@Pluto's Republic
they deserve to be destroyed as well as the mega-cities. Which will happen all by itself.

Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.

Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.

The seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.

This is a five-minute Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

It reveals the government’s mindset, the way this dead empire views the citizenry, and describes the so-called “problems” that the "dead empire" must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

The future is here ahead of schedule. The Internet book-burning is underway.

Shouldn't you be living someplace else?

— #1

this will be too. Looks like a great future. What do you want to be the Sun Tzu option is #3 - take them out then viciously attack the remnants. Hope you guys are ready to go underground, perhaps literally.

To quote Thomas P Barnett: "The job of the Pentagon is to dream up the future of warfare and build the force to win it."

Well played MIC and Alphabet Spooks. Well played.

@Pluto's Republic

Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.

Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.

The seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.

This is a five-minute Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

It reveals the government’s mindset, the way this dead empire views the citizenry, and describes the so-called “problems” that the "dead empire" must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

The future is here ahead of schedule. The Internet book-burning is underway.

Shouldn't you be living someplace else?

— #1

@UntimelyRippd

environmentalists and Bernie. Klassy Kamala.

#3
the gutting of Kamala Harris, that would be a worthy enough achievement.

@HenryAWallace

Legal position[edit]

Twenty-one states do not have laws compelling their electors to vote for a pledged candidate.[9] Twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia have laws against faithless electors. Washington became the first state to fine faithless electors after the 2016 election, and these fines were upheld by the Washington Supreme Court. In lieu of penalizing a faithless elector, other states such as Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota specify a faithless elector's vote be voided.[10] Colorado first enforced this law during the 2016 election, which led to litigation where the 10th Circuit ruled that Colorado's faithless elector law is unconstitutional.[11] Minnesota also invoked this law for the first time in 2016 when an elector pledged to Hillary Clinton attempted to vote for Bernie Sanders instead.[12] Until 2008, Minnesota's electors cast secret ballots. Although the final count would reveal the occurrence of faithless votes (except in the unlikely case of two or more changes canceling out), it was impossible to determine which elector(s) were faithless. After an unknown elector was faithless in 2004, Minnesota amended its law to require public balloting of the electors' votes and invalidate any vote cast for someone other than the candidate to whom the elector was pledged.[13]

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals case Baca v. Colorado Department of State, decided August 20, 2019, is the first federal Court of Appeals case deciding the question. It held that electors have a constitutional right to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice and are not bound by any prior pledges they may have made. It said electors are federal officials, the act of voting for President in the electoral college is a federal act not subject to state law, and state laws requiring electors to vote only for the candidates they pledged are unconstitutional and unenforceable. The case is likely to be appealed.

The decision directly conflicts with an earlier decision by the Washington State Supreme Court decision, In Re Guerra, holding the exact opposite, that presidential electors are state officials under the control of state law, and can be criminally punished by a state if they do not vote as they pledged.

U.S. Supreme Court[edit]
The constitutionality of state pledge laws was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1952 in Ray v. Blair[14] in a 5–2 vote. The court ruled states have the right to require electors to pledge to vote for the candidate whom their party supports, and the right to remove potential electors who refuse to pledge prior to the election. The court also wrote:[14]

However, even if such promises of candidates for the electoral college are legally unenforceable because violative of an assumed constitutional freedom of the elector under the Constitution, Art. II, § 1, to vote as he may choose [emphasis added] in the electoral college, it would not follow that the requirement of a pledge in the primary is unconstitutional.

— U.S. Supreme Court, Ray v. Blair, 1952
The ruling only held that requiring a pledge, not a vote, was constitutional and Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Douglas, wrote in his dissent, "no one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated what is implicit in its text – that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices."[14] One recent legal scholar believes "a state law that would thwart a federal elector’s discretion at an extraordinary time when it reasonably must be exercised would clearly violate Article II and the Twelfth Amendment".[15]

The Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of state laws punishing or replacing electors for actually casting a faithless vote, or refusing to count said votes.[16]

Any bets on how the current court would come down on it?

#4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

The only federal election that our vaunted Framers left in the hands of the people--well, in the hands of relatively wealthy white males--was election to the House. Hence, the name, "the people's House." (Of course, states took care of state elections.) When the ink dried on the Constitution, only about six percent of Americans were eligible to vote. So, it's adorable that so many Americans believe that that document created a democracy. Suffrage has since expanded greatly, but we still operate under a document that created a republic/plutocracy.

Thing is, these days, I'm almost certain that a faithless elector would be risking his or her life. A whole states" worth? There would be rioting, possible across the nation.

@Wally
we are each responding in our own way - there is no other way as we are individuals.

I realize you don’t know me. I’m an optimist. I gave my pessimism, too, but mostly I’m snarky.

We have been screwed for decades, now. We discuss it here all the time. I agree, it’s all how you look at it and what you want to get out of it.

Lookout helps us prepare in many ways. Most essays contain real information about everything. It’s a dependable site.

Anyway, I also know we are moving from the third dimension to the fifth. We are in the fourth. The struggle is with those that want us to remain in the third (think Herr Drumpf) and those that want us to get to the fifth (us, millennials, Gen X & Zers, u get the idea), which we will by the 2030’s), but the struggle will ensue and play out through the twenties. I will be pushing 80 by then. I’m so excited to see how this plays out.

#5

We all make of it what we will and all respond as we will.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

an earlier post-

For context, and for those playing at home, the DNC-approved polls have to be associated with or conducted by the following: the Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, The Des Moines Register, Fox News, Monmouth University, NBC News, The New York Times, NPR, Quinnipiac, the University of New Hampshire, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post and Winthrop University.

Per the DNC: "Any candidate's four qualifying polls must be conducted by different organizations, or if by the same organization, must be in different geographical areas.

Why only these and no others? You got me there.
And then they don't poll in August! This is really bad.

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/29/727852195/democratic-presidential-field-w...

#6

the ways in which social reality is being changed around us.

Since when does anybody have to "qualify" for a debate by polling a certain amount in "authorized" polls? What's an authorized poll? Who authorizes it? CNN? The DNC?

When did our politics become a shittier version of the NFL playoffs?