The Glade 4.0

I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm just telling you what I know.

But I will give you something to ponder: the majority of our major media outlets, and nearly all of our social media platforms are direct mouthpieces of various US intelligence services. If a Presidential election was rigged by those same intelligence services, how would the information that the election was rigged be disseminated?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Why would your average soldier trust some shadowy anonymous group of military intelligence officers significantly more than the general population would?

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

The bolded part is the main reason the average soldier would listen to the officers appointed over them.

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"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice R. Longworth

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash Williams

You do realize you're labeling the Pentagon a "shadowy intelligence group", and ask why members of the military would trust their leadership structure, right?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

The actual chain of command isn't super relevant here since we're talking about a coup. Officially all soldiers ultimately take orders from the President. You're saying that there's information that will convince them to stop doing that in favor of following some group of insiders in the Pentagon, but said information wouldn't be good enough for the people not in the military.

Where were these guys when J. Edgar Hoover was running rampant?

Lacking the technology to run an intelligence agency with the capabilities of 2018?

Here's a bombshell for you to back what I've been telling you. This has been in the works as an intel OP since 2014, and has been being organized to secure convictions since shortly after the election.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/20 ... ndals.html

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Since it's painfully obvious you have no idea how the military works, I will try to explain so even you can understand.

The chain of command is entirely relevant. The President does not issue orders to individual soldiers. His orders are given to the Secretary of Defense who then relays them to the Commanders of the Combatant Commands. The President is advised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others, they advise the President how to best utilize the military. So ultimately, the orders that come from the Pentagon, down the chain of command, to the lowliest private in the Army, come from the military advisors to the President.

Those same advisors get most of their information form the Military Intelligence community. In the case of a military coup, orders would only need to go from the MI community to the Commanders of the Combatant Commands, bypassing the President, the SecDef, and the JCS, though the JCS and SecDef might be in on the action. I would assume the JCS to be a player based on their access to to the MI community, it's entirely likely one of them would take control after a coup. Your average Brigade, or for that matter, Division Commander in the Army, would follow any orders that came from the CCC, likely without question.

What is not relevant is what the civilian populace thinks. They aren't the ones that have a dog in the fight, so to speak.

As for J. Edgar, that was an issue for the Executive Branch, you know, the President.

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"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice R. Longworth

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash Williams

I seriously doubt the entire chain of command would actually relay orders to arrest or kill the elected civilian government down the line, nor would the enlisted troops follow such an order "without question." You're literally saying the President is essentially powerless because the JCS can arbitrarily remove him at any time and no one would question an order to do so.

I don't find it unbelievable that Trump's DOJ is going to pursue criminal charges against people involved in the scandal. Nor do I find it unbelievable that the military might have been gathering dirt since 2014. I do find it unbelievable that the military was plotting to overthrow Hillary, and that everyone would just sort of go along with it.

The military is not reliant on traditional media outlets to disseminate it's actionable intelligence to it's rank and file, and it's command structure is sacrosanct.

This isn't to say that there would have been no disagreement, or even bloodshed. There almost certainly would have been. We're talking about a coup, after all.

With that said, this sort if thing happens. Why do you believe it could not happen here?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Criminal convictions sound a lot like "leaving someone else holding the bag" to me.

As to the rest, yes, if you just listen to Trump's rhetoric - especially as filtered through idiots like Don Lemon or Chuck Todd or whatever ill-informed nincompoop is on TV inveting a "constitutional crisis" this week - he doesn't seem like much, but his accomplishments since taking office, and especially after the first six-to-nine months are a different story. For example, where is ISIS today? Oh, that's right. He promised to do what? Knock the hell out of them. "B-But Mattis did that!" Yes, and who appointed Mattis? Would Clinton have done the same? Would she have given SECDEF a free hand? No, she would not.

Trump does not need to be a particularly great reformer to "Drain the swamp". Upon his election - really, upon Ted Cruz's withdrawl from the primary - the Swamp obligingly filled itself up to a point where he could hardly help but drain it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think the least plausible part of this whole thing is the suggestion that Trump could keep his mouth shut about this. Trump suffers from diarrhea of the mouth. (or thumbs as the case may be) If it were really happening, Trump would be shouting it from the rooftops.


The fact is that Trump and his team have continually changed their story about the nature of their relationship with Russia. They've made multiple public statements which have been found to be factually untrue. They've lied about the existence of meetings, the topic of the meetings they 'didn't have', who they were meeting with.

As for the 'swamp' I think we have very different ideas about what constitutes a swamp. For me, the levels of corporate corruption, bribery, pay-for-play and political favoritism to every single corp entity out there constitute the 'swamp' --- from DeVos's appointing former heads of DeVry Univ to head up the investigation into for-profit debit mill universities , to Pruitt's thugs banning some media organizations from public meetings, to the ridiculous violations of the emoluments clause that Trump himself is perpetuating, that, to me, is the "Swamp"

It was bad before. Now its awful. I dont know how anyone can look at the current state of the US government and, with a straight face, claim anything is 'better'

You are strawmanning to a degree that would make Cathy Newman proud.

It is physically possible for the DOD to take control of the government at any time. This is true in pretty much every country; no other agency has the combat power to prevent the military from doing anything it wants, any time it wants. There have been historical exceptions, such as the SS in Nazi Germany, but (aside from the hideous nature of the SS itself) there are tremendous inefficiencies in such a set-up.

That does not mean that the JCS or any other part of the military can simply do so arbitrarily or capriciously or even for very serious reasons without serious consequences. The generals and admirals and civilian agency heads that make up the Pentagon (which I will sue as shorthand for the high-level military command structure) are all Americans. They are not the Hollywood caricature of them, they are not the stereotypes that ill-informed people have of officers and gentlemen. They grew up in this country; they had their childhood here, and they were Lieutenants and Captains once and in come cases were privates, seaman, or airmen before that. They have white hair in their 50's and all those nifty decorations on their uniforms because they were still doing crazy **** like jumping out of planes into their 40s. You simply do not get to a level such as the JCS without understanding, very clearly, why the military simply does not do that.

Yes, circumstances could exist that might make such action absolutely necessary, but even then the military commanders would be loathe to undertake it. I am skeptical of the notion that such action was being actively contemplated or that someone would really reveal it casually to Rynar for these reasons. To do something like that would be the final extremity. It would be essentially the domestic equivalent of nuclear war; once done it could simply not be undone, and it could be done again. Until it is done, it cannot be done, but once it is done it is easy to do again. You might be able to find military officers who might be ok with that, but you will not find them in the ranks of Generals and Admirals. Some things are simply not done. (It could actually start a real nuclear war too, if the Russians feared that we had lost positive control of our arsenal and decided a pre-emptive strike was a good idea in case a lunatic came out on top.)

During the Cold War, ballistic missile submarine captains had independent launch authority; if, in their own judgement, the National Command authority had been destroyed they could retaliate on their own - this was done so that the Soviets would know that a decapitation strike was not feasible. Britain still has a similar system in the "Letter of Last Resort". Yet no American or British submarine captain has ever misused that trust because, as the British put it, "that simply wouldn't do." It is just not done. Ever.

If this seems like a weak proscription indeed, you are deeply mistaken. It is the strongest there is. Doing so would be abhorrent to military officers, and by abhorrant I do not mean in the self-aggrandizing way that talking heads on TV toss hyperbole at things they don't happen to like. I don't mean it as in "did things I'm not proud of." I mean as in doing so would mean becoming everything we hate about our adversaries. It would mean the utter failure of Constitutional government as a concept. It would mean, for senior military members, sacrificing their entire identity, even if they were successful. It would mean having to go on TV - or what was left of it - afterwards and explaining to a public why things that Just Don't Happen Here had happened here as if we were some shithole country. It would mean having to preside, in some way, over the end of America as we know it even if our economy survived intact and we didn't find ourselves in a war with horrified Europeans or nervous Russians.

No one wants to even contemplate that. Generals and Admirals don't just love their country, they also like their country. They want to retire. They want to go on vacation. They want to play with their grandkids. They want to go down to Outback and have a nice steak with their wife or husband. They even like the paid speaking engagements, the business opportunities, the chance to talk to other veterans, all of that stuff. They don't want to spend the rest of their lives trying to patch a country back into a shadow of its former self because the alternative was even worse.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

He is. Are you not familiar with his Twitter habits?



Yet none of them involved criminal behavior. A year and a half later, we're still looking for an actual crime to investigate. Even "getting dirt on Hillary from a Russian lawyer" wouldn't have been, had it actually happened - Hillary did precisely that using a British spy, and no one has suggested that her "opposition research" was illegal in and of itself, only that it was put to improper use by the government. We've been subject to repeated lies about these meetings and such, with "bombshells" published and then retracted, and firings and disciplinary actions for those involved. Trump is "lying" according to people caught red-handed lying to him on a daily basis, when they are not inventing new Constitutional clauses that are written down nowhere to have a "Constitutional crisis" on their hands.



"Swamps are fine as long as they're advancing leftist causes" - got it.

Also, Trump is'nt violating the emoulments clause, just as he isn't improperly interfering with Justice Department "independence". The Justice Department answers to the President. Getting paid for servies rendered is not an emoulment. You can believe these things if you're intentionally obtuse, or **** illiterate; there's no other reason for it.



Anything you're agonizing over is probably an improvement.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Perjury is indeed a crime. There've been a number of convictions and guilty pleas including conspiracy against the United States, not to mention a large number of criminal proceedings initiated against groups we sadly have no jurisdiction over.

This is not some 'witch hunt' -- many of these people have actually plead guilty.

Most of the team that is involved in this investigation are life long republicans. This is not the democrats sabotaging your president. This is a criminal conspiracy around Donald J. Trump. Our own intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia has been meddling with our election and the ONLY people who claim differently is the House intelligence committee full of Trump sycophants. (And Trump's sycophants elsewhere of course, you, Taskiss and Rynar included)

Well, more transparency, as you've pointed out.

I guess if you're focused on partisan issues I can see your point. If someone wants to see the swamp drained, I'd say that the situation has improved, if nothing other than due to the firings and those career parasites that are abandoning their host.

I'd like to know why folks that are all agog about "collusion" don't fret over Soros and his takeover of the liberal side of things.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Conspiracy relies on an underlying crime. You cannot charge someone with "conspiracy against the United States" without an underlying crime, nor has any crime of "conspiracy" been articulated as a justification for Mueller's probe. As for "perjury", that would be a process crime resulting from the investigation. Convening an investigation without an underlying crime that can be articulated, then charging people for process crimes in relation to the investigation is quite Soviet, but exactly the sort of thing i expect to be perfectly ok with the likes of you, and the spoiled brats that make up a similar constituency.
By "many" you mean how many exactly? I can count them on one hand's fingers with room to spare - and so far, it's to process crimes.

We don't actually know for sure if it's a witch hunt. I expect, every day, some bombshell to drop that implicates Trump directly and is pounced on by the left, because Trump is Trump. But, I also suspect any such bombshell will be rapidly discredited, because that's already happened, and the left and Trump's antagonists are no more honest than he is and will resort to anything against him.

I also expect you to cling to any straw you can - as you are here - because like most of the rest of the appalling "progressive" political constituency, the end justifies the means to you.



Most of the team are democrat donors. As for Republicans, the "never Trump" movement is alive, and quite well. Don't pretend Republicans are unified on Trump. I still don't even like the man; I wish someone more personally moral and articulate was implementing the same policies, but I'm perfectly willing to suffer his terrible commentary if it means progressives are shown they don't own the government, the judiciary, the press, or the educational system.



Russia has meddled in our elections for decades. That proves no conspiracy, and there is no evidence of a criminal conspiracy around Donald Trump at this time.

Period. End of story. This is a fact, and it is not subject to your review or opinion. If any facts to contradict this exist, they are not publicly available at this time.

You are trying to argue this as if it were a matter of opinion when it is a matter of fact and you are categorically wrong as of the time of this writing. Stop lying - most importantly to yourself.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah, I think you're delusional then, since I've never claimed that Russians haven't meddled. I've only pointed out that meddling in sovereign nations elections is something the USA has done on a regular basis. That, and worse. I'm looking at you, Bay of Pigs.

Your fake news liberal roots are showing, sport.

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In time, this too shall pass.

This isn't about Donald Trump, or left, or right. It's not about Democrats or Republicans. I came in to this as a vocal Never Trump libertarian.

I am confident in saying that my posting history here has been one of the most vocally anti-government in our community.

This isn't about politics. It's about the ability to have politics, as politics only matter in-so-far as they matter.

It's about whether you and I have the right to respectfully, or disrespectfully agree, or disagree about the way we govern ourselves, and if we have the essential right, as a free people, to self determination.

I'm old enough to remember a time when liberals like yourself insisted that every person of majority age should have the right to vote, and that their vote should matter.

Are you now prepared to abandon that position in favor of a new system of government under which no ones vote should matter?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

The definition of "matter", itself, has been subject to quite the interesting permutation over the years.

For example, people whine that the electoral college means their vote doesn't "matter". This is incorrect. Your vote "matters" in selecting which candidate your state will vote for in a Presidential election. Your vote does not "matter" in directly electing the President because we (thankfully) do not have any such contest. People are complaining that their vote does not matter in a nonexistent scenario.

"But my state always goes <insert party here>!" So what? It still matters, unless one is prepared to argue one is disenfranchised simply by losing.

Arguing over partisan gerrymandering has taken similar turns. Gerrymandering along partisan lines for maximum efficiency also means a much smaller voter swing in those districts that are gerrymandered for success is needed to take them from you. By gerrymandering, one accepts a low bar for losing in one's own districts while granting the opponent very safe remaining distrcits. This is necessarily true because of basic math, but one's vote doesn't "matter" in a gerrymandered distrcit, supposedly - unless one is black in which case gerrymandering to maximize the efficiency of that vote at all times is a legal mandate.

Or how about the "jungle primary" California has to ensure Republicans can't even see general elections on a statewide basis? This concept produces a vicious cycle - Republicans see no major candidates from their party on the ballot and therefore don't go to the polls which further ensures fewer Republicans voting. I don't know enough about the history of this system to blame it on Democrats, but I see no evidence they are concerned about this sort of lack of "mattering". Votes not mattering is fine when they are the wrong votes.

Whether one's vote "matters" is a tacit complaint that one's vote only matters when one wins. The left feels entitled to win elections, especially Presidential elections. The left is animated by the conceit that its desire for "progress" (which, in reality, it fears more than anything else) makes its own views so eminently superior it need make no argument for them. That if it loses, obviously that is the product of chicanery if it is not confined to areas defined as ignorant and backwards - areas where electoral votes and House seats are in conveniently short supply. Even losing in those areas, it likes to talk about racists or deplorables or pretend they're some sort of third world country and that whatever garbage heap coastal city with its debt, stupid regulations and endless homeless people is somehow superior. The sort of idiot who turns up their nose at living in Texas because Texas - never mind the $43 billion Texas has in the bank without a state income tax. Getting votes from Texas, Alabama, Nebraska, or any other disapproved red state is a form if cheating in the progressive mind because those people are deplorable and therefore their votes don't count and asking for their votes is somehow illegitimate because the left has proclaimed it so.

Leftism has one goal and one goal only - leftism for leftism's sake. It is not even primarily about power, it is about virtue. It is about a desire for religious sanctity without religion, and losing is heresy because it simply cannot be that the left isn't right.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I have mixed feelings on this. While the Senate and Electoral College favor rural areas over urban, it was deliberately designed this way in the Constitution and as such people should really stop complaining about it. The same can not be said about the House. That's supposed to be the chamber that represents the population directly, yet it has been gerrymandered to the point that Democrats need a 6.5 point advantage in votes just to have a 50/50 chance of taking the chamber. In 2012 Democrats got 1.5 million more votes than Republicans and ended up 24 seats down.

Because the entire system has become corrupt garbage. It needs to be given a good old F-Disk, Format and Reload to get back into working order.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

with extreme prejudice.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Nah, you do it with cold calculation and indifference.

If you set it on fire... you do THAT with Extreme Prejudice

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

That's not an actual problem. The House is not intended to represent parties or the national distribution of party affiliation. Seats in the House are still assigned by state; states with high populations will always have more population per representative than states with low populations; some states have cities with more population than entire other states.

This, too, was designed into the Constitution. If the Democrats choose a political course that panders to high-population areas, they are knowingly pursuing a suboptimal population strategy - this was designed into the Constitution. They also are in no position to complain about gerrymandering, as they have been proponents of the idea that racial groups (who just happen to vote Democrat) need to be gerrymandered into optimal groups. This is decades after there was any good reason to be concerned about minority voting rights; even the fiction that "but they can't get ID's" is laughably inaccurate, and transparent. ID is needed for all manner of everyday functions, but no one complains about this apparent crisis until Democrat voters might potentially be found not to actually be voters.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."