Newly anointed Deep State RINO Brain Kemp!

They have that in mitt Romney. He was last republican presidential nominee before Trump. Only republican who voted to impeach and made a convincing speech of it too.

I don’t think McCain would have made difference.

Two monsters

Why would you want this to happen? Are you just a straight up communist POS or what?

You are anti American and complete disgrace

LOL.

Georgia GOP Senators Back Texas AG's Lawsuit to Overturn Their Own State's Election

One state's AG suing four other states over their election results. Totally standard - this kind of thing happens all the time.

Hmm. It's easier to identify the most recent thing he has done -- work tirelessly to convince the American public that U.S. elections obviously are rigged unless he wins.

It's cool to look at the photos, but people are drawing conclusions that are too sweeping. The literacy rate in Afghanistan today is more than twice what it was in 1979. I'm sure it was even lower in the late 1960s than it was in 1979. And life expectancy in Afghanistan today is almost twice what it was in the late 1960s.

Trump : What are these "laws" and "Constitution" things you speak of and why should we care about them?

We don't know for sure but I think Mitt was already on his way out prior to Trump and had lost the center of the party, whereas many saw McCain as that guy who was the center.

I think he would have defied Trump, kept Lindsey close and then rallied others (Mitt and others) to stand with them.

Interesting as I would not have assumed that. I admit I have not researched the society and was under the impression it was closer to be on a track towards being early Beirut which was called the Paris of the Middle East then Saudi Arabia.

Live and learn.

Afghanistan has been a mess for centuries. Imperial wars between the British and Russian empires, Soviet protectorate, cold war arena, religious theocracy and weak Republic, inhabited by distinct ethnicities with a tendency to hate each-other.

You can travel to Beirut and feel relatively at home and be easily understood if you speak French or English and enjoy touristy things, but there is pretty no hope for any of that in Kabul.

Or, maybe not...

Supreme Court rejects Pennsylvania Republicans' attempt to block Biden victory


Trump, master negotiator.

House approves defense bill with veto-proof majority after Trump urges GOP opposition

I'm actually a little sad as I see OneShot was banned. Where are we going to get our scoops now?

Great spot for some leadership, so instead you get...a brief mention of CDC guidelines, and then on he goes to how great he's done. You know, working with Melania to make the vaccine in their kitchen, all while doing everything he could to ensure that almost 15% of the population got Covid to, um, make them immune - a terrific accomplishment!

Really, everyone would be hailing him as the best president ever, but he's personally ensured that the US tests so much, that of course there's more cases. Less tests, less cases! Well, unless you're the UK, who tests more per capita but has a little over half the cases per capita. Or Russia, with 85% of the US test rate but only 37% of the case rate. Or the 14 of 17 countries with higher testing rates than the US, that have lower case rates. Shockingly, it seems that testing a lot more doesn't really track that consistently to more cases. It's almost like keeping the virus under control with strong leadership based in science means you can contact trace and test less, rather than testing being almost your only control measure, which means testing a lot of people who don't have Covid. Wow, the more you know...

Well guess trump find allies he couldn’t fire if they disobeyed....
It’s kinda of deplorable that you have to wait at the end of line of the Supreme Court to see it tho ...
Maybe some institutions needs a bit more independence from the presidency ...
Or mind as well call it the :
The United Kingdom of America “ soon enough !

Safe Harbor day has arrived

[QUOTE=Cuepee;56753600]McConnell et al, are certainly worse than Trump from a societal standpoint.

There will always be individual autocrats, despots, tyrants who would love to game the various systems and steal power. Not much can be done about their ambitions.

But those people are not that dangerous without an army of people willing to put aside all rules and drive their agenda and provide cover and excuse and rationalization for them.

I honestly think Trump would have been dead in tracks so early on if John McCain was still alive and safe in his seat.

A single strong, ethical voice (whether I agree with his politics or not) with any influence would have rallied enough other legislators to provide others the cover needed to shut Trump down.

Instead you have this group of terrified and weak people, who hate Trump but are so afraid of his twitter and losing their power in gov't that they would stand for nothing and allow the US democracy to be destroyed as long as they can hold on to power.

I can only imagine what this group would have done for Trump had they held both Houses of Congress and had no impediments to enacting his every desire.[/QUOT


Old timer journalist H.L. Mencken hilariously wrote that they'd be for cannibalism or anything else if it would get them elected. I greatly recommend him to whippersnappers too young to have come across it.

Just imagine if he made some direct military commands during a confrontation. He would get up there and proudly talk about how he helped disable a minefield by having his troops walk over it and set off all the mines. Some of them who survived would be immune from future mine fields since they no longer have legs.

After that his supporters would buy hats and send him lots of money until some of them wake up months or years later.

It's a bit ironic that the US was founded on the premise of independence of a monarchy, but by now you can make a decent case that there is more institutional power vested in the US presidency than the British monarch enjoyed in the late 1700s.

During the last 4 years we have seen that the The US president is above the law, as an example of that. Of course it helps with a dysfunctional and politically impotent congress.

Trump was above the law because of the idiot AG Barr that cant apply the law .
there is some serious reform needed in that system if the republicans really want to save their constitution and their democratic republic.

This is great news in the same way that it was great news that the sun didn't go supernova while I was sleeping last night. In both situations, it would have been pretty bad if things had gone the wrong way. But I wasn't that worried.

ya. This was almost Bill Barr's wet dream realized.

Bill Barr has always been an advocate for an Imperil Presidency. He argues that basically a POTUS should get to act nearly unchecked during his term and the check that exists is that he will not be POTUS forever and if he does illegal things he can be held to account and thus that should be enough to keep him on the straight and narrow.

Trump showed the giant flaw in that as a sociopath like him typically will not focus on a future threat. Everything is about the immediate. What he can grab and gain, and he always believe he can fix or overwhelm the system tomorrow.

Barr's POTUS along with the Pardon power potential to insulate a POTUS could make him King for 4 years. Even with broken laws, just issue a pardon. Or hop on the jet and fly to Russia or somewhere on your last serving day and gain safe harbour from a country you may have gave trillions of US benefit to for a few billion in your personal accounts in exchange, and never come back to the US.

Trump exposed how many areas need reform within gov't but none more so than the AG office.

A power mad POTUS supported by a corrupt AG who puts loyalty over the Country and constitution becomes almost unstoppable.

It exposed how impotent the House becomes as they rely on the DOJ to investigate and enforce any abuses against them.

Nothing magnified it more than the difference in how members of Congress treated being subpoenaed to testify before Mueller, compared to being subpoenaed to testify before The House, after the conclusion of the Mueller investigation. They were terrified and largely compliant with Mueller and laughed and openly mocked The House.

They knew Barr had their back in any House attempted sanction and it would go nowhere.

And i cannot figure out what the remedy is? Simply making the AG report to Congress instead could face the same issues.

What i am starting to believe is that the US does require a Constitutional Court and that is either a separate Court to the SC or they assign a certain few members (maybe 3) when such issues are brought before them by any of the 3 bodies (POTUS, Senate, House).

This Court is not one that seeks 'findings' but instead simply must judge if the issues being argued for some form of mediation are sufficient to require action and then what form that action should take.

So for example with the "Trump/Russia Collusion' issue the House could petition this Court to review it (had the AG refused) and if the Court thought it was seditious they could take any of many actions including appointing a Special Counsel to investigate and defining its scope.

They would not then hear the case or results if brought. That would go through the normal channels.

Sure this Court could be political in its actions but I think it would be the least likely to get corrupted reliably in matters like this that are investigatory and not determinative.

I think that there is at least a 5% chance that Trump does the following:

He leaves the White House on January 20, but he continues to proclaim that he is the lawful president of the United States. He announces that Mar-A-Lago or wherever is now the seat of executive power in the United States. Maybe he even fills out a "cabinet". Anyone who agreed to serve in such a "cabinet" of course would be three orders of magnitude crazier than his current appointees, but I'm sure he could find people.

Trump encourages state governments to recognize him as the rightful president. No state government officially endorses the view that Trump is the rightful president. Even the most MAGA states refrain from explicitly recognizing Trump as the president because they are concerned about the purse string implications of refusing to recognize Biden as the president. But plenty of state legislators endorse the idea that Trump is the rightful president of the United States.

Trump continues the legal circus by filing endless numbers of frivolous lawsuits seeking access to national security briefings, etc., as the true president of the United States.

Republican members of Congress nominally recognize Biden as the president. They interact with the Biden White House as they would with any Democratic White House. But they largely refrain from criticizing Trump for his continued insistence that he is the president. For the most part, they avoid commenting on Trump's lawsuits other than to say that all Americans are free to seek relief in court. And they adamantly reject the idea that anyone, much less all the citizens of a MAGA state, should be punished or disadvantaged by the federal government because of a good faith disagreement about who won the election.

Trump pays for all this by continuing the ongoing grift of his base.

The only reason that this scenario remains remote in my view is because I suspect that Trump would be subjecting himself to criminal liability if he pulled this stunt. And I can't see Trump going this route if it required him to live in Brazil or wherever in order to avoid prosecution.