149 Comments
author

I'll be offline until morning, for the purpose of preserving my sanity. Back tomorrow.

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Hope it helps...I despair that such minor attempts can succeed anymore.

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Enjoy your rest. You deserve a day off. Thanks for all you do!

Expand full comment

"They do mean to prevent the American people from electing Donald Trump to the presidency, even if the American electorate chooses to do so, and they’re extremely explicit about it (citations omitted)"

--------------

That's why calling 1/6 an INSURRECTION was so important. If you paid close attention to their words (and I know YOU did), you could see this coming since the evening of 1/6. Biden repeated it after the midterms. They're going to stop him from taking power again -- but nobody is afraid that Trump is going to lose the election and attempt to take power anyway, they're talking about preventing him from taking power IF HE WINS.

FOR DEMOCRACY!

Expand full comment
author

If it works, or even comes close to sort of working, we'll be having a TERRIFYING INSURRECTION right before every election for the rest of our lives. Whoops, we had to disqualify all the opposition leaders again.

Expand full comment

If the GOP would stop nominating LITERALLY HITLER, we wouldn't have to keep disqualifying them! It's really the fault of the Republicans!

Expand full comment
author

MONSTERS

Expand full comment
deletedAug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

I wrote about it here!

https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/this-didnt-have-to-happen

Edit: Oops I shouldn't comment before coffee. Didn't realize you weren't talking to me!

Expand full comment

Keep an open mind. The truth is a force of nature, and it is slowly being revealed. No biased poll can capture that. There is so much more to know. The great awakening!

Expand full comment

remember how the corrupt D-party southern black elites were told to stab bernie in the back? they will do the same to rfk, jr. if he gets too popular.

Expand full comment

After 2016, it mystifies me why anyone would pay attention to polls

Expand full comment

"Polls" had hillary as madame president

Expand full comment

You swallowell your indoctrination

Expand full comment

If the media hadn't tried using Trump to make fun of the Republican field in the 16 primaries, by focusing much of the coverage on him, I'm sure the Republicans would have stuck to the script. Like the nepo baby we had before Obama. Remember his brother was running in 16.

Expand full comment

Indeed. Feds will infiltrate any right-leaning gathering to manufacture the crisis. This is the only way to guarantee the win so the social pillaging may continue. I also wonder how robust their vote rigging operations are in the states that actually elect the President. The internal polling numbers are likely so bad that they can't fudge the votes this time. By any means necessary, no? Gruesome will make America feel California's pain.

Expand full comment

Kari Lake was up by 11 points to a woman who refused to debate and fled from non-sycophant reporters. She lost. Notwithstanding the clear misconduct that took place on Election Day, to date, there is no remedy.

Expand full comment

Oh but there’s a remedy it just isn’t safe...

Expand full comment

There are remedies but most people are not there yet. Your average normie is suspect of the elections now but dismisses it: football season is starting dontcha know? They'll rationalize it away. I suspect the Uniparty knows they won't fool the public twice so now the insurance of burning the Fat Orange Retard at the stake.

Expand full comment

Exactly! The only good that has come from all of this is that now everyone knows the term "insurrection" and what it means. That way, when the general public becomes aware of what the elite leftists have done to our beloved country. They will have the right term on the tip of their tongues.

Expand full comment

The first attempt to impeach Trump happened in 2017. See https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-resolution/646

It "sets forth two articles of impeachment based on President Trump's statements as President that constituted harm to American society and manifest injury of the people of the United States."

Expand full comment

Sophistry, agenda driven lies and the false usurpation of the moral high ground are hallmarks of the plutocratic oligarchy

Expand full comment

Very true, but it is the specific 'insurrection' language that allows them to attempt to disqualify him.

Expand full comment

That was just background; a reminder of how quickly the impeachment issue turned from talk to legislation. The first attempt got 58 votes, including from prominent people like Lieu and Clyburn and Waters and Raskin.

Expand full comment
author

BTW, the reference to "Professor Calabresi" in the excerpt from the NYT article is because Calabresi was commenting on the paper by Baude and Paulsen, not because he's an author.

Expand full comment

Power is not getting people to believe what is true or obvious. Power is the ability to get people to believe/act on that which is not true, (for the narrative setters benefit and the to the detriment of the narrative believers/chanters.)

You can measure their power (or at least brazenness in their attempt) by how evident what they are saying is not true, a maximum score being minus 180 degrees. (or better yet, an absolute value)

We are in the era of same-sentence contradictions. (And prideful hypocrisy thereof)

An armed insurrection where no one had guns

More snow due to global warming

A virus so deadly you need a test to see if you had it

Russian blew up its own pipeline

etc.

At least fewer are chanting so eagerly...

Expand full comment

Some more Orwellian doublethink to add to your list:

Looting shops is a 'protest' against 'injustice'.

the 15 year old Swedish expert on climate change

Expand full comment

She's 21 now but still just as naive and spoiled.

However, she no longer have handlers hovering around her, so nowadays all the garbage she spews is simply her lack of education and retardation (autism among other things) talking.

She's desperately trying to extend her fifteen minutes of fame, no realising that she's been tossed on the heap and is being made irrelevant by the Davos-crowd.

Expand full comment

15 when she started being an 'expert' is what I meant

Expand full comment

Not defending her - absolutely not! She pissed her bed and can lie in it.

Reason I mentioned it is, a 15-year old can get away with being stupid because they're probably being exploited - a 21-year old is an adult.

Best thing she's done is help rip off the false halo of "expert".

Expand full comment

Agreed. A media culture that sets a 15 year old up as an expert is the stupid one. Greta with her half-baked teenage opinions would have been just fine and dandy if her opinions had been allowed - as with every other teenager - to stay within the confines of her teenage peer group.

Expand full comment

You can measure their power also by how reliably they manage to imbue the NPCs with cocky confidence they're in full possession of relevant facts even without the benefit of research.

Expand full comment
founding

I'm just catching up on stacks. But this comment is brilliant.

100% on target

Expand full comment

I've likened those in positions of power to the old Eveready commercial with Robert Conrad:

Eveready Battery 'I Dare Ya' Commercial (Robert Conrad, 1977)

https://youtu.be/0dD-Oekbmlo

As in, "What are you gonna doo about it, huh? What are you gonna doo? I dare ya to doo something about it. C'mon, I dare ya!"

Because that's what those in power are saying to us. Knowing that if we act with violence they got us right where they want us.

They spent two decades in the Middle East remaking our military to be proficient at occupation, putting down violent insurrectionists. Stand up army-to-army war-fighting proficiency? Not so much.

But suppressing civilian rebellions, electronic surveillance tech, two decades of training for the mission of suppressing US citizens from opposing an authoritarian regime taking power in a color revolution at home? Check.

They want that fight. They're ready for that fight. They're daring us to make that move. "C'mon, I dare ya."

So what are we gonna doo about it, huh? And they know they can do pretty much whatever they want until we do doo something about it that they're not ready for.

Expand full comment

Checkmate. See the Book of Revelation for the rest of the story.

Expand full comment

God gives us free will to choose obedience to him or obedience to men, false gods unto themselves. But when the need is great he will divinely intervene. That intervention comes in different forms depending on us.

Are we seeking him, his love, honoring him, his commandments? He will rescue us from our tormentors.

Are we rejecting him, denying him, disrespecting his word, and failing to protect his children by teaching them his word and love? He will intervene as he did in Sodom and Gomorrah where his creation had become so irredeemably wicked his disgust resulted in annihilation.

Our choice.

About that checkmate? The story of Mordechai the Righteous inspires me. How can I help the children of our times find their faith in God and obedience to his word over obedience to the word of fallen men? How can we all help? When our houses of worship are led by money changers worshipping their power, status and the laws of other men ahead of God and we realize that's our job.

Expand full comment

We’ll said Mr. Fox. May each one of us, however small our space on the planet, choose to follow the example of righteous Mordecai, and as another righteous man said, “live not by lies”.

Expand full comment

that started in the 1950s

frankfurt school = cia employees

Expand full comment

Frankfort School 1920's, Tavistock Institute 1940's.

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

It seems like the so-called conservatives that the left touts are pro-choice, anti-trump, and of course very supportive of all things LGBTQ. They trot them out and say, "See! We're balanced because we have these weak-kneed conservatives saying what we want them to say." Some examples are David Brooks and Anna Navarro. Sigh.

Expand full comment
author

Tom Nichols, Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, William Kristol.....

Expand full comment

Did you see the newest Max Boot embarrassment on CNN this weekend? I wanted to fit it into my article but couldn't. :(

https://imgur.com/a/Eh1v6TB

Expand full comment

I've heard Paulsen speak, read at least one or two papers by him, and he is a serious and serious-about-originalist-premises law scholar. Haven't read this yet, but my assumption is that above and beyond any TDS-derived statements or assumptions in it, that the analysis of the insurrection clause itself is sound. The mad assumption here would be that Jan. 6th was an insurrection, or that even by the most strained theory, that Trump was in any clear way guilty of said insurrection--which facts about the Civil War individuals made rather abundantly clear in those cases which the framers of the clause had in mind--and in a manner clear enough to be judged by state election officials. Everyone should realize that in certain outside-of-imagined-scenarios, the Constitution is silent. And amid that silence, certain mad applications of govt. authority, elements of which are justified by portions of the text, can be pushed forward. The key to this particular mad application, which as Chris shows results in an anti-democracy one-party ballot, is the acceptance of the mad definition of insurrection for Jan. 6th in the first place. Oodles of TDS-afflicted Dems and moderate-so-called Republicans accepted the "insurrection" description of Jan. 6 as a matter of good rhetoric and narrative-framing, but here we see what the legal consequences could be if we actually accept it as logical and merited application of the English language. I assume that Paulsen and his co-author didn't have the practical wisdom, nor the courage, to state that in their paper, and thus in the end, may be remembered primarily for the way their own blinders-on love-of-the-argument academic attention-seeking led them into becoming aides to the destruction of the nation and Constitution they love.

Expand full comment

I have now read/skimmed the last 20 or so pages, and I retract any impression I may have conveyed that Paulsen should be presumed to be a responsible scholar of our Constitution and jurisprudence. The impressions conveyed by his previous scholarship will remain what they are for those who care--good arguments are good arguments, and cannot but give one a good impression of the scholar making them, but this, this is like a nightmare version of "Jackie Chiles." The arguments concerning what an "insurrection" is and about Trump's speech are jaw-droppingly tendentious, deceptive, and absurd. Moreover, the whole is, as Chris says, a lawyerly invitation to behavior on the part of state officials that could very likely throw our republic into open chaos if enough of them take Paulsen and his co-agitator up on the gambit. Incredible.

Expand full comment
author

"...jaw-droppingly tendentious, deceptive, and absurd."

That was my impression.

Expand full comment

the funny thing is that the republican field has some good "other" choices- DiSantis, Ramaswamy and Scott. i think the country would be safe with any of them at the helm. the democrats have RFKjr, who they are doing their best to trash. their preferred offerings are trash

Expand full comment

I wish I could agree. But none of them have a prayer unless Trump is removed from the board. Which makes any of them beholden to the same powers that removed Trump from the board. And that point won't be lost on any of them.

Which makes them the MAGA horse-whisperers. Those of us still wild freedom stallions refusing to be broke by the hard Bronc-busting Dems trying to lash us into submission. Bring in the R horse-whisperers, "There, there, easy big fella, nobody's gonna hurt you now. I got ya, it's ok, easy, easy...will you let me ride you, I'll be gentle, not like the last guy who was roughing you up...there, there, easy, shhh...we got this."

Both D's and R's working together to break the wild freedom-loving stallions, the bitter-clingers, baskets of deplorables. Bronc-buster - Horse-whisperer. Good cop - Bad cop. Different wing, same bird.

There's not a single other candidate who isn't owned or indebted to the authoritarians. Not one.

I'm open to RFK Jr's pitch, though.

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023

🤩 Quite a smorgasbord of picturesque & spacious Uniparty metaphors to choose from!

Expand full comment

Rev. Dr. Cornel West (socialist) has been openly attacking black "sellouts" to neoliberalism/neoconservatism like Obama for several years (at least a decade?).

In that context, West is probably more coherent than RFK Jr. because West is able and willing to (reliably) go deeper than RFK, Jr.

Expand full comment

The Green Party supports Covid vax mandates and other Covid authoritarianism so will not get my vote even if I like some of what West has to say. That being said, as the Greens have no chance of winning, I hope they do well to hurt Biden.

https://www.gp.org/statement_from_green_party_us_steering_committee_on_covid-19_vaccines_and_mandates

Expand full comment

Unfortunately for West he has that "pesky" half a million dollar debt he owes to the IRS.

Expand full comment

so the mass media/propaganda says, but I haven't seen any real reporting on the details.

in any case, irrelevant to my point.

Expand full comment

hold on. if DemoBiden Inc decide Green could adversely affect Dem votes, an IRS arrest would solve.

Expand full comment

uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Expand full comment

The use of lawfare, if successful will not stop.

Expand full comment

All 3 mentioned are DS puppets. The best thing I heard said was that “Florida deserves the governor they elected, and American deserves the president they elected.”

Expand full comment

"Safe."

That's funny.

Expand full comment

Reading the article and scanning the replies, it seems no one is noting Wayne Madson's biography of Obama;

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17611182

Basically that both his father and step father were being groomed by the CIA, his maternal grandfather worked for the CIA and its predecessor, his maternal grandmother worked for a bank associated with the CIA, and his mother working for the Ford Foundation, was very much a CIA asset as well. Basically that the intelligence services did to the US what they do to other countries and put their man in charge.

Expand full comment

I am frightened for my family. We live in a rural state whose population is considered on par with road kill by the elites, but my question is what the hell can we do about this mess. Any thinking person, fewer and fewer of those around these days, understands that the election was manipulated, the virus came from a lab, trannies aren’t and Mr. Biden is not in charge; the question becomes how to make a change toward good? “They” are waiting for an uprising so the National Guard can be used as a tool for a Cambodian killing field. I appreciate your commentaries, but how to proceed is the question. And, don’t get me started on the dissolution of Country Music.

Expand full comment

I am not convinced that the majority of the military would obey the current regimes orders to suppress the general public. I pray we don’t ever get to that point but I feel in my heart that the vast majority of the military are patriots and are just as disgusted with what is going on as the rest of us.

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023

Most of the military is corrupt or incompetent. [EDIT: BUT,] There are plenty of "careerist" criminal personalities in military leadership to shutdown gas stations, electrical grids, all MASS communication, critical roads/airports/ports, food and water supplies, garbage collection, supplies of bullets, etc.

Within days, maybe weeks at the most, most of the population would be begging for a dictator to "restore order".

Expand full comment

You may be right about the “top down” control. Over the long run that didn’t work out to well for us in the recent past overseas. Spent most of the time playing whack a mole until we got exhausted or lost interest.

Expand full comment

A domestic insurgency in a modern country is far easier to put down (stop) than a foreign one in a poor country organized around clans, nomadic life and subsistence farming.

Expand full comment

That assumes some viable economic dynamic in which the larger population participates and therefore will defend. Given those pushing this agenda are doing their very best to destroy the economy, either through the banks sucking all value out, or the woke, eugenics movement trying to kill it, it seems much more likely this movement is generating far more blowback than it will be able to handle.

We "sanction" Budwieser and see how it works.

Expand full comment

blather

Expand full comment

I will defer to your superior research/knowledge/experience on these matters.

It’s almost as if you may have “war gamed” this out at some point in your past.

Expand full comment
Aug 15, 2023·edited Aug 15, 2023

I grew up in a military family and have lots of relatives in it, or who used to be. I'm just repeating what was common knowledge of possible military orders for maintaining "civil order".

My father was a senior USAF officer (B-24 navigator WW2, F86 combat fighter pilot Korean War, etc.) in the Pentagon during Watergate (fall of Nixon from power, 1974?), and he was formally asked if he would support a military coup of the US govt. if liberal-reformers got power after Nixon's fall. That was the origin of what became the Bush/9-11 scheme by Rumsfeld and those lunatics.

Expand full comment

The devil and the WEF (but I repeat myself) are on a strict timeline to usher in the one world government and Trump will not be the spoilsport in this again. They don't care how blatten the election is stolen this time. I'm really surprised that they haven't tried an attempt on his life yet. Maybe they are just waiting for the right time to see if any of the impeachment will work. You just have to love the wisdom of man in action from a spiritual perspective.

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

just when im about to fall asleep mr bray fills my head

Expand full comment
author

sorry

Expand full comment

No I think it's a good thing 😉

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023

"fellatiographers"

I am planked, boarded and floored. All the laughing e-mojis.

Ahem. I have to ask, was Obama even born on US soil, given his background? Not to mention his youth - wasn't he active in groups calling for violent overthrow of "The Man"?

Here's one for US constitutionalists: what would happen if a president was to be proven to have been ineligible after having already served his term(s)?

I can't help noticing that liberal-progressive US debaters use the Constitution the way fundamentalists use religious scripture: as a smörgåsbord. Pick what you like, as and when.

Expand full comment

Here's one for US constitutionalists: what would happen if a president was to be proven to have been ineligible after having already served his term(s)?

--------

I can't imagine any practical remedy. At best maybe you could review executive orders or similar pronouncements........

Expand full comment

This is the kind of "Constitution's silence" thing I mentioned in the longer comment above. There is not any automatic-pathway to removal of president if he is proved ineligible provision in the document. He or she could be impeached, or 25th-ed, but that is it in terms of removal.

Expand full comment

Thanks to you and SimCom for answers.

Here, it wouldn't be a problem if an MP, a minister or even the PM would be found retroactively to have been ineligible: since we vote for parties who then appoint their people, as long as the vote for the party was correct, then that's it.

It's fully possible and has happened that people not even party members before an election has been approached and asked to take a seat for a party in parliament, or even in governement (Alice Bah Kunke, an adoptee from Africa, became minister of culture for the Green Party and infamously deocrated her office with quotes and portraits of Lenin and Mao - the Greens wanted/needed a negro to show how "inclusive" and "anti-racist" they are, since the party leadership is all-white 90% female liberal-progressives...).

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Chris you just nail it down. You’re doing important work , keep it going

Expand full comment
Aug 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Barack Obama is a fictional creation.. Nobody outside his immediate circle and the CIA know this guy. He appeared on the national stage with fanfare out of nowhere. And then, presto chango, he was the President. But who is he? Nobody knows. Just like the Biden Presidency is a fiction. Joe didn’t run in or win the election.

Seriously, one would think they could invent somebody better than the mannequin Joe Biden and his trash swindler grifter dad pedigree and trash offspring. But the circus continues. Donald Trump’s persecution is so absurd as to be beyond satire. But it’s happening. No court thus far will give any reasonable hearing to election fraud claims, for which there are growing mountains of evidence.

And the spending g continues at a pace never before seen in the planet - solving problems which don’t exist and creating problems that don’t have to exist.

At what point did the GOP get purchased is what I’d like to know. Was it after Reagan?

There are an abundance of huge scandals and crimes - COVID, the border, the election fraud, the Biden crime family, the fentanyl, the swindling...but gosh darn it we just can’t seem to get any traction. (Insert seriously miffed GOP representative/Senator WASP face here). Oh, consternation! If you just give us some more money, we’ll get ‘em next time. Uh huh...

The country is in limbo. In some ways it’s already gone. In other ways, there’s still some semblance of old America, but not in the corridors of power. If 2024 goes the way I think it will, (insert blatantly stolen ejection here) that’ll be a wrap folks. Then we’re either going to have real fireworks or just shrug and shuffle our way into digital slavery.

Expand full comment
Aug 15, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

I followed Chris's link to the Obama hagiographies piece. Wound up reading this from him in January 2014. "Reporting from a Safe Distance." It reads differently now, due to covid. https://thebaffler.com/latest/reporting-from-a-safe-distance

Expand full comment
author

Forgot about that one! Long time ago.

Expand full comment