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US election 2020 thread

Ax^ said:
hmm you think the American justice system is completely broken or just only protecting one part of the population

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Kalief Browder's story is even more tragic than that implies. He was held in solitary confinement for two of those years and tried to kill himself twice. Two years after his release he hung himself in his parent's home.
 
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Russian embassy or consulate would be my first port of call. Whether they believe you or think you’re a US agent trying to trick them is another matter.
 
not-bono-ever said:
they would likely fuck you off straight out the door like a traveling brush salesman- this isnt cricket. anyway, they probably have all the laptop info already anyhow
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It has worked before. John Walker just walked into the embassy in Washington and sold secrets.

The embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was located less than four blocks from the White House. It was housed in a grandiose stone mansion built at the turn of the century by Mrs. George M. Pullman, widow of the railroad sleeping car magnate, but she had never occupied the four-story, rectangular structure. Instead, it had become the embassy for the last czarist family, the House of Romanov. John parked several blocks away and had a cab drop him at an address one block north of the embassy. He walked down the sidewalk, passed the embassys iron gate, paused, and then continued walking down the street. He had lost his nerve. Mustering his courage, he spun around and this time walked through the embassys front gate. He opened the front door and burst inside so quickly that he startled the receptionist stationed there. I need to see the man in charge of your security, he stammered. Seconds later, John was escorted into a small office where he was introduced to a stern looking Russian. I am interested in pursuing the possibilities of selling classified U.S. government documents to the Soviet Union, he announced. Ive brought along a sample. He handed the KL-47 keylist to the Russian. The man asked John his name. James Harper, John replied. The Russian asked him for some sort of identification. John reluctantly took out his military identification card.
John Anthony Walker Jr., the Russian read aloud. Thank you.... Mr. Harper.
John felt his face turning red.
The Russian left with the keylist. When he returned, he motioned for John to sit down. We desire the document, he told John. We want more such documents. We welcome you, dear friend.
The Russian, who was a KGB officer, asked if John was offering to help out of political beliefs or for financial reasons?
Purely financial. I need the money.
The KGB officer then began quizzing him: Was he married? Did he have a drinking problem? Did he use drugs? John, who was nervous and in a hurry, interrupted. He explained that he was willing to sign a life time contract to supply classified information, primarily NSA keylists, in return for a monthly salary, just like an employee.
The KGB officer had never had a spy ask for a regular salary. John suggested $500 to $1,000 per week. The officer agreed and asked him to prepare a shopping list of keylists that he could steal. They agreed to meet in two weeks at a suburban shopping center. John was to have a folded Time magazine under his right arm. A man will give you instructions about how to make a dead drop and arrange for us to meet in Europe, the Russian explained. He then handed John an envelope stuffed with bills and lead him into a hallway where he was instructed to put on a full-length coat and broad-brimmed hat. As soon as he did, he was surrounded by a group of large men and hustled into the rear seat of a waiting car, which then sped out of the embassy grounds and spent the next hour cruising through Washingtons streets. John was let out in a residential area. As soon as he was alone, he began counting the cash. I knew I was about to make a lot of money, he said later. I was not going to be a failure like my father...My financial problems were over!
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The Story: Page 2 — Family of Spies: The John Walker Jr. Spy Case — Crime Library
 
I don't think the Dems or Biden will listen. For all the good analysis and worthwhile commentary, they think they are wonderful and don't realise that they had an unlikely reprieve. They will never build the foundations to fix their society. In other words: Trump would have dragged the country into authoritarian patriarchy and made it as bad as you can imagine. The Dems won't pay heed to the reality that Trump might well have won. They just about made it out of trouble but are nevertheless so short on solutions. They won't make it next time, you and I can see it a mile off, they can't.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
It has worked before. John Walker just walked into the embassy in Washington and sold secrets.
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Also, there's whatever the fuck happened with the alleged Hunter Biden laptop:
Rudy Giuliani provided the materials to the paper after they were allegedly found on a MacBook Pro left at a Delaware computer repair shop owned by John Paul Mac Isaac. Mac Isaac contacted Giuliani, who he said was his "lifeguard"—voicing credence to the conspiracy theory that the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign was behind the murder of campaign worker Seth Rich.[46] Steve Bannon informed the New York Post of the laptop,[47] and he and Giuliani delivered a copy of the supposed laptop hard drive to the publication.[48] Weeks before, Bannon had boasted on Dutch television that he had Hunter Biden's hard drive.[48] Giuliani was later quoted as saying he had given the copy to the New York Post because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out".[6] According to the New York Post story, an unknown person left the computer at the repair shop to repair water damage, but once this was completed, the shop had no contact information for its owner, and nobody ever paid for it or came to pick it up.[49] Criticism has been focused on Mac Isaac over inconsistencies in his accounts of how the laptop came into his possession and how he passed it on to Giuliani and the FBI.[49][46] When interviewed by CBS News, Mac Isaac offered contradictory statements about his motivations.
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I realize that the Democratic Party won't pay attention here, but....

In spring 2013, after their defeat in the 2012 presidential election, the Republicans conducted an autopsy on their party to determine how things went wrong. There were recommendations for tactical and organizational changes, but the most important of them involved a call for outreach to groups of Americans who had either been shunned by the GOP or been considered unlikely recruits to the ranks of their voters: African Americans, Latinos and members of the LGBT community. In one of the more ironic developments in modern American political history, three years later, Republican primary election voters chose a man who espoused views that were the very antithesis of those recommendations.

The paradoxical result of the inquest should not be read as proof of that such exercises are useless. In truth, there is no reason why such autopsies should be conducted only by the losers. Winners such as 2020 Democrats would be well-advised to conduct one of their own about why 74 million Americans voted against them and why they lost strength in the House of Representatives.

Soul-searching is not a prevalent mood among Democrats right now after the invasion of the U.S. Capitol and the re-impeachment of former President Donald Trump. They are entitled to a temporary feeling of triumphalism, but there is also cause for them do some reflection on how they should reach out to the tens of millions of voters who rejected them and who are sullen and even rebellious. This is not to argue that hardcore Trump loyalists or believers in implausible conspiracies can be won over. Rather, it involves how hard the winners are willing to work to understand the losers.

The Democratic Party since the 1930s has been the home of both the better-educated and racial minorities. But for most of the period was also the political home for blue-collar workers. By the 1970s, two of its most reliable bases of support found themselves at odds with each other. As African Americans advanced demands for both the expansion of political rights and economic advancement, the Democrats’ blue-collar voters perceived these gains as coming at their expense. Busing to achieve integrated schools and affirmative action became emotional flash points.

Bridging this divide became a kind of political high-wire act for Democratic presidential nominees. They did not always manage this very well, as seen in Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” reference to Trump followers in 2016 and Barack Obama’s dismissive “they cling to their guns and religion” in 2008 in reference to some GOP voters.
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Democrats need an autopsy to figure out why 74 million Americans voted against them (msn.com)

The thing is, its not that difficult to understand that if you abandon working class voters, they won't vote for you. The difficult part is changing course, when all of the momentum is toward the other direction. Most of the money funding both parties are corporate donors who's interests are in direct conflict with working class voters. Its also difficult when your party leadership is so far up their own ass that they refuse to listen to their base.
 
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brogdale said:
+ $1.3bn :D :D

View attachment 251266
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At one level you can see this as the mad flailing about of the old regime, thinking it still had the power to intimidate these massive companies with crazy accusations about Chavez and stuff. Here comes the new regime and Dominion (along other companies and individuals who were defamed by trump's team) realise they can get their revenge. But then it also feels like the points Smokeandsteam and others have made about the reassertion of business as usual neo-liberalism.

Anyway, wonder if Giuliani will fold?

Edit: I think the political economy is the important bit here. However it is interesting seeing experienced operators like Giuliani doing something clearly dishonest - and risky to himself - in terms of the voting machine accusations. The only way he wasn't get sued was if trump stayed in office and that so obviously wasn't going to happen. Did he just feel he couldn't stop, couldn't pull out of the icy slide he was on? Did he think the combination of trump refusing to move and the forthcoming capital invasion would win the day and then save him from legal action?
 
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Posted on the Dog Breath thread, but might as well go here as well, new stuff from Research & Destroy:

illwilleditions.com

The Dilemma • Ill Will

Political economy for the time of monsters
illwilleditions.com illwilleditions.com

Things fall together. The ruling class’s greatest powers are passive, invisible, and January 6 brought out all the hard-wired system stabilizers. Crises consolidate the ruling class as a matter of practice: the MAGA senator has more in common with AOC than any of us, in the end, and it is this that has eluded audiences across the nation and the world. From one vantage point — one that believes that the norms were in charge up until quite recently — the dissonance seemed baffling. They carried Thin Blue Line flags and fought the cops! Minds reel from Twitter to the Tuileries. How quickly has the Struggle on the Steps led us to forget the no-less suggestive scene just a few months earlier wherein Kyle Rittenhouse, having seized upon the confluence of racial hatred and the sanctity of property to murder two men in Kenosha, Wisconsin, meandered untroubled through a line of police, his assault rife slung over his shoulder, ready to shed blood for a used car dealership. What is it that Rittenhouse wanted? It cannot be terribly different from the petty desires that seized his cartoon cousins in the Capitol, even as we know that Rittenhouse dreamed only of becoming a cop. Just as surely, both sides of the capital confrontation would have assassinated Michael Reinoehl without a second thought; the cops entrusted with that task would have had kind words, we are sure, for all January’s parties...

Covid-19 clarifies the workplace for what it really is, a charnel house with private offices attached. Some of us work from home, others can’t find any work at all, still others are forced to get sick and to sicken others in the name of necessity, so that all of us can purchase our supplies or receive care if we get sick. The new variants are more transmissible but so far this has been a disease of cramped spaces rather than sporadic contact, affecting anyone who must work indoors with others, anyone who cannot go outside: workers, prisoners, residents in nursing homes and other facilities. Confinement is the disease’s metier: wherever humans are treated like objects, massified without egress, there the disease thrives. The summer’s insurrection showed us the creativity with which people can act together who are nonetheless disconnected, a lesson that doesn’t stop needing to be learned.
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Their last text from back at the very start of the Trump era might be worth revisiting as well: The Landing: Fascists without Fascism

Many of the Executive Orders were statements of intention rather than actions, designed to show his commitment to the proto-fascist project without requiring him to put much weight behind it. They simulate absolute authority, as if he were already the kind of leader capable of remaking the country by fiat. But he’s not, at least not yet. And so his administration remains a sort of simulacrum of fascism; Trump is a Mussolini without his Italy. To become a true fascist, he will need loyal people at all levels of the government, as well as extra-governmental forces capable of doing the dirtiest work but also forcing the hand of bureaucrats and judges too loyal to the letter of the law. It is hard to see how he can garner such devotion except by giving people something more than empty rhetoric, fear-mongering, and fake news about fake news. He will actually have to put people to work and build infrastructure and increase their living standards, and to do this, he will have to tell the most rapacious billionaires to get with the program.
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Wilf said:
At one level you can see this as the mad flailing about of the old regime, thinking it still had the power to intimidate these massive companies with crazy accusations about Chavez and stuff. Here comes the new regime and Dominion (along other companies and individuals who were defamed by trump's team) realise they can get their revenge. But then it also feels like the points Smokeandsteam and others have made about the reassertion of business as usual neo-liberalism.

Anyway, wonder if Giuliani will fold?

Edit: I think the political economy is the important bit here. However it is interesting seeing experienced operators like Giuliani doing something clearly dishonest - and risky to himself - in terms of the voting machine accusations. The only way he wasn't get sued was if trump stayed in office and that so obviously wasn't going to happen. Did he just feel he couldn't stop, couldn't pull out of the icy slide he was on? Did he think the combination of trump refusing to move and the forthcoming capital invasion would win the day and then save him from legal action?
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Useful observations and questions.
From my relatively ill-informed position I'd suggest that any neoliberal corporation defamed by such a high-profile individual would seek damages irrespective of who happened to be President. As for Giuliani? Maybe being caught up with the malevolent narcissist-in-Chief really did warp his cognitive abilities and brought to the fore his own psychopathic traits?

Fuck him, anyway :D
 
Wilf said:
At one level you can see this as the mad flailing about of the old regime, thinking it still had the power to intimidate these massive companies with crazy accusations about Chavez and stuff. Here comes the new regime and Dominion (along other companies and individuals who were defamed by trump's team) realise they can get their revenge. But then it also feels like the points Smokeandsteam and others have made about the reassertion of business as usual neo-liberalism.

Anyway, wonder if Giuliani will fold?

Edit: I think the political economy is the important bit here. However it is interesting seeing experienced operators like Giuliani doing something clearly dishonest - and risky to himself - in terms of the voting machine accusations. The only way he wasn't get sued was if trump stayed in office and that so obviously wasn't going to happen. Did he just feel he couldn't stop, couldn't pull out of the icy slide he was on? Did he think the combination of trump refusing to move and the forthcoming capital invasion would win the day and then save him from legal action?
Click to expand...
I've wondered this about a few of them, tbh. I'm not sure there is any reasonable, rational answer to explain their actions. Trump himself, and a few others like Powell, were probably true believers. And despite his history as a relatively pragmatic politician, Giuliani appears to have succumbed to delusion as well. The only answers that really make sense are that he truly believed what he was saying, or that Trump has something on him.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I've wondered this about a few of them, tbh. I'm not sure there is any reasonable, rational answer to explain their actions. Trump himself, and a few others like Powell, were probably true believers. And despite his history as a relatively pragmatic politician, Giuliani appears to have succumbed to delusion as well. The only answers that really make sense are that he truly believed what he was saying, or that Trump has something on him.
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There's got to be some kind of timeline: trump does the groundwork before the election (about mail in votes); lose the election; minor inconsistencies in several states + the counts getting dragged out; wild accusations and conspiracy crap; some kind of processing, filtering these into trump's post election crusade. At some point, the brains of the key players are both aware this is all untrue and also repeating it so often it becomes true. There was never a taking stock moment, thinking through the likely outcomes if they carried making these accusations. Basically, they were naughty children.
 
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littlebabyjesus said:
I've wondered this about a few of them, tbh. I'm not sure there is any reasonable, rational answer to explain their actions. Trump himself, and a few others like Powell, were probably true believers. And despite his history as a relatively pragmatic politician, Giuliani appears to have succumbed to delusion as well. The only answers that really make sense are that he truly believed what he was saying, or that Trump has something on him.
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TBF I doubt Trump was a true believer - I don't want to compare him to Hitler, but the way in which they "ran" their regimes seems quite similar (overlapping and indistinct areas of responsibility between underlings, only being able to do something with the leaders tacit and ongoing support, endemic rivalries and hatreds deliberately fostered between the underlings and so on). This means he could just have been told a range of things about the aftermath and went with those who offered a way to stay in power. That they were willing to suffer on his behalf probably counted a lot to him, though obviously not to the extent of him protecting them via pardons or helping them when this lawsuit screws them over utterly.
 
agricola said:
TBF I doubt Trump was a true believer - I don't want to compare him to Hitler, but the way in which they "ran" their regimes seems quite similar (overlapping and indistinct areas of responsibility between underlings, only being able to do something with the leaders tacit and ongoing support, endemic rivalries and hatreds deliberately fostered between the underlings and so on). This means he could just have been told a range of things about the aftermath and went with those who offered a way to stay in power. That they were willing to suffer on his behalf probably counted a lot to him, though obviously not to the extent of him protecting them via pardons or helping them when this lawsuit screws them over utterly.
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Yeah. Hitler is a good comparison sometimes. :D 'Working towards The Donald'
 
gosub said:
time.com

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions
time.com time.com
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Outline.com

outline.com outline.com
Odd article that. Think I've heard of Molly Ball before?

Centrist coalition of the professional-managerial class & business titans saving democracy?

The clickbait title means that the deep state lot will make hay with it?

The bit at the end was interesting.
As I was reporting this article in November and December, I heard different claims about who should get the credit for thwarting Trump’s plot. Liberals argued the role of bottom-up people power shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly the contributions of people of color and local grassroots activists.
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Others stressed the heroism of GOP officials like Van Langevelde and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Trump at considerable cost. The truth is that neither likely could have succeeded without the other.
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“It’s astounding how close we came, how fragile all this really is,” says Timmer, the former Michigan GOP chair. “It’s like when Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff–if you don’t look down, you don’t fall. Our democracy only survives if we all believe and don’t look down.”
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Don't look down, you might realise who you're treading on?
 
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