The Trump Presidency, Season 2

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Noodles]

Luigi you say?

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Waiting to see who capitulates first but right now Bing Maps is at double Gulf of Mexico.

 

[Myradyl Muse]

Sounds like a replica for an orange bully blowhard and his belligerent followers. How history doth repeat itself!

 

[Ellie]

I'm half laughing and half pissed/confused at why Donald would waste all of his time and immense power worrying about one little Bishop who asked him to be nice.

This, folks, is the consequence of toxic narcissism - everything's an insult if you're stupid.

Not one little bishop, but, as Rump sees it, an uppity woman who dared to speak out. I hear she's getting death threats & this saddens me greatly, but doesn't surprise me at all.

His hatred & fear of woman, especially ones he suspects may be smarter than him, was a huge factor shaping who he has become.

 

[Noodles]

Waiting to see who capitulates first but right now Bing Maps is at double Gulf of Mexico.

Would it be "Gulf of Mexicos" or "Gulfs of Mexico"?

 

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

...she's getting death threats...

"We're the good guys and we'll kill anyone who says otherwise."

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Breaking news by Greg Palast: Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.

Here are key numbers:

• 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.
• By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.
• No less than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).
• At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
• 1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
• 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.

Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won.

Here are the numbers...

www.gregpalast.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Trump is lazy innovative: American legal experts raised many eyebrows about how Trump was able to sign so many executive orders on day 1. Since during his first term the orders were sloppy and didn't hold up in court many thought that Trump would avoid this mistake now.

Turns out it's worse this time: some of the orders were at least created with the help of AI, if not even written by AI.

Just as to be expected by this stable genius... question is only if they were using ChatGPT or Grok.

Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Orders

Artifacts in Trump's executive orders have led to speculation that those who penned them might have turned to AI for help.

futurism.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Sorry, Trump: this pact says Britain has first dibs on Greenland

The president is said to be raging at Denmark for the right to buy the strategic Arctic island. But a century-old document could stand in his way

www.thetimes.com

Evernote Link

 

[Innula Zenovka]

US Air Force will still teach lessons on black WWII pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen

After Trump banned DEI programmes, the military reviewed lessons that included the Tuskegee Airmen.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

Breaking news by Greg Palast: Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.

Here are key numbers:

• 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.
• By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.
• No less than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).
• At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
• 1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
• 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.

Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won.

Here are the numbers...

www.gregpalast.com

Part of why I don't vote is that none of this makes sense to me.
Who collects these numbers?
Are there receipts?
What's the punishment for just fudging the numbers?
How would we know if someone wasn't just fudging the numbers?
How many signatures are required to reject a ballot?
Do the individual voters get notified when their ballots are challenged and/or rejected?
How would we know if votes are counted at all?

Elections are on a schedule, right? It's not like someone randomly wakes up and rings a bell for voting to end.
If someone can't be trusted to be on time to something that was scheduled years ahead of time, how can they be trusted to pick world leaders?
If someone can't be trusted to count postage stamps, how can they be trusted to pick world leaders?

 

[detrius]

US Air Force will still teach lessons on black WWII pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen

After Trump banned DEI programmes, the military reviewed lessons that included the Tuskegee Airmen.

www.bbc.co.uk

Wouldn't the same "reasoning" also apply to any lessons on the Holocaust?

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Soen Eber]

Part of why I don't vote is that none of this makes sense to me.

I can only speak for my own eperience as someone who has voted for over 40+ years, and from what I have heard on public radio interviews with our local Secretary of State, governors, journalists, etc as well as non-partison reporting on elections.

Who collects these numbers?
Over 10,000 separate governmental departments are responsible for handling the voting process nationally. In my state, the Minnesota Secretary of State is chiefly responsible for handling state totals, which are summed up from county, city, and township officials and boards of election. Everyone within the state must follow state election laws.

Are there receipts?
Receipts are integral to the entire process, at all levels of government. The totals are reported from each election board and are usually tabulated automatically from the voting machines. Some are hand counted, especially in smaller elections.

What's the punishment for just fudging the numbers?
Punishments for election fraud are usually at the felony level. Punishments for election interference can vary, depending on the type of interference.

How would we know if someone wasn't just fudging the numbers?
Through the receipt process. There is a bulit-in audit process.

How many signatures are required to reject a ballot?
I would have to look that up. I'm pretty sure several people are involved. The vote counting happens after the elections close, so available election staff put in long hours after the doors close to count, tabulate, and verify ballots. Each part of this process requires multiple eyes on each process, not just one person can ever have that authority, it would typically involve a consensus of multiple parties to reject a ballot.

Do the individual voters get notified when their ballots are challenged and/or rejected?
That's probably up to the state. Since most votes are run through an optical ballot reader those machines are programmed to reject ballots failing set conditions, the staff (usually two people) receiving the ballot for machine counting can direct a voter to try again, after reminding them of the procedure for casting a valid ballot. For mail-in ballots in my state, voters get a notification and may vote again, if submitted before the deadline.

How would we know if votes are counted at all?
No ballots are destroyed until after an election is certified and challenges are worked through. There are usually multiple participants at each step of the process, or the process is designed to detect a mishap by a tally of votes cast vs votes received. If someone failed to drop off a box of ballots it would be noticed.

Elections are on a schedule, right? It's not like someone randomly wakes up and rings a bell for voting to end.
Hours and locations for voting are set by state law. No one individual has control over this.

If someone can't be trusted to be on time to something that was scheduled years ahead of time, how can they be trusted to pick world leaders?
It is either part of the role, such as a city admin being responsible for certain aspects of the election process, or election workers applying and being taken on to work an election. It's much like any other job or volunteer position. Their is always someone trusted performing oversight.

If someone can't be trusted to count postage stamps, how can they be trusted to pick world leaders?
See above.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Go ahead and cancel the Commissary, see what happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

 

[Noodles]

Trump is lazy innovative: American legal experts raised many eyebrows about how Trump was able to sign so many executive orders on day 1. Since during his first term the orders were sloppy and didn't hold up in court many thought that Trump would avoid this mistake now.

Turns out it's worse this time: some of the orders were at least created with the help of AI, if not even written by AI.

Just as to be expected by this stable genius... question is only if they were using ChatGPT or Grok.

Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Orders

Artifacts in Trump's executive orders have led to speculation that those who penned them might have turned to AI for help.

futurism.com

I wonder if some of it is just intended to flopd the system. Like how they handle the new cycle. They need to be challenged to be stopped and that takes time and money. So throw out a shitload of them, thenidiots see it as "doing something" and then you get a slightly stretched apparatus fighting back against too much.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I wonder if some of it is just intended to flopd the system. Like how they handle the new cycle. They need to be challenged to be stopped and that takes time and money. So throw out a shitload of them, thenidiots see it as "doing something" and then you get a slightly stretched apparatus fighting back against too much.

I think I've quoted this before, but it bears repeating

Looking critically at Trump’s flurry of Executive Orders: why we should watch what is done, and not to be distracted by what is said

21st January 2025 Around Westminster, the most useful guides to the nature of modern politics may not be the journalists and commentators, still less the ‘think tanks’ with their portentous names a…

davidallengreen.com

Around Westminster, the most useful guides to the nature of modern politics may not be the journalists and commentators, still less the ‘think tanks’ with their portentous names and solemn but flimsy ‘reports’.

They are perhaps instead the con-artist conjurers on Westminster Bridge – whose activities are detailed in this fine piece.

For it is these lowly tricksters that remind us that we should watch what is done, and not to be distracted by anything else.

This is not to say that some – maybe many – of these Executive Orders are not going to have adverse effects for somebody – especially in the short term.

Indeed, given the many partisan conservative judges now on the federal bench, there will be energetic judicial exertions to give effect to otherwise shoddy Executive Orders.

But what it does mean is that we should be careful not to accept everything at face value.

For a flurry of Executive Orders may be little different from a flurry of Press Releases.

And we should be mindful that we are dealing with con-artist conjurers.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Part of why I don't vote is that none of this makes sense to me.

Actual voting fraud is relatively rare, as in dozen fraudulent ballots versus millions of valid ballots. Which is why overwhelmingly the GOP focuses on voter suppression. They make it harder for people to register to vote (lots of requirements), harder for them to reach the polls (fewer and farther away from minority areas), harder for them to cast a ballot (long lines, hours of waiting), and aggressive challenging of ballots (on often spurious grounds). And lastly is the gerrymander the voting districts so the Dem voting blocs are broken up and diluted by burying them in GOP districts.

If you actually make it to the poll and cast a vote, then it almost certain that your vote is counted. Whether or not it has an impact is increasingly in peril as GOP takes over more and more of this machinery.

We got to where we are right now because so many people didn't vote, when voting actually mattered. We lost the last narrowing window to maintain a democracy.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Part of why I don't vote is that none of this makes sense to me.
Who collects these numbers?
Are there receipts?
What's the punishment for just fudging the numbers?
How would we know if someone wasn't just fudging the numbers?
How many signatures are required to reject a ballot?
Do the individual voters get notified when their ballots are challenged and/or rejected?
How would we know if votes are counted at all?

Elections are on a schedule, right? It's not like someone randomly wakes up and rings a bell for voting to end.
If someone can't be trusted to be on time to something that was scheduled years ahead of time, how can they be trusted to pick world leaders?
If someone can't be trusted to count postage stamps, how can they be trusted to pick world leaders?

Honestly, Immy, I think it will be a good long while before you need to worry about this again.