Category: Uncategorized Page 21 of 100

by Tony Wikrent

14th Amendment

Why 14th Amendment bars Trump from office: A constitutional law scholar explains principle behind Colorado Supreme Court ruling

Mark A. Graber [The Conversation, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-20-2023]

“Section 3 then says people can be disqualified from holding office if they ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion.’ Legal authorities from the American Revolution to the post-Civil War Reconstruction understood an insurrection to have occurred when two or more people resisted a federal law by force or violence for a public, or civic, purpose. Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Insurrection, Burr’s Rebellion, John Brown’s Raid and other events were insurrections, even when the goal was not overturning the government. What these events had in common was that people were trying to prevent the enforcement of laws that were consequences of persuasion, coalition building and voting. Or they were trying to create new laws by force, violence and intimidation.”

Donald Trump blocked from appearing on presidential primary ballot by Colorado Supreme Court

[Colorado Sun, via Naked Capitalism 12-22-2023]

Chief Justice Boatright: “The framework that (Colorado’s election law) offers for identifying qualified candidates is not commensurate with the extraordinary determination to disqualify a candidate because they engaged in insurrection against the Constitution.” [Boatright] said the plaintiffs relied on the ‘breakneck pace’ required in Colorado’s election laws to pursue Trump’s disqualification and that they ‘overwhelmed the process.’ ‘This speed comes with consequences, namely, the absence of procedures that courts, litigants, and the public would expect for complex constitutional litigation,’ Boatright added.” Justice Samour called the challenge ‘a square constitutional peg that could not be jammed into our election code’s round hole’ and labeled the district court proceedings a ‘procedural Frankenstein’ for not following the strict deadlines in state election law.” Berkenkotter: “Three days to appeal a district court’s order regarding a challenge to a candidate’s age? Sure. But a challenge to whether a former President engaged in insurrection by inciting a mob to breach the Capitol and prevent the peaceful transfer of power? I am not convinced this is what the General Assembly had in mind.”

The Colorado Supreme Court Got It Right

Matt Ford, December 20, 2023 [The New Republic]

Critics of the court’s ruling are breezily dismissing the notion there should be any legal accountability for Trump’s actions on January 6….

Most abhorrent to me is the idea that Trump shouldn’t be disqualified—even if disqualification would be legally and constitutionally valid, as Chait conceded for the purposes of his argument—simply because Trump supporters do not like it. This is precisely the reasoning that got us into this situation in the first place. Trump and a few thousand of his supporters gathered in Washington on January 6, 2021, because they thought their beliefs mattered more than the Constitution.

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The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

The response to my article about how climate change is now unstoppable and people should consider what they will do to survive it included some questions of what those considerations should be.

(This is a reprint of a 2018 article. The issue keeps coming up, and there are many new readers, so it’s needed again.)

I don’t want to go into the technicalities of survival preparation. There are plenty of books and blogs (prepper blogs) devoted to it.

But a lot of them miss the proverbial forest for the trees. Obviously you’re going to need the basics; obviously you don’t want to be in the worst places when whatever it is hits.

But less obvious is that the primary determinants of who survives will be social.

Strong and Wide Social Ties

Look, when the shit hit the fans, distribution is hard to entirely determine. Some people will survive, others won’t. Minus tons of money (not always as useful as one thinks, minus prep work) and maybe even with tons of money, what determines survival best is how many people care about you and want you to stay alive.

Are there people who will check on you? Share food and shelter and medicine if they have to? Find (or be) two strong young men and hump you out if necessary? Do people care?

If you don’t have a strong social group, and wider ties, if you’re essentially on your own or just with your immediate family (and it isn’t a huge clan), then your odds of dying or suffering going way, way up.

Don’t have this? Join a church. There are agonostic churches, by the way. Any functional church checks on its members, does visits, helps find jobs, etc, etc…This is a ready-made social group. Yeah, you have to do this stuff yourself, but it’s good for you to care for people and be cared for. When Emile Durkheim studied suicide in 19th century France, he found that atheists suicided most, followed by Protestants, followed by Catholics. This was based on social engagement (don’t transfer this direct, look for a church with social engagement).

If you absolutely can’t stand church, find some other close knit social group. People who look after each other.

Be On Good Terms with the Violent Authorities

Do the local cops like you? Do you give to the patrolman’s benevolent association, or whatever? Does the police chief know your name and care about you? If there is a local military base, are you on good terms there? If there is a local gang, are you on good terms with them?

I don’t care how many guns you have, or if you think  you’re Rambo, organized violence beats unorganized violence. When shit goes bad, you want the people who are used to fighting as a group to think you’re a great person. You want them to defend you and not think of you as a victim.

You may have reason to hate some of these folks, those reasons may be good, but the best way to deal with an enemy is to turn them into a friend, and this is about survival.

Keep Your Resources Largely Secret

You aren’t Rambo, you don’t have an army at your beck and call, and you’ve done your work: You have food, water, medicines, maybe even power. Other people may resent that. They may ask you to share. You may not have enough to share with as many people as want you to share, and still survive. So keep it on the down low. I’m not saying don’t share at all, but conceal how much you have, and keep it hidden. Be smart about this, a semi-public stash you show to those you share with and a hidden stash are a good idea, for example.

(This is a reader supported Blog. Your subscriptions and donations make it possible for me to continue writing, and this is my annual fundraiser, which will determine how much I write next year. Please subscribe or donate if you can.)

Have Tradeables

In the old days, this used to mean cigarettes. In a crisis, it will mean medicines like antibiotics, drugs, medical supplies in general and anything else you can think of that will be in short supply and needed (iodine tablets for purifying water might be a hot item, for example).

You’ve got to be real careful with this stuff, see “secrecy” above. If people think you have a stash, and know who you are and where you’re from, this can go bad. Strong social ties, ties to the local violent authorities, and secrecy can protect you somewhat, but use your sense.

Careful Following the Crowd

Despite wanting to have strong social ties and all that, remember that the places that are worse to be are often the big center points: the stadium or whatever set up as a central distribution and camp out point. This is where the rapes and violence happen. You should prepare in large part so you don’t have to go there. If you do, visit only, don’t stay, and go in numbers with people good at violence and stay together. Dead serious on this.

Belong to an Organized Group

A good church qualifies, but any reasonably large group (50+ people) who are used to working together outside of work can qualify. When government fails, such groups, used to working together, can pull together. Bonus if the group tends to include people with technical, agricultural, and survival skills. Be on good terms with these people.

Concluding Remarks

The people who live, in good times and bad, tend to be the people who other people want to live. When established authority collapses, groups that already exist but aren’t dependent on that authority tend to take over; and yes, organized groups with guns tend to matter.

Want to live? Make it so you living is what other people want.

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by Tony Wikrent

Oligarchs’ war on the experiment of republican self-government

Constitution in the Crosshairs: The Far Right’s Plan for a New Confederacy

Nancy Maclean, Arn Pearson, December 11, 2023 [progressive.org, via Naked Capitalism 12-15-2023]

Frustrated by the surprise defeat of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race, a group of breathtakingly rich and highly strategic actors on the radical right, including the Koch brothers, quietly launched an ambitious new campaign to lock in their political control once and for all. They had used their immense wealth and institution-building savvy to capture a majority of state legislatures in 2010, so the groundwork was already in place.

This campaign would be spearheaded by a corporate pay-to-play group they had long funded to influence state laws—the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—and a dark money group with deep ties to Charles and the late David Koch (who died in 2019), as well as the Tea Party movement—Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). When legislators arrived at ALEC’s annual meeting in August 2013, they were given detailed instructions and model text to bring back to their statehouses for a resolution demanding the first Constitutional convention since 1787….

In the decade since those first secretive meetings, Meckler’s Convention of States has managed to rack up wins in nineteen states for a convention that would address sweeping proposals to radically curtail the powers of the federal government. ALEC-led groups also claim to have twenty-eight states behind their call for a more limited convention to propose a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Should a convention be convened, what is it that the ultra-rich backers want? Their chosen so-called grassroots leaders mince no words when speaking to friendly audiences. Meckler has declared that the purpose is “to reverse 115 years of progressivism.” In fact, the endgame is even more consequential: to return this nation to its pre-Constitution roots under the Articles of Confederation, with a weak central government and sovereign states….

Indeed, most of what ALEC, CSG, and their billionaire backers want to achieve flies in the face of public opinion. And that’s what makes their plan so devious. “Voters have no role to play in the right’s vision of a Constitutional convention,” a report by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) concluded. Delegates would be handpicked by legislative leaders, and here’s the kicker: The votes taken at such a convention would be based not on population but on one vote per state in order to grossly underrepresent the majority of Americans.

In audio obtained by CMD, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, told an ALEC audience in 2021 how this strategy could be used to circumvent what most Americans want. “Because their [Democrats’] population is concentrated and ours isn’t,” Santorum said, “rural voters [Republicans] . . . actually have an outsized power granted under this process.”

He added, “We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority, even though . . . we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

[TW: The most disconcerting aspect of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza is not the brutality and inhumanity of it, or the shamelessness of Israeli officials, but the complete lack of any plan or even proposal for a constructive alternative to the killing and destruction.

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by Tony Wikrent

War in Ukraine

Seymour Hersh, Anatol Lieven and the desperate DC gambit to end hostilities in Ukraine while claiming ‘victory’ 

Gilbert Doctorow [via Naked Capitalism 12-04-2023] Excellent.

Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine 

[Washington Post, via Naked Capitalism 12-07-2023]

Key elements that shaped the counteroffensive and the initial outcome include:

● Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan. But Washington miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period — especially without giving Kyiv air power integral to modern militaries.

● U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing. The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and training.

● U.S. military officials were confident that a mechanized frontal attack on Russian lines was feasible with the troops and weapons that Ukraine had. The simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov and cut off Russian troops in the south in 60 to 90 days.

● The United States advocated a focused assault along that southern axis, but Ukraine’s leadership believed its forces had to attack at three distinct points along the 600-mile front, southward toward both Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov and east toward the embattled city of Bakhmut.

Dissecting the Washington Post’s “analysis” of Ukraine’s Failed Counter Offensive — Part 1 

Larry Johnson [via Naked Capitalism 12-09-2023]

Establishment Alarmism in Overdrive as Raytheon Lloyd Threatens Congress with War 

Simplicius the Thinker [via Naked Capitalism 12-08-2023]

Lying Was the Only Plan Biden, U.S. Ever Had in Ukraine 

Matt Taibbi [via Naked Capitalism 12-09-2023]

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

The collapse of Israel and the United States 

Thierry Meyssan [via Naked Capitalism 12-09-2023]

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