Flying Monkeys
By Nobody
11 Mar 2011 1:42 pm in No Holds Barred Political Forum
31 Jul 2020 12:17 pm
Research Determines Protests Did Not Cause Spike In Coronavirus Cases
Protests against systemic racism held in 300-plus U.S. cities following the death of George Floyd did not cause a significant increase in coronavirus infections, according to a team of economists who have published their findings in a 60-page paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research; these somewhat surprising results are supported by Covid-19 testing data in many populous cities where demonstrations were held.
In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, health officials expressed great concern that protesters, potentially yelling and shouting in very close proximity, would quickly spread the virus, which might lead to devastating outbreaks.
However, researchers found “no evidence that urban protests reignited Covid-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following protest onset.”
In fact, they determined that, based on cellphone data, “cities which had protests saw an increase in social distancing behavior for the overall population relative to cities that did not,” leading to “modest evidence of a small longer-run case growth decline.”
The study’s lead author, Dhaval Dave of Bentley University, said, “In many cities, the protests actually seemed to lead to a net increase in social distancing, as more people who did not protest decided to stay off the streets.”
The study used newly collected data from 315 of the largest U.S. cities and documents that protests took place in 281 of those cities.
The authors prereleased the paper last week, and it has not yet been peer-reviewed.
KEY BACKGROUND:
The study’s conclusions are supported by Covid-19 testing data in many of the cities that were home to prevalent protesting.
For instance, the Minneapolis Department of Health reported that more than 15,000 people were tested at centers set up in communities affected by the protests, and 1.7% of tests came back positive—below the statewide average of about 3.6%.
According to the Washington Post, protest attendees in Minneapolis returned positivity rates of less than 1% and that “officials believe the low infection rates reflect that the protests were outside, that most people wore masks and that people spent most of their time in motion, circulating through the crowd.”
NPR reported last week that parties—not protests—are believed to have caused coronavirus spikes in Washington.
“We’re finding that the social events and gatherings, these parties where people aren’t wearing masks, are our primary source of infection,” said Erika Lautenbach, a local county Health Department director.
TANGENT:
Earlier this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy partly blamed increased coronavirus cases on protesters.
“When I looked at that drone view of [Los Angeles], where it was almost a mile-long shoulder-to-shoulder of people, and they’re expressing, they’re vocal . . . and now we’re finding that’s the easiest way to transmit to one another, the long periods of time next to one another,” said McCarthy, a Republican who represents California.
In the NBER paper’s abstract, the authors write, “We conclude that predictions of broad negative public health consequences of Black Lives Matter protests were far too narrowly conceived.”
CRITICAL QUOTE:
“When considering the results’ implications for the entire population: public speech and public health did not trade off against each other in this case,” the authors wrote in the NBER paper.
FURTHER READING:
BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS, SOCIAL DISTANCING, AND COVID-19 (National Bureau of Economic Research)
Little evidence that protests spread coronavirus in US (AP)
Parties — Not Protests — Are Causing Spikes In Coronavirus (NPR)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/ ... 8a1ff47dac
Protests against systemic racism held in 300-plus U.S. cities following the death of George Floyd did not cause a significant increase in coronavirus infections, according to a team of economists who have published their findings in a 60-page paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research; these somewhat surprising results are supported by Covid-19 testing data in many populous cities where demonstrations were held.
In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, health officials expressed great concern that protesters, potentially yelling and shouting in very close proximity, would quickly spread the virus, which might lead to devastating outbreaks.
However, researchers found “no evidence that urban protests reignited Covid-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following protest onset.”
In fact, they determined that, based on cellphone data, “cities which had protests saw an increase in social distancing behavior for the overall population relative to cities that did not,” leading to “modest evidence of a small longer-run case growth decline.”
The study’s lead author, Dhaval Dave of Bentley University, said, “In many cities, the protests actually seemed to lead to a net increase in social distancing, as more people who did not protest decided to stay off the streets.”
The study used newly collected data from 315 of the largest U.S. cities and documents that protests took place in 281 of those cities.
The authors prereleased the paper last week, and it has not yet been peer-reviewed.
KEY BACKGROUND:
The study’s conclusions are supported by Covid-19 testing data in many of the cities that were home to prevalent protesting.
For instance, the Minneapolis Department of Health reported that more than 15,000 people were tested at centers set up in communities affected by the protests, and 1.7% of tests came back positive—below the statewide average of about 3.6%.
According to the Washington Post, protest attendees in Minneapolis returned positivity rates of less than 1% and that “officials believe the low infection rates reflect that the protests were outside, that most people wore masks and that people spent most of their time in motion, circulating through the crowd.”
NPR reported last week that parties—not protests—are believed to have caused coronavirus spikes in Washington.
“We’re finding that the social events and gatherings, these parties where people aren’t wearing masks, are our primary source of infection,” said Erika Lautenbach, a local county Health Department director.
TANGENT:
Earlier this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy partly blamed increased coronavirus cases on protesters.
“When I looked at that drone view of [Los Angeles], where it was almost a mile-long shoulder-to-shoulder of people, and they’re expressing, they’re vocal . . . and now we’re finding that’s the easiest way to transmit to one another, the long periods of time next to one another,” said McCarthy, a Republican who represents California.
In the NBER paper’s abstract, the authors write, “We conclude that predictions of broad negative public health consequences of Black Lives Matter protests were far too narrowly conceived.”
CRITICAL QUOTE:
“When considering the results’ implications for the entire population: public speech and public health did not trade off against each other in this case,” the authors wrote in the NBER paper.
FURTHER READING:
BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS, SOCIAL DISTANCING, AND COVID-19 (National Bureau of Economic Research)
Little evidence that protests spread coronavirus in US (AP)
Parties — Not Protests — Are Causing Spikes In Coronavirus (NPR)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/ ... 8a1ff47dac
31 Jul 2020 12:34 pm
No link of course.duck615 » 31 Jul 2020, 12:20 pm » wrote: ↑ Research that is flawed.... there were thousands of people that did not social distance... they caused the spike... MORE **** LIBERAL LIES
So what study did you conduct?
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/ ... id19-surge
https://time.com/5861633/protests-coronavirus/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN249335
31 Jul 2020 8:12 pm
Stephen Miller’s Grandmother Died of COVID-19. Her Son Blames the Trump Administration.
This month, Stephen Miller, the extremist anti-immigrant Trump adviser who has promoted white nationalist ideas, lost a relative to the coronavirus pandemic, and his uncle tells Mother Jones that the Trump administration is partly to blame for this death.
On July 4, David Glosser, the brother of Miller’s mother, posted a Facebook note announcing the death of his mother, Ruth Glosser, who was Miller’s maternal grandmother:
This morning my mother, Ruth Glosser, died of the late effects of COVID-19 like so many thousands of other people; both young and old.
She survived the acute infection but was left with lung and neurological damage that destroyed her will to eat and her ability to breathe well enough to sustain arousal and consciousness.
Over an 8-week period she gradually slipped away and died peacefully this morning.
David Glosser is a retired neuropsychologist and passionate Trump critic who has publicly decried Miller for his anti-immigrant policies, and he contends that Trump’s initial “lack of a response” to the coronavirus crisis led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans who might have otherwise survived.
In an interview, he says, “With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... istration/
This month, Stephen Miller, the extremist anti-immigrant Trump adviser who has promoted white nationalist ideas, lost a relative to the coronavirus pandemic, and his uncle tells Mother Jones that the Trump administration is partly to blame for this death.
On July 4, David Glosser, the brother of Miller’s mother, posted a Facebook note announcing the death of his mother, Ruth Glosser, who was Miller’s maternal grandmother:
This morning my mother, Ruth Glosser, died of the late effects of COVID-19 like so many thousands of other people; both young and old.
She survived the acute infection but was left with lung and neurological damage that destroyed her will to eat and her ability to breathe well enough to sustain arousal and consciousness.
Over an 8-week period she gradually slipped away and died peacefully this morning.
David Glosser is a retired neuropsychologist and passionate Trump critic who has publicly decried Miller for his anti-immigrant policies, and he contends that Trump’s initial “lack of a response” to the coronavirus crisis led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans who might have otherwise survived.
In an interview, he says, “With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... istration/
31 Jul 2020 8:21 pm
1 Aug 2020 1:17 pm
Here's Politico's Jake Sherman explaining how Republican members of Congress pressure and shame their staffs into not wearing masks.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp-video/m ... ssion=true
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 0v3HMswuMq
1 Aug 2020 1:38 pm
And what is he doing today?
Playing golf and trying to ban TikTok.
1 Aug 2020 1:44 pm
Misty » 01 Aug 2020, 1:38 pm » wrote: ↑ And what is he doing today?
Playing golf and trying to ban TikTok.
Do you take weekends off?
1 Aug 2020 2:12 pm
I'm not the POTUS during a pandemic.duck615 » 01 Aug 2020, 1:44 pm » wrote: ↑Do you take weekends off?Misty » 01 Aug 2020, 1:38 pm » wrote: ↑And what is he doing today?
Playing golf and trying to ban TikTok.
2 Aug 2020 2:34 am
You, busy online trolling, would have the whole country dead if President during a pandemic.
2 Aug 2020 2:36 am
I am running for House in 2022 and taking matters for my district in my own hands.
2 Aug 2020 12:25 pm
@twitter All of a sudden he cares about income inequality? I guess the fact that Jeff Bezos is featured in the video has nothing to do with it. 
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 70977?s=19
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 70977?s=19
2 Aug 2020 3:04 pm
A bipartisan group secretly gathered to game out a contested Trump-Biden election. It wasn’t pretty.
WASHINGTON — On the second Friday in June, a group of political operatives, former government and military officials, and academics quietly convened online for what became a disturbing exercise in the fragility of American democracy.
The group, which included Democrats and Republicans, gathered to game out possible results of the November election, grappling with questions that seem less far-fetched by the day: What if President Trump refuses to concede a loss, as he publicly hinted recently he might do?
How far could he go to preserve his power?
And what if Democrats refuse to give in?
“All of our scenarios ended in both street-level violence and political impasse,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Defense Department official who co-organized the group known as the Transition Integrity Project.
She described what they found in bleak terms: “The law is essentially ... it’s almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”
Using a role-playing game that is a fixture of military and national security planning, the group envisioned a dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, one in which Trump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government — the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military — to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it.
If it sounds paranoid or outlandish — a war room of seasoned politicos and constitutional experts playing a Washington version of Dungeons and Dragons in which the future of the republic hangs in the balance — they get it.
But, as they finalize a report on what they learned and begin briefing elected officials and others, they insist their warning is serious: A close election this fall is likely to be contested, and there are few guardrails to stop a constitutional crisis, particularly if Trump flexes the considerable tools at his disposal to give himself an advantage.
“He doesn’t have to win the election,” said Nils Gilman, a historian who leads research at a think tank called the Berggruen Institute and was an organizer of the exercise.
“He just has to create a plausible narrative that he didn’t lose.”
The very existence of a group like this one, which was formed late last year, underscores the extent of the fear in Washington’s political circles — and beyond — that Trump will take the same hammer he has used to fracture the norms of executive governance over the past three years and upend the nation’s delicate tradition of orderly political transitions of power by refusing to concede if he loses.
“We have norms in our transition, rather than laws,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program at the Carnegie Foundation, who was not part of the game.
“This entire election season is something a democracy expert would worry about.”
It is a fear that has been stoked by the president himself, who has repeatedly warned, without offering evidence, of widespread fraud involving mail-in ballots — which voters are likely to use at unprecedented levels because the pandemic has made in-person voting a potential health risk — to cast doubt on the results of November’s election.
“I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do,” he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace last Sunday.
When asked if he would accept the election results, he said: “I’ll have to see.”
Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has taken to issuing foreboding warnings of his own.
“This president is going to try to indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work — they’re not real, they’re not fair,” he said at a fund-raiser on Thursday night.
He has also mused publicly about Trump having to be escorted, forcibly if need be, from the White House.
That happened in one of the four scenarios the Transition Integrity Project gamed out, according to summaries of the exercises provided to The Boston Globe.
But constitutional experts — and the game play — was less focused on the possibility of a cinematic, militarized intervention on Inauguration Day, which is a possibility many still consider remote, than the room the Constitution appears to leave for a disastrous and difficult transition if the incumbent does not accept a loss.
“How well is our constitutional legal system designed to deal with an incumbent president who insists that he won an election but for the presence of fraud?” said Lawrence Douglas, a professor at Amherst College who has written a book on what would happen if Trump took such a stand.
“And I think the rather unfortunate answer is our system is not well designed at all to deal with that problem,” said Douglas, who was not involved in the game.
Brooks got the seed of the idea for the Transition Integrity Project after a dinner where a federal judge and a corporate lawyer each told her they were convinced the military or the Secret Service would have to escort Trump out of office if he lost the election and would not concede.
Brooks wasn’t so sure. She and Gilman decided to turn the Washington parlor game into an actual exercise; they held an early meeting in Washington, with about 25 people, in December.
“When we started talking about this we got a lot of reactions — oh, you guys are so paranoid, don’t be ridiculous, this isn’t going to happen,” Brooks said.
Two things have happened since then: Trump has displayed increased willingness to challenge mail-in ballots, and his administration has deployed federal forces to quell protests in front of the White House and in Portland, Ore., and has threatened to do so in other cities.
“That has really shaken people,” Brooks said.
“What was really a fringe idea has now become an anxiety that’s pretty widely shared.”
Brooks, Gilman, and others recruited a slate of players including a former swing state governor, a former White House chief of staff, and a former head of the Department of Homeland Security.
They invited both Democrats and Republicans who they knew had concerns about Trump’s comments on the election; nearly 80 people in all were involved.
The Republicans were described by participants as “never Trump” or “not Trump Republicans.”
They played using the so-called Chatham House Rules — in which participants can discuss what was said, but not who was there; some participants were willing to be named.
They included Republicans Trey Grayson, the former Kentucky secretary of state, and conservative commentator Bill Kristol, as well as Democrats Leah Daughtry, who was CEO of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Convention Committees, former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen, and progressive Democratic strategist Adam Jentleson.
The game was elaborate. The participants took on the roles of the Trump campaign, the Biden campaign, relevant government officials, and the media —generally, Democrats played Democrats and Republicans played Republicans — and used a 10-sided die to determine whether a team succeeded in its attempted moves.
The games are not meant to be predictive; rather, they are supposed to give people a sense of possible consequences in complex scenarios.
Each scenario involved a different election outcome: An unclear result on Election Day that looked increasingly like a Biden win as more ballots were counted; a clear Biden win in the popular vote and the Electoral College; an Electoral College win for Trump with Biden winning the popular vote by 5 percentage points; and a narrow Electoral College and popular vote victory for Biden.
In the scenarios, the team playing the Trump campaign often questioned the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, which often boosted Biden as they came in — shutting down post offices, pursuing litigation, and using right-wing media to amplify narratives about a stolen election.
To some participants, the game was a stark reminder of the power of incumbency.
“The more demonstrations there were, the more demands for recounts, the more legal challenges there were, the more funerals for democracy were held, the more Trump came across as the candidate of stability,” said Edward Luce, the US editor of the Financial Times, who played the role of a mainstream media reporter during one of the simulations.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
In multiple scenarios, officials on both sides homed in on narrowly decided swing states with divided governments, such Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, hoping to persuade officials there to essentially send two different results to Congress.
If a state’s election is disputed, a legislature controlled by one party and governor of another each could send competing slates of electors backing their party’s candidate.
Both sides turned out massive street protests that Trump sought to control — in one scenario he invoked the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use military forces to quell unrest.
The scenario that began with a narrow Biden win ended with Trump refusing to leave the White House, burning government documents, and having to be escorted out by the Secret Service.
(The team playing Biden in that scenario, meanwhile, sought to patch things up with Republicans by appointing moderate Republican governors, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, to Cabinet positions.)
The scenario that produced the most contentious dynamics, however, was the one in which Trump won the Electoral College — and thus, the election — but Biden won the popular vote by 5 percentage points.
Biden’s team retracted his Election Night concession, fueled by Democrats angry at losing yet another election despite capturing the popular vote, as happened in 2000 and 2016.
In the mock election, Trump sought to divide Democrats — at one point giving an interview to The Intercept, a left-leaning news outlet, saying Senator Bernie Sanders would have won if Democrats had nominated him.
Meanwhile, Biden’s team sought to encourage large Western states to secede unless pro-Democracy reforms were made.
That scenario seemed highly far-fetched, but it envisioned a situation in which both sides may have incentives to contest the election.
“There is a narrative among activists in both parties that the loss must be illegitimate,” he said.
According to the Constitution, the presidency ends at noon on Jan. 20, at which point the newly inaugurated president becomes the commander in chief.
The games, ultimately, were designed to explore how difficult it could be to get there.
“The Constitution really has been a workable document in many respects because we have had people who more or less adhered to a code of conduct,” said retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, a Republican and former chief of staff to Colin Powell who participated in games as an observer.
“That seems to no longer to be the case. That changes everything.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/25/ ... ssion=true
WASHINGTON — On the second Friday in June, a group of political operatives, former government and military officials, and academics quietly convened online for what became a disturbing exercise in the fragility of American democracy.
The group, which included Democrats and Republicans, gathered to game out possible results of the November election, grappling with questions that seem less far-fetched by the day: What if President Trump refuses to concede a loss, as he publicly hinted recently he might do?
How far could he go to preserve his power?
And what if Democrats refuse to give in?
“All of our scenarios ended in both street-level violence and political impasse,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Defense Department official who co-organized the group known as the Transition Integrity Project.
She described what they found in bleak terms: “The law is essentially ... it’s almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”
Using a role-playing game that is a fixture of military and national security planning, the group envisioned a dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, one in which Trump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government — the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military — to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it.
If it sounds paranoid or outlandish — a war room of seasoned politicos and constitutional experts playing a Washington version of Dungeons and Dragons in which the future of the republic hangs in the balance — they get it.
But, as they finalize a report on what they learned and begin briefing elected officials and others, they insist their warning is serious: A close election this fall is likely to be contested, and there are few guardrails to stop a constitutional crisis, particularly if Trump flexes the considerable tools at his disposal to give himself an advantage.
“He doesn’t have to win the election,” said Nils Gilman, a historian who leads research at a think tank called the Berggruen Institute and was an organizer of the exercise.
“He just has to create a plausible narrative that he didn’t lose.”
The very existence of a group like this one, which was formed late last year, underscores the extent of the fear in Washington’s political circles — and beyond — that Trump will take the same hammer he has used to fracture the norms of executive governance over the past three years and upend the nation’s delicate tradition of orderly political transitions of power by refusing to concede if he loses.
“We have norms in our transition, rather than laws,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program at the Carnegie Foundation, who was not part of the game.
“This entire election season is something a democracy expert would worry about.”
It is a fear that has been stoked by the president himself, who has repeatedly warned, without offering evidence, of widespread fraud involving mail-in ballots — which voters are likely to use at unprecedented levels because the pandemic has made in-person voting a potential health risk — to cast doubt on the results of November’s election.
“I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do,” he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace last Sunday.
When asked if he would accept the election results, he said: “I’ll have to see.”
Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has taken to issuing foreboding warnings of his own.
“This president is going to try to indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work — they’re not real, they’re not fair,” he said at a fund-raiser on Thursday night.
He has also mused publicly about Trump having to be escorted, forcibly if need be, from the White House.
That happened in one of the four scenarios the Transition Integrity Project gamed out, according to summaries of the exercises provided to The Boston Globe.
But constitutional experts — and the game play — was less focused on the possibility of a cinematic, militarized intervention on Inauguration Day, which is a possibility many still consider remote, than the room the Constitution appears to leave for a disastrous and difficult transition if the incumbent does not accept a loss.
“How well is our constitutional legal system designed to deal with an incumbent president who insists that he won an election but for the presence of fraud?” said Lawrence Douglas, a professor at Amherst College who has written a book on what would happen if Trump took such a stand.
“And I think the rather unfortunate answer is our system is not well designed at all to deal with that problem,” said Douglas, who was not involved in the game.
Brooks got the seed of the idea for the Transition Integrity Project after a dinner where a federal judge and a corporate lawyer each told her they were convinced the military or the Secret Service would have to escort Trump out of office if he lost the election and would not concede.
Brooks wasn’t so sure. She and Gilman decided to turn the Washington parlor game into an actual exercise; they held an early meeting in Washington, with about 25 people, in December.
“When we started talking about this we got a lot of reactions — oh, you guys are so paranoid, don’t be ridiculous, this isn’t going to happen,” Brooks said.
Two things have happened since then: Trump has displayed increased willingness to challenge mail-in ballots, and his administration has deployed federal forces to quell protests in front of the White House and in Portland, Ore., and has threatened to do so in other cities.
“That has really shaken people,” Brooks said.
“What was really a fringe idea has now become an anxiety that’s pretty widely shared.”
Brooks, Gilman, and others recruited a slate of players including a former swing state governor, a former White House chief of staff, and a former head of the Department of Homeland Security.
They invited both Democrats and Republicans who they knew had concerns about Trump’s comments on the election; nearly 80 people in all were involved.
The Republicans were described by participants as “never Trump” or “not Trump Republicans.”
They played using the so-called Chatham House Rules — in which participants can discuss what was said, but not who was there; some participants were willing to be named.
They included Republicans Trey Grayson, the former Kentucky secretary of state, and conservative commentator Bill Kristol, as well as Democrats Leah Daughtry, who was CEO of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Convention Committees, former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen, and progressive Democratic strategist Adam Jentleson.
The game was elaborate. The participants took on the roles of the Trump campaign, the Biden campaign, relevant government officials, and the media —generally, Democrats played Democrats and Republicans played Republicans — and used a 10-sided die to determine whether a team succeeded in its attempted moves.
The games are not meant to be predictive; rather, they are supposed to give people a sense of possible consequences in complex scenarios.
Each scenario involved a different election outcome: An unclear result on Election Day that looked increasingly like a Biden win as more ballots were counted; a clear Biden win in the popular vote and the Electoral College; an Electoral College win for Trump with Biden winning the popular vote by 5 percentage points; and a narrow Electoral College and popular vote victory for Biden.
In the scenarios, the team playing the Trump campaign often questioned the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, which often boosted Biden as they came in — shutting down post offices, pursuing litigation, and using right-wing media to amplify narratives about a stolen election.
To some participants, the game was a stark reminder of the power of incumbency.
“The more demonstrations there were, the more demands for recounts, the more legal challenges there were, the more funerals for democracy were held, the more Trump came across as the candidate of stability,” said Edward Luce, the US editor of the Financial Times, who played the role of a mainstream media reporter during one of the simulations.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
In multiple scenarios, officials on both sides homed in on narrowly decided swing states with divided governments, such Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, hoping to persuade officials there to essentially send two different results to Congress.
If a state’s election is disputed, a legislature controlled by one party and governor of another each could send competing slates of electors backing their party’s candidate.
Both sides turned out massive street protests that Trump sought to control — in one scenario he invoked the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use military forces to quell unrest.
The scenario that began with a narrow Biden win ended with Trump refusing to leave the White House, burning government documents, and having to be escorted out by the Secret Service.
(The team playing Biden in that scenario, meanwhile, sought to patch things up with Republicans by appointing moderate Republican governors, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, to Cabinet positions.)
The scenario that produced the most contentious dynamics, however, was the one in which Trump won the Electoral College — and thus, the election — but Biden won the popular vote by 5 percentage points.
Biden’s team retracted his Election Night concession, fueled by Democrats angry at losing yet another election despite capturing the popular vote, as happened in 2000 and 2016.
In the mock election, Trump sought to divide Democrats — at one point giving an interview to The Intercept, a left-leaning news outlet, saying Senator Bernie Sanders would have won if Democrats had nominated him.
Meanwhile, Biden’s team sought to encourage large Western states to secede unless pro-Democracy reforms were made.
That scenario seemed highly far-fetched, but it envisioned a situation in which both sides may have incentives to contest the election.
“There is a narrative among activists in both parties that the loss must be illegitimate,” he said.
According to the Constitution, the presidency ends at noon on Jan. 20, at which point the newly inaugurated president becomes the commander in chief.
The games, ultimately, were designed to explore how difficult it could be to get there.
“The Constitution really has been a workable document in many respects because we have had people who more or less adhered to a code of conduct,” said retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, a Republican and former chief of staff to Colin Powell who participated in games as an observer.
“That seems to no longer to be the case. That changes everything.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/25/ ... ssion=true
3 Aug 2020 11:59 am
3 Aug 2020 12:17 pm
D.A. Is Investigating Trump and His Company Over Fraud, Filing Suggests
The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested on Monday that it has been investigating President Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than the prosecutors have acknowledged in the past.
The office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., made the disclosure in a new federal court filing arguing Mr. Trump should have to comply with its subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. Mr. Trump has asked a judge to declare the subpoena invalid.
The prosecutors did not directly identify the focus of their inquiry but said that “undisputed” news reports last year about Mr. Trump’s business practices make it clear that the office had a legal basis for the subpoena.
The reports, including investigations into the president’s wealth and an article on the congressional testimony of his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, said that the president may have illegally inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to lenders and insurers.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump have said he did nothing wrong.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/nyre ... 7GUYrvVnIu
The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested on Monday that it has been investigating President Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than the prosecutors have acknowledged in the past.
The office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., made the disclosure in a new federal court filing arguing Mr. Trump should have to comply with its subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. Mr. Trump has asked a judge to declare the subpoena invalid.
The prosecutors did not directly identify the focus of their inquiry but said that “undisputed” news reports last year about Mr. Trump’s business practices make it clear that the office had a legal basis for the subpoena.
The reports, including investigations into the president’s wealth and an article on the congressional testimony of his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, said that the president may have illegally inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to lenders and insurers.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump have said he did nothing wrong.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/nyre ... 7GUYrvVnIu
3 Aug 2020 12:21 pm
It's not about what she thinks you jackass.Termin8tor » 03 Aug 2020, 12:11 pm » wrote: ↑Twitter is a cesspool of leftist haters, lunatics and wackjobs.
Who freaking cares what she thinks?
It's about Trump on video saying that he is strongly pro-choice and would not ban abortion.
3 Aug 2020 12:52 pm
3 Aug 2020 12:57 pm
Maybe you should watch the video you gaping asshole.Termin8tor » 03 Aug 2020, 12:37 pm » wrote: ↑Twitter is a cesspool of leftist haters, lunatics and wackjobs.
Who freaking cares what she thinks?He's been the most pro-life president in US history, psycho.Misty: It's not about what she thinks you jackass.
It's about Trump on video saying that he is strongly pro-choice and would not ban abortion.
Maybe it's time you got in touch with actual reality.
He was never anti-choice.
You fell for that line of ****.
3 Aug 2020 1:21 pm
That's because you're a **** animal.
3 Aug 2020 2:02 pm
Face it Precious.Termin8tor » 03 Aug 2020, 1:26 pm » wrote: ↑He's been the most pro-life president in US history, psycho.
Maybe it's time you got in touch with actual reality.Is the video going to change the historical reality of 3 1/2 years of him being the most pro-life president in US history, you stupid wackjob?Maybe you should watch the video you gaping asshole.
He was never anti-choice.
You fell for that line of ****.
He lied to you.
And you fell for it.
He was a Democrat who up until 5 years ago mostly gave money to people like Joe Biden, John Kerry , Terry McAuliffe, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris.
And in 2004, he told CNN that he simply didn't see himself as a Republican.
"In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat," Trump told Wolf Blitzer at the time. "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans."
5 Aug 2020 10:53 pm
The New York State Attorney General has called a press conference for 11:30 AM tomorrow.
I wonder what that is about?
Watch this space.
Edit-August 6th: She is seeking to dissolve the NRA.
New York AG seeks to dissolve NRA in lawsuit accusing leaders of self-dealing, causing $64 million in losses.
I wonder what that is about?
Watch this space.
Edit-August 6th: She is seeking to dissolve the NRA.
New York AG seeks to dissolve NRA in lawsuit accusing leaders of self-dealing, causing $64 million in losses.
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