Trump Tweets

Today, I announced two of the LARGEST grants in history to Puerto Rico to rebuild its electrical grid system and education system. My Administration will be awarding $13 BILLION through FEMA – the largest obligations of funding ever awarded...

...Obama killed the pharmaceutical manufacturing business in Puerto Rico. We are bringing it back from China and other faraway lands.

Since the president should not be involved in the review process, him proclaiming that he will be involved means that the review will be ALL about politics. What a putz.

More stuff before election. Trump will nominate and Mitch approve Ginsberg's replacement. How soon can Canada open up some abortion clinics for us?

With his ego? He'll show up expecting to wipe the floor with Biden and claim afterward that that is exactly what he did, no matter what actually happened.

How? Obama had absolutely nothing to do with it. The pharmaceutical manufacturing business in Puerto Rico was decimated before Obama even took office due to the repeal of the Section 936 tax break between 1996 and 2006. Just another example of Trump lying. Does that sorry excuse for a man ever NOT lie?

Yeah, I just saw where RBG died. The **** is going to well and truly hit the fan now, unless McConnell and Co do the honorable thing and go by the "let the people have their say" standards* they set themselves four years ago. Not gonna happen- they will move the goalposts, "uh, well, it's different now because this and that."

*McConnell in 2016- ""The American people are perfectly capable of having their say on this issue, so let's give them a voice. Let's let the American people decide. The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the qualifications of the nominee the next president nominates, whoever that might be."

Overturning Roe does not mean abortion will become illegal nationally. In all likelihood, only certain states will make it illegal, and those states already make it difficult to have an abortion. I've heard estimates the abortion rate would probably decline ~10%.

If the conservatives are like Justice Thomas, then, yeah, they could determine the fetus has a right-to-life. Because of the backlash, this would be a big mistake. Big. Huge.

Don't we have an RBG thread? This is my 3 cents:

Our only hope is a few GOP Senators with a conscience. I think that is the case, especially with their own reelection looming.

Back up option, we take the Senate and POTUS back and follow through with the threat of expanding the number of seats on the court by ... oh let's say two or four more seats.

McConnell might take option #3): try to use it as campaign leverage.

If McConnell doesn't move for an approval vote, you can bet that means he doesn't have the votes.


Edited to add: If they try to push a SCOTUS nominee through you can bet that will piss off more voters than it will please.

Regarding the first link: Interesting that you cited the graph WITHOUT the accompanying text. However, if you read that text, it says NOTHING about child sexual assaults. The graph you cited shows the Canadian *homicide rate*.

Regarding both links: Neither say a word about migrants. In fact, doing a word search on the word "migrants" in both articles shows zero results. Thus, the data you cite does not support your assertions.

Maybe you're used to posting in forums where fact-checking is considered beneath the poster. You might want to consider going back.

Think about it.

Let's say that through some miracle we get the Republican Senate to agree to hold on appointing the new Justice until after the election. They won't, but let's say.

What happens when Trump loses but declares himself the winner on some pretext? Who do we turn to? The 4-2 Conservative remaining members of the Supreme Court? Even Roberts having one of his moments of sanity would only get us to a tie with no way to break it.

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think it's a fait accompli that Republicans push to nominate and replace.

Howver, if Trump and McConnell agree whoever wins should get to name the next nominee, I wouldn't be surprised if, after Trump loses, they renege and try to cram through their choice.

You're totally naive. McConnell has said flat out that filling a vacancy now would be totally different from the last time he refused to do so because the current president is Republican. He will absolutely try to shove another [incompetent, probably criminal] judge onto the Supreme Court bench before January 21. Whether it happens before the election or after is completely irrelevant because none of the Republicans involved would be likely to lose votes over doing it. Their supporters will consider it Divine Providence that they get to make the federal court system completely insane for the next 20-30 years.

Trump at the rally
Trump praises the top general who fought on behalf on slavery

"Lincoln was getting beaten a lot by Robert E Lee. They want to rip down his statue all over the place, he would have won except for Gettysburg, these were incredible things",


"We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students, and restore patriotic education to our schools. We will teach our children to love our country"

Trump on what will happen if he loses the election
"On November 4th, the press will probably say, let's say something stupid happened, the press will say, 'I gotta admit, he did a damn good job!'"

"They charged and they beat the hell out of these guys" -- Trump praises law enforcement for brutalizing people who allegedly were trying to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson, who he describes as "a very good president"

Trump pushes unfounded conspiracy theories about Rep. Ilhan Omar
"Look at Omar. She came in here, did she marry her brother?"

Trump suggests congress members AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib should be prosecuted
"We'll prosecute 'em. Yeah. Why not?"

Trump insinuates that AOC should be in prison
"She spent $2 million on ********, okay? And if a Republican did that, they'd be in jail"

FTFY

I'm guessing it is pretty much a given because McConnell and the GOP want to amass power, to win. They clearly believe the end justifies the means.

More importantly:
Read what the Transition Integrity Project has to say, as summarized by The New Yorker:
Horrible to contemplate, but as bad as the past four years have been -- especially the past seven months -- they may have just been the lead up to the final stomach-churning events that brings down our democracy as we have known it for the past two hundred forty-four years.

Five years ago I couldn't even have imagined writing those words. 'Bring down our democracy.' If I read them I would have laughed at it and said, "Hey calm down." But some people are getting a sickening feeling -- and I'm one of 'em -- that this may in fact be exactly where all this insanity is headed.

The Ginsburg replacement will become a Trump issue now. Everything is Trump now, and he will do a mass of awful things after he loses the election.

Trump and McConnell certainly want to replace Ginsburg, and if it were just up to them, then they'd do it. Fortunately, they have to contend with political reality. The hypocrisy of doing this even four months ago is different than six weeks before the election. Murkowski has already said she won't support it ("fair is fair"). Such naked hypocrisy is not a good look -- though, admittedly, with Trump anything is possible (except decency).

I'd guess President Trump will meet with people, claiming he wants to be prepared. At rallies, he'll go off message to say things that the crowd wants to hear, but it's not clear to me that Orange Man & Turtle Face can get the necessary number of Republican Senators to go along with a confirmation.

They'll be very likely to get them the day after the election once reelected senators have 6 more years in their jobs and ousted senators want to express their bitterness. It's doubtful any of the remainder will actually stand up and tell McConnell no and then vote that way, regardless of what empty words they're spewing today.

How do you "teach" someone to love something? Maybe I'm naive, but it seems to me that love is different than math and geography. Love is not instructively instilled from without; it is inductively arrived at from within.

You think that because you are a rational person. Most people are not rational, and believe whatever they are told to believe by authority figures. And they find that not only valid, but the only valid means of coming to belief in anything. Any other means of arriving at a belief is suspicious, and probably evil.

Let's see: on what occasions in the past has Trump failed to seize a personal advantage due to concerns it might make his enemies think bad things about him?

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has said she will not support an attempt to nominate a justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But Murkowski has also indicated she won't support trump in November. trump knows that and said in 2022 he will go to Alaska to campaign against her reelection.
But before we start fitting Murkowski for a halo:
Senator Susan Collins of Maine -- who has also indicated she might not vote for a replacement for Ginsburg prior to the November election -- also voted to acquit trump during the impeachment vote. So even if (if) Collins and Murkowski follow though and vote no, in order to defeat a nominee, there will need to be two more Republican Senators who won't support a replacement. With trump and mcconnell undoubtedly working behind-the-scenes to exert as much pressure as humanly possible on GOP senators to insure they 'toe the line,' those two additional GOP senators may be hard to find.

I think there's a good chance they might, simply because cramming through a supreme court nominee before the election would risk a political backlash.

Better to wait until after the election, then cram it through in the lame duck session.

One would think a professional liar would have a better vocabulary or understanding of English

Trump would have us believe that these fictious world leaders meant “[what you have done)] is amazingly good.

It could just as easily be that they called Trump and said “we look at what you have done and are amazed and dumbfounded - even flabbergasted and shocked.”

ETA
I kind of cannot tear my eyes away. I looking at a burning train wreck next to a fireworks warehouse while a 10-passenger commuter flight is about crash on top of it all and an earthquake has formed an ever-widening chasm right in front of some tornadoes. (D’oh what am I thinking? Sharknadoes)

If four GOP senators with enough backbone can be found to stand up to McConnell, I'll eat my hat.

I think your hat is safe.

My whip count right now is that Collins and Murkowski will oppose. Graham has said he doesn't think it's possible to do hearings and a vote in a lame duck session. Graham though has shown the backbone of jellyfish, so his assessment could change.

I'm curious to see what Grassley will do. He's a Senate institutionalist and may balk at rushing a nominee. Romney is his own man and we'll have to see who the nominee is. If it's a TV judge from Fox, Romney will oppose. Ben Sasse could be a spoiler as well. I could see a coalition of Sasse and Romney (never Trumpers) and Collins and Murkowski if the nominee is a true Trump loyalist.

Trump will likely want a true Trump loyalist, eyeing court fights for when he goes totally off the rails in an unlikely second term.

For the GOP, the smart thing to do would be to NOT nominate someone before the election.

Then, if Trump loses and/or the Democrats retake the Senate, nominate and confirm a judge in the lame duck session. And yes, they'll have the votes in the lame duck (just to reassure Stacyhs' hat).

Even more than the electoral college, this is the one thing about US government that I found absolutely jaw-dropping. In parliamentary systems, when the election is called the House (of Commons) is dissolved and doesn't sit. No new legislation can be passed until after the election is decided and a new Parliament sworn in.

It should be the same in the US: on the day after the election the old House of Representatives should be considered dismissed in toto and cannot sit until the entire slate of 438 new members is sworn in, which should happen concurrently with the President.

I believe the process for the electoral college votes and certification are laid out in the constitution, but I don't know if the time lines are. If they are, then the ten weeks where there isn't a sitting House would be problematic. If they aren't, they should be tightened up, especially if the election results are clear. Of course time needs to be set aside for the transition teams to do their work, but they don't need a sitting House for that. The new House, Senate, and President could be sworn in on December 15.

wrong thread

I don't think Trump will be able to be that patient.

There is a good argument to be made that, should Trump lose, he has no incentive to pander to the "losers" who didn't vote in sufficient numbers for him.

IF Trump loses, Trump could be bribed by a full pardon from Pence.
But I agree that Trump will probably like to tout his new magnificent judge during the campaign.

Conservatives who claimed that "yes, Trump is disgusting and unfit, but SCOTUS" will have a big problem, though.


No, joking of course: they'll find a new rationale why they have to vote for Trump (something like "why did the Dems nominate AOC's puppet?").

Even before I wrote my previous message last evening, mitch mcconnell had already announced that yes, they WILL vote on a trump nominee (not named yet) to fill Justice Ginsburg's seat on the Supreme Court prior to the November election. From an NPR news report:
This is raw partisan politics. The reason for pushing the nomination through before the election is simple: to get the kind of judge on the court that Republican voters want. That's essentially the same reason mcconnell WOULDN'T hold a vote in 2016. But that time it was to prevent the nomination of the kind of judge on the court that Republican voters didn't want. mcconnell made that clear last evening, explaining:

There is a second reason. The presidential election may again be decided by SCOTUS.

Trump will be torn. Announcing the name gives him the look-at-me moment that he lives for. But the showman (huckster) that he is willl lead him to say “I’ve narrowed it down to 3, tune in tomorrow for a nominee revelation that will shock you.”

Trump lives his life as if he were click bait.
Perhaps Trump himself is click bait.

The American version of seperation of power has shown itself to be a huge failure.

Propaganda and indoctrination.

More specifically, that's fairly certainly what the actual intent is. Of some note, a number of right-wingers have been accusing schools of doing exactly that - mostly falsely, but frequently with a small grain of truth mixed in - albeit largely because schools are teaching things that they don't want to be taught. So, in the usual result of their projection, they're trying to do exactly what they're projecting onto others. I'm also reminded of a particular right-wing father that I watched, though, who specifically stated that he thinks that the only thing that he thinks that his kid needs to have as a takeaway from school is that the US is the best country in the world.

"He loved Big Brother."

Neither Collins nor Murkowski will oppose. They'll make "concerned" faces and pretend to be about propriety right up until the vote, then they'll vote for whatever their fuhrer wants while hoping that nobody's looking.

Collins in particular should have had her image of independence shattered years ago. She's a spineless yes woman.

Exactly what I think :(

You can’t complain he’s inconsistent.

"If you can't love something, love the something you're with ..." Aldous Huxley

I still think the Senate won't vote until after the election. If McConnell keeps pressing for an earlier vote it will be to give vulnerable senators something to push back against for the purposes of political theater. They can paint themselves as mavericks then after the election "reluctantly" vote for a candidate who is just too good not to put on the bench.

On September 9th trump released an updated list of potential nominees for the Supreme Court. The front runners according to CNN are:

• Amy Coney Barrett
• Amul Thapar
• Former US Solicitors General Paul Clement and Noel Francisco
• Barbara Lagoa
• Sen. Tom Cotton

Here is a link to the CNN story from this morning about the frontrunners: Link. Here is a link to the CNN story about trump's updated list that appeared on September 9th: Link

trump updated his list ten days ago? Maybe trump knew something nobody else did. ;)

I think it's more a matter of gaming the system has become a science.

Meanwhile:

https://twitter.com/AnthonyTilghman/...817736705?s=20

In the thread, there's footage of them trying to prevent people reaching the polling stations.

... which is a serious crime.