Just Saying Who's Trumping der Fuhrer?

[Jerry Russell]

Writing at CounterPunch, Paul Street asks (and answers): "Is it the (fascist) apocalypse yet"? The litany of Trump's crimes is discouragingly familiar. But I was much more interested in the conclusion of the essay, where Street writes about what it will take to prevent Trump from continuing into a second term. He says that "I've never found near-term history less predictable". But aside from the wildcard of the possibility that Trump could still have a covid-19 relapse, really there doesn't seem to be anything at all unpredictable about the scenario that is now unfolding.

Barring a total Biden sweep in both the popular vote and the absurdly anti-democratic Electoral College, it seems likely that a massive and consistent popular presence in the streets (and elsewhere) will be required to have a decent and “fair” vote, insofar as such a thing is even possible under the highly flawed, reactionary, and money-soaked U.S. party and elections system. ...​

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Will Democrats be willing to call masses into the streets, rejecting the pathetic path of surrender taken by the Gore-Lieberman Democrats in 2000-2001? Perhaps, but the signs are not good. ​

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Of course the Democrats won't organize any mass protests. The military is not going to intervene either. This isn't going to be an election, or a civil war either. It's looking like Trump's rampage cannot be stopped.

 

[Charles Watkins]

Of course the Democrats won't organize any mass protests. The military is not going to intervene either. This isn't going to be an election, or a civil war either. It's looking like Trump's rampage cannot be stopped.

When it hits the fan, the first question will be how to resolve the electoral dispute and this will fall to the Supreme Court. The issue will be whether to allow the judicial process regarding claims of voting fraud to play out or to shortcut the process to meet Constitutional requirements. That will be up to the Chief Justice.

So, I'm starting to think our last great hope may turn out to be John Roberts. So far, he has shown signs of valuing the integrity of the Court over blind partisanship, such as his ruling on Obamacare. If the Trumpies bring him a basket of ludicrous voting fraud claims, he could take that as an insult and lock down a Biden win, looking ahead to the status of the Court after Trump is gone. Could he be the Court's Thomas Becket?

 

[Jerry Russell]

The WSWS this morning is saying that with the confirmation of ACB to the Supreme Court, the Democrats have presented a "picture of utter spinelessness" towards Trump's coup plans. Patrick Martin wrote:

With only a narrow 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate, the Democrats nonetheless claimed they could do nothing to stop the speedy confirmation of Barrett, only five weeks after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg created a vacancy.​

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These claims are so ridiculous they barely require a refutation. The Senate is well known for its innumerable arcane procedures that allow a determined minority to delay and even defeat actions if they are willing to fight. If the circumstances had been reversed, there is not the slightest possibility that a Democratic president with a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate could push through a Supreme Court nomination on the eve of a presidential election. The Democrats would not even try.​

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An article at the Jacobin gave some more concrete ideas about what the Democrats could have done. They suggested that Democrats could have objected to each and every consent agreement for routine business in the Senate, creating many small delays. They could have enforced committee rules restricting hours of business. Or, more radically, they could have scheduled impeachment hearings for Attorney General Barr.

But none of that happened. Instead, the Democrats let the Republican nomination proceed like clockwork. While the WSWS chalks this up to cowardice and ineptitude, how can one avoid the suspicion that the Democratic party leadership is fully complicit?

I'm starting to think our last great hope may turn out to be John Roberts.

I hope so, but I'm not sure how this would work. Supreme Court procedures say that when the court is asked to consider a case, it is advanced for review by a vote of at least four of nine justices. The Chief Justice sets the agenda at the meeting where the cases are considered, but any justice can add a case to the agenda. (Doctrinal and Strategic Influences of the Chief Justice, Cross & Lindquist, 2006, p. 1671.)

 

[Charles Watkins]

Roberts does not want to be pushed into the position where the Court decides the election and he does not want the Democrats to pack the Court against him. His ideal situation is a 5-4 Court with himself as the swing vote and the Democrats would probably accept that. The solution is for Clarence Thomas to resign under Biden.

If he decides to throw the election to Trump, Roberts will have to go through a slew of cockamamie lawsuits raised by the Republicans and try to find some with enough merit to even be considered and enough disputable votes to sway the results. Given the quality of Republican litigation, that may not work.

A peculiar thread in this is Trump's insistence that the winner be determined on election night. This is the so-called "red mirage" where election night returns favor Trump but uncounted mail-in ballots swing the election to Biden. This has been parroted by Hannity and the rightwing media, but we have also heard from Roberts that prolonging the process would be bad for the country. Some think that if Trump gets a lead, he will try to proclaim himself the winner and order further vote counting to stop. This sets up another Bush vs Gore scenario. Back then, Roberts was an advisor to Jeb Bush, so I suspect that is where his true loyalties lie.

Of course, all that happens on election night is that the media makes a "call" on the winner. At that point, past losers have graciously conceded, but what are the chances of that with Trump? Who gets the "call" may depend on whether the networks are willing to include projected mail-in ballots in their decisions.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Roberts does not want to be pushed into the position where the Court decides the election...

But the Court already seems to be willing to decide the election.

Again from wsws:

On Monday, the US Supreme Court ruled that the battleground state of Wisconsin cannot count mail-in ballots sent before election day but received after November 3....​

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It is a nakedly political ruling with no real basis in law. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in regard to Wisconsin’s primary elections that the state could accept late ballots postmarked by election day—the opposite of yesterday’s ruling, the only difference being that suppressing the vote now helps Trump.​

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The article goes on to explain that in 2016, there were 80,000 votes in Wisconsin that would not have been counted under the new rule, and Trump won the state by 20,000 votes.

Of course, all that happens on election night is that the media makes a "call" on the winner.

Fortune is talking about a 342-electoral vote landslide for Biden, even if the polls now are just as wrong as those leading into the 2016 election. Rupert Murdoch reportedly might be expecting the same.

The ugliest possible scenario is a landslide victory for Biden, followed by a Trump coup.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Back in Post #1044 of this thread, in April 2019, I wrote:

Greenwald's position supporting the Mueller investigations of both Russiagate and 9/11, makes sense considering that he works for Peter Omidyar at The Intercept. Omidyar has well-known connections to the NSA and CIA. And unlike Assange, The Intercept is in the business of suppressing leaks, rather than publishing them. After sitting on the vast majority Snowden's archive of NSA documents for five years, trickling out just a few documents from time to time, The Intercept has just announced that they don't have enough funding to publish so much as one more document. This in spite of having had enough funds to pay Glenn Greenwald the sum of $1.6 million from 2014 to 2017. See:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/intercept-snowden-archive/256772/

https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/03/h...d-is-the-intercept-an-intelligence-operation/

So now, a few days before the election, Greenwald finally "sees the light" and has renounced his connection with the Intercept.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept

My Resignation From The Intercept

The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles. ...​

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When I left the Guardian at the height of the Snowden reporting in 2013 in order to create a new media outlet, I did not do so, needless to say, in order to impose upon myself more constraints and restrictions on my journalistic independence. The exact opposite was true: the intended core innovation of The Intercept, above all else, was to create a new media outlets where all talented, responsible journalists would enjoy the same right of editorial freedom I had always insisted upon for myself. ...​

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The current iteration of The Intercept is completely unrecognizable when compared to that original vision. Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties, a rigid and narrow range of permitted viewpoints (ranging from establishment liberalism to soft leftism, but always anchored in ultimate support for the Democratic Party), a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created The Intercept to oppose, critique and subvert.​

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This sudden need for independence is because Greenwald wants to use the Intercept platform to attack Joe Biden. I agree completely with the sentiment, but the timing seems disingenuous. Why is Greenwald suddenly realizing that the Democratic Party establishment is a corrupt corporate tool? Surely most Biden voters realize that it is a matter of choosing a profoundly evil candidate, who nevertheless is preferable to the psychopathic tyrant currently in the White House.

 

[Seeker]

Jerry, in view of what is happening now with the 2020 Presidential Election, and that Richard in the past had referred to Donald Trump as "The Beast from the Sea" (of Mar-a-Lago), a "Samson" (causing dissension), and that he might eventually stage a coup and become "Dictator", have you any comment to make about what he would do now, and have you any thoughts on Joe Biden typecasting?

 

[Jerry Russell]

I don't think the (s)election has been made yet. I get about ten fundraising letters every single day from both the Blue team and the Red team. (Is it just me, or does everybody get these?) And there's no letup at all, both teams are saying they need money to defend the election results. The Trump team is saying as clear as can be, that they think the election is being stolen and they aren't giving up.

I've been deeply suspicious for decades, that the vote counting process in the US has no built-in integrity. So many districts use "black box" vote counting machines with software of unknown provenance. It shouldn't be up to the skeptics to prove that cheating is going on, it should be up to the government to build a trustworthy system. Yet anybody who questions the results, is called a "conspiracy theorist."

While the Red team is claiming that the Blue team is primarily guilty of voter fraud and vote counting fraud this year, the Red team are far more flagrantly into various methods of vote suppression and gerrymandering. But one can only assume that both parties indulge in whatever fraud they think they can get away with, and any resemblance between the reported vote totals and the actual voter preferences is purely coincidental.

The Martenson forum tends to be pro-Trump and they're putting together a thread of links to articles claiming Democratic party election fraud.

Meanwhile, Joseph Kishore writing at WSWS thinks that while the count was going on, Republicans were negotiating with Biden for cabinet positions and other concessions. So even if Biden eventually gets into the White House, his administration will be more Trumpist than not. Even now, Kishore says, Trump's goal is "to create a 'stab in the back' narrative that will create the best conditions for the development of a fascistic movement, whether or not he is president."

 

[Seeker]

I get about ten fundraising letters every single day from both the Blue team and the Red team. (Is it just me, or does everybody get these?)

I got my last solitary solicitation two days ago, so I guess it's not everybody.

But one can only assume that both parties indulge in whatever fraud they think they can get away with

"To err is human, to forgive divine", as Pope (Alexander, not Charles) wrote. Of course my TV news is telling me nothing of the sort is occurring, but perhaps that is due to these blue Matrix pills I am taking. Donald Trump is of the "red" party, so he must be telling the unpleasant truth then.

Trump's goal is "to create a 'stab in the back' narrative that will create the best conditions for the development of a fascistic movement, whether or not he is president."

Now where have I had heard this before? Oh, yes, Germany in 1918, the same year as another pandemic. If Donald Trump should be "resurrected" to run again, 4 years from now after his "martyrdom", he would be 78, the same age that Joe Biden is just about to attain. Also, recalling German history, Hindenburg was 78, too, the year that he was elected President, and after he passed away in office, Hitler took over completely. Perhaps Donald Trump could be the "Grey Champion", supposed to arrive in 2025 and save us from that eventuality.

I don't think the (s)election has been made yet.

I presume you mean (s)elected by "BC" (top of the 1% of Banking/Corporation heads). Sort of like Bilderbergers for Biden vs. Trilateralists for Trump? Maybe we should have all voted for ourselves, and let "the powers that be" sort out THAT mess of ballots!

 

[Jerry Russell]

I guess it's not everybody.

So then it's my own fault that I get so many of these. It must be because I've occasionally clicked through on their 'survey' requests, and told them I think they're blockheads. I may have even promised to give them my two cents.

Now where have I had heard this before?

If history rhymes without exactly repeating, perhaps the 'recapitulation' of this event would be the rise of Kamala Harris. She appears to be very progressive, but her record as California attorney general is alarming, not to mention her very strange cackle. So I'm not sure yet what to expect.

Sort of like Bilderbergers for Biden vs. Trilateralists for Trump?

Yes, exactly. Trump seems to have lost support from Rupert Murdoch and the Fox News empire, which is a huge blow. But I don't see how we're going to know how this turns out until January.

 

[Seeker]

So then it's my own fault that I get so many of these. It must be because I've occasionally clicked through on their 'survey' requests, and told them I think they're blockheads. I may have even promised to give them my two cents.

LOL, very candid and funny, Jerry. That's exactly why I ignore these requests, once you answer one, they've got you!

If history rhymes without exactly repeating

Just saying, with no specific implications intended towards anyone, this is the 97th anniversary of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Trump seems to have lost support from Rupert Murdoch and the Fox News empire, which is a huge blow.

Fox may be getting back on Trump's bandwagon. Tucker Carlson endorsed the claims of voting fraud yesterday, without saying whether there was enough cheating to effect the results. Fox also hosted Rudy Giuliani making these fraud claims, leading Sam Seder to mock the narrative that Democrats used fraud to flip the Presidential results in ten states, while forgetting to do anything about the Senate.

I agree with Seder, that this degree of incompetence is impossible to imagine... unless the Democrats wanted to be caught!!

 

[Seeker]

that this degree of incompetence is impossible to imagine... unless the Democrats wanted to be caught!!

Uh Oh, does this mean that the Democrats could be "controlled opposition"?

 

[Charles Watkins]

What? Are you saying the Democrats would sacrifice the Senate deliberately and in such a way as they would be discovered? That some mysterious controllers made them do that?

 

[Jerry Russell]

.... this degree of incompetence is impossible to imagine... unless the Democrats wanted to be caught!!

In addition to Seder's remarks -- here's the data I was looking at, prompting this comment:

https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum-topic/gathering-links-evidence-of-election-fraud/#post-591552

Here is some data that points to fraud in Virginia [first congressional district]. Look first at the number of Trump votes, then compare that to the number of votes for the republican candidate for the House. 257K vs 255K.. makes sense right, as most people voting for Trump will likely vote down the line, at least for national office. BUT BUT BUT… look now at Biden votes in the same way; 277K vs 181K? This makes no sense. Why would so many live, conscious voters who care enough to vote for Biden not also vote for increasing control of Congress? What’s wrong here… can you see it?​

"Jim H" follows with a chart that looks like it was cut-and-paste from the Virginia elections website.

But, looking at Virginia's election results website today, I find completely different data:

https://results.elections.virginia.gov/vaelections/2020 November General/Site/Presidential.html

In the 1st congressional district, the totals are 213K for Biden and 233K for Trump, instead of 277K to 181K.

WTF?? From Jim's version of the data, it looks obvious that ~90K Biden ballots have been fabricated out of thin air. Now today those votes are gone, and a totally ordinary-looking scenario is posted instead.

So my data is gone! And furthermore, this was happening in Virginia, which is not a swing state anyhow.

Are you saying the Democrats would sacrifice the Senate deliberately and in such a way as they would be discovered?

To further clarify the narrative here, Trump's followers seem to be saying that the Democrats fabricated hundreds of thousands of ballots, marked them for Biden, but forgot to have those fake ballots also vote for Democratic congressional & senate candidates. If this were true, of course it would be an obvious fraud. Or at any rate, it's obvious to any "woke" conspiracy theorist, although (according to the narrative) you are never going to see CNN and MSNBC admit to anything.

So it's not so much that the Democrats sacrificed the Senate, so much as that they just forgot to include it when they fudged the results for Biden. And according to the narrative, it's obvious in the same way that Building 7 was obviously demolished: it's only "obvious" if you're paying attention.

BUT... I'm going to have to retract this entire line of conjecture and speculation. At least unless there's some real data to base it on.

The "Legal Eagle" You Tube channel looked into the fraud allegations and Trump's legal challenges in some detail, and the conclusion (starting at 26:08) is that there's nothing significant enough to change the electoral college outcome.

Which seems to leave only brute force (control of the military and/or citizen militias) as a means for Trump to stay in office. I wouldn't count him out yet. The most ominous signal is that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has been replaced by a Trump yes-man. Patrick Martin at WSWS says:

The undeniable implication of Esper’s firing is that Trump wants a Pentagon chief who will say yes to the deployment of troops into American cities to deal with the mass unrest that would undoubtedly follow an attempt by the president to defy the election results.​

 

[Charles Watkins]

So the Democrats didn't deliberately tank the Senate races, they just forgot about them? Is that what you're going with?

And let's have some details on this plot. How do you manufacture hundreds of thousand ballots? How do you get them distributed? How do you deal with voter verification?

 

[Jerry Russell]

Hi Charles,

And let's have some details on this plot.

I think you missed where I said:

BUT... I'm going to have to retract this entire line of conjecture and speculation. At least unless there's some real data to base it on.

Or in other words, I'm not buying this narrative either.

But, here's the screen shot of the data "Jim H" found at the Virginia election website a few days ago:



Here's what I find now:



Seems odd, eh? Although it certainly could be a completely innocent mistake.

 

[Seeker]

This is not from me, but I found it posted, supposedly advice from an anonymous "constitutional attorney"(?)-

"Below is from a constitutional attorney:
Ok in a nutshell... This is going to the Supreme Court. Where they will rule that the election is invalid due to fraud or mistakes on a country wide scale. It will go one of two ways, either they will rule that all the unconstitutional
mail in ballots will be removed and the states ordered to recount without them or they will simply rule the election is invalid due to mass voter fraud and at that point it will be sent to the congress and senate for a vote. This is where it gets good. The house/congress votes on who the President will be. It has nothing to do with what party that has power. Every State gets one vote and 30 States are held by Republicans.and 19 by Democrats. They have to vote down party lines, they have no choice due to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution and the Senate votes for the Vice President where a similar even will take place. This is The law. This is why the Democrats are so mad at Nancy Pelosi. This will all happen in January. The only way President Trump won’t be President is if he concedes the election and that will never happen So stop watching the fake news and don’t let your heart be troubled and live your life knowing this will all work out. President Trump will remain President I have researched all of this and it is Fact!
Another fun fact, the media called Gore the President Elect for 30 days in 2000 until the courts ruled against him and declared Bush the winner. And two people that were part of that decision was none other that new Supreme Court Justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Why do you think the Democrats tried so hard to keep them from being confirmed."

 

[Jerry Russell]

This is not from me, but I found it posted, supposedly advice from an anonymous "constitutional attorney"(?)-

"Legal Eagle" really is a constitutional attorney, and he obviously doesn't agree. And I don't either.

In order for the Supreme Court to issue a ruling, the case needs to get on their docket first. That means that specific issues need to be addressed at a state level first. Multiple cases would need to succeed at a state level to present a picture of mass voter fraud on a national level. It just isn't going to happen. Maybe the Supreme Court could step in and issue some sort of kangaroo court style ruling, but there would be no basis to pretend that this was happening on a legitimate basis. It's looking like Trump can't even get the Supremes to throw out Obamacare.

So it seems rather presumptuous to me, that any expert "constitutional attorney" would make a prediction like this.

Unless... maybe this "constitutional attorney" has been watching this video, or something like it:

It's rather long. If you don't have time, here's a sort of cliff's note summary:



The premise is that in Michigan (for example, Oakland County), voters have the option of either voting a "party line" ticket, or else voting for individual candidates. In the graph above, the horizontal axis is the percent of Republican "Party Line" tickets in each precinct. Dr. Shiva argues that these "party line" tickets should predict the party makeup of each precinct, and so it should also predict the percentage votes for individual candidates in each precinct. The vertical axis represents the deviation from this prediction. So, according to Dr. Shiva's analysis, the precinct data should all fall fairly close to the red line drawn along the horizontal axis. But what we see is a fairly strong deviation, such that the precincts with 60% Republican tickets, are voting 40% Trump and 60% Biden.

Now, I disagree with Dr. Shiva on two points.

First of all, the cross section of "party line" tickets might not be a perfect predictor of the makeup of the precinct as a whole. Instead there might well be some tendency of regression towards the mean. But I'd have to agree that a complete flip, 60/40 Republican ticket voters and 40/60 Biden candidate voters in the same precinct, seems to indicate foul play is afoot.

Secondly: Dr. Shiva is assuming that the "Party Line" tickets are "ground truth" and that the individual candidate votes are being stolen for Biden. I think the data would look more or less the same, if the manipulation was to randomly switch some Democratic ticket votes to Republican ticket, in a solidly Democratic county.

But, I have to agree with Dr. Shiva, that these voting machines are subject to manipulation, and there's no guarantee that the output will accurately reflect the input. If indeed the manipulations are ham-handed and easily detected through simple statistical and graphic analysis, then perhaps there could be a basis for the Supreme Court to throw out the election.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Mike Adams at Natural News has this report:

https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-09-trump-fires-deep-state-defense-secretary-mark-esper.html

Understand that the election theft was conducted in real time on Nov. 3rd, using the Dominion software, created by a corporation partially owned by Nancy Pelosi. During the election, the real-time data were shunted offshore, where calculations were run to produce action lists for stealing the votes in swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan, and then Hammer and Scorecard (created by the CIA) were used to alter the votes in real time, in the voting machines.​

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Deep source insiders have been telling me for days that an “epic counter attack” against the deep state is about to be launched by Trump. We don’t know the details about this counter attack, but we do know that Trump has two options which involve deploying the military to save the Republic:​

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Option #1) Invoke the Insurrection Act and declare the Democrats’ blatant vote rigging and outrageous censorship to be a “rebellion” against the United States of America. Order military police to arrest the thousands of high-level traitors who tried to carry out a communist-influenced coup against the United States, including all the CEOs of Big Tech as well as the heads of the corrupt Democrat party. More details here.​

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Option #2) Invoke Sec. 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which calls for Trump to strip Electoral College votes from all states engaged in acts of rebellion against the United States, which of course includes rigged election theft and vote fraud. More details here. And here.​

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Both of these options will likely require deploying elements of the military in left-wing cities in order to first carry out the arrests of the traitors and then maintain the rule of law as left-wing terrorists rise up and try to stage a kinetic coup / civil war in America’s streets.​

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I wonder if these "Deep Source Insiders" include QAnon, or others of similarly poor predictive reliability?

As I discussed above: even if there's proof of real-time data manipulation in the Dominion machines, how do we know who did it, or to what end? The possibility of sophisticated "false flag" electronic attacks cannot be discounted.

Would this be a use of the Insurrection Act and/or 14th Amendment to suppress a coup attempt? Or, more of a coup in itself, the final death blow to the American democratic system? Given Trump's record exposed in this thread, the latter seems far more likely.

Predictions are all over the map. Caitlin Johnstone says:

Totalitarian Dictator To Leave Office After Losing Election​

Trump will leave office on January 20th, a sound refutation of the widespread narrative that he was a totalitarian dictator who presented an unprecedented threat to democracy.​

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The hysterical exaggerations of the threat Trump posed weren’t destructive because they were unfair to Trump, they were destructive because they created the false impression that those who came before him and those who will come after are not equally depraved.​

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The others including Biden are certainly depraved. But, equally depraved? Don't we give any credit at all, for at least giving lip service to positive values, as the Democrats often do?

It's all too easy to imagine Trump invoking the Insurrection Act to overthrow his opponents; not so easy to imagine the Democrats doing the same.