The Multi-Party System

This article is almost complete hypothetical, and is the result of a twitter discussion with @justapedn from Saturday 10-7-2017. Since I’m a little too verbose for 140 characters, I decided to write a blog post about it.

What would a multi party political system look like in the United States?

Like I said, this is all hypothetical, based off of what’s known, what’s being reported, and what’s being rumored.

THE SET-UP, OR WHAT’S ASSUMED FOR THIS EXERCISE.

Assume that at some point between 2018 and 2022, the Republican Party as it exists today ceases, likely due to implications from the Russian Investigation.
Also during this time, the Democratic Party also has its own problems, and falls apart.
The Green Party goes through a reorganization. Jill Stein goes to jail.
Major campaign reforms are enacted, all the way from a Constitutional Amendment overturning Citizens United down to shortening campaign season.

COLLAPSE OF THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM

So, how do I think the current system dies?

In fire. And a whimper.

During the investigations over the next couple years, the ties of Dark Money will come to the forefront. The RNC leadership laundered Russian money into their 2016 campaigns, and the DNC will be involved in some other shenanigans.

In the fallout, both major parties fracture. Whether any piece of them survives is up in the air, but for this piece, I’ll assume they both die.

THE NEW PARTIES

The names are placeholders. Actual party names may vary.

Nationalist Party. Made up of the Deplorables, the Alt-Right, and hard liners on immigration.
Religious Party. The “Religious Right” get their own party.
Conservative Party. For fiscal conservatives who aren’t as hung up on social issues.
Moderate Party. Made up of a mix of centrists from both Democratic and Republican Parties.
Liberal Party. For the more left-leaning members of the old Democratic Party, but not radical by any definition.
Socialist Party. The fringe left. Over time, their policies become the platform of the Liberal Party.
Libertarian Party. This party sees a new age as those that labeled themselves as Libertarians all of these years join this party.
Green Party. This party reorganizes into one that focuses on environmental issues.

CHANGES TO THE ELECTION SYSTEM.

For the most part, I don’t see too many changes at the state and local levels in the Primary elections. It would be the same as today, just more party options.

Where I see changes taking place would be in the General election.

With 7 or 8 options for an office, there’s a good chance that none of them get a majority. There are two ways this can be handled. Either have the top two contestants take place in a run-off, or use ranked voting.

I prefer ranked voting, as there wouldn’t be a need for a separate day of voting. Each voter would rank their choices from first to last. If no one claimed a majority, whomever had the most last place votes is eliminated. Then, the numbers are recalculated, removing the eliminated candidate from the new count. This continues until someone has a majority.

For example, let’s say Al, Bob, Chuck, Dave, and Ed are running for Congress. Al received 35%, Bob 30%, Chuck 20%. Dave 10%, and Ed 5% out of 100 votes. No one won the majority, so it goes to the rankings. Al had the most votes, but was last in more than half the ballots. Most people said “anyone but Al.” Al is eliminated. Bob now has 30/65 votes. Still not a majority, so another round of eliminations. The next worst one was Dave. Since Dave had 10% of the original vote, that gives Bob a majority.

Bob wins the race, and it’s all done in a night.

CHANGES TO CONGRESS

Surprisingly, there wouldn’t be much change to Congress.

At least, as far as the structure goes.

Unless a party has a full majority, then get ready for coalition governments and a lot of deal making and compromising.

For example, let’s say the Moderates win 200 out of 435 House seats. That’s not enough for a majority. They’re still 18 seats short. All of the other parties could combine against them, or the Moderates could make a deal with one of the other parties that has at least 18 seats to confirm that they maintain the leadership. They could join with the Liberals to institute new health care reforms, or the Conservatives to enact a new jobs program.

CHANGES TO THE PRESIDENT

This is where things get weird.

Assuming the Electoral College is still in use, we might see some interesting deals come out of the Presidential Election.

If a candidate does not receive a majority of the Electoral College, the House of Representatives then decides the President, while the Senate chooses the Vice President.

However, there is a month between the General Election and when the Electoral College meet. That’s more than enough time for either a run-off or some kind of deal.

Let’s say the Moderates have the most assumed EC votes after the General Election, but not a majority. They have 230, but need 40 more. The Socialists won California with 55 electoral votes. To avoid this going to the House, the Moderates and Socialists strike a deal. Maybe the Socialists will endorse the Moderates if they adopt a particular platform and name their candidate to a cabinet position.

Similar deals would happen at or after the Electoral College as well.

WHAT DOESN’T CHANGE?

Hopefully, nothing negative changes with the judiciary. Local races will still be based off of local interests. And, in some areas, running on a particular ticket would be a bad idea.

That’s it for today. I’ll get back to the normal posts tomorrow. By the way, if you’re on Twitter, follow @justapedn. He’s a pretty cool cat.

Thank you, and have a good one.

Did Pence Flip On Trump?

Time for a little bit of a departure from the normal posts, and speculate about some rumors.

I alluded to this on Friday, but I didn’t want to include this in the Daily Check-In, since I felt this could be significant for future developments.

Did Mike Pence flip on Donald Trump?

WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW

First, a little background.

I’ve described on multiple occasions about how Vice President Mike Pence is dirty AF. (That means “as fuck” for the old people out there.)

He’s up to his neck in shit. Pence was Paul Manafort’s pick for Vice President, over Chris Christie, Jon Kasich, and Michael Flynn (yes, THAT Mike Flynn.) Pence was the head of the transition team, which was responsible for ensuring a smooth transition and hiring key people. He hired Mike Flynn, and was informed by multiple members of Congress about Flynn being compromised BEFORE the inauguration. Sally Yates testified in front of Congress back in March or April about Pence knowing about Flynn being compromised AFTER the inauguration. Pence has been implicated in several of the campaign shenanigans, including hiring hackers to scour for the emails. Since then, he’s also been implicated in Obstruction of Justice charges surrounding Jim Comey’s firing.

Back in May, after Comey was fired, Trump met with the Russians in the Oval Office, and Pence lied about all of it to the public, Robert Mueller was named as the Special Counselor in charge of the Russian Investigation. Pence was in the Oval Office with Trump, Jeff Sessions, and McGahn when the call was made.

That was May 17th.

On May 18th, set up a Political Action Committee, or PAC, for his future political concerns. It’s a pretty unusual move for a VP to do this, less than four months into the job, in the first term of a presidency that spews chaos.

In June, it was reported that Pence had hired Robert Cullen in late May. Cullen, a former US Attorney, previously worked with Mueller.

It’s also been reported that Cullen has met with Mueller’s team on multiple occasions.

RUMOR TIME

Starting Thursday night on twitter, @AngrierWHStaff, Angry White House Staffer, got into an argument with some people about whether or not Pence would end up in jail. Angry was adamant that he wouldn’t. Over the next couple hours, Angry mentioned that he had seen Cullen meet with Mueller multiple times, and had handed over a lot of information. Angry concludes that Pence had flipped on Trump, and was feeding Mueller info to bury Trump and save his own ass. By doing so, he’ll avoid prison time and will succeed Trump as President, and would avoid jail time.

Quick sidebar. To “flip” on someone in legalese is to turn over incriminating evidence on a person, group, or organization.

Later that day, Ale (@aliasvaughn) put together a thread detailing the many ways in how Pence has implicated himself, and how this move was a smokescreen, likely to confuse and confound the investigation.

MY TAKE

Here’s my take on Pence. He’s dirty, he’s a liar, a zealot, but scariest of all, he’s competent.

He lies. A lot. Not only does he lie, but he’s he’s good at it. So good, he convinces his target that he was right the whole time. It’s called Gaslighting.

Pence thinks that he’s ordained by God to lead the United States. He probably saw Mueller as a sign from above.

He was ready to move on to presidency on January 20th. He doesn’t plan to be Trump’s VP on the 2020 ticket. He doesn’t plan on Trump being President by then.

This is part of Pence’s plan.

He started his PAC the day after the Special Counselor is named, and hired an attorney who was a good friend of Mueller’s.

Pence flipped on Trump. He’s selling him down the river, but trying to make it look like he’s loyal to Trump. Pence is loyal to himself.

Will this stop Mueller from coming after Pence? Not likely. He’s screwed 8 ways to Sunday.

Will Pence become President? Very likely. Unless he gets indicted first, or at the same time, Pence will succeed Trump. How long is the interesting part. He’s a lame duck from the start, and may only be in office long enough to ensure a peaceful transition.

Will Pence go to jail? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I picture him receiving a pardon to avoid jail time, and he would disappear into obscurity.

Thank you, and have a good one.

Drip, Drip, Drip

This article is a little change of pace from the normal daily posts, and jumps into the realm of speculation. I’m going to answer a question I’ve seen on Reddit and Twitter several times since this whole mess started.

“If it’s as bad as they’ve said it is, and the spooks knew, why are we just getting a piece or two at a time?”

The first part refers to the theft, espionage, and treason committed by Donald Trump, his staff, campaign, and the Republican Party.

Spooks in that sentence refers to spies, like the CIA, NSA, MI6, FVEY, and every other country in the world.

The last part is about the steady pulse of information and stories coming out about the investigation, like a faucet dripping.

To answer this question, I’d like to War Game out what I think could have happened had we gotten the whole story at once.

For this exercise, just like in Geometry class, we need to state our assumptions.

ASSUMPTIONS

At least 70% of the rumors are true. Trump, his staff, family, and Campaign committed election fraud, espionage, and treason with the Russians reporting to Vladimir Putin.
The Right Wing Media, including Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller, snd InfoWars, knowingly spread propaganda originating from Russia.
Russian money was laundered to the Republican National Committee, and that the leaders of the Party assisted in those matters.
Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit not only let Russians use their platforms to spread propaganda and influence the election, but those platforms profited from it.
Intelligence organizations the world wide knew all of the above.
All of the events up to the election are the same.
All events in this War Game are based off of a quick strike hypothesis, in which the Obama government moves fast after the election.
Following Murphy’s Law, several things go wrong. Horrifically wrong, and at the worst time.

WAR GAME TIMELINE

November 8, 2016

Election Day. Even though Donald Trump loses the popular vote by more than 3 million votes, he squeezes out a minuscule margin in three key states to win enough presumptive votes in the electoral college to become the assumed President-Elect.

November 9, 2016

While the MSM starts asking what went wrong, President Obama meets with the National Security Council. They know what they know, and have three choices. They can either act swiftly to stop Trump from becoming President, let jurisprudence take its toll, or let our allies handle Trump.

This is where the War Game diverges from the regular timeline. In this War Game, Obama chooses to remove the Trump threat immediately. Operation: Bystro (fast in Russian) is authorized. Donald Trump will be arrested right away, along with his family members, staff members, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Jason Chaffetz, several Russians involved that live in the United States, and several people at Fox News like Sean Hannity and Rupert Murdoch, as well as people at Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Breitbart, and other websites. On top of these arrests, several media outlets would close to control panic and the narrative.

It’s decided that since most of the principals will be in Washington the next day, the move will be made when Trump visits the White House.

Several people question the timing of implementing this plan so quickly. If one piece of the operation misses the window, then there could be a disaster.

Still, the administration presses on with Operation: Bystro.

November 10

Trump meets with Obama in the White House. Everything seems like normal, until senior FBI officials walk into the meeting, joined by the head of the Secret Service. The SS Agents are confused as the FBI officials make their way to Trump and arrest him for a whole slew of charges, including espionage.

Across town, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are picked up from a meeting they were attending. Jeff Sessions is arrested at his office.

In New York, Don Jr. and Eric are in Trump Tower with their families. Paul Manafort is downstairs in his suite.

A ruckus is raised outside as a squad of FBI agents roll up to the building.

Across town, the Fox News HQ is about to get some unexpected visitors.

The plan has kicked off, and not even a half hour in, the first SNAFU occurs. One of Rudy Giuliani’s moles finds out about the plan and informs Rudy, right before being rounded up. Rudy calls a producer at Fox News just minutes before the FBI gets there and breaks the story that Donald Trump has been arrested, and that the rest of the family, and his staff, are wanted. Rudy hops in his car and leaves his place, moments before the G-Men get there.

As Fox News is breaking this story, they go dark. In mid-sentence, they go dark.

Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are visited by FBI Agents in San Francisco. Their presence is tweeted and retweeted millions of times that day. The three biggest social media sites start acting a little wonky, then go silent.

The White House announces that they will hold a press briefing at 15:00 EST, followed that evening by a national address by President Obama.

Jared and Ivanka are airborne at the time, but they’re alerted to these developments by Rudy. They instruct the pilot to get out of American air space as quickly as possible. The pilot complies.

Mike Flynn and his son are also arrested in New York.

The next disaster of the day occurs at Don Jr.’s arrest. One of his bodyguards opens fire on the FBI agents, and is killed.

Carter Page, thinking he’s some kind of hero, greets the agents coming to arrest him with a shotgun. One agent is hurt, but not killed. Carter is killed in response.

At 15:00, the White House releases a statement, saying that neither the President nor President-Elect will be available for a press statement, and that President Obama will address the nation that night.

As this is going on, a lone reporter from the Washington Post gets a shot of Donald Trump and some of his cronies being escorted into the back of a van, and he’s wearing handcuffs.

Rudy Giuliani is stopped at a traffic stop a trying to get out of New York City. As the NYPD stops him, the FBI show up to apprehend him. This turns into a stand-off between the two law enforcement agencies. A minor scuffle breaks out between them, until senior officers from both sides show up to calm everyone down. They reach an agreement. Rudy will be allowed to be taken home, but he will be under house arrest until the morning, when he’ll be taken out of town.

Jared and Ivanka’s plane deviates from its flight path, and heads for the Caribbean. Air traffic controllers are confused by this move. Eventually, someone from the USIC informs them that the plane is full of fugitives. F-16’s are scrambled from Florida to intercept, but the plane is already within Cuban air space.

In the evening, news of Trump’s arrest hits the news, along with everything going on at Fox News, Facebook, and Twitter. Several people are seen leaving Fox News HQ under arrest, including Sean Hannity.

At night, President Obama addresses the nation. He announces that Donald Trump had been arrested for election fraud, money laundering, RICO, and espionage. He also goes on to indicate that the Russian Government had helped Trump steal the election, and that while they were still investigating whether actual votes were changed, he does admit that voting rolls were hacked, which caused millions of voters to be denied the right to vote. The nation is an in unprecedented constitutional crisis, but America will prevail.

MID-NOVEMBER

The country is dazed as, over the next couple weeks, more and more information comes out about the depths Donald Trump sunk to in order to win the presidency.

The government is shaken, as many members of the House and Senate were arrested for accepting campaign funds from Russia.

Right Wing Media doesn’t know how to react. On the one hand, Trump committed treason. On the other hand, screw Obama and Clinton. Many of the websites, like Breitbart and InfoWars, lose their hosting, but soon come back with Russian domains.

Twitter and Facebook return to semi-normal operations. Fox News remains off the air, as their role in spreading propaganda comes to light.

Alex Jones dies in a standoff with police executing an arrest warrant. After shooting at the police and killing two officers, he eventually takes his own life via shotgun haircut.

LATE NOVEMBER TO MID DECEMBER

Tensions are running high. Protests on both sides get ugly across the country. Violence occurs at one rally in Minneapolis, where Trump supporters attacked HRC supporters that were protesting a recent attack on a mosque. At least once a week, there’s an attack from one side or the other.

Jared and Ivanka show up on Breitbart Russia. They talk about being harassed on the run, and of their heroic escape from Cuba to El Salvador to China to Russia. This is completely made up, but Trump’s supporters eat it up with a spoon. They call on “true patriots to do what must be done.”

DECEMBER 19, 2016

The Electoral College, after being given a classified briefing on the election, vote in favor of Hilary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States of America. She wins in considerable fashion, pulling in over 350 votes. Out of the remainder, about 40 of them still voted for Donald Trump, 100 abstained, and the rest split between John Kasich, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. Tim Kaine becomes the Vice President.

LATE DECEMBER TO EARLY JANUARY

Tensions continue to rise throughout the country. Small bands of Trump supporters take up the call to “do what must be done.” Fringe groups on the right and left join together to take a stand against government tyranny.

JANUARY 3, 2017

In the most bizarre Congressional session in history, the Senate convenes and refuses to certify the previous election or the Electoral College counts. This standoff ends with a compromise. HRC will name several key members of the Republican Party to her cabinet, as well as offer amnesty to low-level Republican members of Congress that didn’t knowingly accept money from Russia or aid Trump, in exchange for certifying the election results. Clinton and Obama agree.

JANUARY 20, 2017

Hilary Clinton is sworn in as POTUS. Throughout the day, riots break out across the country. Protests and counter-protests turn violent.

From Russia, the cries for violence and revenge grow louder.

LATE JANUARY TO FEBRUARY

The first series of coordinated attacks takes place in Portland, OR, as white supremacists attack several mosques, temples, and synagogues in a 72 hour period. Similar attacks occur in South Carolina, Alabama, and Pennsylvania.

MARCH 6, 2017

Following repeated calls from Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump through Russian sponsored Breitbart, an assassination attempt is made on HRC. She escapes injured, but lives. The assassin was a male follower of the Alt-Right.

APRIL TO JUNE

The first trials begin in the espionage saga of United States vs Trump. Many staffers turn state evidence to implicate their bosses.

Michael Flynn is found guilty of espionage and sentenced to death.

Paul Manafort is found guilty of many crimes, and is sentenced to a very long stay in Federal prison, pending extradition to Ukraine.

Steve Bannon kills himself in prison awaiting trial.

JUNE 15, 2017

Another assassination attempt is made at Hilary Clinton, but this time she’s not so lucky. She was shot by a young woman who at first was a supporter of Bernie Sanders, but eventually joined Team Trump. This woman will turn out to be a Russian agent provocateur. HRC is shot three times, and spends two weeks in a coma. Tim Kaine becomes the Acting President.

JUNE 30, 2017

HRC is pulled off of life support and dies. Tim Kaine is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

SUMMER 2017

Nothing happens in the Congress as half of the House is in legal limbo, awaiting trial for election fraud and campaign finance violations. The Senate is in shambles as well.

Violence spreads across the country, with organized paramilitary groups openly taking part in armed attacks against government officials and buildings. The worst of these attacks takes place in Idaho, where the Governor called in the State Militia to try to keep the peace. It turned into a massacre as State Militia, US Military, and Armed Civilians attacked each other in Boise.

Evidence comes to light that Russia was behind not only Clinton’s assassination, but also the attacks in Boise and elsewhere. Relations with Russia reach an all-time low.

Tim Kaine, in an attempt at trying to heal wounds, nominates Lindsay Graham of South Carolina to be his Vice President.

By the end of Summer, there are an average of 30 Americans killed per week in acts of domestic terrorism. That number only increases as pressure on Russia increases and Trump’s trial gets closer.

CONCLUSION

If we were given all of the information at once, and if the authorities had acted at once, we would be in the middle of a civil war right now.

Some Americans could handle the truth, some of us were paying attention as this unfolded, but most people couldn’t handle it.

Had this unfolded, we’d call it a coup if it took place anywhere else. And rightly so.

This is why we’re getting all of this one piece at a time, like Johnny Cash’s Cadillac.

Thank you, and have a good one.

Daily Check-In 8/17/2017

Thursday, Thursday. I’ll try to make this shorter today, as I just finished up an article about Fox & Friends – 10 Minutes Is Enough

Donald Trump took to Twitter this morning and… Does this sentence ever end well? If I make this a multiple choice question, can you guess at this point?

Donald Trump took to Twitter this morning and…

Talked about how beautiful the statues to Traitors to the United States are.
Directly compared Robert E. Lee and George Washington.
Attacked the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee for not standing by him as he defended Nazis in public.
Advised our military leaders to perform war crimes and crimes against humanity, based on a debunked story.
Engaged in secessionist rhetoric with his base, hoping to scare anyone looking to remove him from office.
ALL OF THE ABOVE

Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Having a hard time with today’s question? I’ll give you a hint. It’s Donald Fucking Trump.

That’s rigth, 6. All of the above.

After studying Trump for the last couple years, when Orange Julius goes off like this, shit’s about to hit the fan.

What could that be?

First, Congressman Steve Cohen promises to introduce Articles of Impeachment. He doesn’t say what charges specifically, but at this point, there’s enough to go around.

Steve Bannon had this interview where he proposed a trade war with China, smeared Trump on North Korea, proposed raising taxes on the rich, and about some of the infighting. Here’s a summary on Axios.

Speaking of Bannon, over the last few days, a couple rumors have been floating around about Bannon’s connections to Gamergate, World of Warcraft, and Russia. I need to find more details on it, but the short version is that Bannon and the Alt-Right stoke the hate that occurred in Gamergate, especially the Anti-Feminism, Anti-Women stuff, to a bunch of men that have been getting real good at doing some low-level coding to mine in WoW and other games. With a little bit of proper encouragement, these men were pushed to some hacker forums on the dark web, where they were likely frequenting anyway, and urged a few of them to take on work outside of gaming, making malware and other stuff. Eventually, they were radicalized, and started working with state-sponsored hacking groups like Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear.

Speaking of Fancy Bear, they’re still at work. Remember when Diaper Donny released his mails to the world showing that he wasn’t colluding with the Russians when the email chain said flat out he was? Well, around that time, the White House started pushing a story about the “Real Collusion Story” between HRC and Ukraine? The White House started talking about this on July 10. Fox News picked it up on July 12, referencing a website from some group called Cyber Berkut. Who are they? Fancy Bear. That site went up on July 12, claiming to have emails between HRC and Ukraine.

Yesterday, Chuck Todd and Shepard Smith both reached out to any and all Republicans they could, looking for anyone to defend Donald Trump. No one agreed to come on their shows.

Newt Gingrich said that there are no very fine people that are Nazis on Fox News.

The Dow Jones fell 150 points today over fears that as long as Trump is in office, Republicans won’t get their tax cuts.

Republicans across the country are doing the slow dance away from Donald Trump, but not fast enough or hard enough. When more than a couple openly ask for him to step down, call it a game for Donald Trump.

That’s it for today’s update, unless something big happens between 18:20 and 22:00. I’m going to work on a couple of the GTKYG series, starting with the Federal System, The Branches, Impeachment, and Pardons. I’ve got a feeling they’re going to be in the news quite a bit coming up.