The 2024 Election, Part IX. The Biggest Danger To The World Edition.

Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024

What his victory in America’s election would mean

The Economist

November 18, 2023.

I'm starting this a bit earlier than normal (I still had room to post on the last one), but the dawning realization that not only that it's possible that Trump might win, but rather that he will, is finally sinking in. The Economist got to this point after I did.

Democratic pundits like Robert Reich and Donna Brazile are going to keep on saying that we shouldn't worry, things will be fine.  Baloney, worry, things aren't going to be fine. Joe Biden is not going to suddenly pull the rabbit out of the hat.

Nor are voters going to suddenly realize that the economy is doing well and love Biden. This vote isn't about the economy.  Indeed, the fact that the economy is doing well in part provides the luxury to focus on social issues in a time of extraordinarily extreme stress.

Democrats need to move to the right, and right now.  If they don't, they're going to hand this election to Trump, and we'll have four years like we've never seen before.  Part of that means dumping an 80-year-old candidate that people don't like, and his highly annoying left wing running mate.  And right now.

From our last edition:

Overall in the Republican race right now, the following are the serious candidates in terms of still (sort of) being contenders against Trump.

Trump.

Doug Burgum

Chris Christie

Ron DeSantis

Nikki Haley

Asa Hutchinson

Of the above, Hutchinson should drop out, as his campaign is gaining no traction and is essentially the same as Christie's.  Burgum should drop out as well as his campiagn has generated little interest, mostly due to his own waffling on Trump.

GOP candidates still around that nobody is paying any attention to are:

Scott Alan Ayers   

Ryan Binkley

Robert S. Carney 

John Anthony Castro

Peter Jedick   

Perry Johnson

Perry Johnson   

Donald Kjornes

Mary Maxwell   

Glenn McPeters

Glenn J. McPeters    

Scott Peterson Merrell   

Darius L. Mitchell   

Vivek Ramaswamy

Sam Sloan   

David Stuckenberg   

Rachel Swift

Of these, only Ramaswamy is newsworthy, but most due to his being noisy and somewhat of a gadfly.  So, in terms of real candidates, what the GOP actually has is:

Trump.

Doug Burgum

Chris Christie

Ron DeSantis

Nikki Haley

Asa Hutchinson

Vivek Ramaswamy

On the Democratic side, there are actually just about as many people running, but really only Biden and Dean Phillips are serious candidates. . . so far.

Regarding efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, the trial court in Colorado found that Trump did engage in insurrection, but that the office of the President was not included in "officers of the United States" to which the Fourteenth Amendment applies.

Some really excellent commentary on this can be found, interestingly enough on Twitter, on this feed:

Liz Cheney and Jennifer Erin Valent follow

@judgeluttig

@judgeluttig

The Colorado State District Court, Judge Sarah B. Wallace, held tonight that the former president “engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect [his] speech." The court also held that he

7:00 PM · Nov 17, 2023

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"acted with the specific intent to disrupt the Electoral College certification of President Biden’s electoral victory through unlawful means." The court thus found as both fact and law the preconditions to the former president's disqualification under Section 3.

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But then, accepting wholesale the former president’s tortured constitutional arguments, the court held that the Presidency of the United States is not an “office under the United States” and that the former president

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was not an "officer of the United States" and did not take an oath to “support the Constitution of the United States” in 2016 when he took the presidential oath in Article II, Section 1, Clause 8, to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

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It is unfathomable as a matter of constitutional interpretation that the Presidency of the United States is not an “office under the United States.” It is even more constitutionally unfathomable, if that's possible,

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that the former president did not take an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” within the meaning of Section 3 when he took took the presidential oath “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

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The Constitution is not a suicide pact with America's democracy. Indeed, it is the very contrary in this instance. It is plain that the entire purpose of Section 3, confirmed by its literal text,

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is to disqualify any person who, having taken an oath to support the Constitution, engages in an insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution. The former president did exactly that when he attempted to overturn the 2020 election and remain in office

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in rebellious violation of the Constitution's Executive Vesting Clause, which prescribes the four-year term of the presidency.

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November 20, 2023

In something really scary, in context, given his recent tweets, former President Trump, the GOP front-runner was filmed serving an early Thanksgiving dinner to uniformed personnel reported to be Texas National Guardsmen and "border patrol agents" who are more likely Texas law enforcement officers.  Many of them stopped to have their picture taken with the former President, who now has one judge on record with an opinion that he has been an insurrectionist.

The U.S. military, although less so the National Guard, has traditionally been non-political.  Indeed, up until World War Two military officers regarded it as a personal duty not to vote.

Last prior edition:

The 2024 Election, Part VIII. Speeding toward the missing bridge

Monday, November 19, 1923. Not being proved by the test of time.

Oklahoma's Governor, Jack C. Walton, who had tried to take on the KKK, was impeached on corruption charged by the state Senate

Mrs. Coolidge visited the Harding Memorial.

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Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

Frankly, Billie Eilish probably could use a good hamburger and a beer, and maybe hang out at some community college for a while.

Best Posts of the Week of November 12, 2023

 The best posts of November 12, 2023.

The Romans had expeditions that went all the way into what is now Nigeria.

What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.

The Post Insurrection. Part VII. The Insurrectionist.

The 118th Congress. Part II

Tuesday, November 16, 1943. An attempt on Hitler's life.

Friday, November 16, 1973. Transforming Alaska.

The 2024 Election, Part IX. The Biggest Danger To The World Edition.

Thursday, November 18, 1943. The (Airborne) Battle of Berlin commences.

The RAF commenced the airborne Battle of Berlin on this day in 1943, hitting Berlin with 440 Lancaster bombers in a nighttime raid.  The raid killed 131 Berliners, caused light damage and resulted in the loss of nine aircraft with 53 airmen.   Raids would continue through March, 1944.

Cordell Hull addressed a joint session of Congress on the Moscow Conference.

The Germans opened the Ebensee concentration camp, with the first prisoners being non-Jewish.

The 1st Panzer Division pushed the Red Army out of Zhytomyr.

The U.S. Army issued a report on a newly encountered rifle, the FG42

German Paratrooper's Rifle F.G. 42" from Tactical and Technical Trends

German paratrooper in raid to free Mussolini carrying a FG42. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-567-1503A-01 / Toni Schneiders / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5412659

Never completely finished in terms of design, the FG42 was arguably the world's first battle rifle, although it is often called an assault rifle. The selective fire rifle, firing the standard full sized German 8x57 round and was designed to fill the role of rifle, light machinegun and submachinegun.  It was made in fairly limited numbers.

Following World War Two, the concept would be adopted by NATO countries, in part because of the U.S. rejection of intermediate sized rounds.  The FAL, G3, Stg 57, BM59 and M14 are all examples of post war battle rifles.

The Army also reported on German armored cars:

"German Four-Wheeled Armored Cars" from Tactical and Technical Trends

British soldiers exam a disabled SdKfz 222, the most common German four-wheel armored car.

The Germans, like the British, liked armored cars and used four wheel, six wheel and eight wheel varieties, the latter of which proved influential after World War Two and which inspired armored cars currently in use by the U.S., Canada and Germany.  Their four wheeled variants were in the Leichter Panzerspähwagen class and used for reconnaissance.

The U-718 accidentally rammed and sank the U-476 in the Baltic.

The Greek sailing vessels Agios Demetrios  and Kanelos were shelled and sunk south-east of the Kassandra peninsula and Strati, Greece by the Royal Navy, although I don't know why.

The HMS Chanticleer was torpedoed off Portugal and damaged beyond repair.

The Empire Dunstan was torpedeoed and sunk in the Ionian Sea.

German patrol boats sank the Soviet No. 35 motor boat in the Black Sea.

The Columbian Ruby was sunk by the U-516.

The Liberty Ship Sambridge was sunk by the I27 in the Gulf of Aden, where you don't really think of Japanese submarines operating.

The Sanae, a Japanese destroyers, was sunk by U.S. submarines.

French aircraft carrier off of Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, November 18, 1943.

1943  The Wyoming Department of Education released the results of a survey revealing that the state was short 70 teachers, no doubt the result of teachers having joined the armed forces during World War Two.  Attribution. Wyoming History Calendar.

Can somebody please ban the moronic Christmas movies?

You know what I mean. Pretty much any Christmas movie made since It's A Wonderful Life, save for A Christmas Story.

They are freakin awful.  The worst are anything that starts with "National Lampoon's".  National Lampoon is a byword for "pretentious, juvenile, and stupid".

Make them stop.

Blog Mirror: Quotable (Movie) Cowboys

Quotable (Movie) Cowboyss

Going Feral: This is why we can't have nice things:

Going Feral: This is why we can't have nice things::   

This is why we can't have nice things:

 

The above is a case caption of a lawsuit brought in Montana in which Wilderness Watch is suing the U.S. Forest Service over the Forest Service program to use rotenone to take out non-native trout species so that cutthroat trout, the native species can be reintroduced in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

So, in the name of wilderness, Wilderness Watch, it acting contrary to nature.

Sigh.

Saturday, November 17, 1973. Richard Nixon - "I'm not a crook"

It's almost charming to think that there was a time when the Republican President had to assure the American people of his morality.

The Athens Polytechnic Uprising, which had started on November 14 as a student protest, was put down by the Greek Army.

Wednesday, November 17, 1943. Battle of Sattelberg commences.

The Battle of Sattelberg began on New Guinea, pitting Australian forces against the Japanese in the Huon Peninsula Campaign.

Australian Matilda tank in action, November 17, 1943.

The campaign would last through the 25th and result in 48 Australian soldiers killed to an unknown, but large number, of Japanese losses.

Sam Lacy of the African American newspaper The Chicago Defender met with Baseball Commissioner Landis to discuss integrating the major leagues.