I call that “God’s ultimate veto”

That assumes there are no shenanigans with those elections. I believe we will have them. We’ll just have to see how fair they are.

We will know that is happening if there is ever a real movement to abolish the UN Security Council, or at least the permanent seats that have veto power. Until then, the US will always have that power.

Maybe I can pump another 10x out of my Crypto portfolio and retire early.

Sorry to break it to you, but you can’t.

There are a few remaining checks and balances on other issues, and the Democratic Party might be able to use its minority in Congress to strategically delay certain things. But foreign policy is entirely in the President and Congress’s domain. And while Republicans in Congress sometimes have internal bickering that derails their agenda, I expect Trump and Congress to march lock-step on this one. (Their marching might even be a bit like a goose step, come to think of it.)

So the frightening thing us that everything you have written is possible, if Republicans as a whole prioritize it. Trump can’t do it all himself, but Trump + Congress + a compliant Supreme Court definitely can. There are some remaining checks on the whole process, but they are weak and amount to delay tactics.

The biggest check right now is the Military itself. The Military swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the President. That oath will be tested. The Military brass understands their role in all of this. They understand their use on US soil is extremely limited. A lot of the super-fascist stuff will involve them, and they don’t want to be involved. If Trump fires a bunch of Generals right away, that’s a really bad sign, because it means he is going through the various chains of command and trashing it all until he finds a leader willing to violate that oath for him.

I’m surprised the other ones did better

The American Constitution says that Presidents can’t accept gifts from any foreign source, and that has been interpreted in the past as a general prohibition on Presidents operating in any capacity in any private enterprise. Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust.

Not only was Donald Trump allowed to circumvent this during his first term, retaining ownership of his businesses and nominally putting his kids in charge while they pursued foreign deals, but today Trump is waist deep in Crypto, and owns a majority share of a publicly traded company whose ticker is his initials. Foreigners can (and likely do) shovel money into both. Do you think anyone will ask him to divest, like the Constitution requires him to?

The Constitution is useless unless it is enforced. It relies on checks and balances between competing branches, and right now they are broken. The only checks on Presidential power are the military (whose oath is to yhe Constitution, not to any one President) and the individual states (who retain all powers not explicitly given to the Federal government).

The Constitutional text is very broad:

The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

So it looks rather absolute, for Fedral crimes. However, the real situation is complicated. This is just one clause in the Constitution, while the President is supposed to be bound by all of it. So, presumably, he can’t exercise his pardon power in a way that violates something else in the Constitution. If you go deeper into the Federalist papers, it’s quite clear that the Founders held that no man should be his own judge, and a self-pardon effectively does just that.

Here is a good write-up, although I do note it was written before the Supreme Court put their thumb on the scale and said he could do whatever the hell he wanted, as long as he doesn’t get impeached for it:

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-presidential-pardon-power-explained/

I expect him to do it anyway. It will be challenged, but courts will reject it due to “lack of standing” and sidestep the messy business of having to tell the King he went too far.

As a first time offender, he may not be getting a jail sentence regardless. Even if he did, though, he could just file an appeal and in the time it would take to hear it, he would be President and whatever sentence would be immediately put on hold l.

You work for the government, not for whatever yoyo happens to be President at any given time. You wouldn’t necessarily leave a private sector job if the CEO changed.

OTOH, this administration has been making a point of wanting to make government so small they can drown it in the bathtub. Unless you work in one of the very few Project 2025 priorities, they will probably eliminate your job eventually. So keep a keen eye out for alternatives.

Last time, I don’t think Trump was expecting to win. He ended up needing to scrape together a cabinet, and a bunch of those officials were old-school Republicans who chafed at all the crazy stuff he wanted to do.

This time, the Heritage Foundation is preparing him, and the new Senate will rubber-stamp all his appointments. He will pick people who intend to “dismantle the administrative state”. Grover Norquist famously wanted to make Government so small he could drown it in fhe bathtub. He might get his wish.

Packing the court requires legislation, in which he needs Congress to send him a bill, and between the Republican House and the Filibuster in the Senate that was never happening.

It looks like turnout is way down compared to last election. Trump is pulling about the same amount he did last time ( maybe a few million down, but there are still results to get). Harris is currently down 15M from where Biden was.

Trump’s support is no larger than it was last time. Harris’ supporters just didn’t show up

It’s quite apparent that the plan in 2020 was to organize these fake electors, who did everything the process called for except actually be certified by the states, and send their phony credentials into Congress so Pence could recognize them. When Pence didn’t go along, their plan pivoted to creating enough chaos at the Capitol to stop the certification altogether. Both plans failed because Pence wouldn’t go along.

This time, they can’t plan on anyone in the Executive Branch to go along. So their plan must be either to make the House dysfunctional so it cannot act to certify, or pressure states to ignore their laws and certify for Trump.

I am constantly amazed how far Trumpiats will go to maintain power – and how their voters reward them for it.

Hmm, we learned in 2022 that the House can’t do anything until a Speaker is installed. And the new Congress is seated a few days before the EC votes are counted. What if Kamala wins the election, but the House declines to elect a Speaker? Can they even convene to count the votes? I hope so, since the VP president over the counting of votes, not the Speaker.

Still, a Kamala win will be a lot more bullet-proof it it comes with a Democratic House and Senate, too. Then there is far less that Mike can do to fuck it up.

Maybe, but it’s still the case that slowing down will impart less energy to the collision. Let up on the brake before impact if you want, but you should have been braking once you first saw the deer in the road.

Sometimes those fuckers just jump out at you at the last minute. They’re not smart. But if you click the link, this one was right in the middle of the road, with that “Deer in the headlights” look. There was plenty of time to slow down before impact.

Using your credentials is not hacking, but once he was canned he no longer had authorization to access those systems. Legally, there is probably no distinction between gaining access by actual hacking vs. using credentials that are no longer authorized.

So yes, their IT processes are deficient, but that doesn’t let the guy off the hook or mitigate his punishment.

Drivers in rural areas are taught to hit the brakes and maintain their lane.

Which the Tesla didn’t do. It plowed full speed into the deer, which arguably made the collision much much worse than it could have been. I doubt the thing was programmed to maintain speed into a deer. The more likely alternative is that the FSD couldn’t tell there was a deer there in the first place.

If I were hiring for a forklift operator, and someone was a good candidate who came with experience but their prior employer didn’t certify him properly, I would pay for the certification. $300 seems like noise compared with the general cost of onboarding a new employee. But it’s been a while since I worked in Manufacturing/Operations, and when I did the managers at that place were competent, so maybe my standards are too high.