You’re right, it was rude and barbaric of us to get so upset with Nixon over the Watergate thing. It literally makes us like Conan the Barbarian, a well known bloodthirsty savage.
Emphasis mine.
You say this like it’s a good thing, but I believe this is what’s known as a constitutional crisis, and it’s a very bad thing, of the sort that fascists use to slip into power.
If Biden had followed Trump’s wishes, he would have bypassed the will of the voters. If any of the alternative slate of electors had been accepted, the same thing would have happened. If some Republican candidates for Secretary of State offices get elected, who have publicly said they would not certify elections if Democrats win, the same thing would happen. Would it work? We don’t know, but it won’t be because it wasn’t tried.
What the 14th Amendment or SCOTUS says won’t be of any use if rioters stage a successful coup. That’s what coups are for.
(bolding mine)
But … that would mean the illegitimately elected “president” would be in office well before the legal challenge was resolved. IOW, it would be too late to do anything about it. Even if SCOTUS ruled 9-0 that the electors were unconstitutionally submitted, there’s no mechanism for reversing a presidential inauguration. And even if there were, do you suppose our illegitimately elected “president” and his/her party would peacefully go along with it?
I think Smapti is envisioning a scenario where a State legislature passes a law before the election saying that it, and not the voters of the State, will determine who gets the State’s electoral votes. He is saying that legal challenges to this law would prevent it from being implemented in time for the next election (which I question, but whatever).
He’s not talking about a case where the legislature decides to change the law in order to overrule the voters after the votes have been counted, which would clearly be unconstitutional. (In actuality, of course, we’ll probably see false claims of “voter fraud” being used to justify “emergency actions”, rather than explicit attempts to change the law).
Yes, Amendment XIV Section 2 is a great thing, but unfortunately they forgot to put in an enforcement mechanism or make clear who decides whether a State is denying the right to vote. I guess Congress could make the determination, but what if the President and/or Supreme Court disagree?
Also the losing electors thing could still potentially allow a state with GOP majorities in the statehouse but that had just cast the deciding Democratic presidential votes (if counted) to negate their votes rather than flipping them.
I take it you’re not actually familiar with the character?
Right, and if enough red legislature/blue elector states did that, they could keep enough electoral votes on the sidelines so that the Democratic candidate couldn’t get to 270.
Then what happens? Majority of those electoral votes that were cast? The 12th Amendment seems to say so, if the electors whose votes were negated are considered “not appointed.” What if just enough votes are removed to have it thrown to the House, with the voting power of those states restored?
It’s a mess either way.
I take it you think Watergate was no big deal? Every part of that post was meant to be wrong 
Fair enough, you whooshed me.
Or on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1932 to disperse the Bonus Army.
Here’s a question:
If things really did go to Hell in the US, then presumably US markets and the dollar would also go to shit. Where / how could one park money outside the US to keep it safe? Would owning international funds denominated in US dollars (ie through Fidelity) work? Would one need to open an account in a foreign country and park money there?
To be clear, I’m just playing along, but I’ve spent a lifetime saving and don’t need to see it all lost as the dollar and S&P 500 turn worthless.
If the dollar is shit, why buy dollar funds? Why not buy foreign currency directly?
When things are really hell, though, you get currency controls and bans on opening foreign bank accounts. Also, many banks are reluctant to deal with U.S. citizens.
I’ve been tracking the dollar for a while, and whenever things more or less start going to hell, the dollar strengthens.
The value of the dollar (as well as other grand scale financial issues) are more or less based on the mass psychology of all of us believing they’re valuable. The US dollar could remain strong even in the state of a total loss of democracy in the US if we all kept believing everything was fine, which seems to be the natural inclination of most people. There’s definitely a scenario where there can be a fascist takeover of the US and the dollar remains strong.
Yeah, nothing prevents a fascistic state from having a strong economy and currency (save that too often the fascist rulers will choose fidelity over competence).
My assumption (?) is that if one owned, say, a FTSE 100 fund denominated in dollars, then as the dollar sank it wouldn’t matter because you’d have a dollar price that increased to match the Pound’s exchange rate. So that 50-pound share price might translate to $1,000/share.
Is that not accurate?
I think it is accurate. I will defer to the experts for the technicalities of what might happen in the case of extreme and/or rapid exchange rate variations.
I am recalling the futile feeling of the “duck and cover” method of dealing with a nuclear bomb, as we learned in school growing up. And I’m praying that the young Americans take hold of the reins and turn this thing back around, because it’s going in the wrong direction. The bad guys are winning and it’s not a cartoon… there’s nothing funny about it!