The secret plot to depose Trump

"I recall that you two Russian Trolls discussed sharing a lawyer who would sue me over that point."


No, SHITSTAIN, I said I would sue SOMEbody of my choosing, at a time of my choosing, for reasons of my own.



*IS* there a reason I should focus on you? Have your little trollettes bailed on you?

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To get back to the OT "The secret plot to depose Trump".


Yes indeed there was a secret plot - and still is.

But time has moved on, as have world circumstances. The most notable factor which has NOT disappeared from the headlines as JACK predicted is COVID-19. I'm not going to predict how this will play out over the next few months, as I don't think I have an understanding of how the virus spreads through the US. Obviously there are superspreader events/ conditions; but there's also at least one OTHER mechanism that doesn't fit with the current understanding of who're the major infection sources - that's responsible for the non-urban persistence and spread in places like LACounty and rural states.

So that's up in the air in terms of the election.

The second and related circumstance is the economy. Right now a lot of people are still coasting on jobless benefits. (Mar 25, 2020 In addition to regular state unemployment insurance, individuals will receive an additional $600 per week for up to four months. https://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2020/03/25/what-you-need-to-know-
about-expanded-unemployment-benefits-for-covid-19/#64f9f7136e4a ) So while there's a great deal of angst among people who are truly strapped for cash, as well as among small business owners; it's being muted by those who are still receiving that expanded unemployment. But that's going to run out SOON. And in addition, anyone refusing to go back to work because they think it's unsafe will have their unemployment benefits cut off. And businesses have been freed from liability for SARS-CoV-2 infections. Both of those will land directly on Trump if it becomes prevalent enough. Overall, can Trump restart the economy before the election decision point when people settle on a candidate? I don't think so.


Then there's the George Floyd cotton candy. I'm calling it that because I believe - in terms of numbers - this will dissolve like the fluffed up piece of insubstantial nothing it is. Not that I think police misconduct doesn't exist. Or that police are immune from prejudice. But, as Signy points out, nothing will be done about the root causes of what's wrong with society. (SECOND should know about root causes - it's the factor that underlies any failure analysis.) There will be a lot of what I call Kabuki theater instead, which will mollify enough people enough, but go absolutely nowhere.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Then there's the George Floyd cotton candy. I'm calling it that because I believe - in terms of numbers - this will dissolve like the fluffed up piece of insubstantial nothing it is. Not that I think police misconduct doesn't exist. Or that police are immune from prejudice. But, as Signy points out, nothing will be done about the root causes of what's wrong with society. (SECOND should know about root causes - it's the factor that underlies any failure analysis.) There will be a lot of what I call Kabuki theater instead, which will mollify enough people enough, but go absolutely nowhere.

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1kiki, it is NOT theater. Trump asked the Pentagon to send troops to kill American citizens. The Pentagon told Trump it would not follow his plan:

James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution. In an extraordinary condemnation, the former defense secretary backs protesters and says the president is trying to turn Americans against one another.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200609110559/www.theatlantic.com/politic
s/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/

Trump Wanted to Fire Esper Over Troops Dispute
Defense secretary’s stand against using federal troops to quell protests over George Floyd’s killing prompted president’s plan to remove him

WASHINGTON—President Tramp last week was on the brink of firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper over their differing views of domestic use of active-duty military, before advisers and allies on Capitol Hill talked him out of it, according to several officials.

The officials said Mr. Trump was furious with Mr. Esper for not supporting his inclination to use active-duty troops to quell protests in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and elsewhere following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wanted-to-fire-esper-over-troops-dispute-11
591728235


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Rodney George King Floyd

Empty theater.
Stylized protests. Formalized knee-bending.
Nothing changes here.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Rodney George King Floyd

Empty theater.
Stylized protests. Formalized knee-bending.
Nothing changes here.

---

It is NOT theater. The president’s threat to send the troops into American cities alarms commanders:

America is in the midst of its worst civil-military crisis for a generation, one that threatens to do enduring harm to democratic norms and the standing and cohesion of its armed forces. Mr Trump’s call to use military force to quell the most widespread unrest in half a century—sparked by the killing by a white police officer of George Floyd, an unarmed black man—has caused unease and alarm up and down the chain of command. Two events, in particular, seem to have prompted the generals to speak out. On June ist Mr Trump threatened to deploy active-duty troops under the Insurrection Act of 1807. He also decided to walk to a church near the White House to stage a photo-op, flanked by Mark Esper, the secretary of defence, and General Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, America’s top military officer. Peaceful protesters had been forcibly cleared away with tear gas from the site moments earlier, even before the city’s curfew had taken effect.

www.economist.com/united-states/2020/06/07/americas-top-brass-break-wi
th-donald-trump

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SECOND: blah blah blah ... Trump ... blah blah blah

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Members of the U.S. military avoid making overtly political statements. Even former generals avoid criticizing a sitting president -- who serves as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

But on Tuesday, retired admiral Mike Mullen said: “The events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.” Mullen was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Mullen wrote in the Atlantic: “It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church.”

The strongest and most public criticism came Wednesday from retired General James Mattis. He is Trump’s former defense secretary. Mattis said in a statement: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking the same oath would be ordered…to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/retired-generals-clash-with-trum
p/5449319.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SECOND: blah blah blah ... Trump ... blah blah blah

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Oh, and BTW ... if it's true that you know for a fact who I am (and I think it probably is) then defaming me is not just telling an untruth, it's telling a deliberate lie. And if you're willing to lie about something you know for sure, what else are you willing to lie about?

Doesn't your religion tell you not to lie? Or is your God like a tax collector, and as long as you pay your taxes you're good with the Almighty?

I guess that's how you stave off your guilt for killing people, murderer.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Signym, rather than you speculating about me, someone who is a figment of your Russian Trolling imagination, speculate about someone who is very fat and soft and real:

Donald Trump’s Increasingly Elaborate Bid to Create His Own America
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/trump-wants-his-own-americ
a.html

His lies and his degradation of reporting have been constant, but as we head toward the election, something more sinister is afoot.

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump, whose unsurprising character defects still never fail to surprise, tweeted a Russian-sourced conspiracy theory claiming that the 75-year-old peace activist who remains hospitalized after his head was smashed open by Buffalo, New York, law enforcement officers was in fact a tech-savvy “ANTIFA provocateur” who “fell harder than was pushed.” The president also linked to a report from a conservative cable news outlet, One America News Network, for support. That report claimed, with no supporting evidence, that the man “was attempting to capture the radio communications signature of Buffalo police officers.”

The problem for Trump—but actually the problem for all the rest of us—is that we all saw the video. We all saw a peaceful 75-year-old approach the Buffalo police officers, who then push him to the pavement and walk past his bleeding body. In fact, the existence and wide circulation of that video are what forced the Buffalo Police Department, which originally claimed that a person “was injured when he tripped & fell” during a “skirmish involving protestors,” to suspend the two officers. The existence of the video, for all intents and purposes, closed the case, at least in the court of most sentient public opinion.

But closed cases are actually Donald Trump’s specialty. And the more compelling the evidence of a closed case is, the more apt he is to relitigate it. It’s no accident that some of Donald Trump’s most incendiary claims require his true believers to accept that their own eyes cannot be believed. Whether it’s photographic evidence of his lackluster inaugural crowds or hand-altered meteorological maps, almost every Trumpian fictionalized tour de force starts with a false claim—also known as a lie—that is readily disproven or even obviously wrong to the naked eye, and then subverts it. The more overtly false, the better.

But casual lies alone are for amateurs; the real authoritarian move is to construct an entire false reality—an unreality—around those lies.

Indeed, Trump himself has made the Orwellian claim that, among the many entities he insists lie constantly—the media, the FBI, the intelligence community, the entire House of Representatives now that it’s Democrat-led, the nameless and faceless “deep state” conspirators—the lyingest liars out there are our own eyes and ears. In July 2018, Trump, while addressing a Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Kansas City, told those assembled that they shouldn’t trust their eyes and ears at all and should instead get their facts from Trump alone. “Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” Trump said. “Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.” In some ways it’s an old play, presaged by George Orwell in 1984 when he warned that “the Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” It’s a double whammy that demonizes and delegitimizes the media as a whole while also—as Tyler Cowen has argued—wringing loyalty from all those who must then repeat the lie and cover for it. Every repetition of a lie deepens their loyalty.

But casual lies alone are for amateurs; the real authoritarian move is to construct an entire false reality—an unreality—around those lies. That’s what we’re now seeing from Trump and his loyalists. On Wednesday morning, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made just this move on Fox & Friends. Speaking about the peaceful protester pushed to the ground in Buffalo, host Brian Kilmeade asked, “Does the pre

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