wasn’t enough food and shelter to go around, people fought everyone else for them. As they noticed that banding together was easier they did but because there wasn’t a lot of mingling and outsiders were very suspicious – the unknown. People with a different dialect or language, people with different skin color or noses or anything really. And outsiders could be accepted they just needed to fit in. Conservatives have always been unwilling to allow others in, it’s part of conservatism’s point of being. But the world is getting, not smaller but far more crowded, and far easier to get around and mingle with others. How many countries have you met people from? I’ve been lucky, I’ve met people from many parts of the country and the world. And some of them are amazing and some are not worth the effort. We should never join that second group, the problems have to be solved are world wide and any country that doesn’t attempt to help is going to be, has to be ostracized or the planet will take over, no matter our political bent. And racism is one of those man made issues that has to be fixed for it separates everyone and there isn’t enough room and food for that. And warfare or moving no longer works for that as it did 200 yrs ago because there are too many people and not enough places to live and raise food. And societies that discount labor and over prize wealth are going to learn the lessons that they always have, sooner or later, either of those intrude too forcefully on life and the result in that is that attitude changing or losing badly.
lofgren
@H.E.Wolf: We haven’t had the fight war over democracy in this country in 250 years. It’s a different kind of fight than those other three, the existence of which relies on a belief in democratic values. I don’t think it is fair to compare them.
ballerat
@Kent:
The 2016 election wasn’t a test of a person’s IQ, it was a test of character. It is even more so for this one.
I’ve got bad people in my family too. It is hard to love someone so full of hate and self-pity. I will never think of them as warmly as I did before. But I realize now they were always this way. I just didn’t know.
It’s been said that being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.
It appears that, similarly, Trump’s presidency didn’t change who the people in America are, it has revealed who they are.
A Lee S
@Citizen Alan: The thing is, and I live in Red America, Red America despises itself.
And wants to punish Blue America for it.