I would have loved to work for ASS

FAKE NEWS! The evidence is whatever Donald Trump says it is…

That’s so awful for the worm.

It’s not gonna be 9-0, because Thomas’s vote is already bought. It’s gonna be 8-1 or 7-2, but written in such a way that it imposes so much work on the lower courts that the three cases affected by it won’t go to trial before the election.

First of all, all our Constitution states is that the Speaker should be elected by a majority of the House. But normally the minority party votes for their candidate, so in order for the majority to win that Speaker election their entire Caucus would need to agree on the candidate, meaning they have to keep their caucus in line.

All the other noise around the election is in regards to the rules, which are set in each Congress. McCarthy was forced to agree to that ridiculous rule that a single member of the Majority could force a vote to “vacate the chair” in order to get enough support to get the job. If that motion passes, then the body can do nothing else other than hold Speaker elections. That single-member threshold is not normal.

So, all Democrats have to do is vote against that motion (or even abstain) so that the “no” votes outnumber the “yes” votes, and the motion fails and Johnson keeps his job. I think simply allowing the Ukraine vote earned Johnson this sort of protection. (McCarthy didn’t earn this because he didn’t keep up his end of deals with Democrats. Every Democrat voted for the motion to vacate, so the objectors only needed a handful of votes to get the motion to pass.)

But there is another thing to consider: the Speaker has broad discretion to set the agenda in Congress, but that is subject to a majority vote, too. Typically, these votes are just a formality, because the Speaker’s party already has the majority and will support his agenda. But if there are enough defectors in the majority, these routine votes will fail, and the House would be at a standstill, unable to act on anything. If Johnson still needed help to get an agenda passed, that is where there would have to be more serious dealmaking. If Jeffries needs to help Johnson run the House, then Jeffries needs to get something out of it.

If you’re so sure, you should post it on all of your Social Media accounts, and see what happens…

If anyone else had done that, the Secret Service would be after them. But since it’s Donald Trump, the Secret Service protects him.

150 days is 15 whole Mooches…

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Immigrants! They get the job done!

Some MAGAs, I assume, are good people…

Of course this is all just a riff on his quote about Mexicans.

When MAGA sends it’s people, they’re not sending their best…

Jan 6 is the important date, because that’s when Congres counts the EC votes. That’s when the next holder of the office is formally confirmed. If a President-Elect dies after that , there’s nothing that can really be done about it. I would assume the Vice President-elect just cuts to the chase and takes over as President on the 20th, but it’s never happened before, so who knows?

If it happens sufficiently before Jan 6, there may be time for states to direct electors to vote differently. But that might be perilous: an EC majority is required for each office. If some states leave the ticket untouched while others make changes, you run the risk of splitting the vote so nobody technically “wins”. I don’t think any states would direct electors to vote differently unless they all do. And it’s hard enough to coordinate a single group of politicians to do anything, it would be nearly impossible to get 30+ states to all pass the same legislation at the same time.

But could Congress realistically allow EC votes to be counted for someone who can no longer take the office? There will be a big push to invalidate those votes, particularly given the GOP’s tendency to piss on elections these days. I would not put it past them to use their power in the House to deny Democrats the Presidency even if Biden plainly won the EC , but bites it before Jan 6.

To make matters worse, the VP presides over the vote counting as President of the Senate, but the VP office would be vacant because whats-her-name would end up being President. They would need a vote in both houses to name a new VP, and you know the GOP Majority in the House would just sit on it and not act to confirm the new VP. So it might be the President ProTem of the Senate, and Democrats have a real chance of losing the Senate this year.

My point was that if anything happened to make Trump ineligible, even if he had amassed the most delegates up until that time, the party would have leeway to release those delegates before the convention. At no point would they be stuck with a candidate who is ineligible because he is incarcerated/insurrectionist/deceased. Trump wouldn’t be able to sue over that.

But if that happened after the convention, then the GOP might not have a choice but to keep his name on the ballot anyway.

Parties can choose candidates however they want. It doesn’t have to be in a primary, and the primary results don’t have to matter. (See the kerfuffle over the Dem Primary in NH this year). It’s not like the No Labels party is having any primaries, after all. All six people who are members will probably decide over a nice steak dinner (funded by gullible donors).

The major party nominees won’t be formalized until the convention. Until that happens, the party can change rules on a whim. after the convention, though, things get a bit tricky. Remember that we don’t cast votes for candidates directly here, we are casting votes for a slate of Electors to the Electoral College. Many states bind electors to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote there, but that is simply a State law and can be changed by a State law. So we could end up with a situation where a candidate is no longer eligible, yet they still get EC votes, and the State needs to decide what to do about it. They could simply release the electors, or pass a law telling them to vote for the new slate the party offers.

The SC seems determined to decide the 14th amendmentissue in a few weeks, though, so we should know that well in advance of the election. But we can’t predict the timing of any trial, nor of any candidates’ cardiac health.

I’ve often said the only person standing in the way of despotism in the US is not Joe Biden, it is his Cardiologist. That person needs to keep Joe’s heart ticking until 12:05 (DC time) on Jan 20, 2025. After that, Joe can kick off whenever he likes.

The GOP Primary is not over, not until Super Tuesday at least. Haley can stay in the race as long as she has money to continue campaigning and being visible, and I don’t think she has any problems raising money.

If something were to happen to make Trump ineligible (either via the 14th amendment, a conviction, or a medical issue), the party would have to pick another candidate at the convention, and right now Haley is the only other candidate who can send delegates. The more delegates she earns, the less work she has to do to broker the outcome she wants. So she may stay in all the way to the convention, as long as she has the money to.

(The only caveat is that I thought most Republican primaries were winner-take-all for delegates, I guess NH is not though, because Haley is reported as earning 9 out of 22 delegates.)

“The fact that a bunch of Republicans want to enforce some ethical standards is really getting in the way of our goal of establishing a Fascist Dictatorship…”

So what are we supposed to call Lindsey Graham, then? Heck, Taylor Swift might even be in trouble.

And there’s a MLB player named Taylor who is married to a woman also named Taylor.

Of course he can do math, he won the Fields Medal for his Theory of Perfidious Logic in 2011