How Alarmed Should We Be?

Worry not Lee - Trump is Gone - and he is not riding back on a whilte Horse to seize the Capitol - Your Nightmare is over - Trump no longer holds the reigns of Power .. he can no longer torment you.

Biden your hero is now in Power - your comforter and savior - vanquished Orange Man Bad he did .. banished him to the neither region from whence he can still be heard complaining .. but you are safe.

 

As soon as I saw Bill Kristol's name.... I quit reading. That guy sucks in every imaginable way. The little war hawk is pissed that Trump refused to expand our wars and was in fact reducing them.

 

Awash In Threats And Harassment, Many Election Offices Struggle To Attract And Retain Workers

Testifying at a Senate hearing this week, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) detailed one of the many threats her office received in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Someone called the office, Hobbs recalled, said she deserved to die, and then asked what she was wearing that day — “So she’ll be easy to get.”

That was one of several such threats described by high-ranking officials at a Senate Rules Committee hearing Tuesday, part of a year-long trend kicked off by Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election. But more than her own safety, Hobbs, who’s also a candidate for governor, said she was worried about public servants down the food chain: County supervisors who were mailed orange prison jumpsuits, or poll workers who faced armed crowds as they tried to count ballots.

“We’re already seeing high turnover among elections staff, and I fear that many more will reach a breaking point and decide that this line of public service isn’t worth it,” she said.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...ffices-struggle-to-attract-and-retain-workers

This is only one aspect of the damage to democracy Trump has brought about.

 

Kinzinger Announces He Won’t Seek Reelection, Underscoring Trump’s Grip On GOP

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the few Republican lawmakers who’ve been outspoken in denouncing ex-President Donald Trump, announced on Friday morning that he will not run for reelection in the 2022 midterms.

Kinzinger posted a video on Twitter declaring that the “time is now” for him to leave Congress.

The GOP lawmaker lamented that the “price tag to power has skyrocketed, and fear and distrust has served as an effective strategy to meet that cost.”

“We’ve allowed leaders to reach power selling the false premise that strength comes from degrading others and dehumanizing those that look, act or think differently than we do,” he said. “As a country, we’ve fallen for those lies, and now we face a poisoned country filled with outrage blinding our ability to reach real strength.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...ek-reelection-underscoring-trumps-grip-on-gop

Another Repub resistant to Trump's lies has been purged.

 

Except it does threat anything other than Democrat hegemony

 

Virginia Attorney General Demands Conspiratorial State Sen Share Evidence For Her Wild Claims

Virginia’s attorney general has had enough, demanding that a conspiratorial state senator provide evidence for her “baseless” assertions that the upcoming election results will reflect Democratic cheating.

The senator, Republican Amanda Chase, has said for months that Democrats cheated to win the White House in 2020, and now, as a surrogate for 2021 Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, she’s rolling out the same playbook. Attorney General Mark Herring (D), apparently, is sick of it.

“Let’s be clear: these kinds of baseless, false claims are simply designed to undermine confidence in our democracy and our elections,” Herring, who himself is running for reelection this year, said in a statement Thursday.

“If Senator Chase has any evidence of cheating or voter fraud then she has an obligation to bring it to the attention of authorities who can do something about it rather than secretively sharing this supposed ‘evidence’ with political allies.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...-state-sen-share-evidence-for-her-wild-claims

Members of The Following are seeking elected positions all over the place. What makes them think they have a chance? The POT has lost its collective mind.

 

Champions Of The First Amendment (wink)

The University of Florida has barred three professors from testifying for plaintiffs against a law championed by Ron DeSantis that restricts mail-in voting, curtails drop box hours and limits who can provide food or water to those waiting in line to vote.

• DeSantis is very proud of this law. He even, bizarrely, signed it during an interview on Fox and Friends, a very on-brand bit of showmanship.
• In rejecting one of the professors’ requests, the dean of the university’s college of arts and sciences wrote that “outside activities that may pose a conflict of interest to the executive branch of the state of Florida create a conflict for the University of Florida,” according to The New York Times.
• “As UF is a state actor, litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests,” school officials said in documents reported by The Washington Post.
• The professors in question were three political scientists: Daniel A. Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Wright.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morni...against-desantis-prized-voter-suppression-law

 

Wisconsin Republicans Push to Take Over the State’s Elections
Led by Senator Ron Johnson, G.O.P. officials want to eliminate a bipartisan elections agency — and maybe send its members to jail.

The POT assault on democracy continues unabated.

Republicans in Wisconsin are engaged in an all-out assault on the state’s election system, building off their attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential race by pressing to give themselves full control over voting in the state.

The Republican effort — broader and more forceful than that in any other state where allies of former President Donald J. Trump are trying to overhaul elections — takes direct aim at the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, an agency Republicans created half a decade ago that has been under attack since the chaotic aftermath of last year’s election.

The firestorm picked up late last month after a long-awaited report on the 2020 results that was ordered by Republican state legislators found no evidence of fraud but made dozens of suggestions for the election commission and the G.O.P.-led Legislature, turbocharging Republican demands for more control of elections.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/politics/wisconsin-republicans-decertify-election.html

 

Good move. Only read things you agree with. It's a great way of not challenging your beliefs.

 

Republican Attacks On Wisconsin Election Officials Alarm Outside Experts

Republican politicians are seeking to shake confidence in Wisconsin’s election system with a partisan review of the 2020 results and wild allegations of criminal wrongdoing, marking a dangerous time for democracy in the state, outside experts said Wednesday.

Though Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020 with just more than 20,000 votes, it has been plagued for months by false claims of election fraud, frivolous lawsuits, and, now, amped up attacks on the state’s election administrators — a bipartisan agency created by Republicans in 2015 called the Wisconsin Election Commission.

“They’re using a coordinated campaign to politicize elections across the state of Wisconsin, because it’s good for politics and it’s good for their fundraising, which is a pretty jaded approach to sell out American democracy,” Matt Masterson, a former DHS official and former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, said of Wisconsin Republicans Wednesday.

“What these folks aren’t able to achieve legislatively, they’re attempting to do through a coordinated campaign to target the administrator of elections in Wisconsin and the commission, and the local administrators that successfully administered this election,” Masterson said, speaking at an event held by the National Task Force on Election Crises.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...nsin-election-officials-alarm-outside-experts

Repub attacks on our democracy continue unabated.

 

Yeah election integrity measures scare hell out of Democrats. Thanks for proof that is the case.

 

An attorney leading an investigation of the 2020 elections for Wisconsin’s legislative Republicans has threatened to jail the mayors of Wisconsin’s second- and third-largest cities if they don’t meet his demands.

The mayors, for their part, say the attorney is wildly distorting reality, and that their attempts to reach him have gone unanswered.

Michael Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice who’s leading a partisan review of the last presidential elections, filed petitions for “writ of attachment” against the two mayors in county court this week, accusing the mayors of failing to appear for testimony without explanation. But both mayors say they’ve reached out to Gableman’s office and not heard back.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...threatens-to-jail-mayors-of-green-bay-madison

Who gave that lunatic the power to make those threats? Oh.....wait......that would be Repub legislators.

 

There will be no Trump coup because the Trumpists are cowardly blowhards. The 6 January "insurrection" was a farcical parody. The Trumpists inspire contempt, not fear.

 

But that's just it, he isn't. He still holds a hammer lock on the POT with the singular litmus test for potential House candidates being fidelity to him and or the Big Lie. And he remains the presumptive nominee for prez in 2024.

 

Not fear, really?

Trump campaign demonized two Georgia election workers – and death threats followed

As Donald Trump’s campaign sought to overturn his shocking loss of the state of Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, it hatched a conspiracy theory.

At its center were two masterminds: a clerical worker in a county election office, and her mom, who had taken a temporary job to help count ballots. The alleged plot: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and mother Ruby Freeman cheated Trump by pulling fake ballots from suitcases hidden under tables at a ballot-counting center. In early December, the campaign began raining down allegations on the two Black women.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, falsely claimed that video footage showed the women engaging in “surreptitious illegal activity” and acting suspiciously, like drug dealers “passing out dope.” In early January, Trump himself singled out Freeman, by name, 18 times in a now-famous call in which he pressed Georgia officials to alter the state’s results. He called the 62-year-old temp worker a “professional vote scammer,” a “hustler” and a “known political operative” who “stuffed the ballot boxes.”

Freeman made a series of 911 emergency calls in the days after she was publicly identified in early December by the president’s camp. In a Dec. 4 call, she told the dispatcher she’d gotten a flood of “threats and phone calls and racial slurs,” adding: “It’s scary because they’re saying stuff like, ‘We’re coming to get you. We are coming to get you.’”
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats-georgia/
.............................................................................................................................
State and local officials of both parties have warned that President Trump’s increasingly desperate tweets about election fraud are fueling the potential for violence as well as another ominous trend of 2020, in which public servants and others who disagree are targeted at their offices and homes with armed protests, harassing phone calls and stalkers.

Last week, an “enemies” list of state and federal officials who rejected Trump’s baseless election conspiracy theories floated up from the dark corners of the Web, with home addresses listed and red targets over their photos, the latest in a string of threats to public officials.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...0bd380-3be7-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html

There is a purge going on right now to remove Repub officials who resist the Big Lie. They're being replaced with Trump loyalists who, rather than resist, will facilitate the next attempted coup. Do I think they will ultimately be successful? No. Do I think this represents a further erosion of democratic norms and the possibility for a constitutional crisis? Yes. After all, don't forget that...............

A majority of House Republicans voted to reject results from Arizona and Pennsylvania
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/7/222182...m-capitol-election-stop-the-steal-trump-biden

 

Trump allies work to place supporters in key election posts across the country, spurring fears about future vote challenges

In Michigan, local GOP leaders have sought to reshape election canvassing boards by appointing members who expressed sympathy for former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 vote was rigged. In two Pennsylvania communities, candidates who embraced election fraud allegations won races this month to become local voting judges and inspectors. And in Colorado, 2020 doubters are urging their followers on conservative social media platforms to apply for jobs in election offices.

A year after local and state election officials came under immense pressure from Trump to subvert the results of the 2020 White House race, he and his supporters are pushing an ambitious plan to place Trump loyalists in key positions across the administration of U.S. elections.

The effort goes far beyond the former president’s public broadsides against well-known Republican state officials who certified President Biden’s victory, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. Citing the need to make elections more secure, Trump allies are also seeking to replace officials across the nation, including volunteer poll watchers, paid precinct judges, elected county clerks and state attorneys general, according to state and local officials, as well as rally speeches, social media posts and campaign appearances by those seeking the positions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...33b3ce-4227-11ec-9ea7-3eb2406a2e24_story.html

 

No, they are trying to avoid the return of the person that got Biden elected in the first place.

 

If that is their purpose, that is a misappropriation of congressional resources.

 

Need to distinguish something here .. the wife of the Judge have influence over the Judge .. but the Judge is the one that has the actual Power. Trump is out of Power .. and further .. the party that he has "Some" influence over - is also out of power.

So there is a difference between power and influence ... even though one can effect the power equation via influence...

Does Trump still have "Influence" ? absolutely .. like a "Rush Limbagh" or Jerry Swaggart .. and .. well .. we can't fault Trump for that .. just as we can't fault the LImbagh vieweres for being stupid enough to gobble down the Koolaid he was peddling..

This is a democracy .. if Trump can command the will of the people .. then he is the legitimate comander ...

Why folks are still talking about this Election fraud nonsense .. I do not know .. its over .. done .. the "Insurrection" "Coup" was a massive failure .. and a disaster .. done .. over .. people in jail .. and a whole lot of damage done to our system on the basis of the Blue Reaction .. As it is Blue who really "Has the Power"

and any continuence of this nonsense by Blue .. only servers to do further damage .. as there is work to do . real issues that need be addressed .. by competent individuals ... but all these morons seem to be able to do is deflect from doing what needs to be done .. focusing on the political clownshow menu item of the day ... "Stormy Daniels" level issues.

Blue is lucky that Red has started beating the Abortion drum .. dumb and dumber political move on steroids .. these folks are too stupid to govern 1) not being able to figure out that a single human cell is not "an Innocent Child" 2) not realizing that even if they do believe this .. it is political suicide so keep it on the down low .. as was often GOP policy .. and a good one .. politically.

but, even this might not save them .. Blue is that much of a disaster. .. and Abortion for years was the straw for me .. I can honestly tell you that in IMO .. its no longer a straw that breaks the camel's back .. .. as Blue has become such an abomonation.

So bad . that even Carrot Top doesn't look so bad by comparison ..

 

Because Trump is, and as long as he is The Following will keep believing the Big Lie.......keep believing he is the rightful prez........and keep supporting him in his next bid to get the presidency back.
Additionally, as noted in the thread, his minions are working hard to replace honest election workers with ones that are loyal to him, not the Constitution or election laws.

 

Not fear, contempt.

 

Don't know what the point of all this is .. Trump is out .. if he gets back in .. due to the will of the people .. so be it .. as stated .. lucky for Blue that Red is dropping the ball on Abortion .. shooting legs out from under .. because they are morons too .. but ... even that may not help them .. nor the demographic time bomb if stuff like that starts to become irrelevent compared to the disaster that Blue is these days.

 

Unpersuaded by the facts as always.

 

Then I can't help you.

 

No. I have dealt with truly frightening people. These aren't them.