2020 I
2018 2015 2012 20092006
2019 II 2017 2014 2011 20082005
2019 I 2016 2013 2010 2007

Jan     Feb    Mar    Apr   



President suddenly decides to leave Mar-A-Lago New Years party. Hmm. What's he up to? What villainy is afoot?


"New York Times Joins Trump's Anti-China Crusade"
NY Times actively takes the side of the Trump Administration at the expense of world peace. They suggest that China deliberately and consciously helped to spread the coronavirus.


The off-going President leaves a disaster behind.


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:

“The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats’ rich friends who don’t need the help.”

Would wealthy people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates get a $2k check? No, over a certain income, you won't get a check. Would they benefit from the checks? Sure, indirectly. People would spend their checks on necessities and the money would bubble up to them.


Usually, companies under-promise and over-deliver. They'll promise you'll get your package on the 4th, and they get it there by the 2nd. It's a good practice, but the The Trump Administration tends to do the opposite. Overselling the Covid cure had a cost. It made some people overconfident and careless.

And please keep in mind that the Trump Administration had several months of advance notice that this would be the last memory that people would have had of how they performed in office.


Unfortunately, this is exactly what you get when the President is AWOL on his job and leaves everything up to the states.

THREAD: I generally abstain posting about my own personal experiences or those of my family, but what my parents are seeing and experiencing in SW Florida with the vaccine rollout is a disgrace.

Problems with getting the vaccine out were systemic and deeply rooted. They could have and should have been addressed many months ago.


NY Times inappropriately romanticizes the off-going President’s call to overthrow democracy and to install him as a dictator.

Update (6 Jan): NPR gave live updates to "Insurrection at the Capitol."


Yeah, I have absolutely zero use for “Deficit Hawks.” In order to get us through Covid, we need to spend major amounts of money.


A look at a dying Alabama mall and dying capitalism.


Good! Very glad to hear this! This means Biden can go back and make sure the Census results are accurate.


This piece reminds me of my favorite quote from Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner:

"What this President did is he represented an outsider who came in, brought in a ton of people who never would’ve been in Washington before who were not ‘qualified’ by conventional standards..."

Clearly what Trump really did was to bring in an assortment of clownish, utterly unqualified amateurs who were hopelessly out of their depth!
The scientists who were charged with developing a COVID-19 vaccine did their job with great competence. Those who have been tasked with getting it into people's arms? Ehh, not so much.


Of course they want to make mail-in voting impossible. Our voting system was designed for small towns in the early 1800s. For much of the population, it's still an adequate system. For many others, it's old and outdated. For Republicans, they like the fact that, for lots of people, it's difficult to use and reduces Democratic turn-out.


Aww! Sorry to hear this! Dawn Wells, Mary Ann On ‘Gilligan’s Island’ Was 82. Dies of COVID-19.


In 2014, when police officers were confronted by a 12-year old with a toy gun, they very, very badly overreacted, presuming that he was some really dangerous person and unloaded into young Tamir Rice, killing him. Wow! No charges for that?


With many days until he formally takes charge, it's funny, but the President-Elect appears to have already taken charge!


The President's niece, Mary Trump, commented on this. He seems to think that just because he refuses to take responsibility for getting a job done, he's somehow escaped any responsibility for it. Nuh-uh. Doesn't work like that.


"The Pleiades are composed of hot blue stars less than 100 million years old."
By comparison, the Earth is around 4.54 billions years old. 100 million years ago was Earth's Cretaceous period.

At that time our now-temperate planet was a hothouse world of dense jungle and Sahara-like desert overrun by dinosaurs.


Our VP-Elect appears to be wearing two masks, an N95 that's really proof against a lot of virus and a more fashionable black mask to go over that. Cool! Better safe than sorry!


The blogger is 100% correct here. Instead of saying "Biden accuses Trump...," the WaPo should determine whether or not the accusation is accurate. If it is (a very highly likely proposition), then just tell us what the off-going President did, adding that Biden is also saying that. Don't make the story a "he said, she said."


Even Boston, the originator of First Night in 1975, is having a virtual celebration this year. Yep, I'll be celebrating First Night in my slippers this year!


Blogger hilariously quotes right-wingers who thought the off-going President's "strategy" was brilliant.

"He had little choice. President Trump held out as long as he could to try to get a better deal..."

Actually, a smart strategy would have been to read the bill that Democrats passed back in May, to set out what he had to have and to confidentially tell his negotiators what he could live without. He might have actually gotten something done.


Heh! Yeah, that's a very good question! What the hell is "second-hand experience" of living in a communist or socialist country?!?!?!


When I gripe about “BothSides” journalism, this is what I mean. When the press treats both sides the same, when misbehavior is overlooked or “balanced,” there’s no reason to behave. Why bother to do the right thing if the press won’t call attention to that?

$#@%ing NY Times demonstrates its anti-Democratic Party bias again!


Transition not going as well as it could. Lots of Trump people putting up roadblocks at OMB and DoD.


Contains spoilers if you haven't seen WW84 yet. I agree with the main point the writer makes, that the film stands by itself without any need for knowing anything else about the DC Comics movie universe.
The one gripe I have so far is that Marvel is much better at plotting, at getting all the details right so as to make a tighter, more plausible story. And yes, there's a plot element that takes directly from Orion 13 in 2001. The comic did it better of course, but that's because they had plenty of time to develop the storyline.


Great news! The GOP has tried and failed five times to suppress the vote in Georgia! Woo hoo!


Gotta wonder what the color of the sky is in the world that these guys inhabit. The host claims that people won't spend their stimulus checks, they'll just save them. Erm, is he aware that millions of people lost their jobs because of the pandemic?!?!?!


Excellent, on-point assessment of how Trump's presidency will look in 2080 and why. Author figures the andemic and how he handled it will be the most memorable thing.


"BREAKING: Trump Signs Stimulus Bill, Well After Unemployment Benefits Expired, But Before Government Shut Down"
Thanks Heavens for extremely modest favors!

I agree with the economist here. This game-playing with people’s unemployment checks and possible government shut-down was not amusing or harmless! Millions of families, food-insecure to begin with, had interruptions in an already-stretched budget!

Agreement says they'll focus on "very substantial voter fraud."
Oh, please! The off-going President has been deeply concerned about in-person voter fraud for his entire term. Not once has he produced any evidence of any such thing! Also, a really big problem is that he tried negotiating long after the bill had to be signed!


Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy:

"Nothing good happens with bills when you're up against deadlines like this," she opined. "You're saying, if you want your measly $600 of crumbs, you've got to pass all these other..."

First off, treating bills like Christmas trees that you pile more ornaments onto is a tradition that goes all the way back to the Founding. Also, Democrats passed their bill back in May, so Republican senators and the President have had since then to engage in detailed horse-trading.

"Business as usual is over," Cain said. "Donald Trump has scrambled that idea."

No actually, he hasn't. He might very well have done so, had any of his legislative strategies been successful. But they weren't. They were all crash and burn failures. Nope, "business as usual" has not been discredited in the slightest.


Yeah, when even that corrupt piece o' dung AG Barr agrees that there's nothing to the Hunter Biden "scandal" after two years of investigating, I'm pretty inclined to believe there's nothing there.


It's not just that people are getting the coronavirus, it's that hospitals are feeling severe stress.


This summary hugely overstates what the off-going President has done for the US! The Supreme Court Justices were far more due to the Republican Senate than to him, ISIS was well on the way to defeat when Trump entered office. “Mideast Peace” Whaah?!?!?! Hardly. North Korea? Nothing’s been accomplished.


The off-going, one-term President defends the $2k per person stimulus. Great! But then he adds: “Also, stop the billions of dollars in ‘pork’.” Okay, now the negotiating process will drag on forever, at the expense of the people who were getting unemployment checks! He could’ve been responsible, he could have just pressed for one thing, but no-o-o-o!!!


Trump pushes voter fraud claims despite contniued failres in courts. Unfortunately, this is exactly what I worried would happen. The off-going, one-term President is trying to create a "stab-in-the-back" theory as to why he lost. Never mind that his approval polls were consistently within 5 points of 40% throughout his term.


"Trump slams US fashion magazines for not giving Melania a single cover shoot while he has been in office"
Problem is, any article on Melania would have to be more than just pictures. She once wore a jacket that said "I really don't care." Her point, she said, was that she didn't want people to focus just on her clothes. If she had picked some subject other than online bullying (which was a subject her husband violated non-stop, kind of like if Hillary Clinton had chosen marital fidelity), which she then never bothered to really study. Wouldn't a fashion shoot have just emphasized how useless a First Lady she was?

Also, the First Lady never sat for an interview during the four years of her husband's presidency.


Hmm. Yeah, I gotta say, I'm not aware of Ivanka Trump ever having done any of this stuff. I guess my real problem is the phrase they keep using, "economic empowerment." What does that phrase even mean?


"Democrats Try and Fail to Jam $2,000 Payment Through House"
Revolting and disgusting to see such a headline from the NY Times. They're showing their partisan loyalties early, before Biden even takes office!


"Deficit Hawks" tend to be extremely short-range thinkers who don't appreciate the impact of long-range investments. Please let's ignore their "wisdom" when it comes to tackling human-caused climate change.


Yeah, Kimberly Guilfoyle is definitely the most memorable part of this year's Republican Convention!


Back in the day when capitalism was first founded (mid-1700s), the theory was that people were lazy and had to be forced to work. Given their own druthers, workers preferred to sit around doing nothing. This was an experiment started in 2015 that showed that, given the right incentives, people are very willing to work!


How people are dealing with the pandemic all over the world.


When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, Ford went to great lengths to make it not appear to be a quid-pro-quo (That is: "I'll appoint you president if you pardon me"). It's up to the Supreme Court to decide, but the pardons of alleged co-conspirators like Papadopoulos, van der Zwaan, Flynn, Manafort, and Stone sure does look an awful lot like "You scratch my back (Help me get elected) and I'll scratch yours (pardon you)."


The Sussexes (Meghan Markle, Prince Harry and (their son) Archie) wish us all a very Merry Christmas!


Congresswomen AOC and Tlaib moved very quickly to call the off-going President's bluff (He allegedly wants everyone to get $2k as opposed to just $600). Here's hoping he was serious! People can use the extra bucks!


Pro-Trump people are getting really desperate! 138 ballots in a single drop-box I can believe. 138 thousand in one drop-box?!?! Erm, don't think so!


Trump believes he can do anything because Republican senators have told him as much.


Another Mars rover. This is pretty cool:

The rover will also deploy Ingenuity, a tiny helicopter that’s poised to become the first human-built aircraft to take flight on an alien world.


Gotta say, anyone who's favorably impressed by Senator Rand Paul should read this twitter thread and see how utterly illiterate the guy really is. About the best and most concerning case he makes is about missing drones over Afghanistan. Kind of a problem with that is that there were two disappearances during the younger George Bush's time and two during Obama's. Waste? Or just ordinary wartime losses?


Heh! Problem for the two Republican candidates in Georgia is that the President outranks the Senate Majority Leader, but Trump is only in office for less than a month, so Perdue and Loeffler are seriously torn! McConnell is supporting their run for re-election, Trump doesn't seem to really care. But the President supports the popular $2k checks while the Senate Majority Leader doesn't.


This is very, very good news! The Trump Administration has given wholly inadequate explanations as to why it "had" to rush the Census. Judge wants the completion date delayed so that an accurate count can be made.


The people on the Fox News show Outnumbered compare the off-going President's interview style to that of Biden. They like Trump's style better. But Trump lies! All. The. Time. What good does it do to have a cheerful interview if you get lied to?


Whuuh? Jupiter has that many moons?!?!


"Pennsylvania Man Charged With Registering Dead Relatives To Vote For Trump"
The easy part about using dead relatives to vote is that you know a lot about their demographics. Not so easy when there's a chance that a person you're voting in the name of shows up or has already shown up to vote.


The President could get a deal together if he cared about it. Another problem is that he's used up all of his political capital trying to overturn the election!


Good! Happy to hear that Dr. Birx will retire rather than seek a position in the Biden Administration. Her involvement with the CDC was pretty much entirely negative. Her efforts ultimately hurt the US response to the COVID-19 crisis rather than helped it.


President issues a whole set of pardons, most of them connected to his own crimes and misdeeds, or at least ideological allies of his.

This is very, very bad! The off-going President's pardons to the killers of Nisour Square is a fundamentally racist act.

Stone, Manafort and Jared's dad are the three big ones who were pardoned yesterday.
Piece contains an update on Edward Snowden.


Heh! People who worked for Trump creating a non-profit specifically for the purpose of providing employment for themselves. As Trump never created any policies, that's the only possible purpose it can serves.


So what's the essential distinction between the coup in Bolivia of about a year ago and what Trump is trying to do today? Well, basically, the coup in Bolivia had outside help by the US and the OAS. What Trump is trying to do is more of an autogolpe, or self-coup, one where he takes over his own government.


J.M. Keynes was the theorist who pointed the way out of the Great Depression. Senator Paul argues for a pre-Keynesian economics that would have left the US dirt-poor after disasters of all kinds. Paul does point out the utter hypocrisy of those who pay lip service to his ideas, so there's that.


The galaxy GN-z11 just might be the furthest away and oldest galaxy ever recorded, clocking in at a full 13.4 billion light-years away! Universe is around 13.8 billions years old. Light began around 240k to 300k years after universe began.


An economist for the trump Administration, Peter Navarro, has very energetically blamed China for the spread of the coronavirus. A major problem with doing that is that COVID-19 was already on the way well before China imposed any secrecy.


This is something that a couple of right-wing politicians have done. They were all heartily skeptical that COVID-19 was a real thing, until a vaccine became available! Then they were all like "I must set an example for my fellow citizens." $%#@ers!!!

BTW, Dr. Fauci is working as an active, in-the-field physician, so he's getting the vaccine, but he is not jumping the line.


"Newsmax And Pro-Trump Media Walk Back Voting Conspiracies After Legal Threat"
This isn't the slightest bit shocking or even surprising to liberals as it was clear to us that pro-Trump people were trying to "flood the zone" with hysterical accusations in the hopes of creating a "stab in the back" myth that they could use in future elections. Problem is, they named specific legal entities (voting machine companies) that could take legal action against them.

Good! Michigan AG Dana Nessel is seeking to hold the lawyer Sidney Powell professionally accountable for her lies about the 2020 election.


Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) issued subpoenas to HHS and the CDC for information on how the pandemic has been handled.


"Barr refutes Trump on Hunter Biden, voting machines, Russia hack"
Ehh, this is good. I'll award AG Barr a few points for this. On a scale of -10 to +10, this brings him up a few points to about -5.


This is significant because the Vatican is admitting that pregnancy choice/abortion be subject to cost-benefit analyses, the way just about every other human activity is.


The off-going President's own aides are concerned about him doing something crazy.

Also: "Trump Threatens SCOTUS with 'Disruption' If They Don't Take His Case"

Update (6 Jan):  "There was no peaceful transfer of power; Trump goaded mob into an attack on U.S. Capitol today"


The “peace deal” was actually an arms deal. The UAE was never at war with Israel anyway.


Summarizes a lot of what I’ve seen on the internet lately. Fortunately, Trump and his co-conspirators are too incompetent to effectively launch a coup, but that doesn’t mean they won’t cause a lot of damage trying.


*Sigh!* Pretty gol-durn sad that, when it comes to democracy, the US compares poorly to Iran.


Pretty good summary of what each party stands for.


I agree with her exasperation. Senate Majority Leader McConnell is trying to make it sound as though he and his party bear less than 100% of the responsibility for the hold-up in getting Covid relief to the people.

Woo hoo! Covid relief bill passed.


A Muslim observes how we Westerners celebrate Christmas.


The younger sister of “a little Hillbilly singer” Dolly Parton tells us how she feels about selfish, tight-fisted politicians and televangelists.


People wish to develop a 247-acre parcel in Arizona. Navajo Nation and others are concerned about cultural stereotypes that are planned.
Note: Native Americans of the Great Plains used teepees, but the Indigenous people of the Southwest didn’t, so the planned teepees of the development would be out of place.


Huh! Didn't know this. Not only is Space Force ripping off the comic book/movie Guardian of the Galaxy with the name of "Guardians," but that's also the name of the theocratic thugs in Handmaid's Tale.


Two pieces on the Russian cyber-attack. Yep, the off-going President is in full denial.

How a “supply chain” computer attack works.


Representative AOC is definitely one of our national treasures.


One of every 56 people in the US is now infected with the coronavirus.


It's made pretty clear here that problems with "Operation Warp Speed" (vaccines) are entirely in the Trump Administration. The attempt to say that governors merely misunderstood their directions is especially insulting.


I disagree 100% with the former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. No, very few people who served Trump were “decent people.” Very few of them deserve any sort of praise. They were generally thugs, creeps, grifters, sycophants, assholes and yes-men. Only exceptions would be people like Dr. Fauci, who politely but openly disagreed with the President or Chris Krebs, Director of Cybersecurity, who worked hard behind the scenes to secure our election. Secretary of Defense James Mattis was also honorable.


Lou Dobbs of Fox News has been airing wild, hysterical, fact-free claims about Smartmatic voting machines. After they threatened to sue, he put out a show fact-checking and correcting his earlier statements.


Dean Baquet is the Executive Editor for the NY Times. Here he proves that his reporting doesn’t come up to the level of a cub reporter fresh out of Journalism school.

Update: “Caliphate” story turning into complete cluster#$@%!


Woo hoo! The other vaccine is approved! We now have two effective and workable vaccines!


Not only has the off-going Trump Administration called a halt to proceeding the the transition to the Biden team, they're lying about it! This is concerning.


Sent on by a fellow progressive. The right-wingers idea is obviously "Live and let live." Sample statement: "I never cared that you were gay until you started shoving it down my throat." 
But the problem with ignoring the difficulties that Blacks and gays, etc., are suffering is that we aren't just all living on separate, self-sufficient islands.
Few months back, I saw a picture of the two fellows from "Brokeback Mountain" just chllin's and enjoyin' being out in the wilderness. But they were wearing city-made clothes and carrying city-made six-shooters. They were preparing cattle to be sold to the city for money that they would then spent largely in the city.


A fond, nostalgic look back at the deep, dark past of...(checks calendar) less than a year ago!


Rudy Giuliani's son gets another useless, high-paying job (his last one was to supervise...hmm...something to do with sports people).
Him and more grifters at the link.


Good! US Government response may have been crippled and incompetent (How much money do we spend on cyber-defenses?) but a big private enterprise company is filling in for it!


Huh! Amazing!

Pfizer says they have MILLIONS of unclaimed vaccines waiting to be distributed with no additional instructions on where to deliver.

Ya mean the Trump Administration has proven itself to be utterly incoompetent at a task they had months to prepare for? Nawww!

States are reporting all kinds of problems with vaccine distribution.

Of course it doesn't really help that the President appears to be more concerned with his life after the presidency than he is with his current day job.


Native American Representative Deb Haaland to head the Interior Department. Very cool! And she's a strong environmentalist!

The Bureau of Indian Affairs was initially part of the Department of the Interior and had a mission in 1849 to “Civilize or Exterminate” Representative Haaland's people. Now, she's going to run it!


Biden puts out a statement on the Solar Winds cyber-breach. Still no word from the sitting President about that. Department of Energy, the bureau that takes care of nuclear weapons, was also breached.


Heh! Senator Paul "says the quiet part out loud!" First off, when you say "[Democrats are] mailing everybody out a solicitation to vote by mail," that just means Georgia is sending everyone ballot applications. But he really gives the game away with;

"I'm very very concerned if you solicit from typically nonvoters that you will affect and change the outcome."


Again, humoring the off-going President and putting up with his wild claims that he "actually" won, is having very bad consequences.


One of the more idiotic "scandals" of the day. Really hope the Biden people are aware that the media is not their friend!

...incoming White House deputy chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon referred to Republicans on Capitol Hill as "f--kers."

The CDC was, in the past, a world-class disease-control organization. The damage done to it will take years to repair.


It's far from clear that Dr. Birx's behind-the-scenes rapport with the off-going President had any real effect. Kinda like saying Ivanka or Melania Trump had any appreciable influence when the cameras weren't documenting. I much prefer Dr. Fauci's style of politely, but firmly, making it clear that he disagreed with Trump. Fauci now has credibility whereas Birx has to defend herself as having been relevant.


I stopped by a mall the other day. Food court is still serving, but all the chairs and tables have been removed, so it's all just take-out. Biden's people are not going to conduct a big inaugural anyway, so they're actively urging people not to try and get to Washington DC.


Essential legal problem with the off-going, one term President using Mar-A-Lago as his home is that, for tax purposes, he earlier transformed it into club. If he were actually a welcome presence in Florida, his neighbors might see fit to let him slide on this.


Rather interesting that the off-going Secretary of Education seems to believe that she's been battling a "Deep State" for the past four years and that somehow, she's inspired her own Deep State that will now battle on behalf of her favored policies.


Ahh! The salty, bitter tears of right-wingers who still believe the off-going President was cheated out of a second term! Delicious!
Am I the slightest bit concerned about the Senate Majority Leader? Nah, this is happening because he stood by silently for six weeks. He egged them on and now he's leaving them.


Dr. Fauci and the Trump team aren't even talking to each other at this point. Don't think America is missing anything.


Yeah, this is a moronically stupid argument. All building on the wall on the border with Mexico needs to stop dead on January 20th.


Actually, spreading Russian disinformation is exactly what Senator Johnson did!


For all intents and purposes, Trump sees limited loyalty as no different from wholesale betrayal. It's a lesson Barr, Kemp, and Fox News are learning.

Back in college, I took a course in Nazi Germany. The way in which they instilled fanatical loyalty was that their demands on citizens went well beyond the reasonable. Going beyond what was necessary or reasonable was the whole point.


The House might object to the vote for Biden to be President, but Senate Majority Leader McConnell pled with senators not to insert themselves into the fight.


"Betsy DeVos Tells Education Department Staff to ‘Resist’ Biden: Report"
Yeah, I kinda get the impression that her imprint on the Department will prove to be a very shallow and temporary one. I strongly suspect everything she did will be erased within half a year.


Well, that's pretty cool! The ex-wife of the billionaire Jeff Bezos figures she doesn't need her whole alimony check, so she gives her excess money to nearly 400 organizations.


Seen comments from right-wingers lately saying (words to the effect of) "Our Glorious Leader the President cares so much for us common people, he is trying hard to Drain The Swamp!" Of course, if he really wanted to do some real swamp-draining, he'd take the side of Representative Katie Porter against the Senate Majority Leader!


In the very highly likely event that the off-going AG Barr starts receiving tongue baths and puff pieces from the media, let's please remember how really, really terrible an Attorney General he really was.


There we go! Now that Trump’s good buddy Vladimir has recognized Biden as the President-Elect, will Trump be far behind?

Hmm. Very, very interesting! Shortly after Vladimir Putin comes out and admits Biden is the President-Elect, Senate Majority Leader McConnell does the same.


This episode showed there was no “internal resistance.”
I recall kids being put in cages and staffers in the Trump White House thinking about their mortgage payments and how they had bills to pay, even though kids in cages really called for them to resign.


The truly awful curse of “BothSides!”


Woo hoo! The Electoral College has officially voted and Biden has won!
Yes, yes, that makes it several times he's won, but hey.

President-Elect Joe Biden gave a very good speech tonight after the Electoral College confirmed his landslide victory.

Kayleigh McEnany sent this from her personal account as opposed to her official Press Secretary one. To answer each of her charges: 1. The Russia investigation uncovered a very considerable amount of Obstruction of Justice, which goes to explain why it didn’t immediately kick off impeachment. Can't build a case if you've been prevented from getting evidence.
2. Nothing in the actual impeachment was ever disproven.
3. Trump’s legal team has completely and utterly failed to prove that the election was in any way “rigged.”


Passing out flyers for Philadelphia Unemployment Project.


Yup! Flat-out, straight-up, unquestionable quid pro quo! Julian Assange assisted Trump getting into office, Trump repays him!


Very cool! Critical Care Nurse among first to get vaccine!

Good! Even Donald Trump, even that guy, recognized how incredibly insensitive and tone-deaf it was to put White House staffers at the head of the line for vaccines!


One would think the crash and burn of the Supreme Court case would dissuade folks! Apparently not.

Yeah, that was a pretty stupid and dangerous take on how to deal with the sore loser President.

Trump rally in Washington DC - like a Nazi rally or more like a KKK cross-burning?


More on hacking of Treasury Department.
Positive update on that.
More on the cyberattack.
The off-going, one-term President hasn’t responded to the moves by his good buddy Vladimir to hack into US Government databases. Hmm, wonder why that is?


This denial by the Florida governor clears him of absolutely nothing. "Rebekah Jones, the data scientist who ran the state’s coronavirus dashboard until she was fired in May." She then put together her own dashboard and the Governor's police raid then put an end to that.


I kind of understand the dispute over the First Lady-to be using Dr. in front of her name as that confuse people who think "Dr. so-and-so" must automatically refer to a medical doctor as I've seen the recommendation that non-medical doctors use "so-and-so, Ed.D." But I don't think that' as established as some would like it to be, so let's us "Dr." for her.

Ahh! Our incoming First Lady! A breath of fresh air!
"Dr. Jill Biden Helps Assemble Care Packages for U.S. Troops Serving Overseas During the Holidays"

And speaking of First Ladies. Melania Trump never did hold a press conference where she explained how she got an "Einstein Visa."


This woman's rant is exactly why we have paper back-ups fr 95% of all ballots!
There's a fellow here with a shirt saying "credulous boomer rube." He didn't explain it. We DFHs (Dirty effin' Hippies) actually have a very good record for getting things right!


A very sad piece about a woman who can't talk to her sister about politics anymore. The reason is pretty obvious. Her sister is in a cult. The CEO of MyPillow demonstrates the behavior of people who are trapped in this cult.


Poor Rudy Giuliani! He used to be a hotshot lawyer. Back in the day. Those days have long since disappeared in the rear-view mirror. It isn't up to courts to investigate claims. It's up to attorneys to present comprehensive cases.


The off-going President rushes the vaccine's introduction for no apparent reason.


"CDC Director Illegally Orders Trump Administration Email Deleted"
Think this and things like this are why we haven’t seen any sign that the CDC Director will stay on in the Biden Administration.


Important to remember that GOP was all-in on the Supreme Court case that failed late yesterday.


Speaker Pelosi emphasizes the scientists and doctors involved in producing the vaccine and emphasizes that wearing masks and social distancing are still important.


The off-going President delivers a generally good and accurate speech until about the 2:00 minute mark, where he starts veering off into propaganda (“China virus,””Nobody said it could be done.” etc.)


And, of course, the off-going, one-term President is very disappointed with the Supreme Court.


Good grief! Does America's Sweetheart (Dolly Parton) have any faults at all?


"Supreme Court rejects Texas' effort to overturn election in fatal blow to Trump legal blitz to stop Biden"
Good!

Score is now 1 victory to 57 losses!

And the bet news of all is that the off-going President has lost over 300k Twitter followers!


What Ivanka Trump has done for the past four years has generally been behind closed doors and with very small groups of people, all of whom were guaranteed to give the press a flattering story on her behalf. Ivanka appears to have told the press about what was happening behind the scenes. In return, they continue to write puff pieces about her. I'd say the press made an extremely bad bargain.


This is insane:

"Texas has had only weeks to detect wrongdoing, look for witnesses willing to speak, and marshal admissible evidence."

Dude, I'm sorry, but if it takes "weeks" to gather enough evidence to prove your case, then just write it off as "water under the bridge" and resolve to do better next time!


I'm sure the Republican Congresspeople who support the off-going, one-term President's "legal" case think that there's no harm done as the case is clearly going nowhere. I'm not so sure about that. 106 GOP lawmakers sign onto a clearly meritless lawsuit.

A total of 106 House members are on board with asking the judiciary to overturn their own country's election, invalidating results they don't like.

Looks like this’ll be a fun series (Loki).


We really, as a nation, need to hold business accountable for the health and welfare of their employees. The fact that this proposition is even mildly controversial is horrifying.


Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be running for office, maybe president. Apparently, he and his wife aren’t worried about the appearance of abusing his office for financial gain. Out of eight official trips, his wife only documented two of them. The rest were apparently just personal trips that the Depart of State paid for anyway.


Wow! This is a perfectly respectable argument if one is discussing the unknowable nature of God. If, as Roman Catholics say, He is one being and yet three. For a secular argument about suspected voter fraud, it's pretty bat$#%@ crazy!

Oh. So the initial claim was Team Trump has evidence of fraud, but the new claim is that the evidence is "undetectable," which is why no one can see it.

Senator Ted Cruz suggests that Republican senators should hold up Biden's appointments as long as litigation concerning who won the 2020 presidential election is ongoing, which essentially translates to "Forever!" as the current litigation continues despite being utterly baseless.


This alleged desire for secession is much stronger on the right than it is on the left.
Where does this desire for secession come from? What's the essential difference between the city and the country? I think this tweet nails it. Rural states want to suppress the vote, cities want to expand the franchise.


Examination of the Native American vote in Arizona, where Biden received a large share of that vote. The Wall between the US and Mexico was one of the issues.

Y'know, when you bring in Mexican immigrants in an extralegal manner to work on The Wall, that, uh, kiinda defeats the whole purpose!


The off-going, one-term President is going far, far beyond just “exploring his legal options!”

More “scorched earth” tactics.


Very important thread from Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) on what’s holding up the COVID-19 relief bill.


So here we are in mid-December. People knew during the last few months of last year that there was a dangerous virus active in China. The off-going, one-term President declared that we were in a crisis in March. We're still lacking supplies of things like Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This is one of the easiest problems to solve!


The government of Afghanistan spends a lot more, $5.55 billion, but for the Taliban to have $1.6 billion to spend is extremely significant. That’s lot of money for a guerrilla force. Also, the Taliban gets $240 million of that in charitable donations.


This is worrisome.

The White House removed nine members of the Pentagon's Defense Business Board on Friday and installed people loyal to President Donald Trump in their place...

Senate Majority Leader McConnell wants a coronavirus relief package as that may help Republican prospects in Georgia. A major sticking point is that he really wants to immunize corporations when they sacrifice workers in favor of profit.


US District Judge Emmet Sullivan had to dismiss the case against Mike Flynn as Flynn was pardoned, but Sullivan got in many parting shots.


Looks like Ivanka will try to get into politics via Florida. She and hubby have just contracted for a $30 million property down there. Also has news on her daddy and Florida.


Supreme Court issues unanimous decision.

Supreme Court denies request to stop certification of Pennsylvania vote, with no noted dissents.

"The very short and highly selective memory of the Trump supporter"
Trump supporters are circulating a lengthy list of such horrors as: "We remember Robert de Niro shouting "F" Trump" at the Tonys and getting a standing ovation."
Yeah, the currently off-going, one-term President is portrayed as all sweetness and light and hey, he was completely innocent! Democrats were completely evil and vicious and hated their Glorious Leader from the beginning.


Makes sense that the vaccine-makers would skip this as the only purpose to a "vaccine summit" would be for the Trump Administration to try and take false credit for doing what it had little or nothing to do with.


Several months ago, Israel attempted to annex parts of the West Bank. They decided to drop the direct approach in favor of more subtle one.


A senior Republican official said "What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?" “Humoring” the off-going President has had extremely serious consequences. Trump’s refusal to accept his loss is really hurting the country.

"Citing 'Historic Abuse' of Judicial Process, Over 1,500 Attorneys Call for Sanction of Trump Campaign's Legal Team"
The antics of the Giuliani team have to end and they have to end now!

One of the Trump lawyers who is challenging the election results, Jenna Ellis, says she's doing "the right thing for God and country!" But she's reducing people's faith in democracy and encouraging people like the armed thugs who surrounded the house of the Michigan Secretary of State on Sunday night! It's nice for her that her to feel that God is on her side, but I assure y'all, He isn't!

It also turns out she's got Covid!


"Why Mary Trump Is The Only Good Trump"
Barron is probably okay and Tiffany seems pretty naive, but yeah. Don Sr., Melania, Ivanka, Don Jr. & Eric are all pretty useless.


Yeah, I think AG Barr is concluding “Whoa, this President is too crazy, even for me!”


This is pretty cool! The artist takes famous paintings and sculptures, slaps on modern haircuts and clothing and comes up with cool images. Pictured here is Egypt's last Pharaoh, Cleopatra


$300 million for Bob Dylan's whole song catalog? Sounds about right. It'll take awhile for Universal to make all that back, but they should be able to do it.


"Melania Trump cheers new White House tennis pavilion amid ongoing pandemic
Quite sad. This was oblivious and tone-deaf back in March and is more so now.


Hmm, this could be a problem. Ten Iranian vessels are headed for Venezuela with loads of oil. The US committed an act of piracy back in August with another Iranian oil tanker. Will it try for a repeat?

Update (23 Dec): No incidents reported. Vessels are still en route.


Here's a big reason it's so difficult to believe that Biden cheated. President-Elect Biden is now more popular than the off-going, one term Trump ever was!


"Chris Wallace Scolds HHS Secretary Alex Azar On COVID: 'A Massive Failure By President Trump'"
Chris Wallace of Fox News doesn't appear to realize that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar is absolutely terrified for his job and will not denounce the off-going President! Azar can answer for himself and for HHS, but answering for what Trump does is something Azar simply cannot do.

Just as with Chris Wallace and HHS Secretary Azar, Chuck Todd asks Dr. Deborah Birx to denounce Trump and she just wouldn't do it. Recall please, that when the WaPo said several Republican legislators thought that Biden had won the election, Trump wanted to know their names!

And if anyone feels the slightest bit tempted to pity the Republicans trying avoid the wrath of the off-going, one term President, just remember, they had a chance to vote him out of office on 5 February.


Rachel Maddow did a report on Belarussians a while ago. They're still resisting! Peacefully, with determination.


Yeek! Very short horror film.


"TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO EXECUTE 5 BLACK PEOPLE IN LAST DAYS AS PRESIDENT"
So completely "on-brand" for this presidency.


Summary of the off-going, one-term President’s rally in Georgia yesterday.


This is total, complete and absolute rubbish. The off-going President says:

"We actually won. Remember? So many of the states. I won every won of them."


Someone pointed out that the first few words “PELOSI has held out…” suggests that the other side the GOP, has been making an offer, but that Speaker Pelosi has been refusing to take them up on it. But that isn’t the case at all. There has been no offer from the GOP until very recently and the “offer” that was finally unveiled is filled with “poison pills” like immunity for companies that deliberately sacrificed the health of their workers. .


Good thread on having natural or inborn talent at a subject vs having to work at it.


The off-going, one-term President calls the Georgia governor to pressure him to change numbers on the vote count. This. Is. A. Crime! Period. Full stop. Did the governor do as he was asked? Who cares? As someone else in the thread says: "talking about price fixing is a felony even if you don’t actually raise prices."

A little while ago, someone in the NY Times wondered what we could charge the President for. Here ya go!


Electors, people who are member of the Electoral College, will formally meet and vote on 14 December. At this point, as Julia Roberts said in "Pretty Woman," it's "kind of a sure thing." Biden has enough Electors who are officially committed to vote for him, he's definitely going to win on the first ballot.


Yeah, there's a serious conflict between Republican "austerity" ideology and the real-life needs of actual, living constituents.


The assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist helps the hardliners and hurts the moderates in both Iran and the US.


As I’ve said, the NY Times does many things well, but they are not friends to progressives! Their mea culpa here is much too little and way too late!

More of “being tough on Trump.” More of “Too little, too late.”


This is worrisome. What is Trump up to?

Two top Trump loyalists were installed at a Pentagon advisory board shortly after several board members were fired on Friday.

More on that. And more.


If you oppose your state conducting a policy of "austerity," that is, cutting government services while there's plenty of money (interest rates are close to zero, meaning borrowing is very cheap and easy) please remember that austerity is the result of conscious, deliberate decisions, arrived at through malice and forethought.


Yeah, I agree with the blogger. January 20th, all work on The Wall stops cold! Construction comes to a complete, screeching halt. We begin to take it apart, all unused materials get re-purposed, all salvageable materials get salvaged, etc.


Talking about the politics of the rock carvings in Colombia. Also, carvings show now-extinct animals.


“Political officers” or “commissars” started back under the French Revolution. The Nazis and Soviets both used them and the Chinese Red Army uses them today. Their function is not to help organizations perform mission-critical tasks, but to make sure they’re remaining “politically correct.” Yeah, the US DOJ had to deal with a “commissar,” even though they didn’t call her that.


"Roger Stone Says North Korean Boats Delivered Ballots Through Maine Harbor As Trump Boosts Fraud Claims"
Alas, the report doesn’t deliver any details about how the DPRK Navy carried out this heroic feat. Did they use the Panama Canal? Did they go around South America? Did they disguise their craft or did they did they use their official war-craft? So many questions!


My focus in documenting the US Government response to the pandemic has been to look at the supply issue, because providing large quantities of supplies for large projects like wars, is something our government has proven to be very, very good at. As the blogger points out here, the government response to the pandemic has been incredibly poor. It’d really be a good thing for the media to relentlessly ask why.


The editorialist makes a strong case that prosecuting the off-going President presents many difficulties. I doubt that they're as intractable as he makes them out to be. Especially:

And that is also why Mr. Trump’s many financial entanglements were not criminal. Guests of Trump International Hotel in Washington who sought to curry favor with Mr. Trump may have transferred cash to his wallet through his organization. But this is not a bribe unless a quid pro quo can be proven, and that seems unlikely as well.

The text of the Emoluments Clause says nothing about bribery. There's no reason not to bring charges under the EC, to make it a real crime, by way of establishing a precedent, that mixing your own personal finances with official government business is, by itself, a crime. Whether or not a bribe of any sort can be proven should be beside the point. 


As far as the pandemic is concerned, Fox & Friends is clearly part of the problem!


Good! The President-Elect has promised to restore the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran! As the off-going, one-term President never managed to make any improvements on the deal, there will be little or no change to the deal.


Senate Majority Leader McConnell wants to get an aid package through. Not badly enough to actually offer a package that Democrats can live with and he's insisting on including a provision that holds meat processing plants blameless for endangering the lives of workers, but it's a bit of progress.


"Whistleblower Docs Confirm Census Delays That Could Kill Trump Plan To Skew Count"
This is actually good news as the Census count is probably actually skewed to leave out Democratic-leaning demographics.


Yeah, it makes sense for front-line health care providers to get the vaccine first. Beyond that, it's not really clear. Perhaps grocery store workers and other front-line people?


"Trump Spokeswoman Says Americans Will Be Taking ‘Trump Vaccine’"
Yeah, uh, no. The President's cultists may call it that, the people who cheerfully drink the Kool-aid and tell us how delicious it is as they pass away, but I think it will be a minority of Americans who refer to it as that.


The off-going, one-term President is clearly off in a fantasy-land. "It's name is Dominion. With a turn of a dial or the change of a chip, you can take a vote for Trump and change it to Biden."
Fun fact: 95% of all ballots had paper back-ups, meaning any computer manipulation can be quickly and easily disproven.


Our hero argues his case with Fox News people. He does a poor job (should have agreed with a point and then kept going), but notice that everyone essentially agrees with him. There was no fraud. All of the cases alleging fraud crashed and burned.


So the off-going, one-term president will follow in the footsteps of another impeached, one-term president (Who was also racist), Andrew Johnson (left office in 1869). No inviting the President-Elect to lunch, no formal turn-over.


Unfortunately, the power to pardon is quite broad. Biden needs to get started on a Constitutional amendment process to limit it.


"Betsy DeVos Calls Student Debt Forgiveness 'A Truly Insidious Notion'"
Sorry, I don't buy the idea that American education is great because we've been using capitalist principles. Never been convinced that education and free enterprise have ever really mixed.

DeVos got lots of pushback from this comment!


Hollering about non-existent fraud has been amazingly profitable for the off-going, one-term President. He has every incentive to keep it up for years!


Not enough PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) is a problem that the US has had since the very beginning of the pandemic and it's the least necessary problem imaginable! For the federal government to ensure adequate supplies of stuff that we know how to produce is one of the unique strengths of our particular government! Unfrtunately,

The PPE problem — ie the lack of it — "is absolutely, positively not fixed.” 

A very serious and important announcement.

“Mr. President... stop inspiring potential acts of violence. Someone’s gonna get hurt, someone’s gonna get shot, someone’s gonna get killed.”

I'm still absolutely convinced that the opposition to Neera Tanden is entirely about her foreign-sounding name. And yeah, it's just amazing how, all of the sudden, the media is abruptly applying standards again.

In response, President-Elect Biden is just saying "$%#@ y'all! I'm nominating her anyway."


Good! AG Bill Barr announces the obvious, that there is no serious evidence of fraud in last month's elections. He's been summoned to the White House and Rudy Giuliani has put out a statement, but facts are stubborn things.


Good short, animated film about dealing with Covid.


In theory, divided government is a good thing and leads to "common-sense solutions." In reality, under Senate Majority Leader McConnell, if Republicans retain control of the Senate, we'll get total paralysis. My evidence? Observe the lack of another stimulus bill. The House passed a bill in May and the GOP has yet to pass an alternative of their own. McConnell has been absolutely crystal clear that obstruction is good for the GOP.


The election is far beyond "desperate," the critical counts/certifications/recounts in the swing states are done. It's far too late for contributions to make any difference to the outcome of the election. This is just grift, plain and simple.


Yes, we have a vaccine on the way and that's 100% good news. But let's please not think that we no longer have to wear masks and can go back to having large parties.


Heh! The First Lady's mood seems to have lightened now that she'll soon be out of the White House. Her Christmas decorations are much more bright and cheerful this year.


Yeah, I just can't see anything the slightest bit successful about Israeli or American policy towards Iran since Trump came into office. Not that I think Iranians are heroes at all, but are just a country that wants a fair, equitable deal.


White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx deserves a lot of the blame for the complete screw-up of US Government coromavirus data at exactly the time when we needed accurate data the most.


Yeah, I agree that the idea of the President-Elect consulting with Republican senators on his appointment to office is an incredibly moronic one.


Trump lawyer Joe DiGenova has some rather bloodthirsty views as to what should happen to his critics.


A deepthink piece. People pointed out in early 2020 that authoritarian systems don’t work well with pandemics. Turns out just plain US conservatism doesn’t, either.


Yeah, the off-going, one-term President has always had what they call “anonymous validators.” People who always ask the most convenient questions or make the most convenient statements that just happen to fit right into his stories like a hand into a glove. Funny how that happens!


November


Happy to report that Dr. Scott Atlas has resigned.

He will not be be missed; the reactions to his resignation are a mix of relief and anger at the damage he has caused during his brief stint.


A Republican president never happening again is something I can live with. I'm not at all clear what reforms are needed for mail-in ballots as no one identified any specific problems with such ballots this year, despite having had a month since the election to identify such problems.

Update (23 Dec): The off-going President is still trying to litigate his electoral loss! He's still using an argument that was debunked before voting even started.


Fox News complains that Trump gets flagged for false tweets all the time while Biden never gets flagged. Um...yeah. Erm, didya think that maybe the legitimate President-Elect doesn't engage in mindless, fact-free drivel that has no basis in reality? Maybe there's no reason to flag any of Biden's tweets?


One of the many problems with the off-going President's claim that he actually won the election is that Republicans are trying to suggest "solutions" to non-existent problems that would help their own party far more than democracy in general.

Yeah, the off-going, one-term President is still in the grip of fever dreams.


Republicans who are paying attention to the Biden proposed appointees are getting all excitable about Neera Tanden, who’s too liberal for their tastes. Here’s a sample entry of hers.
And here's on the people who are getting all bent out of shape about her being appointed.


Blogger cites local Philly paper and a pollster who uses lots of statistics to conclude that the old model of using poorly-educated white people to run for office is obsolete.


Really disturbing that threats against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger are not being immediately and universally condemned.


Unfortunately, a great deal of what motivates Trump voters is not at all mysterious and doesn’t require anthropological field trips to understand.


Yep! Governor Kemp of Georgia chose to meekly submit to the off-going, one-term President and now he's being blamed by that President for not delivering Georgia! Can't win for losing!


More right-wing stuff that usually just stays in my spam folder. Pretty laughable that check stubs would be considered proof of ballot-harvesting. Really? Someone's going to write on a check stub that the money is intended for illegal purposes? In any event, the piece never produces any incriminating images. The Project Veritas video is also pretty laughable.


How does the off-going President view his loss?

“Detroit and Philadelphia, known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country — easily — cannot be responsible for the outcome of a presidential race," Trump said, citing two cities known for their large Black populations.” (LA Times 5 Nov)

Actually, it was suburban voters that made the decisive difference. But “they don’t fit the narrative he’s fed to his credulous, susceptible voting base.”


Yep, second son Eric Trump just can’t believe the American people have no use for his father. Lots of Twitter responses.


Frikkin’ hilarious! The comedian Sarah Cooper makes up a character, the one who’s mentoring the legal team of the off-going, one-term President and Rudy Giuliani.


It’s hard to get Republican followers to switch gears and focus on the upcoming Georgia Senate elections.


I've been aware of Republican efforts to combat so-called, alleged in-person "voter fraud" since sometime during the second term of the administration of the younger George Bush. I'm aware that it's been a pretty low-profile issue, but it's a scam that's been running for quite awhile. It didn't start with the current off-going, one-term President.


Good comment by Secretary of State Pompeo. It follows an incredibly stupid comment of his, so I’m not going to get too excited about it.


South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's daughter announces that she's pregnant. Total Covid deaths are now at 888.
This reminds me of Ivanka Trump posting some very nice family photos at the very time that children were being imprisoned by her father‘s ICE at the Mexican border. Just fantastically, incredibly insensitive.


The off-going, one-term President launched about 40 lawsuits, all aimed at proving the assertion he makes here, that Biden's election was due to fraud of some sort. Is there a plot to reverse the election? Or is Trump just trying to create another "Benghazi," another case about which he can rant and rave and collect money off of suckers and an excuse for hearings and testimony?

Update: As of 19 December, the off-going President had raised $200 million in money that was less restricted than ordinary campaign funds are.


The title here is misleading as the blogger adds at the very end that yes, the assassination "attempt" was successful and the Iranian nuclear scientist is dead. This is a very big deal that could lead to provocative actions by Iran.

CodePink sounds off on the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. How many other condemnations will we see tomorrow?

A quickie look at possible strategy behind killing of Iranian nuclear scientist.

Was the killing of Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh intended to kill off the Iran nuclear deal of 2015? “The Iranian government believes that Israel’s Mossad carried out the assassination.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has suggested that the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist is a good thing. Here's a sampling of their track record.


It's good to see these two posts one right after the other to see how disconnected from reality the off-going, one-term President is. In this first, three judges, one appointed by Trump, the other two appointed by the younger George Bush, absolutely trash the ridiculous, meritless case brought by Rudy Giuliani. The next reproduces a rant by Trump where he discusses how clearly obvious and backed up by solid evidence his case is.


Wow! I can understand age and race playing a role in a disease, but partisanship? Unfortunately, that's completely understandable under these particular circumstances! 


*Sigh!* Our new Supreme Court Justice and her first decision is to increase the danger of the pandemic by undermining public safety in favor of religion!


Erm, yes, the off-going Pesident most certainly will “leave the White House” because he have zero choice in the matter!

Hmm. Am I “mystified by the loyalty of Trump’s base”? No, not really. He’s the leader of a cult. Trump fans would "drink the Kool-Aid" if it were offered.


Y'know, when you (Secretary of State Pompeo) have to "pad your resume" by lying about and exaggerating your accomplishments, your list of accomplishments was obviously pretty thin to begin with.


"Nearly 2100 died of Covid19 in the U.S." in a single day. South Korea has suffered 515 deaths since the coronavirus first appeared on the scene. Cures and vaccines and therapeutics are all very fine and well, but wearing masks and social distancing can keep the death toll way down in the first place.


This is just thoroughly, utterly, absolutely evil. The Trump Administration has left $455 billion unspent. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin wants to make that money inaccessible to the incoming Treasurey Secretary. 


Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is concerned that the off-going President is attacking our system of elections. Ryan's not just some disconnected observer. He’s also a member of the Fox News Board of Directors.


The off-going, one-term President pardons a co-conspirator, Mike Flynn, on his way out the door.

Details on Mike Flynn's many, many crimes.

The off-going, failed, one-term President ends the way he began, with wild, self-serving corruption.


The blogger here is pressing for Democrats to adopt a simple strategy. 1. Do good things. 2. Brag about those good things. 3. Repeat over and over.
I'd just add that the mainstream media, the big guys, are not the friends of Democrats. Use them, but use everybody else too! Spread the wealth around, make sure all of the outlets get good quotes.


Curious about a statement that the Secretary of State made:

Pompeo countered her statement, saying the Trump administration had developed "coalitions that actually deliver real results and reflect the reality on the ground."

Erm, what "real results"!?!?!?! The Obama Administration got an agreement from Iran, the Trump Administration got bupkis.


The very reliable Trump voters, White Evangelicals have been suffering major demographic decline over the past several years, with more people answering "none" for religion on surveys.


Ivanka tries to claim credit for a worldwide reduction in greenhouse gases. Kind of a problem with that is that the US had absolutely nothing to do with that reduction and in fact was a contributor to more greenhouses gases! Credit for Dow 30k clearly goes to President-Elect Biden. Nah, anything she might have done right was done behind closed doors with only a few dedicated, that is, unreliable witnesses.


Good grief! This is the most moronically idiotic criticism I’ve heard about the Biden crew yet! But hey, it’s early. "President-elect Joe Biden's cabinet picks have faced criticism for being too elite."


This is pretty cool! Reema Dodin is a Muslim Palestinian and will work as Deputy Director for White House Legislative Affairs.


Hmm. Biden is “just” an Obama repeat? Ha! Bring it! An Obama repeat would be a huge improvment over the past four years!


Yeah, seriously. Who the #@$% gives a rat's ass abut what Ivanka and Jared will do next? They're wealthy and famous. They'll be fine.

More on why? Why is the NY Times trying to get us to sympathize with Jared and Ivanka? Due partly to Jared’s incompetence, over a quarter of million Americans have died from the coronavirus!

Update (19 Dec): Ivanka, along with Kellyanne Conway, was overriding the scientists at the CDC, telling them what to say to the public about the pandemic.


The author of the piece mentions President Ford's 1974 pardon of President Nixon. I was 14 years old at the time and thought it was a terrible idea. Still do. By establishing the precedent that it was okay to pardon a president for abusing his office, Ford made the elderly George Bush pardons of people involved in the Iran-Contra scandal possible. By establishing that "Hey, for the President to abuse his power is no big deal," Trump then felt free to do so. No, I think this piece recommending a pardon is an absolutely awful idea.


Two things about Randy Quaid's ideas on the election: 1. Trumps' legal team filed over 35 cases. No "flagrant irregularities" were found.
2. America's voting system was designed for small towns in the early 1800s. Mail-in voting is the newer and better and more reliable method.


"Jack and Jill went up the hill..."
Jill here very strongly defends her role in the famous incident!
Chloe is 6 and has Down’s Syndrome.


The nomination of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary demonstrates that being fired and bad-mouthed by the currently off-going President doesn’t mean anything.


Israel and Saudi Arabia are anxious to avoid Biden putting back the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but the last four years have shown that their preferred policy is utterly bankrupt.


The motorcycle rally held in Sturgis SD in August was, as expected, a “super-spreader” event.


Erm, “GSA being allowed to preliminarily work with the Dems…” The President had no authority to tell the GSA not to work with the party that won the election!

I’d say she has quite a bit to be defensive about! GSA head Emily Murphy denies that she was being ordered by the off-going President to refuse the oncoming President GSA services, but Trump’s tweets appear to contradict that.

Many in the press would like us all to forget that they played a highly destructive role over the last several weeks by mis-describing the off-going President's actions. Especially infuriating have been the many times that officials were described as having "no choice" but to do as they did. The sympathetic treatment given to the GSA's Emily Murphy was truly revolting and completely uncalled for.


Woo hoo! 'Bout gol-durn frikkin' time!!! “GSA Emily folds, transition begins


So why hasn't the head of the GSA, Emily Murphy done her job yet? Marc Morial of the National Urban League, gives a good answer:

“[Trump]’s a sore loser, it’s sour grapes, and he’s scared to death,” Morial said, adding, “I think he’s a man who lost his courage, he can’t face the American people, he’s holding out some false hope that he can maneuver some manner of victory. I think we’re seeing the last acts of a desperate man.”


"Trump set on veto of defense bill over renaming bases honoring Confederates"
Pretty amazing that the off-going President is willing to make a fight over this and then he sits there and wonders "Why do people consider me a racist?"


Yowza! MSNBC's Chuck Todd got roasted on Twitter for appearing to suggest that Biden was not the clear winner of the election. I was pretty peeved that he was silent on the assertion that the Mueller Report didn't produce any evidence and that the impeachment produced nothing either. Good newspeople have to litigate misstatements by their guests or they risk being seen as agreeing with them.


What we're seeing the off-going President doing now was baked-in from the very beginning of his campaign for the presidency.The Jewish phrase is "sof ma'aseh b'maḥshava teḥila," and it means "the end of something is evident at the start of it."


The off-going President demonstrates a few of the many reasons we voted against him. He remains convinced that reducing carbon emissions would wreck the American economy. 


The off-going President's refusal to concede is having a very real effect. This is no joke, people!

The longer that Donald Trump refuses to concede the presidential election to Joe Biden—and the more he and his minions promote conspiracy theories to claim that Biden won fraudulently—the more the unhinged behavior of their perfervid True Believers, threatening mass violence and more, begins to pile up.

Democrats have to engage in fundraising because Emily Murphyof the GSA still hasn't signed the paperwork necessary to start the transition! Biden is pressing ahead with Cabinet picks.


Yep! Back in July, Senator Cruz swore that once a new president was chosen, the coronavirus would disapper, just like *that!*

In one state, Utah, hospitals are at 100% capacity. Coronavirus shows no sigs of slowing down.


After 15 years, the series Supernatural ends. As the Grateful Dead sang: "What a long,strange trip it's been!"


Trump campaign essentially asks judge to toss out entire Pennsylvania vote. Another "crash and burn" legal ruling.


We have two vaccines on the way, but that doesn't mean we can start gathering in large groups yet!


New ideology on part of Republicans?


The off-going President really, really wanted to have a vaccine ready by Election Day. Might we have gotten one on time by collaborating with China? A vaccine produced through collaboration would have gone through all of the standard FDA requirements and China would probably not agree to hand it over to a private corporation to sell, but I find it had to see any downside.


Mail-in voting is pretty cool and convenient. The public is now aware of it. That might be why Republicans are supporting the off-going President in his tilting-at-windmills opposition to it.

Update (17 Dec): Senator Rand Paul appears to confirm that mail-in ballots are bad because they're popular and easy to cast. The GOP does well when voting is light.

Voter fraud’s a big issue with the GOP, not because there’s any actual voter fraud of any significance, but because Republicans, especially the off-going President, have been hollering about if for well over a decade.

More on how voter fraud is a story that Republicans have been pushing for a long time!


Biden's lead is now over 6 million.


Hmm. So if your crazy right-wing uncle says he follows "the news," you can ask him whether he follows the more "Reality-based Community" brand of Fox News and Drudge or whether he goes for the really crazy stuff of OAN and QAnon!


Someone on my news feed has complained that Speaker Pelosi didn't take the "deal" that was offered on a stimulus package, arguing that it was better than nothing. Problem is that the "deal" included legal immunity for precisely this sort of thing that was carried out by Tyson Foods.


Wow! Yeah, Senator Ron Johnson of the Homeland Security Committee has gotta take the award for the most utterly useless member of the team during a public health crisis!


Just as the anti-pornography feminists of the 80s would have caused collateral damage to the First Amendment, Secretary of State Pompeo, in aiming at the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement,  is threatening to damage civil rights generally.


Rachel Maddow has been away from her show because her partner Susan caught COVID-19. Susan is over the worst of it and is recovering, but Rachel pleaded with her viewers to please not take any risks with the coronavirus! She wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy. It's no joke. Directly from her.


As the country crosses the quarter-million mark for deaths, VP Pence engages in happy talk:

Pence said the task force sees “The light at the end of the tunnel" before repeating Trump’s unfounded assertion that the country is rounding the corner.”

Pence did not take any questions.


The head of the GSA is suffering from a “faux dilemma.” From the piece about Ms. Murphy’s career:

She should’ve remembered: Everything Trump Touches Dies! — especially careers.


Trumps legal team has lost 30 cases at this point. They keep trying to prove that the off-going President should've gotten a second term, but have yet to provide any proff of that.


Hooo-weee!!! Pretty insane press conference! Think my favorite accusation was that votes were being sent over to Germany and Venezuela to be counted.
Oh, and Hugo Chavez died in 2013.


A Republican official asked about the off-going President's refusal to concede: "What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?" Well, the downside is that if Biden's presidency is delegitimized, it'll be harder to get anything done.


I normally don't have a lot of use for bipartisan committees, but voting is an area where they would be very highly useful.


The off-going President produced several estimates of how many American citizens would be lost to COVID-19 and if the number stayed below certain benchmarks, he would have done a decent job. Oops! His latest estimate was 240k at the absolute maximum and we've now hit 250k with absolutely no slowing down in sight.


Rudy Giuliani is demonstrating how rusty and out-of-shape he is. One of the more abstract legal concepts that he screwed up on was levels of scrutiny. Just how closely is the court going to examine the arguments that are made?


The CNN piece here is a truly awful, horrible, revolting piece of "BothSides." The writers and editors should be fired for putting out this unmitigated crap! The head of the GSA is refusing to do her job. The piece presents her as being pressured from "both sides," but only one side has a reasonable case!

Very good point! If the head of the GSA is really that torn and agonized over whether or not to do her job, she could just $%#@ing resign!


Wiping out student debt could be a very, very good thing for the economy. Saddling new graduates with massive debt means they can't get started on buying homes, starting families, etc. Never understood why the federal government needs to make a profit on anything in the first place.


This is very, very bad. When all 50 of our states are having increases in Covid cases, that means overwhelmed hospitals can't send patients off to bigger hospitals.

The Press Secretary thinks we need to be concerned about freedom and liberties and avoiding too much repression. Erm, does it look as though the old strategy is working?


Ooh! Good point! The wrongfully-fired Chris Krebs is now free to talk to the Biden team!

Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee explains who Chris Krebs is.


Would the American experiment have survived another Trump term? Unfortnately, that's doubtful

My concern is more for several election cycles from now more than for now. The “stab in the back” theory that the Nazis used became popular many years after World War I was lost.


Now here's a reason to go back to the Moon! We could put a really big telescope up there and, there being no atmosphere there, it can take super-clear pictures which might reveal the first stars!


Do we have a better American than Dolly Parton? Mr. Pierce makes a pretty strong case that if she's not at the absolute top, she's well within the top half dozen.


Did the off-going President fire Secretary of Defense Esper because Esper was expressing a lack of enthusiasm about attacking Iran?


By refusing to concede even in the complete absence of evidence that there was anything suspicious about Biden's victory, the off-going President has encouraged various "militia" groups to "resist." This was always the danger of "Letting the President have his day in court."


Dr. Scott Atlas, who is a radiologist, not an immunologist, said “The only way this stops is if people rise up.” Heard he said he wasn’t suggesting violence, but I have a really hard time thinking of what else he could possibly have meant.


Infuriating! And, as people in the comments point out, newspapers did ask both Nixon and Clinton to resign! Nixon’s crimes were far more serious than Clinton’s, but remember, the Senate in Trump’s case never carried out any sort of investigation on their own. 

It’s so strange that with all of the bad craziness and criminal behavior over the last four years, not a single mainstream news outlet (that I’m aware of) has called for Donald Trump to resign.

Uh. Mah. Gawd!!! The President was upset that Iran is moving nuclear production underground and asked for military options! Fortunately, he didn’t like any of them, so we all dodged a bullet. The question is, why has Iran been carrying out provocative actions? Duh! Trump’s incompetent diplomacy!

More on Trump’s thinking about bombing Iran.


I remember someone telling us of the conservative creed: "Conservatism cannot fail. It can only be failed!" The blogger here makes a good point, the Trump Presidency, and especially the first two years when Republicans ran everything, was a disaster because conservatism can no longer answer the essential question or provide any solutions.


"GSA Leader Consulted With Predecessor Who Faced 2000 Recount"
On the one hand, I can understand that the off-going President may have given the head of the General Sservices Admiistration (GSA) strict orders not to help out the incoming President with the transition. We know that Trump is fond of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), so it's likely she's been sworn to secrecy. I can also appreciate her being nervous because very few Republican senators have backed up the obvious decision to begin the transition process.

But the 2000 action by the GSA is not relevant here. Then, the decision really did hang on a knife-edge. Here, even though the President is fighting the obvious decision tooth and nail, there just isnt't the slightest question tha Biden won this by a large margin, fair and square.


Lengthy piece on the "stab in the back" theory that der Fuhrer used so successfully in his rise to power. As the mid-80s were a time for Vietnam books, the mid-70s was a time for World War II books, so I'm very familiar with what the blogger describes. And yes, I have long been concerned about the media bubble that made the conspiracy theory so convincing back in the 20s and 30s and the very similar bubble today in the US.


Fox News vs Newsmax/OANN/QAnon or whatever the off-going President cobbles together could be amusing, but yeah. I'd put my money on Fox surviving.


Problem with COVID-19 these days is it's everywhere!!! Hospitals can't call other states or even other regions to provide spare, staffed ICU beds.


A church buddy of mine pointed out that the Los Angeles Times had printed a whole page of right-wing comments. Worth reading, but I had lots of commentaries to make on them.


Governor Whitmer of Michigan is exactly the kind of Governor America needs more of! She's willing to take sides against a corporation to protect Michigan.


The Texas Lietenant Governor is just talking complete and utter fantasy. Biden won, period! That cannot be reversed. Numbers are much too large for that.


Heh! Gotta love it when the opposition splits!

Trump supporters are now marching toward the Supreme Court, chanting "Fox News sucks!’


Vote count is showing Biden's lead over Trump is approaching 6 million at this time. Biden won Pennsylvania by a full percentage point, 49.9% to 48.9% or 3,418k to 3,352k. In Georgia, it was slimmer, with only 0.3 points between the two, 2,472k to 2,458k, but that's still about a 14k vote difference. Only about 10k votes different in Arizona, but because of their smaller population, that's 0.3% again.

When you have "problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost," then sure, there's a likelihood that the final vote tally will be a bit different, but there is no likely "path to victory."


About 5k people show up for the "Million MAGA March." Press Secretary tries to pretend that a million showed up.


Meanwhile, the credibility of the cases that attack the election process have so little credibility, law firms engaged to fight them are dropping out.

One of the major problems with the conspiracy theories that the Democrats rigged the election is that lots of down-ballot Republican candidates won their races. Wouldn't a conspiracy have taken all the races?

Follow-ups from local news stations keep proving conspiracy theories to be baseless.

As the off-going President continues to complain about voter fraud, judges are getting annoyed with all of the plainly-frivolous lawsuits that are being launched to prove that fraud.


Restrictions work. Britain provides a real-time experiment. The coronavirus was getting bad, so restrictions brought it more under control.


Yeah, I feel a great deal of sympathy for the Secret Service folks. They’re supposed to take a bullet to protect the President. They’re not supposed to take a bullet from the President!


Yeah, it’s a luxury to be unaffected by politics. Most people can’t afford to ignore it.


This is a book about a very unappreciated part of people's lives, from before written history to today. Probably because spinning is normally done by women.


Yeah, this is really sad. The WaPo uses the terms "compassionate and intelligent" to refer to Melania and Ivanka Trump.
What's the color of the sky on their world I wonder?


Ah, poor VP Mike Pence! As his boss has suggested that he wants to run again in 2024, that leaves absolutely zero room for him to run!


Examining the off-going President's latest tweet.


Clearly, there was no plan as to how to proceed if the President lost. Nobody there has any idea of what to do now. The Trump Administration is just drifting now. The relevant term is "Malignant Narcissist." "What, the American people do not love their Glorious Leader?!?!?!"

Oh good grief! Trump Administration in serious denial!


Good! China isn't waiting for the offgoing President to concede. They're congratulating President-Elect Biden right now.


Lack of action during the summer is kicking our collective butts now. The time for coordinated federal action was a long time ago. The US is badly behind the curve.


Texas Senator Cornyn wants “all legitimate votes to count.” Fine. The problem is showing that there were any illegitimate votes! It’s been over a week since the election and we’ve seen lots of accusations, but zero proof. As of 12 November, 11:30pm the Presidential vote count, Biden to Trump, is 77.5 million to 72.3 or 50.9% to 47.5%. This was not a close race!

Yeah, I very strongly object to the idea that the President is engaged in “street theater” or “performance art” or any other such thing! His actions are profoundly damaging to democracy. He simply has no case that he actually won or that there was any cheating. The margin by which he lost is far beyond any possible explanation other than that he lost fair and square!


Our election security was the most secure it’s ever been.


Pretty cool! Voyager 1 was launched 40 years ago today. Is it a "Light-Day" away? Not quite. A light-day would be 1,440 light-minutes and Voyager is now 1,252 light-minutes or about 14 billion miles away. 


Lengthy Twitter thread about how truly rare voter fraud is and how profoundly offensive it is to suggest that he and his fellow elections workers are casual with the security of the votes of the people.

Woo hoo! Very cool! International group scolds Trump Administration for not conceding that it lost the election!

Well, there we go! Talk about solid and reliable sources: "[Trump] tweet Thursday amplified a 'report' built on empty claims that originated in anonymous comments on a pro-Trump blog."


This is rather disturbing.

US military fatalities just increased by one in Sinai helo crash today. Now 6 US servicemembers killed. Fact: not one word from Pentagon, State or WH. Six Americans died today in service of the Constitution, the country and peace. May their memories be a blessing.

Hmm, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany appears to be very confused as to whether she's a Trump campaign official or a taxpayer-paid White House official. The legal reference is called the Hatch Act and it says everyone below the President and Vice-President is supposed to be non-political.


Good thinkpiece about the differences between Rs and Ds.



“I can factually tell you tonight, it will be impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results,” Fox star and Trump operative Sean Hannity claimed.

Not true at all. We have an election system that both sides have an interest in keeping fair and it gets tested twice a year, for primary and general elections. Having been a poll worker for almost two decades, I see regular, small improvements in the system.

“Americans will never be able to believe in the integrity and legitimacy of these results.”

Well, not with Fox News hammering away at the credibility of those elections by going “all-in” on wild, nutty conspiracy theories, no.


Trump Administration figured if it could keep deaths below 240k, than it would have done well. Oops! Deaths are now 241.8k, with no slowing down at all anywhere in sight.


Is the election over now tha Biden has won? Nah. Not sure whether Trump just wants to prepare his way to conduct rallies for the next four years until he can run again or whether he’s trying to launch a coup so he can start a second term right away or whether his ego simply can’t handle the rejection of losing. Nah, this ain’t over by any means.


There is obviously absolutely zero similarity between Biden’s open, non-confidential calls to foreign leaders and Mike Flynn’s secret, undercover calls to Russia that directly undercut US foreign policy.


Axios describes a “long-shot scenario” that’s being considered that’s actually a complete rejection of the very idea of democracy.


Good point! The offgoing President is essentially admitting that he lost. Would be nice if he were more direct about it, but there ya go.

Good to hear that the Republican Pennsylvania senator acknowledging, weakly, but acknowledging that Biden/Harris won the election.


Instead of "Republicans have no choice..." but to continue to support the off-going President's delusions, how about "Republicans are deliberately and consciously, with malice and forethought..."
Do better, CNN!


I remember the story from 2006, US persons found a bunch of old, degraded chemical weapons that had largely lost their potency and Sean Hannity was trying to pass them off as evidence that Iraqi WMDs were a real thing that justified going to war. Sounds like Press Secretary McEnany's pile of sworn affidavits amounts to pretty much the same thing.

Update: Yeah, the 234 pages of sworn affidavits didn’t really concern anything genuinely interesting.


Good video!


I parse a set of letters sent to my local paper by Trump supporters.


Yep! "BothSides!" as if the two examples are even remotely, even somewhat sort of equal!

From Trump's GSA barring Biden transition officials from federal buildings to Whoopi Goldberg telling his voters to suck it up...

Stupid comments have grave consequences. Secretary of State Pompeo badly damaged US standing on promoting democracy abroad.

The context for the question is that the United States constantly hectors other countries about not respecting the outcome of democratic elections.


City Council member from Ohio attempts to prove the existence of widespread voter fraud. He talks of “unconstitutional Mail-In ballots.” Erm, a ballot is a ballot. Each one constitutes a vote. The Constitution leaves details of voting up to the states. There’s no such thing as an “unconstitutional ballot.”


A review of a film from 2003. I liked this film a lot because it showed two young women who were very much alike as they were both soccer players, but very different as they were from different nationalities and cultures.


Good news! Appears that we have five solid votes on the Supreme Court to keep the ACA/Obamacare!


If winning the election was "Plan A," is launching a coup via the Electoral College vote (December) "Plan B?" Lots of reasons to think it isn't but as the TV commentator says, Trump is now like a bull in a china shop, trying to break as much china as he can, while he can.

No, I agree that NPR is 100% wrong to suggest that for the President to refuse to concede is in any way, shape or form a reasonable position.

The Secretary of State, America's top representative to the world suggests that hey, just 'cause the other guy got five million more votes and won several rucia swing states, no biggie.

The margin of victory for the challenger was the largest since Franklin D.Roosevelt took over from Herbert Hoover. It does no good for anyone to pretend that Biden's victory is somehow in doubt. The margin in formerly-contested "battleground" states is several tens of thousands in many cases.


The role that Stacey Abrams played in making Georgia competitive for Democrats.


Defense Secretary Esper gets fired. Might be because of the 1 June photo-op in Lafayette Square.


Quote:

We have seen no evidence that would justify a Department of Justice probe. The Attorney General's move raises grave concerns that he is acting to advance a preferred political narrative rather than following the facts and the law.

Nevertheless, AG Barr says DOJ will go ahead and prosecute any electoral fraud claims.

The director of the Election Crimes Branch resigns when he sees what the Attorney General is asking him to do.


Among other rhings, the off-going, one-term President predicted the stock market would crash if Biden were elected. Oops! It's up 1,400!


So, is the Trump Administration trying to gum up the works as regards the transition? *Sigh!* Of course they are!


Emily Murphy, the Trump-appointed administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), has thus far refused to sign a letter that immediately allows the transfer of power from one administration to the next to commence.

Even the FLOTUS, generally not one to speak out, is advising the President to admit he lost.


A not-so-fond look back at the one-term president over the past four years.


A political movement that said “Fuck your feelings!” and called liberals “snowflakes” and suggested hanging journalists is wondering why we’re being so mean to them.


How much does the Navajo Nation dislike Trump? Enough to have made a decisive difference in Arizona! Good thread, BTW. Turns out New Mexico Native Americans also went very strongly for Biden!

Why do Native Americans like Biden so much? They and Biden both fully understand the climate crisis.


This is utterly frikkin’ hilarious! People call in to prank the Trump “voter fraud hotline.”

Update (14 Nov): Voter fraud hotline shut down. No actionable tips, lots of prank cals.


White Evangelicals were major losers of this election.


And, of course, one of the first things the incoming President-Elect says is how he's going to tackle the coronavirus.


Rudy Giuliani feels the networks aren't "authorized" to call winners and losers in elections, but when the loser incumbent refuses to concede, what is the US supposed to do?

The President reveals his deep knowledge [/snark] of American politics. He has no idea that the AP has been calling presidential elections for almost 200 years.


Bwah-hah-hah! Gotta love it! How perfectly symbolic! Rudy Giuliani carries out a press conference in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping company.

This sounds plausible. The President decided on the Four Seasons Hotel and announced that to the media. the hotel said "Nothing doing," so the team improvised and got something that was named "Four Seasons."


Woo hoo! They've called it! President-Elect Biden and Vice-President-Elect Harris are now a thing!

The celebration! More celebration!

Various aides of the President are trying to figure out how to convince him that he lost and must vacate the premises by mid-January of next year.

Ari Fleischer warns us to know that the President is such a snowflake that "he'll need a few days to absorb that he's lost."

Our allies knew the value of our offgoing President. They're happy to congratulate the oncoming one!

Heh! "Miley Cyrus’ 'Party In The U.S.A.,' NSYNC’s 'Bye Bye Bye' suddenly charting for some reason"


Not at all clear why the Presidential contest hasn't been called yet. Are the networks bowing to the President because he screamed bloody murder when Fox News called Arizona?


72 hours after polls closed and not a single case of voter fraud has been substantiated. The election was clean. Call it and begin the transition.

Heh! Greta Thunberg makes fun of the President's hesitation to admit he lost!

Hmm. No, I disagree with RNC Chairwoman McDaniel. You don’t hold up the process for unsubstantiated rumors. You hold up the elections/transition process because you have serious irregularities that can be proven in a very quick and expeditious manner.

By voicing evidence-free concerns about voter fraud, Trump and his buddies are making the US look ever more like a tiny, backwards banana republic that’s being run by poorly-educated amateurs. No, let’s not “take time to investigate.” If there’s no obvious evidence a few days after the election, leave the conspiracy-theorizing up to the fringe players like OANN or QAnon.


If the Electoral College picks Biden, does that change my view of the EC? No. It's an institution that has served its purpose and now needs to go. It was constructed to protect slave-holding states and doesn't serve any further useful purpose.


The off-going, one-term President has alleged voter fraud. Response by Republican Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey: "The president's allegations of large scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated."


Woo hoo!!! Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States! It was Peensylvania that put him over the top!

Trump did so poorly on getting votes that his margin of defeat may be about that of Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan! 
Update (14 Nov): Actually, the only challenger to have done better was Franklin D. Roosevelt against Herbert Hoover in 1932.


Have we ever seen political partisanship align so closely with a virus?!?!?!


Iron can burn? Without releasing carbon into the atmosphere? Cool!


Very happy to see there’s been lots of pushback on the statement by Trump that he had won.


*Sigh!* Yep! Our Electoral College.

I love waiting up all night to see if the guy who got four million more votes actually won.


So we have Newt Gingrich showing us how much he values and respects democracy, that is, not in the slightest.


Shepard Smith was a Fox News anhor for many years and recently moved to CNBC. Really good summary of President's speech.

News host Nicole Wallace took the hit for us and watched the President’s speech.


Steve Bannon talks about ye olde days with relish as he imagines hanging and beheading political opponents.


Hah! Love it! Trump's religious adviser Paula White's "victory" rant, remixed!


Yeah, Trump was "winning big" in PA, but then that gol durn state Secretary of State insisted on, y'know, counting ALL of the votes!!!


Traditionally, two days after election is called, the incumbent invites the President-Elect over for lunch to begin transition.

Update (6 Dec): Trump still hasn't conceded that he lost! For unexplained reasons, the Biden team has yet to meet with many Pentagon agencies, specifically the agencies dealing with intelligence and covert operations. Chris Wallace of Fox News got attacked for saying Biden was the President-Elect. The Rudy Giuliani-Sidney Powell legal team is just submitting case after case and is losing them all.


More cheerful, decent news! Mississippi votes by nearly 70% to retire the old Confederate design for their state flag!

More good political news, this election saw a "Rainbow Wave" of LGBTQ candidates make it into office!

Percentage-wise, the vote was just a hair over 2/3rds of all of the eligible voters.


Heh! Russia mournfully concludes Biden has won!


After four years of screaming about voter fraud and zero voter fraud being detected, what makes the DOJ think that armed federal officers are necessary to detect it?


Very pleased that the networks did not heed the President's evidence-free claim that he had won!

Exactly! There's only one possible reason for people to oppose counting all of the ballots!


But why did the President turn the race "into a cliffhanger?" Because of the Electoral College. If it was a straight-up popular vote, Biden would have made his victory speech already.


This is an important point. The ballots in several key states could have been counted early and we'd know the results by now, but Republican legislatures decided against that.
"They're finding Biden votes..." didn't have to be a thing.


Post-election, Biden has a broader and surer path to victory than Trump does. Nevertheless, we’re going to have to put up with a lot of false claims and a lot of litigating of the actual results.


[Tired, cynical knowing laugh] Tom Friedman is a NY Times columnist who, quite properly, lost all of his credibility during the Iraq War. If he seriously thinks Senate Majority Leader McConnell will start compromising under a President Biden, he simply hasn't been paying attention to how McConnell has been operating for the past decade.


Trump did many terrible things with US policy over the past four years. The good news is that he didn't build any sort of constituency to sustain them, so his gains are easily reversed!


Cheerful news! No late surge towards the President!


Heck of a closing message!

"Barack Hussein Obama"
"He's against God" -- Trump on Joe Biden
Trump jokes that he won't speak to his kids anymore if he loses
Trump fans in Michigan are now conditioned to chant "lock her up!" when Trump so much as alludes to Gretchen Whitmer


Again, the NY Times does great reporting from time to time, but they are no friend to liberals. What’s so fascinating about white, middle-aged men in flyover states who still support Trump? As a commenter on the thread notes:

The NYT piece does not mention right-wing media, but these folks listen to Limbaugh in their tractors and pickups for three hours, then their local hate-spewing station, then go home and watch Fox. They are brainwashed.


Second and third times weren't as cold as the first, but yeah, I have a really hard time feeling sorry for folks who support someone who cares so little for their health and welfare. I get that he "owns the libs," but America needs someone who can actually do the job of being President. Trump has shown over and over he simply can't do it.


In 2017, Aya Hijazi was released from an Egyptian jail after three years. The President got her released, and she does indeed appreciate it, but she's voting for Biden.


Great Rah-Rah stuff! Two excellent ads!


Yeah, I remember this, how in the early 00s, Kos laid down the law and banned conspiracy theories from his site.

In contrast, the President is clearly not on the same page as he blames doctors for his own catastrophic failures in handling the coronavirus. I'm very happy to observe the contrast.


Yeah, when was this "Good Republican Party of Ye Olden Times"? I personally date it as the Eisenhower Administration. Nixon's Southern Strategy was certainly the beginning of the rot. I was in college when Reagan was in office and my relief over the end of Carter had worn off by the summer of 1981.


Not the slightest bit surprising. The President is concerned about Dr. Fauci making him appear to be an uninformed clown by comparison.


Round-up of news on eve of election.


It’s interesting to look at the language here. “...Trump will be ahead on election night ... And then [Democrats are] going to try to steal it back…” There are no actions here. “Stealing it back” is going to consist of simply allowing the counting of votes to continue. Why is that? Because Democrats prefer to vote by mail. When should counting stop? When all of the votes are counted!


If the President wants to declare victory before all of the votes are counted, well, he can try, but no one beyond his hardcore MAGA fans will take him seriously.


Good! The Texas Republicans' attempt to have 127k ballots tossed because they were submitted from cars is going poorly! Story isn't quite over yet, but it's going in a good direction!
Update (2 Nov): "Harris County responds, arguing 'Election Day is tomorrow. There is no basis for this eleventh-hour attempt to disrupt the election.'"


Post-Gazette wants Trump to serve a second term. I detail why I think that's an awful idea.

A list of the ways in which the President does not deserve to be re-elected.

The President tells us what his philosophy of govering is. Bascially, he just does the opposite of whatever Obama did. Did it work? Uh, no. It didn't work at all.


The President makes a rather blatant appeal to right-wing Supreme Court Justices that if they want to preserve their new 6-3 majority or its power, they need to make sure he wins the upcoming election.


Cultural history of zombies goes way back, well before the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.


Is the era of “Born Again” white people finally ending? Sure hope so!


The toll from Trump rallies is about 700 dead and 30k infected.


Heh! #WitchTheVote is a good deal more innocent than it sounds. They’re encouraging voters to cast their ballots.


The revolution begins to eat its own, something we saw with Ernst Rohn of the SA Brownshirts in 1934.


Medical Community Slams Trump For Pushing COVID Cash Conspiracy

President Trump elicited disgust and anger from nearly the entire medical community this week, after he said that doctors were over-counting COVID-19 deaths to rake in piles of cash.


Hmm. Trump campaign asks very detailed questions about voting security measures. Wonder why?


As expected, no apologies from the President from an act of terrorism carried out by followers of his (Forcing the Biden campaign bus over to the side of the road). 


October


Not quite as bad as the Nebraska rally where Trump people were left stranded. It was 34° then and 41° now, but yeah, it's after dark and Trump supporters don't know where the buses are.


Republicans want to throw out 100k+ votes because of the manner in which they were cast. That is, they were cast in such a way as to be safe for the voters!


Very disturbing! Trump supporters in cars try to run a Biden campaign bus off the road. Neither Biden nor Harris were on board. Campaign events for the immediate area cancelled.


Awww! Very sad to hear that actor Sean Connery has died!

Good review of Sean Connery’s career.


President suggests doctors profit from treating COVID-19 patients. An ER doctor has some thoughts on that.


Authoritarianism vs People Power. With the complexity of modern society, climate change being a really big problem, we just can't afford authoritarianism. Humanity as a whole desperately needs for people power to win out!

Authoritarianism vs People Power and Pregnancy Choice.


Blast from the very recent past (A month and a half ago), White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that the Trump Administration would have 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by now. Oops!

And if we had a vaccine, would it make that much difference?


The President "answers" Biden's taunts with tweets. Problem is, his accusations would sound a lot more convincing if he wasn't the incumbent! He's had 3 1/2 years to tackle these problems and in most cases, hasn't made a single inch of progress. What has he done about the outsourcing of jobs? Nothing. How has he tried to bring back auto jobs from Mexico? He hasn't.


Postmaster General DeJoy needs some prison time for this! Videp shows piles and piles of undelivered mail.


Aww! The WaPo cartoonist Tom Toles has retired? He did lots of good stuff!


Don Jr. tells Laura Ingraham that deaths from COVID-19 are way, way down. Jim Acosta points out that the number of infected persons in the US is the highest it's ever been! In the US, 30 October deaths were 1,030. 


Wow! Senate Majority Leader McConnell is an evil, evil, horribly, viciously evil person!


Yeah, this person gets all snarky and judgmental over Representative AOC wearing nice clothes for a photo shoot. Never seems to occur to the person that those clothes might be on loan.


This is completely, utterly and absolutely wrong! Many people were planning on sending in their mail-in ballots, thinking they had plenty of time. The deadline was just moved up! Absolutely inexcusable! This is far too late to make such a significant change!


The Trump campaign is trying really, really hard to sell the Hunter Biden story. Problem is, the evidence for it is so shaky and unreliable that no relisble news organization will report on it.

Ah, okay! Now I understand why Glenn Greenwald was fired from The Intercept! He based a story on the "Hunter Biden emails," a very highly dodgy set of emails of very uncertain origin that don't really prove much of anything even if we grant that they're true.

Blogger reviews photos of Hunter Biden and concludes it’s a mix of real and fake photos. Very important point, while there are no obvious photos of underage people naked and/or performing sex acts, it is highly illegal to be in possession of such photos. Your motivation for having them? No one cares.


More on the Hunter Biden story. The people here, who both work for Rupert Murdoch owned properties, wonder in a dark and suspicious way, why privately-owned media companies are refusing to run a highly (to use a British term) "dodgy" story. It's not that the story is clearly false or clearly a pack of lies, it's that it's far from clear where the "evidence" comes from.


There's a reason I always think of this guy as "grumble, gripe, %$#@ing Chuck Todd!"


I don't agree with Erick Erickson at all on this. If you're supposed to get your ballot in so that it arrives before Election Day, then there should have been a very clear and explicit warning that ballots mailed after a certain date will not be counted. You can't just make that decision informally and expect everyone to know that!


Good! Some Evangelicals are becoming less certain that Trump deserves their vote.


Really? Seriously? Is this really the message the President wants to go with in the final days of the campaign? "with 80k new COVID cases and a 940 point decline in the Dow," still pushing stuff on Hunter Biden! 


Pretty bad when a Supreme Court Justice has to be corrected by a state Secretary of State.

Update: It’s a new day when a Supreme Court Justice makes such an egregious error that he has to be publicly corrected, but it’s good to see SCJ Kavanaugh do so.


We've now learned from Bob Woodward that
Jared Kushner said “Trump was ‘getting the country back from the doctors’" as though that was a good thing. It wasn’t. It was an absolutely disastrous decision! He said in April that “I do believe that last night symbolized kind of the beginning of the comeback phase.” This was a hugely premature statement! In October, the US is still nowhere near any sort of “comeback.”


Good! Supreme Court makes good decision!


Oh, okay. We now know that Former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor was "Anonymous" who wrote an op-ed for the NY Times.

Yeah, this pretty much sums up my feelings on Miles Taylor, the new "Deep Throat" (Watergate Era whistleblower). I'm pretty "Meh" bout him.


This is very concerning. The President wants to cut off the counting of ballots at a particular time/date, knowing full well that it'll take time to do that. MoveOn is setting up several protests just in case. They've designate 400 protest sites so far. Nothing on their website yet, they're just sending out notifications now.


So the President held a rally in Nebraska. With the Trump Administration's usual, standard, piss-poor planning, thousands of MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters were out in the cold for as long as three hours before they could get back to their cars. It was a three mile walk for them to get back to their cars.  The President wanted to hold the rally right where his plane could be parked rather than in town.

Later, we learn that the VP has extensive medical safeguards to keep him safe. Regular folks who attend Trump rallies?

The American people have the right under the First Amendment to peaceably assemble, too."

You’re a Trump supporter, you’re on your own!


Sadly, the second wave of the coronavirus is in full swing in Europe.


Good! Richmond VA removes a statue of Robert E. Lee. Not a complete solution to racial problems, but a good beginning!


Hmm, could be a problem. A heavy iron and nickel asteroid about 1000 feet at it’s longest, has a 1 in 150k chance of hitting Earth in 2068.


Even though voting in Wisconsin has been made more difficult, not by voters but by the Trump-appointed Postmaster General, the Supreme Court has ruled that the postmark date on a ballot is meaningless. It must get there bu Election Day. Basically, the USPS would get a veto over the right to vote by just monkey-wrenching delivery times.


Speaker Pelosi tends not to get too far ahead of her caucus. She doesn’t do “vanguard” politics, where she stakes out a far-left position and persuades her followers into joining her. If she’s frankly saying that judicial reform to compensate for Republican court-packing is on the table, then Republicans could see all of their efforts over the past decade evaporate.


Neil deGrasse Tyson surveyed his Twitter followers and found his audience is young and well-traveled and interestingly, they skew heavily towards being liberal.

One fourth of you identify as politically Centrist with more than half identifying as Liberal. So the Conservative voices that arise in my threads, though ardent, are a small minority of all followers.”


Erm, has Ivanka Trump ever, y'know, met Donald Trump? Does she have the vaguest clue as to what he stands for? Since when has her daddy ever engaged in “respectful debate”?


Right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro is shocked! Shocked, I tell you! The new Supreme Court Justice wears a skirt. For some baffling, strange reason, feminists aren't supporting her! Very, very strange!I recall that just before the 2008 election, Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was complaining that hey, she wore a skirt! Why weren't feminists supporting her?


Fellow here proclaims that "Elections should happen on Election Day, and at no other time" which was a great idea before the mid-1800s. I understand that our election system was built for small towns in the late 1700s up until the Civil War, but even though the model still works for many of us, the model has become increasingly irrelevant and actually harmful to getting the full votes of all citizens!


*Sigh!* We are not "rounding the turn," there will be no noticeable change on November 4th.
And what the %$#@ does "99.9%" even mean?!?!?!

Wow! This is completely insane!!! The Trump Administration declared the pandemic "over." No. Not even close. In fact, the numbers of deaths and hospitalizations have reached a third peak, higher than the previous two!


Very angry and depressed to be passing this on, but he's right. If you haven't returned your ballot yet, vote in person. It's too late to be trusting the USPS to get it there on time.


Yes, it would be nice to get therapies and vaccines and even a cure for COVID-19, but non-wealthy, non-technologically advanced countries have correctly recognized that they didn't need to sit around and wait for such things. They took action and saved lives.


The President chose an incompetent ideologue to be his White House Chief of Staff and now that decision's come back to bite him in the ass.


This, I feel, is the way to deal with what lawyers call a “hostile witness!” The host Chris Cuomo takes the time to deal with the other guy’s points one by one and clearly knows the details so he can “bring the receipts!”


Senate is now adjourned until after the election. Meaning they were never serious about passing Covid relief.


D'oh! The "handler" (Putin) contradicts his "asset" (Trump)! Even Putin got tired of the Hunter Biden "scandal."


The President's son-in-law demonstrates why the diplomatic successes of the Trump Administration have been so few and far between. When you begin by heaping blame on the other side and by not taking any responsibility for your own side, negotiations have a tendency to go nowhere.


After the President walked out early from his
"60 Mnutes" interview, Press Secretary McEnany presented the interviewer Lesley Stahl with what she claimed was the Trump Administration's health care plan It was no such thing. The heavy volume contained Executive Orders and Congressional proposals, but no health care plan


Judge Amy Coney Barrett is now confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Senate Majority Leader claims:

“A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”

We'll see about that.


Yes, wind turbines are deadly to birds. About 300k die from them annually. But, cats kill about three billion birds! Also, we're developing technology to make turbines safer. Birds can see the turbines, but aren't quite aware that turbines are dangerous, which is why birds running into cell phone and radio towers kills about 6.8 million of them annually.


Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sums up what Democrats are all about these days.

We’re fighting for American lives and freedoms.
The right to affordable health care.
To make your own private medical decisions.
To join a union.
To vote without impediments.
To love.
We will not stop fighting.


Problem with shortages of critical needs like insulin is: Does it cause unnecessary death and injury to Iranians? Of course. Will it result in policy changes on either side? Nah. Iran won't surrender and the Trump Administration will stubbornly and blindly continue a vicious, deadly policy.


This is very, very good news! The commenter points out that Fox News has already devoted 30 hours of coverage to the Hunter Biden "scandal" and...yep. No one's picking up on it.


The Trump Administration thinks therapeutics and vaccines are the answer. In the meantime, South Korea got their first Covid cases when the US did and as of 26 October, they've had fewer than 500 deaths. On just one day, 28 October, the US suffered 1,044 deaths. This is failure by any conceivable definition.


I've never favored the idea of term limits for legislators or governors, but as Supreme Court appointments have gotten more contentious and younger candidates get appointed, I like the idea of term limits there.


Olivia Troye quotes Jared Kushner:

“Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state..."

Why in the $#@% should governors have to "pound the phones" to get what the US should have supplied for them?!?!?! PPE was a 50-state need! All of the states needed it! We should have had a national program to produce the supplies we needed!!!


Truly amazing to go through both of these messages. In the first, we have a chart that shows empirically that wearing masks will lower your risk of catching the Covid. Period. No two ways about it. In the comment is a really horrifying message about how the President's team is going to rely on therapeutics and vaccines, all of which are far off in the future and very expensive. They're determined to sacrifice a short-term, highly certain and proven answer for a vague and fuzzy, far-off answer!


Again, the President shows, nearly four years into the job, that he simply cannot do the job with any degree of competence. He makes a comment that practically starts a war in Northern Africa. 

President slanders health care workers.


What’s absolutely amazing is that Dr. Fauci’s statement, thinking that, y'know, maybe masks should be mandatory, is considered the slightest bit controversial.


Worms frozen in ice are living after being thawed out. They're 32k and 41.7k years old.


Two-minute video on family separation policy.
Please note here that the President was asked about this, he had plenty of time to think about his answer and all he could come up with was to point out how clean the prisons were.


I agree. My reaction may make me a humorless old grouch, but Mike Huckabee, in his description of how he voted multiple times under different guises, isn't being funny in the slightest.


Good piece! And yes, I agree with her. I refer to her as "Representative AOC" rather than just AOC as the AOC simply refers to her name and doesn't include her official title.


From a Republican consultant who's part of the Lincoln Project:

But I never feared for the country if the Democrats won.
This year, for the first time in my life, I’m helping out the other side, because I very much do fear for the country under an even more unrestrained Donald Trump.

Case in point: "Trump Campaign Chief Calls US Rep. Ilhan Omar 'Dangerous'"


Hospitals are short of drugs and personnel to deal with the pandemic.


The Justice Department is still having a really hard time showing that Michael Flynn is innocent!


I agree with this. Where news is published, by which outlet, is important, but that’s not the determinant of whether it’s credible or not.


Last month, it was announced that there was evidence of life on Venus. Scientists weigh in on whether life really does exist there.


Interesting contrast between what the Attorney General thinks Antifa is doing and what the Boogaloo Bois are actually doing! A big "tell" is that the AG refers to "Antifa-like tactics." There are no such tactics as Antifa isn't a violent group or even a violent set of groups.


The President has been promising for years that his "great, new" healthcare plan is just around the corner.


MSNBC's Joy Reid gets pretty heated about the 1994 Crime Bill. Biden saw it and sees it as a public policy issue. Trump just sees it as PR. Biden is willing to go back and change things. Trump just wants to use it as a stick to hit Biden with.


Again, there’s simply no question on the biggest issue of all, climate change, which candidate is better.


This debate answer shows a compete and total lack of understanding of public policy. People can be locked up for lengthy periods, they can get really bad cases of cabin fever, but they can recover from that. You can’t recover from being dead. To correct his figures, it's true that 97% of people recover from coronavirus. 3% of them die. About 20% suffer serious complications


Megyn Kelly wants to know if COVID-19 is Trump's fault.

1. The coronavirus is a natural disaster, like a flood or a hurricane. no one started it, not China and not the President.

2. Would it have come to the US under a different leader? Of course. As Trump points out, it's worldwide.

3. Did the US death rate have to be as high as it is? No. Vietnam and Germany, among many others, have had a far lower number of deaths. that's what he's responsible for!

Date of Kelly's question: 23 October,
US suffered 6,555 deaths just on the 23rd.  Vietnam lost 35 total.
Germany lost 10,090 total. 


I find the President's whole "strategy" on handling COVID-19 to be quite murky. We allegedly can't "live in the basement," but that's how other countries have had such a low death rates. The very worst possible outcome is to die! His "strategy" means lots and lots of death!


By "media blackout," I presume Dinesh D'Souza is talking about the NY Post Hunter Biden story. As the British would say, it's a very "dodgy" story, full of holes that need explaining. Many folks are convinced it's a Russian influence operation.


I understand people don't like to speak ill of the dead, but we might,, before Limbaugh actually passes away, talk about how vile and destructive he was, how full of hate and viciousness and how he contributed to the pandemic by downplaying it. And yes, I still consider him partially responsible for encouraging Timothy McVeigh to conduct the Oklahoma City bombing.


Gotta wonder about where the President gets his scientific information:

Moments later, Trump added, in reference to mask-wearing to stop the spread of the virus, that he doesn't have a problem with masks, but "some people don't like it scientifically."


Woo hoo! The landing on the asteroid was successful!
The asteroid is about as wide as the Empire State Building is tall.
Context: Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun, Mars is 133 million miles, the asteroid Bennu is at 105 million miles.


The problem with being run by a dictator, part zillion and infinity! President's people have to walk back a hasty and ill-considered tweet.

Autocracies and theocracies have a really hard time dealing with epidemics as dealing with an epidemic/pandemic requires respect for science and a free flow of information.


"Lawyers say they can't find the parents of 545 migrant children separated by the Trump administration"
Alledgedly, supposedly, theoretically, QAnon cares very deeply about keeping children safe from pedophiles, sex trafficking, etc. Will they care about these children?
Update (28 Oct): There's a “Save The Children" subgroup within QAnon, but it's not clear that they're doing much of anything about migrant children in particular.

Totally and absolutely unacceptable! A Miami police officer wears a mask with the name of the President on it.

Of course Matt Schlapp, who works in the White House, backs the officer up.

But the Police Department of Miami does not.
(20 Oct)


How much of a "pathological liar" is Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff? Well, Schiff made a large number of accusations during the House impeachment inquiry. Republicans had blocks of uninterrupted time (some blocks as long as 45 minutes) and the Republican-led Senate had the option of holding a trial for the President. Nowhere did the GOP present evidence that Schiff had ever told anything but the truth.


This is a very, very old argument!

Tiffany Trump says her dad can't be a bigot because her 'best friends are gay'

It used to be used to refer to Black people. "Some of my best friends are negroes" racists would exclaim. What it means is that bigots like her daddy "promote" their gay friends to "honorary straight" status.


"...illegal extremist Israeli squatter settlers..." hack, burn and destroy Palestinian olive trees.


Y'know, if I were a Republican, I'd be very deeply concerned that my President was really falling off the deep end. Trump is very upset that news media isn't taking what's obviously a Russian influence operation as objective and trustworthy news.


We're number 1!
Not in any sort of good way, of course.
Brazil and India are the only two other countries where the COVID-19 death toll is above 100k.
US - 220k, Brazil - 154k, India - 114.6k. 


Blogger figures the most likely route to getting Hunter Biden's emails was his smartphone. Can we trust anything that was obtained in the resulting pile of documents? No. It very likely contains lots of other material that were added later.


Hmm. Yup! Sure sounds like Sudan has agreed to pay the US and in return, they'll get removed from the terrorist list.


This piece was printed in our local paper today. It talks a great deal about the economy and how great the President has been for it. The problem with this thesis is...why? Nowhere in the piece does the author explain which specific policies led to this great improvement. My own hunch, of course, is that Trump simply inherited a good economy from the last president.
The piece also discusses lockdows vs a freer economy with bars, restaurants and concert halls being opened up. How are people supposed to improve the economoy if they're dead?!?!?! BTW, Sweden is abandoning its looser approach because it just isn't working.


Yet that Coen Brothers crew of Rudy/Bannon/etc are crowing that they have a ton more...

Yeah, I agree that if they've got any further October Surprises, it's too late. Between early voting and voting by mail, they can't possibly do anything that will "move the needle" enough in time.

And if there are "hidden Trump supporters," why don't they show up in money contributions to the Trump campaign?


Hadn't heard about this part of the Senator Cornyn interview. I've paid intermittent attention to trade policy under Trump, but never got the impression that things were going all that well.


Sigh! Dr. Anthony Fauci, our chief epidemiological expert and we’re right now in the middle of a pandemic, has his life threatened and so has to do his runs with bodyguards.

States that got slammed with the coronavirus early are doing better than the states that said they had nothing to worry about and so didn't have to take precautions 'cause, y'know, COVID-19 was a "Blue state problem."


The arms embargo on Iran that was negotiated by the Obama Administration expires today. Russia can now legally sell Iran an S-400 air defense system. US can still apply unilateral sanctions, but can’t get any other nations to join in. If nothing else, we’ll see increased military cooperation between Russia and Iran. The two countries have a mutual problem with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Update (16 Nov): Russia has brokered a truce that has left Azerbaijan happy, but Armenia infuriated


Yep! Noor Bin Ladin finds it harder to be a Trump supporter than to bet he niece of Osama bin Laden!


WTAF?!?!?! It’s far from clear that the President played any meaningful role in the arrest of people who wanted to kidnap and execute Governor Whitmer. His words and actions and those of his people have been hostile, full stop.


Yeah, very interesting how NY Times does a story on Hillary Clinton being unpopular in 2016 without once acknowledging their own role in making her unpopular by harping on "Her Emails."


An official under Governor Whitmer of Michigan wants to discuss the violent extremist in that state. The head of the RNC wanted to discuss "court packing," the desire of Democrats to compensate for the judges put into courts over the past several years on party-line votes.


This is really quite sad. Lara Trump (Wife of second son Eric) insists she's not trying to diagnose Biden from afar. But very clearly, that's exactly what she's doing! Good for Jake Tapper for cutting her off!


How insane is QAnon? JFK Jr., who perished in an airplane crash 21 years ago, is believed to be alive!


Not good. Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the Southern part of what used to be Russia’s Caucasus region and bordering on Iran, are fighting and the conflict is spilling over into Iranian territory.


Where did the President’s bizarre statement on mask-wearing and catching the coronavirus come from? Misinterpretations, sloppiness and a feedback loop.


Woo hoo! USPS agrees to reverse destructive "reforms" that Postmaster DeJoy put into place.


Charles Pierce, whose comment follows Scott Walker's, is correct. Any Republican who ignores the year-long refusal of the Senate to do its job and that then refused to confirm Merrick Garland is doing nothing more than shedding crocodile tears when they speak of balance on the Supreme Court.


The Pesident says that if he doesn't win Florida, he'll fire the governor. Do you think he's kidding? I don't think he's kidding. I think he's absolutely dead serious. Keep in mind that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been especially sycophantic toward the President, permitting widespread deaths from COVID-19. Florida has over a quarter of a million infections and almost 16k deaths out of a population of over 21 million.


The war on Yemen by Saudi Arabia is in its fifth year.

A third of Yemen’s infrastructure has been destroyed, mostly by Saudi and UAE air strikes, and over 100,000 have been killed.


Good! Rudy Giuliani had set it up to be the big “October surprise” that was going to upend the race. Actually worked like one of those exploding cigars you see in cartoons all the time.

Looking into the “scandal” of the emails of the Biden sons. Seriously, does anyone believe these fellows are going to use some computer repair guy out in town? They’re not going to have enough technology in their organizations to have their own in-house repair shop?


Mainstream Media (Bloomberg) confirms lefty blog conspiracy theory that Republican senators, as a group, are uninterested in spending anything to help the economy because that would make it harder for them to adopt their usual austerity stance after Biden (as expected) takes office.


Good! The head of the Census Bureau, Wilbur Ross, appears to be determined to go out honorably! Census data will be released to the President and the public at the same time.


My essay on why the President does not deserve a second term! Do I hate him? Not as much as I think he's incompetent and can't do the job.


Very good point! When the President leaves his usual cocoon of sycophantic yes-men and ventures into more real-world programming, people are astonished "OMG! Where do you get this crazy information?"


I think Biden has the better long-range plan for America and frankly, the world.


On the second Biden-Trump debate. The two candidates did separate TV appearances.

Gee. Modest expectations much?

He didn’t spend the whole time yelling, he didn’t piss himself… so this was as best as we could have hoped for.

Joe Biden drew about a million more viewers than Trump did, 14.1 as opposed to 13.1. Piece also looks at Nazis and social media.


Good point! “You Don’t Have to Publish Both Sides When One Side Is Fascism"


Still more news on the unbelievable toughness of tardigrades.


North Korea has run circles around the amateur President. After his term ends (Hope, hope, hope! Knock wood!), we'll look back on his relations with NK and declare it to be a total failure.


As Abraham Lincoln said in his re-election campaign "Don't change horses in the middle of the stream." Unfortunately, that's exactly what the Trump Administration did with data from the CDC! They introduced unnecessary and confusing reforms, trying to fix a system that was delivering reasonably satisfactory results.


Washington Times:

Protest leaders have said the marchers were peaceful and did not threaten the couple.

How do we know the protest leaders are correct? The complete lack of news concerning damage to anybody else's property! No one's property in the neighborhood suffered any damage, meaning had the McCloskey's remained inside or had they simply watched quietly from their porch, then no damage of any sort would have been done. They overreacted.


So the great unmasking "scandal" ends with a whimper and, in fact, a great deal of secrecy. There was simply no "there" there.


Judge Amy Coney Barrett explains originalism:

“I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. That meaning doesn't change over time…”

But meanings do change over time! The phrase “all men are created equal” means something different today. “Equal” hasn’t changed, but “men” most certainly has. It no longer refers to just white men who are landowners.

Good piece on what a complete crock the whole theory of "originalism" is. I was unimpressed by it when I first heard of it an have never seen it as anything other than a rhetorical stick that conservatives use to whack liberals with.


Yeah, sheer numbers of answers to media questions doesn't mean anything when the President just makes up "answers" off the top of his head!


If Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett would not carry out Republican plans to tear apart the Affordable Care Act because she's a mom and that would be immoral, doesn't that say something about those plans that the whole Republican Party supports?


Yeah, negotiations on Covid relief is really not a "BothSides" issue! Democrats have had their $%#@ together this whole time! It's the other side of the aisle that doesn't have any coherent proposals or strategy.


Hmm. So the President says he needs the support of suburban women (He was told not to use "suburban housewives" as that sounded too 1950s-ish), so his appeal is: "I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?" Erm...uh...okay.

So what does he mean by that? Ah, okay.

HUD revokes Obama-era rule designed to diversify the suburbs

Here's the video of the President's "ask." As someone pointed out, he usually talks to those who wear MAGA hats and are 110% on his side. He's not used to trying to persuade people who don't already agree with him.


The President promises a great health care plan! The Republican Party's been making exactly, precisely this boast since 2010 and Trump's been repeating it since 2015. This newer and better plan ain't gonna happen! Computer people call this "vaporware," software that's a great idea in theory, but just isn't happening.


Good! Amy McGrath kicked butt in last night's debate! McConnell is an old, washed-up, useless fellow who can't get anything done.

Update (2 Nov): McGrath lost 57.8% to 38.2%.


Yeah, why is the DOJ handling a purely personal dispute between the First Lady and a former friend of hers? Where is the national interest here?


For those who were awaiting economic relief from this President, ehhh, looks like you'll be waiting for a while.


A number of conservative right-wingers on Fox News and elsewhere were very enthusiastic about Sweden's looser, more casual approach to the coronavirus pandemic. Now that the studies are all in, it looks to be a lose-lose proposition all the way around.


Yeah, such a tough choice! [/snark]

This election is a tough call because one candidate was endorsed by both the Taliban and the KKK and the other was endorsed by a broad bipartisan coalition and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Tch, tch, tch! People ask the President what his second-tern agenda is! Don't people know that that's a terribly unfair question? Sure, every president running for reelection since George Washington has been able to answer that, but hey, y'know?


From March, but yeah. What exactly does Ivanka do in the White House?


How much of a case does the President have that he's doing a great job with Covid? Well, when he feels obliged to misrepresent Dr. Fauci, ehh, he clearly doesn't have much of a case.


So the second Covid wave is now hitting Europe at a point where they're fatigued from having battled their first wave.
The US, of course, never got past their first wave, so it's hitting us when we're even less prepared!


So, Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman is set to play Cleopatra. Seen a few films on Cleopatra and did some reading. Was unaware of the recent research that says her mother was African. So she was probably someone of mixed ancestry like Meghan Markle as opposed to someone White like Gadot.


I recorded this PBS Frontline show on the federal government providing supplies for the pandemic. What particularly infuriated me was when the President had a "meeting" with regular doctors (Around the 30 minute marl in the episode). With Trump sitting down, everybody else standing and everyone facing the camera (Trump had to crane his neck back to talk to people), it was crystal clear that the "meeting" was intended to be nothing more than a quick photo-op. The President clearly had no interest in getting input from the field.


Hmm. I watched the first few shows of The Boys, abusive out-of-control vigilante super heroes. Seems their new antagonist is a crusading Representative AOC-analogy who's trying to use federal investigations to rein in the rogue super heroes.


The President is asked where he might have picked up the coronavirus:

"They had some big events at the White House."

As though he wer some far-off, disinterested observer.


The President conducts a rally on the White House lawn.
The Hatch Act that requires federal employees to be politically neutral and that says federal property shouldn't be used in a partisan manner, doesn't apply to the President or Vice-President, so it can be argued that this campaign rally wasn't technically in violation. It did enormous damage to the animating idea of the Hatch Act!

The piece makes it very clear that the rally on the White House lawn was a massive violation of the Hatch Act!


Yeah, gee! Funny how these “mistakes” occur! Someone who’s up for a Supreme Court nomination keep “forgetting” that she spoke at events and took part in groups that both show in an extremist light.
Kinda like how Jared Kushner had to keep revising his financial disclosure statements time after time. 


Very sad. The Secretary of State and the President both appears to really, really want a war with Iran. A very strong argument to vote these clowns out!

Woo hoo! The President wins that all-important endorsement! The Afghanistan Taliban wants to see him serve a second term!


Yeah, the President keeps pushing these completely evidence-free charges of voter fraud, obviously to serve as an excuse when he loses the vote in November.\


After the President said he had Covid, people wished for him to die. Twitter said it was against their policy for people to say that on their media platform. "The Squad" and many other Black and Brown people said "Oh really? You've had such a policy? Since when?"


The Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was essentially shut down by mid-2017.


The worldwide pandemic did nothing to slow down Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.


In 2002, the younger George Bush started up the whole concern about voter fraud, the idea that individual voters would vote more than once. By 2005, investigations showed that such a thing does occur, but at a microscopic rate (A study of a billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014 found 34 credible charges of voter fraud), but the President has frequently charged Democrats with using voter fraud to get people into office and to deny Republicans their rightful victories, he praised VP Pence’s debate answer that cited voter fraud for mail-in ballots.


Mike Pompeo’s War On Iran


I agree. To say that what the President is doing constitutes a “strategy” is to enormously overstate it.


MODOK's a Stan Lee-Jack Kirby creation from the 60s presented in stop-motion animated series and saddled with all sorts of problems that, of course, never even occurred to the original character. Looks pretty fun!


Again, the NY Times is not a friend to liberals! They're good for publishing leaks and science stuff and specific reporters with specialized sources, but they're treating the President's interview with Rush Limbaugh way too nicely!


Exactly! If VP Pence were a true Christian who actually followed the teachings of Christ, no one would have a problem with his alleged "faith."


Good twitter thread on poverty and terrorism. I recall back in college that we teased a buddy on how it's always the colonels who launch coups. Colonels are wealthy and powerful enough to have real influence, but are small enough to be ambitios for more. 


And the President is still strenuously pushing a failed policy that's doing nothing but infuriating Iran.


Heh! Vice-President debate post-motem: The single most important thing that VP Pence had to do was to win over suburban women. By talking over both Senator Harris and the moderator, Pence reminded every woman of every man who had ever interrupted her or talked over her!


Again, with the ngotiation over a stimulus bill, the President relies on his usual playbook, demand everything now! and give nothing to the other side. Yeah, for some odd, puzzling, mysterious reason [/snark], he keeps ending up empty-handed!


Yeah, remember this cute little message (17 April, Trump wrote "Liberate Michigan!") that suggested that a violent uprising was just what Michigan needed? The blogger in a piece here draws a direct connection between this message and the attempted kidnapping and execution of the Michigan governor.

Yep, President’s really upset that the FBI

“...foiled a dangerous plot against the Governor of Michigan. Rather than say thank you, she calls me a White Supremacist…”

Well, yeah! The thing that inspires the President to complain is that he’s part of the problem! He’s not part of the solution. He probably knew nothing about what the FBI was doing until it was done.

Good work by the FBI in surveilling and infiltrating the group! Very interesting to see how the group was inspired by the President's encouragements.

Of course, blaming Governor Whitmer isn't exactly helping matters.

Update (14 Nov): Biden won Michigan by 2,795k to 2,649k or 50.6% to 47.9%.


Whooo-weeee!!! In one of the clips provided here, the President thinks he absolutely mopped the floor with Biden! Delusional much? In this CNN piece, the polls are very much saying that Biden gained from the debate!


Yeah, I'd classify this as a journalistic failure. Peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of democracy.


So how are we doing on the coronavirus? Ehh, not good. Not good at all.


Again, it’s far from clear that “spying on a campaign” is a scandal, let alone “THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!!,” but yeah, the fact that the President made that the  centerpiece of his re-election argument in the first place shows an enormously weak case for re-electing him..


People have been wondering why Susan Page, the moderator of the Vice-President's debate, is giving VP Pence so many breaks. Appears she has a serious conflict of interest in having helped out a protege of Pence's.

Heh! The Merriam-Webster Dictionary site reports that during and after the debate, "Searches for 'smarmy' are up 5000%"

Love it! By 10:30, the Biden campaign already had a meme out of the fly landing on VP Pence’s head. Noticed comments about flies being attracted to crap. It had occurred to me that flies like corpses.

This is one of the reasons I like MSNBC interviewers. They ask lengthy, detailed questions, so it’s more difficult and obvious when politicians dodge them and answer what they want to answer.
Also, saw a poll on choice/abortion. Since 2003, the percentage of people who want to ban abortion have consistently been about 30%, give or take five points. VP Pence appeared to acknowledge this by dodging a straight answer to a question on choice. 

Senator Harris didn’t have a lot of real zingers, but she methodically hit all of the targets she was aiming at.
Harris pointed out that out of 50 judicial appointees, 7 were Asian-American and just one was Latino. Not a single one was Black.


Great parody of "Evita!"


A look at how Yemen has been faring lately.


The President's "plan" for dealing with the coronavirus shows us why dictatorship is a terrible idea. The President clearly wasn't thinking straight and, unlike Ronald Reagan during the later part of his presidency, Trump didn't have anyone like Nancy to realize that her husband wasn't up to the job. and to take appropriate action.

The President really, really wants to appear to be a leader. Problem with that is that if your commands are chaotic and contradictory, no one's going to follow with any confidence.
Senate Majority Leader McConnell appears to know what he's doing, not that anyone should take comfort in that.


Nah, the coronavirus just exposed a person who was never qualified to be in the Oval Office to begin with. Trump was just fundamentally incapable of doing the job.


Sigh! The "Great Dealmaker" tosses in his jersey and heads to the showers long before the game had even reached half-time. No negotiations on any further stimulus.

Sounds like the President is "suffering" a massive attack of common sense and straight thinking!

Ah well. The grand strategic decision lasted ... three hours?


Eddie Van Halen passes away. He was 65.


A bit over three minutes, a really, really excellent ad!


When a plastic item is tossed into the ocean, it breaks down into micro-plastics. Micro-plastics can b found in oceans all over the world! There's up to 14 million tonnes of the stuff!


Please take note that the advertised Frontline PBS report completely and totally contradicts the recent White House talking point, that doctors were well-supplied.


"Grilled On Fox News, WH Aide Insists Misleading The Public Is 'A Common Medical Practice’"
But "raising confidence" isn't the doctor's job! No, the doctor isn't reassuring some nervous spouse. He's supposed to be giving the American people some straight information about if the President can do the job he's hired to do!


Patti LuPone weighs in on the President’s balcony performance last night.


Kyle Rittenhouse to be charged with first-degree intentional homicide. Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty, so Rittehouse is looking at life in prison.


Pretty cool! People 300k years ago using low-temperature fire to aid in precision cutting of rocks to make tools.


"Aughh! The stupid! It burns!"
Aide to the President gives us a lot of nonsense.


Kayleigh McEnany, 2/25/20:

"We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here… isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?”

Oops! She's now caught it as well! As they say "That didn't age well."


Ana Navarro a Republican Never-Trumper, delivers a good, heartfelt, righteous rant!
Hear! Hear!


Good! The polls are in. The President’s debate performance was absolutely disastrous for him!


On the President’s 5 MPH drive around the block, or “What happens when Hope Hicks isn’t around to talk him out of doing stupid things.”

Keep in mind that the President is very highly contagious at this point!

"Brad Blakeman: Trump Was Put On Oxygen Because He's 'Like A Robust Quarterback On The Sidelines'"
Erm, the President sits around watching TV and tweeting most of the day. That, plus being as old and as heavy as he is, puts him in a very high-risk health group.


Used to be (1979-1990) that during the summer, the ice in the Arctic would shrink from 16 million square kilometers to 7 million. Now (2020) it’s gone from a little over 14 million to under 4 million!


It’s not just that the President was irresponsible, it was that his staff also didn’t do anything to protect American national security either!

Let’s not overlook the role that Fox News played in the President catching the coronavirus.

Okay, so there's a balance between "hiding in the basement," (That is, wearing a mask and proper social distancing) and between being outright and being in crowds and shaking hands without having a mask on. Obviously, the President was wrong and was too casual and cavalier!

The President just couldn't care less who in the White Hose complex catches COVID-19. "Ehh! Bunch of peasants want to work someplace that's safe. Sucks to be them!"


This is what we mean by “Both Sides-ism.” An article that’s about the GOP and the coronavirus and how the GOP has handled it so poorly is about “Washington DC” and “Politicians.”


This fellow’s Twitter feed is well worth reading. Lots of righteous outrage.


Blogger feels that the update on the President's health (He has the coronavirus) feels very "Soviet." Authorities are like "We will tell you what we feel you need to know."


Iran has spent on influencing events around the Persian Gulf roughly what they spent on the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s. An examination of costs and benefits for Iran.


QAnon is a group full of crazy whackjobs. Why is it so difficult to denounce them?

The delusional nonsense has become more politically relevant of late, in part because at least one of its adherents will soon be elected to Congress, in part because of the president's deeply unfortunate rhetoric on the matter, and in part because a House Democrat this week started receiving death threats from QAnon followers.


I like this! Future President Biden focuses on the important part. Good priorities!


Right-wing stuff that shows up in my spam folder. Kind of interesting. The cyclist gets tangled up with foreigners who take exception to his pro-Trump statements. The piece quotes a comment:

"...I refused to cheer for anyone who supports a racist, hateful fascist like [the US cyclist] does. I am officially rooting for everyone else.”

At no point does the piece explore why foreigners consider our President to be a "racist, hateful fascist!" They focus entirely on showing that "our hero," the put-upon American, is a victim of the racing association.


How did the White House handle coronovirus testing? It was careless, slipshod and thrown together in a ramshackle fashion. Yep, sounds typical for this White House.


Have seen Steve Cortes on clips from CNN a few times. Just strikes me as a total creep who has zero credibility, so it was a pleasure to see Ayman Mohyeldin from MSNBC verbally smack Cortes around!


President says he has no idea who the Proud Boys are. CNN's Brianna Keilar brings the receipts!

Yes, Barack Obama and Donald Trump both used the phrase "stand by." What was the difference? Context.


Awful lot of the President's language seems to be directly lifted from der Fuhrer.


Huh! Untrained poll "watchers" (who have no idea what they're supposed to be "watching") are being prevented from entering certain areas. And yeah, we're getting lots of false reports of "misconduct."


Sorry to hear that Presidential aide Hope Hicks has COVID-19. The Trump Administration has, of course, been wildly irresponsible in how they've handled the pandemic, both among themselves and as far as public safety has gone.

President caught it too.

Thoughts on the President catching COVID-19: I posted a pictured of a member of a Texas boat parade for Trump who is in great distress. The water was warm and relatively shallow, no one got seriously hurt and safety was within easy swimming distance. As the quote from Voltaire went: "Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." We liberals had a good chuckle over this.
I really wish people would simply recognize that the President is a wannabe fascist dictator. I'd rather he not die of a deadly disease. I'd rather that people simply wake up and realize that this country is doing very poorly with him in charge.


President Trump's criticisms ofJoe Biden's 1994 crime bill were good ones, but what has Trump done about the bill over the last three-plus years?!?!?! This is the very first time I heard of the President having anything to say about the quarter of a century-old bill.


At about the 2:00 minute mark, the Press Secretary defends the President's diplomatic style. It reminded me of a photo-cartoon that National Lampoon ran in the late 70s. It a had a fellow leaning back and asking "Who would you rather have representing you, Mean Joe Green or Cyrus Vance?"
McEnany appears to suggest that Mean Joe Green would be the better choice. But let's have a look at Trump's Iranian policy. It's been mean and in-your-face, but it's also been a complete failure. Trump has accomplished zippo on that front.


Cool! The actress who will play Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel has been chosen. Iman Vellani was asked a while ago who she'd like to play. “Iron Man... duh.” But she's settling for Ms. Marvel.


It's not just Europeans who are concerned. The Arab world also feels the US is going the route of a banana republic.


John Ratcliffe shows yet again why he has no business being in his position. Sending, curses, hate and discontent again to the Republican senators who confirmed him to be the DNI anyway.


Yeah, the President's instruction to the Proud Boys to "Stand by," was neither a gaffe nor an error. Trump weighed costs and benefits and went with his base voters.

Not surprisingly the Proud Boys are pleased with President's reaction to them.


Yeah, one would hope that would be an initial figure and that we'd ramp up. For the President to say 200k vaccinations a day would be enough suggests he didn't arrive at that figure in consultation with anyone.


"Judge grants 2-day extension for release of Breonna Taylor grand jury recordings"
He initially asked for a weeks delay, the judge said two days was enough. Other side has agreed to the delay. He apparently never asked jury to consider charging the police in Breonna Taylor's death.


No, Megyn Kelly. Biden is right and the President does not get that point because Antifa is not an organization.


Yeah, the Commission on Presidential Debates had four years to realize what a disaster the debate with Trump would be. Fire the whole crew! They’re all useless.

Chris Wallace had no clue either. He had no idea why the debate went off the rails, even after Trump’s been in office for nearly four years.


September


Ah yes! Our favorite Congresswoman (Representative Katie Porter) with a whiteboard scribbles more numbers to embarrass still more wealthy executives!


To get to this particular exchange, you'll have to click on the Aaron Rupar entry and then scroll to the sixth screen down. Very good point by Biden! The President has made a lot of wild, unsubstantiated claims! 

Our blogger was horrified by the disinformation on many topics.


"Marvel 616 Follows Marvel Stories From the Viewpoint of Multiple Filmmakers"
Looks like an interesting series! DC Comics regards their basic, essential Earth as Earth 1. Marvel Comics has adopted Earth 616 as their basic, essential Earth.


What was the issue that got suburban women turned against the President? The fact that he was a bully. What did he do last night? Showed everyone he was a bully! The main electoral problem for Trump was that nobody changed their minds about him.

Ana Navarro identifies who the adult in the room was.


Good! People took the Senate Majority Leader’s 2016 action seriously enough that they think the Senate should hold off on picking another Supreme Court Justice.


The Fox News go-to, all-purpose explanation as to why people oppose this President is “hate.” This is a nice, simple explanation that doesn’t require them to examine in detail why we oppose him.


My takeaway from the 2017 march in Charlottesville and the President’s reaction to it was that white supremacists are his people, the group he most closely identifies with. He proved again last night that was true.


Oh, good grief!

A President Biden would be a hostage to the progressives...

Sure, okay. I'd go with that.

...issuing reassuring bromides

Uh, that is not what we'd be asking of a President Biden! The House passed over 400 bills in 2019, none of which were taken up by the Senate.


We've got the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) space telescope, devoted exclusively to examining exoplanets (planets around stars other than our own).


This was my very first suspicion, that the Kurds in Northern Syria were thrown under the bus because Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's leader, has some financial leverage over Trump.


The President's real attitude towards Black voters! He tried to stop them from voting in 2016. 


Yeah, if you're not a super-loyal follower of the President, you quickly realize that "Fake News" simply means news that the President doesn't like.


So court rulings, like laws, are for the little people?

Commerce secretary says 2020 U.S. census will end Oct. 5, despite judge ordering it to continue to end of October.

Is Wilbur Ross of the Census Bureau just saying "$%#@ y'all" to a judge?

"'Agitated' Don Jr. Throws Jell-O At The Wall As Dad's Taxes Made Public"
You nervous, bro? You sure sound nervous. You talking awfully loud and fast for someone who's confident that he's got a case.


Good to hear that the Durham investigation isn't preparing anyone for bombshells, because they're probably looking at the one-day story of the Senate Homeland Security investigation's release. Durham is probably reasonable expecting his report to have the same impact. It'll hit the table with a dull thud and will just sit there until it's forgotten. BTW, the Clinton Foundation was thoroughly examined in 2016. Nothing scandalous was uncovered.


So did the President pay "tens of millions" in taxes or less than $1k? There's an easy way to prove his case and it's something he's fought tooth and nail for the last 3+ years. He could release his taxes.

Initial follow-up on the President's taxes including reaction from him. Yeah, he claims his taxes are still under audit! Note: politicians can release details of tax returns that are under audit.

At this point, my biggest concern about the President's taxes is that I'm sure Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey) were both fully aware of Trump's financial position and extracted lots of foreign policy goodies in return for their silence. In other words, that Trump was compromised.

Chris Hayes of MSNBC and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice examine the President’s indebtedness and what it means for our national security.

This is exactly what concerns me most about the President's finances:

This fact has frightening implications for public policy and national security. Even minor debts are a frequent reason for the government to deny a security clearance, for the obvious reason that indebted and financially desperate public servants make easy marks for bribery, blackmail and potential treason.


The Senate needs some seriously major reforms. Hopefully, Democrats will win a majority and they can then do some real overhauling to it.


Followers of political rhetoric noticed that folks in the press were deeply concerned about the religious beliefs of Obama, Biden and McCain in 2012. But as Palin was a Pentacostalist, that concern came to a screeching halt with her! The precurso to Pentacostalism was called Montanism and it was heretical back during the 2nd Century. It's less so today, but it requires a good deal of explanation to Joe and Jane Average, so the press prefers to simply ignore people who believe in that. Don't expect any regular press outlets to look into Barrett's Charismatic Catholicism.


"Trump On Pandemic: 'The Only Thing’ Administration Has Done Poorly Is Public Relations'"
I agree that the President's PR on handling the pandemic has been done very poorly, but no, I would not argue that was his only fault! One of the primary problems was the supplying of front-line health care people. Ventilators were eventually supplied, long after they should have been plentiful. Personal Protective Equipment (gloves, masks, face shields, etc.) was a serious problem and still is. Nah, I'd give him an "D-" on his handling of the coronavirus.


As more and more facts get revealed, the President is having to work harder and harder to defend his inaction and Dereliction of Duty (Subheading of Article 92 of the UCMJ) concerning the pandemic. This means he has to lie more and more.


WaPo ran a strongly pro-Amy Coney Barrett piece by someone who has known her well for many years. Allegedly, her only really strong, glaring fault is that she takes after the late Justice Scalia is being a strong "originalist," a concept I've always found to be deeply problematic.
Good counter to the above as guest argues strongly against her.


Moody's Analytics says the best thing that could happen to the US economy is for Biden to win and for the Senate to be flipped to the Democrats.


Bob Woodward claimed that, although the President was clearly a rotten person, Republican voters were okay. Maybe they were a bit misguided, but essentially okay. This shows...nope!
"Kyle Rittenhouse’s Mother Joins GOP Women’s Event While Son Awaits Trial; Gets Standing Ovation"


A look at the proposed Supreme Court Justice that they want to replace Justice RBG. 


This is why nobody trusts a vaccine that'll will allegedly be ready in time for the election!

The administration calls Moncef Slaoui, who leads its vaccine race, a “contractor” to sidestep rules against personally profiting from government positions. Slaoui owns $10 million in stock of a company working with his team to develop a vaccine.

Midwest states are spiking in cases. Nine months after many Americans were aware that the coronavirus was a serious threat, the US still doesn't have its act together.


"Trump asked a group of women at his campaign rally if their husbands 'are OK' with their attendance"
Remember, this President doesn't have a sense of humor nor does he ever engage in irony. Please don't regard anything he says as a joke.


"Trump claims Fox anchor Chris Wallace won't ask Biden 'tough questions' at debate"
Republicans have been using this strategy for several decades. It's called "workin' the refs." You beat up on the referee by accusing him or her of favoritism and in far too many real-life cases, the referee "compensates" by favoring the complainer.


"Trump pledges to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, designate KKK a terrorist group in pitch to Black voters"
The best proposal here is to support more broadband internet access. "Opportunity zones" have been around for a while and essentially help business owners (who generally tend to be white) much more than they do regular citizens. Overall, the President's plan to help Black people is like taking down statues of Confederate generals. It's a good beginning, but if I were Black, I wouldn't change my vote or give a dime to the President's reelection efforts.


Again, the NY Times is not a friend to liberals! They often break news that's helpful to our side, but please don't confuse them with the "Liberal Media." The Presient suggested he might not transfer power peacefully. That should have been featured prominently, it was buried instead.


Yeah, this is a very underwhelming Executive Order. The whole point about dealing with pre-existing conditions is that the structure of the ACA/Obamacare allows for taking care of them to be financed. It's not simply that health care providers are ordered to take care of pre-existing conditions, it's that the structure of the plan means that taking care of pre-existing conditions will be paid for. Just writing an EO that says "Take care of this" does nothing.

Confirmation that it’s not a well-thought-out plan.

Republican ideology opposes any actual steps that would be needed to make the resources available to cover people with expensive conditions: They hate regulating the insurance market to force cross-subsidies from the healthy to the sick, and they also hate new taxes and spending.

Someone criticized this strategy as naive, asking people with some conscience left to break from the Trump Administration. It's a good first step that shows confidence and it makes the other side nervous.

Here's a fellow who answered that call.


Cool! FBI Director Christopher Wray takes a hammer and a blowtorch to all of the President's favorite talking points. It's kind of close to the election to fire him, but who knows?


More voter suppression. Florida wants to charge felons who have served their time all of the money they may owe from their crime before they can vote. That's a poll tax. They want otherwise-legitimate voters to pay money before they can vote.
Michael Bloomberg wants to pay those fines for them. Ehh, she wants to contest that? Yeah, good luck with that!


The problem of space junk is a real and serious one as the ISS has had to dodge three items moving at about 6 miles a second this year alone.


Thoughts on restructuring the Supreme Court so that it can handle its caseload better.


Ron Johnson's anti-Biden memo lands with an embarrassing thud
The Republican Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee finally put out his long-awaited anti-Biden report.

How useless was the report of the Homeland Security Committee on Joe Biden's son in Ukraine? Here are the words of the head of that committee:

The report raises serious questions that former Vice President Biden needs to answer. There are simply too many potential conflict of interest, counterintelligence and extortion threats to ignore.

It's not the point of a Senate committee to "raise" questions, the point is to answer them!


For journalists who feel that the GOP is full of honorable, decent people, the Republican reaction to the death of Supreme Court Justice RBG should really have been a wake-up call.


If you feel at all depressed or demoralized by the concern over the President claiming that the casting of votes will be a "hoax," this is a good piece to read.
We must make the vote as overwhelming as possible! We must leave no doubt whatsoever that we reject this president's bid for a second term!


EMT Breonna Taylor received multiple gunshots while she was sleeping!!!
No-knock warrants are a major problem. It is entirely understandable and reasonable for the resident of a place that gets sudden, unannounced people breaking in at 1:00am, to open fire on them.
I feel a bit bad for the police officer who got a bullet from Taylor's boyfriend, but that's like feeling bad for infantrymen who are told to take a hill. Casualties are to be expected when you're serving a no-knock warrant. The anger here should be directed against people who feel a no-knock warrant is a safe and risk-free operation.


See this is why I often prefer news from the blogs. Sometimes, a sober, objective-seeming reporter emotionlessly reading out the news is just not appropriate! This is news that is infuriating and should make us mad!!! Emergency Medical Technician Breonna Taylor was shot and killed while asleep in her bed and not one policeman was charged.

Update (27 Oct):

Cameron alleged the grand jury “agreed” that the officers who shot Taylor ― Det. Myles Cosgrove and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly ― were justified in their actions ...
But Cameron’s comments led an anonymous juror to come out and say that prosecutors never presented the panel with homicide charges against the three officers involved in Taylor’s death.


Europe stands with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The President has, after several years of trying, completely and utterly failed to persuade anyone there that he could get a better deal.


The Rachel Maddow Show tracked down why the CDC watered down its recommendations in April. The CDC Director was ordered to do so by the head of the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services).


Yeah, okay. Young people with COVID-19 may suffer just a 0.1% mortality rate, but with a city like Pittsburgh with about 300k people, that's 300 families that lose a child to a preventable disease!


Advocating statehood for Puerto Rico is not some sinister Democratic plot. From at least Reagan up until the younger George Bush, Republicans were in favor of it.


The reason we had a surge in coronavirus cases isn't the slightest bit mysterious. It was due to behavior that would have, with competent leadership, been prevented.


They're tired of the President being put down, eh? Well, perhaps if he wasn't a wannabe fascist dictator, y'know, maybe we liberals wouldn't be so upset at him.


Someone pointed out that the structure of comickal book stories is that you start with order, a villain disrupts that order and the hero restores it, ergo, comics are conservative. Ehh, somewhat, sort of on the individual story level, yeah. As the piece here makes clear, geek culture as a whole is very progressive.


CNN's Brianna Keilar shows how it's done! She wants to know what the story is on the President's health care plan. At one point, the lying, exasperated spokespersom says:

MORGENSTERN: I appreciate your persistence. You now asked me the same question a number of times.

KEILAR: I have gotten the answer no times. I have not gotten an answer.


Heh! Senate Majority Leader McConnell puts out a "parade of horribles," things a Democratic Senate majority and a Democratic president would do. Actually, it's a really good list!


I thought Reagan was refreshing after Carter, but I soured on him by the summer of 1981. This a good ad. Shows how far we've declined under our current Presiden


No one in the story blames the President, but I regard this as a perfect example of "The fish rots from the head." For years, the President has moved money from Congressionally-approved projects to the Wall between the US and Mexico. The Pentagon is just doing as the boss does, ignoring Congress and spending on what it pleases.


Comprehending 200k deaths from the coronavirus. Total deaths from the Civil War were 620k. Combat deaths were 214k. We're approaching that latter figure.


What effect has it had that the President has set such a poor example on wearing masks?
*Sigh!* Here ya go!


Very sad sign of the times. Editor of the website had a pandemic question and never even bothered to check the CDC or FDA websites because they've lost so much credibility over the last few months.


Heh! Yeah, "complacency" is not a Democratic concern at the moment!


This fellow also did a whole series of tweets today examining what it is that makes America great.

When a politician praises an all-white audience in a predominantly-white state for their "good genes," you don't get to act like his campaign isn't entirely based around white supremacy.


"‘Watchmen’ Makes History as First Comic-Book Adaptation to Earn Top Emmy"
Woo hoo! And yeah, I read the comic when it came out in the late 80s. Is this an adaptation of the story? Ehh, it's a sequel. A continuation of the story in the comic/movie.


Hmm. At the 1:35 mark, Secretary Azar says that they're carrying out tests on three promising vaccines and have prepared "millions of doses." Suppose you make a spaghetti sauce and taste tests reveal the sauce needs a bit more garlic and should be a bit thicker, but you've already produced tens of thousands of cans. Shouldn't assembling the doses come after perfecting the recipe for the vaccine?
Also, if manufacturers have liability protection, what about us regular citizens/consumers?
And yeah, Azar lays on the Dear Leader praise really thick at the end.


I notice the President's spokesperson doesn't cite the Speaker making specific threats just that "We have arrows in our quiver." Question is, why is getting a new Supreme Court Justice seated right now a matter of tremendous urgency when it was a very leisurely and casual matter back in 2016?


"Justice Department deems New York City, Portland and Seattle 'anarchist jurisdictions'"
As a buddy of mine said "Words have no meaning now." The AG's charge was sorta, kinda true for Portland, OR, but the city was settling down and the situation was improving when unidentified federal troops came in and escalated the violence in the city. NYC and Seattle are simply liberal cities run by Democrats where the Trump Administration wants to clamp down.


Senator Graham defends breaking his word of 2016 because of what Democrats did in 2013. Why did Democrats cut back the filibuster then? Because Republicans were horrendously abusing that power!
Reminder: The filibuster is not in the Constitution. It's strictly a Senate tradition.


Huh! Interesting.

Julian Assange was offered a presidential pardon if he helped to resolve the "ongoing speculation about Russian involvement" in the hacking of Democratic National Cmte. emails leaked during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, a London court was told Friday.


NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd is upset that Trump is President, but she provided some assistance in getting him there in the first place.


Covid is a preexisting condition. 6.75 million have caught it. It’s fatal for about 3% and causes immense damage to many of the survivors.

...damage can be immediate, chronic, recurring, or hidden in the body only to show up years later.

If we go back to a pre-ACA world, that could have an absolutely catastrophic effect on millions and millions of people.


A right-winger blames Democrats for appoing Supreme Court Justices that decided Roe vs Wade. I did a paper on abortion way back when. The real story on it was not how it became legal, but how it became illegal back in the 1880s. Roe vs Wade was a return to the norm.


"Trump Blames Blue States For The Country’s High Coronavirus Death Toll"
In 2012, New Jersey was hit with Hurricane Sandy. At the time. it was run by a Republican governor. Barack Obama didn't care. He went in to help New Jersey anyway. Whether they had voted for him was beside the point. He was the President of America. He came to the assistance of an American state! Because Obama understood what his job was all about!


Gaza in still more trouble.

Gaza’s crisis is multifaceted. The Israeli siege, combined with the massive destruction from the previous war, has left Gaza in the throes of a major humanitarian disaster. With electricity outages reaching up to twenty hours per day and with fuel supplies running low, Gaza was barely functioning, to begin with.


Note the great concern that the anti-choicers here shows for the actual desire of Americans to deny women control of their reproduction. They say words to the effect of: "Yeah, yeah, Americans have no desire to pursue our agenda. Whatevuh! We've got a majority on the Supreme Court so $%#@ 'em!"

I was curious about popular opinions on abortion, and so looked at this site.
According to the first entry, a running question asked by CBS News since 2003, the average of people who favor no restrictions on abortions has been 36.8%, those who favor more extensive restrictions 37.4% and those who favor banning it entirely only 21.9%,
So it's pretty clear that the enthusiasm of anti-choicers for rapidly replacing RBG is based entirely on personnel changes on the Supeme Court and not on changes in popular opinion. They're essentially "forcing the change down our throats."

Representative AOC weighs in on the utter shamelessness of the Republican Party in their desire to fill RBG's seat before the election.

Senator Tom Cotton comes up with all sorts of fancy, clever justifications, but Chris Wallace is right. Republicans are exercising total and utter hypocrisy and double-dealing.


Yeah, Senator Lindsey Graham is going to vote to replace RBG well before the election because...reasons.

Again, why would pro-Trumpers do this sort of thing if they had any confidence they'd win a fair and free election?


Ahhhh! (Sigh of pleasure and relief) Students proving to be determined and innovative in the face of challenges!


Jeanine Pirro makes a good point about "Notorious RBG" being a bit of a judicial activist. Thing is though, she was never in a position to simply insist that the Court follow her lead. She had to persuade people she was right!
BTW, if judges are expected to check their opinions at the door, why has the Republican-led Senate been working so hard to install right-wing judges over the past several years?


Wow! Just...wow! The President makes a pro-Robert E. Lee speech! Absolutely murders historical facts, of course. That's to be expected.


US is in about the top 40% in terms of COVID deaths per million, but is off the %$#@ing chart for total deaths!

Update (22 Sep): US deaths from COVID-19 reach 200k. Total deaths for world on 30 Sep was 1.01 million.


From a strategy post: “We need to inflict massive political pain for an act that will produce minimum Republican gains.”


Very sad to hear of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She will be missed.

RBG's legacy.

Demonstrating all the principles of a hungry jackal, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of course wants to confirm a new Supreme Court Justice right away. It was in February 2016 that Justice Scalia died, about eight months before Election Day, it's now about seven weeks until Election Day, but ehh, who cares about principle?

Schumer Throws McConnell’s Words On SCOTUS Vacancy Right Back At Him

Of course RBG's seat should be filled by the next President!


I take a look at why the Trump Administration failed in it's response to the coronavirus so badly.


People have asked the question: "How violent were the BLM protests after the murder of George Floyd?" Out of about 7,750 separate protests, 93% were completely peaceful and there were 38 serious incidents.


Yeah, the likelihood of having a vaccine produced, tested and ready to go by the end of October (That is, right before the election) is very unlikely in the extreme. The idea of producing 100 million doses by then is even less likely. A reporter who just uncritically repeat what the White House Chief of Staff says is worse than useless.


Historians aren’t in the business to be cheerleaders, historians write books to explain why things happened. They have no interest in the President’s new project, to write books as celebrations of American history.


Gee, it’s almost like the President copied his Executive Order directly from what the meat industry executives provided him with.


Right after I finished reading this, how it matters that there’s a strong Republican anti-Trump group but no corresponding Democratic anti-Biden group, I saw this other item about Olivia Troye, someone who was in the room for the first several months of the Vice-President’s coronavirus task force and who strongly urges us all to vote for Biden!


Good! The Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Washington has ruled that the reforms put in place by the Postmaster General have caused great harm to the 2020 election and must stop immediately!


So what are the anti-choicers up to now?!?!?!
Important item to remember, they're also against birth control! That's not a bug in the movement, that's a feature.


The Republican Party has a new platform for 2020, but "many of the 17 points are commitments to keep doing the same thing both parties are already doing."


Oh, okay. The press briefing is told that many stakeholders within the Trump Administration are working on a new health care plan. A reporters names one important medical official who hasn’t heard anything about any such plan. The Press Secretary says the reporters will simply have to get a job in the administration to find out what the plan is.


Jared Kushner said in an interview:

"When we got to Washington, President Trump had never done this before and I think it took him a while to figure out who were the right people that he wanted to have around him in his administration, but I think over time he's really figured out who was with him, who was not on his agenda."

Clearly, what Trump wanted were sycophants and yes-men. He wanted people who would give crisp salutes and who would do as he told them to, regardless how bad an idea it was.

What we can see here ("Laura Ingraham Whines About Trump 'Ambush' By Undecided Voters At ABC News Town Hall") are the results of having that sort of team. Faced with a critcal audience, Trump was completely flustered.

CNN's Dana Bash is just shocked to see that the President prefers to be surrounde by sycophants and yes-men.


Another Moon landing planned for 2024.


The agreement signed yesterday between Israel and some oil-rich Gulf states does not mean peace between Israel and Palestinians.


Not really sure why Antifa would start forest fires in California. Why wouldn't they do that in Republican states? Anyway, as far as forest management goes, a senator mentioned something yesterday. If you clear-cut, just raze a forest all at once and then let it regrow, it grows back so that trees are too close together and they're all the same height, thereby making it really easy to burn. Good forest management would involve the selective cutting of trees! That would be more complicated and expensive, meaning free-market capitalism will never do it, but it would be better in the long run.


When will life go back to normal? Ehh, we'd better stop hoping and dreaming and better start knuckling down and start seriously working at making that happen.


What he means is "herd immunity" and it's an absolutely insane way to deal with a very deadly and highly communicable disease.


"Trump Now Claims Biden-Harris Are Both ‘Fascist’ and Antifa"
This is, of course, a complete contradiction in terms. So the question is, is the President stupid or is he secure in the knowledge that his audience is? Or is it that when you're at a rally, critical thinking is beside the point and an audience member is just primed to cheer what ever Our Glorious Leader says?


Some cheerful polling data for y'all! What was the effect of the Black Lives Matter Movement versus that of the President's "Law 'N' Order" messaging? The effect in Wisconsin, the site of the last confrontation was that the President's message fell completely flat!


President claims he read Woodward's 466-page book last night. Fellow here is right! Ask President to prove it!


Especially starting at the 5:45 mark, Kushner just engages in sheer, utter historical revisionism. He portrays a picture of the Trump Administration's response to the coronavirus that's just completely untethered from reality.


Yeah, this post had a "laugh," "anger" and "sad," all of which are richly deserved.

"...Donald J. Trump has been tested as few other presidents have and is the proven leader to confront these dangers."

Has he been tested? Sure. "proven leader?" Ha, ha, ha!!! Not even close. We're not even on the same plane of reality with the fellow who wrote that, let alone members of the same universe!


Life on Venus? There's a gas that's produced by biological processes. The atmosphere of Venus is hostile to that gas, so something living must be producing it.


This was a story that painted the BLM movement in a very negative light. But we have an active set of people who produce the news and the truth will eventually win out. This is why I rarely credit initial news reports. As I find is thoroughly typical,  the story is not completely false. It was initially reported that a whole group of people were chanting that wounded police officers should die.  The truth was that just one idiot said that!


I was Navy, not a ground-combat kinda service-member, but as a former military person, I know the value of having good intelligence on the enemy, in this case, the coronavirus. Trump's people actively interfered with getting and disseminating good intelligence of what COVID-19 was up to, thereby hurting efforts to combat it.


Yeah, people protesting players kneeling was never about flags or veterans or anything like that.


President make himself clear, he's the candidate of white Americans!


No attempts at social distancing and not a mask in sight after Bob Woodward showed that the President doesn't care about people dying unnecessarily.

Woodward goes into detail about the President's COVID-19 failure of leadership. And yeah, it's tough to have "alerted the authorities" about the President's failure when the President was "the authority."


Does the US "lead the world" in the coronavirus pandemic? Well, yeah. But not in any good or positive way.


Woo hoo! Belarus keeps pressing for democracy! Yeah, this may be us if the Trump Administration keeps going the way it's going!


The man in the video being tackled, his face pressed against the ground and left unconscious-looking with a bloody nose was a passenger in a Lyft vehicle when the driver had been stopped! What was the problem? The driver has been stopped for a moving violation. The passenger didn't have any ID on him! 


Not really clear, did the President order an extra-judicial killing, did he simply encourage it or does he limit himself here to justifying it after the fact? We don't know enough to judge. This requires a serious investigation.
The death penalty is bad enough. We shouldn't have that in the first place. An extra-judicial killing by government forces is necessary?!?!?! I think they call that "moral bankruptcy."


CNN's Jake Tapper does a good job pushing back against Peter Navarro. And he's right, Navarro never answered the question. The thing that really bothers me is that Navarro says twice that the strategy was to "hope for the best, prepare for the worst." Preparing for the worst never happened! To have prepared for the worst would have meant to get production lines up and running, it would have meant a national coordination of supplies, not state-by-state scrambling and driving up prices because everyone was bidding for the same equipment. No, the Trump Administration failed very badly.


Ronna McDaniel's (RNC Chair) response to the accurate criticism that the President essentially slacked off and didn't do $%#@ by engaging in "whataboutism." That is, she asks "Well, what about...?"


Bob Woodward's book covers a conversation between Senator Lindsay Graham and the President. Graham comes off like a sane, rational adult, Trump as childlike in his thinking.


It's crazy that Rudy Giuliani is openly colluding with Russian agent Andriy Derkach, but what's even crazier is that US Senators and Congressmen are working with them!


Good! Biden takes a clear and unequivocal, pro-science stand on wildfires and climate change! 


How schools around the world are welcoming back students.


Good! We like it when the President burns bridges and offends allies! Does Fox News host Chris Wallace hate Trump? Ehh, I doubt that, I think Wallace is more just an old-school newsman who likes facts and dislikes “Dear Leader” sycophancy.


"'Antifa Arson' Hoax Rumors Spread About Wildfires In Besieged West Coast Areas"
1. QAnon is, as with their pedophilia charges, not only useless to law enforcement, but actually hurt efforts to fix the issue.
2. This idea fails my WWDDD test. What Would Doctor Doom Do? Why would the good doctor start fires in liberal areas? Why aren't Louisiana and Alabama burning?


You can tell Greg Gutfeld's a (self-defined) "comedian" because he mugs for the camera a lot. Interesting viewpoint that liberals should be aware of. I don't buy that liberals will react violently to a Trump electoral victory because, as Bette Midler says "What are we going to do? Smack them with our PBS tote bags?"


Hmm. So Senator Collins appears to be trying the Trump-lite approach (Just like Trump, but not quite as crazy). Ehh, the Reagan-lite approach wasn't very successful for Democrats. Let's hope Trump-lite is just as useless for the GOP.


A rather revealing paragraph:

According to Business Insider's report on Woodward's book, the author also asked Trump if he believed MBS's denial about his alleged role in Khashoggi' murder. After hedging, the president eventually replied, "He says very strongly that he didn't do it. Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time."

Why would a non-morally bankrupt politician put these two concerns (the killing of a reporter and money from arms sles) in the same sentence?


In answer to Ms. McCain, if the media wasn't telling the truth about Republicans, it'd be easy to mock and/or ignore. But yes, the media is successful at making the Rs look bad!


September 4th was the 25th anniversary of the introduction of Xena, Warrior Princess.


Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy abruptly quits US Attorney John Durham’s Russia investigation. Indications are that she had gotten pressure from AG Barr to complete her investigation in time to impact the November election.


Heh! Three top-selling books on Amazon are all anti-Trump books!


During his nomination acceptance speech, Joe Biden promised to be a President for ALL of America, not just those who vote for him. This tweet shows why that promise resonates so powerfully for me.


For Israel to annex parts of the West Bank looked like a sure thing for a while. An examination of what happened.


The President's complete denial that Black people are feeling any sort of pain or anguish appears to be the product of his being inside the Fox News bubble, which is self-reinforcing as he then adds his own commentary to it. He's in a hall of mirrors, but thinks he sees the situation clearly.


Rachel Maddow commented last night that, of all of the books that have been dropped about the President lately, this was the one she was really looking forward to. Good, informative interview.


Senate Majority Leader fails to get "skinny" COVID-19 relief bill through. Not at all surprising. Only possible way to get another COVID relief bill through the Senate is to combine the Democratic minority with a minority of Republicans. McConnell's strategy of just getting the Republican majority to sign off is never going to work.


The price for politicizing the CDC is and will be a steep one. For the CDC to be effective, it absolutely requires public trust!


The President's son-in-law Jared Kushner has been uniquely useless and consequential within the Trump Administration. He has been given a big role, but sees himself more as a cheerleader than as a leader.


President rattles off list of alll the Fox News TV shows he watches. What an incredibly dull, empty, impoverished life!


Aww! Very sorry to hear that Diana Rigg has died! Saw a lot of her Avengers* appearances and in Game of Thrones.
*The British spy series, not the superheroes.


As I said, we have to realize that the NY Times is an anti (Capital-D) Democratic paper and pro-Republican one.


Da-yum!!!
"When you've lost Matt Drudge..."


From piece on Woodward's book "Rage."

Trump talked to Woodward 18 times for this book, a decision many are now questioning.

But Bob Woodward isn't the problem! The problem is that the President isn't and never was qualified to do the job! We dirty effin' hippies told everybody that in 2016! But sigh, no one ever listens to us!

Trump: "We don’t want to jump up and down and start shouting that we have a problem."

But the country did have a problem! There was a fire in the crowded theater and the President chose to let people burn rather than to alert them!

Bob Woodward defends his silence up until now.


A newswoman is just absolutely horrified that a senator can be so completely indifferent to the President openly lying about COVID-19. Good for her!


Soledad O'Brien's right. This is how good reporting is done!


Looks as though the "Great Dealmaker" Trump has sealed a deal with Serbia that the leader of Serbia doesn't appear to have really understood.


Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen confirms what I've strongly felt for several years, that the President really, really wants to be a dictator!


By prioritizing political good news (such an early vaccine) above actually getting results, the CDC has reduced its own credibility.


President tries out a few new lines on his audience, the “Green New Nightmare” and “If Biden wins, China wins.” Audience is baffled and silent. We've got less than two months until Election Day.


"Trump Claims ‘Sophisticated Friends’ Say He’s ‘Most Innocent’ President Ever"
Yeah, one really has to wonder how real these "sophisticated friends" are or whether they're the kind of friends a seven-year old boy usually has.

“most innocent guy ever to hold this office”

Uh-huh.
Let's recall that the President was impeached and that nothing was ever disproven. The Republican-run Senate voted for him out of sheer party loyalty.


In response to the Trump campaign's money troubles, I've been posting the Lincoln Project ad that was designed to cause bitterness and hatred within the campaign. It apparently worked, because the target of the ad, Brad Parscale, was demoted a month later.
Update (9 Oct): Parscale's fallen on some really hard times!

In return, someone sent me this, which details that the Trump family, like a parasite that sucks up so much blood that it kills its host, is hoovering up so much campaign cash, the campaign can't survive!


The blogger comes up with lots of solid criticisms of the President posing as a peacenik. Did the military lobby on behalf of launching the Afghanistan or Iraq Wars? Former General Colin Powell made a very melodramatic speech in favor of the Iraq War, but he spoke long after most Americans had already made up their minds. The younger George Bush was former military, but he served some “skate” (neither dangerous nor strenuous) duty during the Vietnam War. Vice-President Dick Cheney received several draft deferments. Donald Rumsfeld supported the Vietnsm War from the safety of a seat in Congress. So no, I’m not really sure that Generals and Admirals played much of any role in getting the US into the two “Endless Wars” we’re now fighting.


Russia and Syria being pressed to find ways around US sanctions, making US pressure increasingly irrelevant.


Yep, looking like the Trump campaign is seriously broke! With the President's usual care and strategic smarts and attention to detail (/snark), his campaign is in easily predictable trouble.


Based on the number of horror movies that occur on holidays, which holiday is the most terrifying? Halloween was number 2.
And yes, there was a horror film for Hanukkah.


We knew back in March that many voters had been improperly removed from the voter lists. The AJC piece explains how the voter purge worked. The C&L piece says that nearly 200k voters were improperly removed.


It seems that unrest would automatically help the President, but if the population blames him for the unrest, then no, not so much.


"Trump Claims ‘VERY High Marks’ For COVID Response As Death Toll Approaches 189k"
Yeah, TPM asked who exactly was assigning the President "high marks." The White House declined to comment.


Friday's demonstration.


Trump attacks the sixth-richest woman in the world for her ties to The Atlantic
I reviewed the news between the time the President was acquitted of his impeachment (he wasn't cleared or proven to be innocent) and the time he declared the coronavirus to be a national emergency. He essentially spent the whole time attacking people that he felt were his "enemies." As we can see here, that's still his top concern.


"REPORT: Louis DeJoy May Have Broken Campaign Finance Laws AND Lied To Congress About It "
Yeah, I think Postmaster General DeJoy needs to be busted with maximum speed and for maximum penalties. The more time and attention he has to turn from sabotaging the Post Office towards his own defense, the better!


Wow! Unemployment is improving a bit, but 27 million people are unemployed and need to go to food banks for basic sustenance. The Senate and President don't that this is an urgent problem!


Advice from someone who has lived in Putin's Russia and can relate it to what's happening in the US now.


One thing to be aware of and prepared for is that with absentee/mailed-in votes, election officials can't start counting them until Election Day, so the results may take a while.


The blog Daily Kos has mentioned this, the apparent evidence that the Trump campaign seems to be broke! They aren't running TV ads where they normally would.


The perils of being a conservative writer and having to justify the current President's performance.


For birds to have fatal crashes into wind turbines is a legitimate criticism of turbines. Naturally, right-wing anti-science, pro-fossil fuel people have used this as a reason to not have wind turbines and to go backwards to using just fossil fuels. Science, as always, has just kept on moving to find solutions. Painting a single blade (out of three) black, keeps a lot of birds away. 


Good questioning by CNN's Brianna Kellar. The fellow here makes a truly stupid statement and she gives him plenty of rope to make himself look ridiculous.


Trump Still Won’t Condemn Navalny’s Poisoning
Of course not. Since when does an asset accuse his handler? That’s like having a Petty Officer 3rd Class try to scold a Chief Petty Officer. It just isn’t done.


Yeah, it’s time to make Facebook a public utility. Zuckerberg has demonstrated he’s not capable of handling it.


Wow! This is absolutely the most moronic, mindless idiocy! Does Chris Cillizza really think the President’s denials are the slightest bit credible? On what possible basis should we grant him the benefit of the doubt? When even Fox News has admitted to the truth of the accusation?!?!?!


Ahh! First time in a long time for seeing a movie in a theater! Good flick! Been awhile since I read the comic, so it took me a while to recall what all the characters could do. Fellow audience members were a whopping grand total of a couple that sat way down front. Think the whole theater had 15 to 20 customers.


Bwah-hah-hah!!! This is hilarious! Hmm, does Antifa have submarines, did they sabotage dozens of boats or did bad weather combine with incompetence?

Update: No one was hurt or drowned and it was the wakes of bigger boats that sunk the smaller ones that had less-skilled pilots.


A WaPo columnist does a Twitter thread on his column. Essential problem is that violence may not help the "Law 'N' Order" candidate if citizens think he's part of the problem.


Well heck! There we go! If Osama bin Laden's niece thinks Trump is the greatest, what can I say?  Noor Bin Ladin also likes QAnon and the website "Prison Planet" run by Alex Jones.


Y'know, when you have to make up a story about 1,700 fraudulent ballots (the story involved one such ballot) to support your claims, you've got some pretty weak claims.


The token liberal on the Outnumbered panel gets some good points in!


Heh!

FENCING: The Perfect COVID Sport *Masks *Gloves *If anybody gets closer than 6' of you, you stab them!


Good! Sounds like the President got some good, strong pushback on his latest wacky idea, that of shutting down the newspaper Stars & Stripes!

The President won about 2/3rds of the military vote in 2016. He's now behind 41% to 37%.


Serious problem with the NY Times enabling the President during the lates scandal. What the Times did is called "privileging the lie," putting the obvious lie first and not featuring any serious counter-arguments until nearly the end of the story (it took 14 paragraphs to get to any serious counter-narratives). 


*Sigh!* Commander-in-Chief reveals his true feelings about the military and those who serve.

Details on the Battle of Belleau Woods.

President doesn't even understand that his stated feelings are appalling. He does know that his comments put him in political hot water, though!

Former Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says that the President didn't disparage troops in the way that The Atlantic reports. Yeah, kind of a problem with that is that Sanders has a really lengthy and extensive record of lying.

See, the problem here is that former Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is trying to convince viewers that, behind the scenes, the President is really a warm, caring person. But she said:

“I've also sat in the room when the president had to make the most difficult calls of his presidency: when he had to let a parent know that their son had been killed in the line of duty.”

But the president doesn't make notification calls. It's up to the service to make those notifications in person. So that blew her credibility to smithereens!

You can tell Greg Gutfeld is the "comedian" of Fox News because he's pictured here wildly mugging for the camera. Gutfeld desperately tries to excuse and/or minimize the President's comments about US soldiers, but it's a pretty hopeless task.


US applies sanctions against the ICC for doing its job.


Russians made plans to discredit Biden. The report on that should have been provided to federal, state and local law enforcement partners. We, the American people, are entitled to know if someone's messing with our elections!


"So Much For The First Amendment: Trump Chief Of Staff Tells Fox 'Arrest Protestors'"
Yeah, yeah, Constitution, First Amendment, yada, yada, blah, blah!


Problem with the AG's assertion is that counterfeiting ballots is considerably more complex than just having a good printing press. It requires lots and lots of deeply detailed, accurate, up-to-date information and that no one tries to vote in their own name after a fake ballot has been submitted with thei name on it, which would thereby create duplicates. No, "logic" does not support foreign countries counterfeiting ballots.


Thing that really amazes me about the First Lady’s explanation for the “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” jacket is what appears to be  her extreme gullibility, her utter willingness to believe what the authorities tell her about the children who were being imprisoned at the border.

“The kids I met were brought in by coyotes, the bad people who are trafficking, and that’s why the kids were put in shelters."

Erm, no. Not at all.


"Fox pushing NY Post story alleging unvetted claims of widespread mail-in ballot fraud by anonymous Democratic operative"
My dad gets the New York Post and I saw this story when I visited over the weekend. I was extremely unimpressed for the same reason the blogger is, no source of information other than a single anonymous person. No reason whatever to believe the source is being honest. Nevertheless, right-wing media ate up this story and reported it as though it were proven fact.


"New poll shows Trump's apocalyptic anti-protester message is failing, big-league"
Very pleased to see Americans are a group of people with common sense! 3 1/2 years into his term and people are not buying into the idea that he's not responsible for the terrible state of affairs in the US!


After 3 1/2 years into the Trump presidency, how can the press possibly look at the results of his policies and see a "Law 'N' Order" administration?!?! But amazingly, some press outlets are describing it in just that way!


Heh! But seriously, the White House says 100 out of 175 arrest were of people from "out of town." No breakdowns. Were they from the region? Did they come from further away? It really doesn't take that long to drive or take the train. No one needs to be "funding" people to go to where the fight is.
And the young man with an AR-15, Kyle Rittenhouse, was driven from a short distance away, even though he too, was from "out of town."

Update (Sep 25): Rittenhouse, an Illinois resident, is fighting an extradition order from Wisconsin, the state where he shot two people and wounded another.


Good! Senator Ed Markey wins his primary against Representative Joe Kennedy. This is the first defeat for a Kennedy in Massachusetts.
As Senator Markey had recently been "promoted" from Representative to his current office, I didn't see him as one of the "good ol' boys" like the fellow that Representative AOC replaced or that super-strong supporter of Israel, Eliot Engel.


*Sigh!* China lectures the US on international law and they're 100% correct to do so. China is also imprisoning and killing off Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, but the US has no moral credibility with which to criticize them.


First Lady Melania Trump's former BFF was also interviewed on Rachel Maddow last night. Yeah, I remember hearing about the missing $40 million from way back when. It's still under investigation.

The question now is: "Why has the First Lady received such gentle, uncritical coverage for the past 3+ years?"


Seems the sabotage of the political and balloting mail has been slowed for awhile.


Under a competent government like what most of the world has, the US should have only lost about 40k people to the coronavirus. With the government we've got, we've lost 185k.


Erm, again, there is no single organization called Antifa! There are many group that use the name. There is no central location where records are kept. It would be a major task to do what Senator Paul suggests, to round up and question Antifa records.


President talks about anarchists stockpiling and pre-positioning cans of soup as they make for better throwing than bricks do. If they get caught? “Why this is just soup for my family.” Someone commented that that was an excuse straight out of Oliver Twist (written in the late 1830s, I saw a movie version of it in 1968).


"Donald Trump says he would be 'irreparably harmed' if Manhattan prosecutors gets his tax returns in bid to get subpoena for them stopped"
Sounds like the President is saying that his taxes contain information that the American public has every business knowing about and every right to be aware of!


Fox News host Laura Ingraham realizes immediately that the President made a really stupid comment, comparing a golf tournament to a police shooting (Sixth screen down).


Gaah! How dare people try to teach a professional development class that teaches objective facts about how Israel and the Arab world interact!


President puts himself wholly and completely on the side of the young murderer who crossed state lines to "defend" white people.

Donald Trump continued his lifelong trend of supporting racists, Nazis, domestic terrorists and straight up murderers, this time by defending Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 year old high school dropout who crossed state lines with an AR-15 (that he illegally possessed) that he used to shoot 3 unarmed people, killing 2. From videos, one man is holding a plastic bag, the other a skateboard. These are the "threats" that Rittenhouse felt he had to defend himself from?


Very good news! Michael Flynn suffered a crushing defeat in his plea to dismiss his case!


Let's please understand what "herd immunity" means! With about 183k deaths now, we'd need about 2.3 million deaths to get to herd immunity!


One of the stories in this book is that the President offered the fellow who later assumed the position of White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly the position of FBI Director in exchange for a pledge of absolute loyalty. Would have been nice to have known this at the time. Had people been aware of this in early 2017, that might have energized efforts to get rid of this very dangerous President.

"Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend offered plea deal if he would claim Taylor was part of ‘organized crime syndicate’"
Uh. Mah. Gawd!!! This is...just...beyond parody! Note that there were indeed drugs being sold, but by the neighbors down the hall!
And again, Breonna Taylor's boyfriend had every right and business to open fire on a group of anonymous people breaking into their apartment without warning! He had no way of knowing they were police.


In the same week that Jacob Blake was shot several times at point-blank range and left paralyzed, apparently (from what I could see in the short film clip) for turning his back on a police officer during a disagreement, this driver argues with an officer for a full minute and 20 seconds, making explicit threats, and gee. Surprise, surprise! This driver leaves the scene in perfectly fine shape!


August


Here's a piece that explains the whole issue with what the DNI is supposed to be providing to Congress via an in-person briefing as well as a written briefing. I've reproduced a paragraph that's usually just expressed as "He provided no evidence to back up his claim." Thought it would be interesting to see his complete statement. Notice how completely uninformative it is.

"Within minutes of one of those briefings ending, a number of members of Congress went to a number of different outlets and leaked classified information for political purposes,” Ratcliffe told host Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”


The President (of course) would like to get the Nobel Peace Prize for the UAE-Israel peace deal. But is the deal really about peace? Israel and the UAE have never had any military clashes.


$%#@!!! Yeah, I'm firmly on the side of the FDA official and science here!

A top FDA official vows to resign if the agency rubber-stamps an unproven COVID19 vaccine. Peter Marks, head of FDA’s biologics center said he's concerned about possible Trump administration pressure to authorize a COVID vax ahead of the November election


Mary Trump, the President's niece, was not at all impressed by the Republican National Convention. She didn't think much of Ivanka or Don Jr. either.


Presidential rhetoric is giving permission to right-wing vigilantes to start shooting.


This reminds me that a few weeks ago, someone sketched out a hypothetical situation, “Suppose President Hillary Clinton had tens of thousands of COVID-19 deaths on her hands...“ Well, right off the bat, this wasn't credible. There was nothing inevitable about the US suffering tens of thousands of deaths from the coronavirus! With a President Clinton, we'd probably be like countries in Europe are today, with a much lower death rate!

Unfortunately, over half a year into the coronavirus crisis, we're still flying blind on getting good data on what the situation is.


No, Democratic presidents seeking a second term will not copy what the President is doing now! Why not? Because it's %$#@ing illegal!!! You should not be using the resources of being an incumbent to run for reelection!


Supposedly, allegedly, in theory, cutting off in-person intelligence briefings is supposed to reduce leaks. No evidence has been provided to show that anything has been leaked.

More on that.


US troop drawdown in Iraq seems voluntary, but is the result of the President's blundering.


This is concerning! New CDC guidelines say contact-tracing isn't necessary. That's sure to increase cases!


Very sorry to hear about the death of Chadwick Boseman! I was only aware of his role as Black Panther. He was very good in that.


Yeah, that was a really serious, burning question that the Republican Party should have been answering over the past four days, what's up with all the chaos and disorder and the out-of-control pandemic and the dissatisfaction over police brutality? How is a second term of Trump going to fix all that? They never came close to an answer.


A look at the President's pretty much accomplishment-free foreign policy.


Monitoring sewage can be our friend. Seems COVID-19 shows up very quickly in sewage. Close monitoring of it enable the University of Arizona to shut down their campus very quickly and to prevent a mass outbreak there.


Yeah, the current President talked a lot about violence without ever mentioning why that violence exists. As TPM points out, he talked about violence in Kenosha without ever mentioning the cause of that violence, that is, what was done to Jacob Blake.


Almost 6k people have tried to climb Mt. Everest since 2006, the success rate of reaching the peak has grown from 1/3rd to 2/3rds, but the death rate remains about 1%.


Yeah, I think Kellyanne Conway completely and totally fails to grasp what being a public official is all about. If there's violence in Democratic-run states, that doesn't mean the president is off the hook.


A bit over 20 minutes, an excellent speech by Senator Harris! Let's hope the President sees it and that it makes him really mad!


So between the murder of George Floyd of Minneapolis and the shooting of Jacob Blake Jr. of Milwaukee, what has the Trump Administration done to reduce police killings of Black men? Listening to Vice-President Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short, it seems they’ve pretty much sat around twiddling their thumbs. I didn’t hear of any substantive policies or actions that they either have done or that they plan to do.


From Twitter:

WHY is MSNBC and CNN covering the entire Republican Convention and Fox News is only covering a limited part of it? Who is not watching?

Good question. See Daily Kos.

Trump Approval DROPS After 2 Days of the Republican Nationalist Convention

A very snarky, highly critical view of the Republican convention's fourth night.


We have a very real and serious problem with the coronavirus, but we have a really serious problem with TV news, which gives the President credit that he doesn’t deserve and which downplays the really serious news. The way the map is color-coded here is really stupid and makes the situation look far better than it actually is.


Belarus, the battle of regular folks vs the state and how they “hot-wired” the internet. A network that had a few hundred thousand subscribers saw its subscriptions shoot up to 2 million.


Mike Huckabee thinks he’s found hypocrisy.

How many people out there on the left criticized the fact that she spoke at the White House, federal property, and I'm thinking, why weren't you guys so concerned about federal property being burned, looted...”

We were! We thought the burning and looting were understandable reactions to murder, but we didn’t think they were good things!


Looking at the Kenosha vigilante.

A close look at his social media accounts and background show a teenager obsessed with law enforcement who also identified as a strong supporter of President Donald Trump and “Blue Lives Matter,” a pro–law enforcement movement that evolved in response to Black Lives Matter.


Heh!

From the Department of You Cannot Make This Up Dept:
Ari Melber: "Matt, why have so many people close to Donald Trump been indicted?
Matt Schlapp: "The real question is why *haven't* any people around Obama and Biden been?"

Gee, I don't know. Could that be because Clinton and Obama didn't surround themselves with criminals? Could it be because Trump's got a lot of "friends in low places?"


NY Times journalist describes the First Lady’s “I really don’t care” jacket as a “fashion faux pas.” No, "faux pas" is really not a term that I'd use to describe this. "Horrendous failure of judgment informed by a complete lack of humanity" would be more like the description I'd use.


NY Times has declared Pompeo the worst Secretary of State ever. Hmm, yeah. I'd agree with that!


President appears to have adopted a new fantasy, that there was unity and harmony until the coronavirus.


Larry Kudlow is apparently describing the economy of the future because he's describing the present coronavirus pandemic as though it was in the past. No, we have not recovered from this at all!

*Sigh!* So is this what the President meant by "winning?"


China intends to spend $400 billion in Iran over the next 25 years. Y’know, I’m old enough to remember a time when Iran was a strong ally of the US in the Persian Gulf that was keeping all the smaller powers there in line for us. Now Iran is a forward base for China.


Uuh...whut?!?! Joe Biden wants to launch a Chinese-type Cultural Revolution?!?!?! Erm...uh, yeah. Okay.

Lots of great snark here on Republican Convention.

Wow! Kimberly Guilfoyle forgot to wear her Ilsa, Nazi She-Wolf of the SS costume! It would have fit her rhetoric so much better!

The First Lady a "secret weapon" against Democrats? Erm yeah, I think the very best she can possibly hope for is to not bungle her speech. Doing better than adequate is in wishful-thinking territory.

Sounds like the First Lady's speech went about as well as it could have. She didn't make any major screw-ups, though "One of the main components of her campaign is tackling cyberbullying ― something her husband does almost daily on Twitter."

The NY Times does its level best to humanize the Trump family via the First Lady, but it requires that we suspend disbelief and to think of Melania as exercising any meaningful influence along the lines of what she presented in her speech last night.


Jerry Falwall Jr. resigns from running Libery Uiversity after repeatedly watching his wife doing it wih young men.

And yeah, the liberal perspective is that the fraud, hypocrisy and the misuse of donated cash are all way worse than the sex.


The Postmaster General - a useless, worthless, criminal piece of $%#@!!!!/

"Will you put the machines back?" DeJoy ignored the question and continued with his lauding of the post office and his pride at being there. A frustrated Lynch interrupts and interjects again: "Will you put the high-speed machines back?" A combative DeJoy finally answers: "No, I will not."
This is concerning and frankly, it isn't very credible that he's simply carrying out someone else's policy:
"After some more back and forth, Rep. Porter asked DeJoy if he knew who had instituted the changes to the post office which have proven to be so disastrous. DeJoy said he did not know, nor would be commit to finding out or reversing those changes."


Again, the thing to note about this is that numbers and statistics and "black on black crime" are all completely beside the point. A horrible, horrible crime has occurred! That's the point!


So wearing a mask and encouraging others to do the same is an "elite" activity, eh? Y'know, Vietnam, which is both not all that wealthy and right next to China, had up until late July, zero deaths from COVID-19. Since then (as of 24 Aug) they've had a bit over 1k cases and 27 deaths.


Wow! Campaign advice for the President from the NY Times! Liberals should not consider the Times to be their friend!


Very interesting but not at all surprising. People in Finland were simply given a basic income to see if they'd just sit around the house all day or would work. Most of them chose to work. One interesting effect was that a lot of jobs that don't pay very much were filled because people's basic needs were already being fulfilled.


Yeah, the statement made by the Press Secretary is really below the standard of decency we should expect from someone in that position. She included the racist term "the China Virus."


This is why I really don't have much use for Dr. Birx. Voting can be arranged so that it's a quick, easy, in and out, but very frequently, it isn't and her Starbucks example becomes irrelevant and beside the point.


California is suffering from a really serious self-inflicted wound. They depend on prison labor to fight wildfires and now, when new fires have broken out, most of that labor was released due to the pandemic!


That “Build The Wall” fund that Bannon scammed people with? Yeah, the President knew all about it.


Lara (Wife of Second Son Eric) Trump is terribly distressed by the Democrats’ “dark, dismal and really depressing vision of America” under her father-in-law’s tenure and the Trump family is determined to present a brighter, happier place.


[Rose Garden replaced by Melania’s design] Gahh!!! All the color! All the beauty! Gone!!!

Huh! Guess the First Lady decided "Only so much time! Must do what damage I can, while I can!"

Update (9 Sep): The job that was done on the Rose Garden was so hasty and shitty and rushed, it was obvious during the First Lady's speech that it was poorly done and already needs extensive re-work.


Demonstration in support of our local Post Office in Elkins Park, PA.


With "[a]t least six Republican congressional candidates embrace or sympathize with QAnon," when does "I know nothing" about QAnon become dereliction of duty?


There are 500 US troops in Syria. Why? The President admits they are there to commit the war crime of stealing Syria's natural resources.


It should concern conservatives that far too many of their leaders see them as "marks" that are ripe for exploitation.


The President has claimed that delivering ballots to drop boxes can be manipulated to produce fraudulent outcomes. Proof of any sort was not offered.


Excellent news! Russian opposition leader Alexander Navalny was poisoned two nights ago and is now on his way from Russia to Germany. Best wishes for his recovery!


As I've said many times, I've been extremely unimpressed by the President's Iran policy. This overselling of the aerial assassination of Iran's General Soleimani. doesn't help matters.

Further failure of Iran policy. This last step was predicted to be a failure and it was.


A rundown on the (alleged) "cost-cutting" measures that are getting in the way of an accurate vote count on Election Day.


Sarah Cooper puts out another great piece! She then follows up in her own voice.


Last month, the Department of HHS turned over its COVID-19 data tracking to a private company. The Trump Administration is not all on the same page yet, but some of them appear to be admitting that the system was moved over far too rapidly and without the appropriate planning.

Ah, okay. The shift of COVID data from HHS back to the CDC is happening because it's being demanded by the Attorneys General of 22 states!

Wow. Gee. Surprise, surprise. Truly amazing that switching over from reporting coronavirus results from the CDC to the HHS would be a complete and utter cluster$%#@. Huh. Amazing how that works!


So the President wants to be sure the election is free and fair. Okay, but his hand-picked Postmaster General has been very busy making it unfair for Democrats who want to vote safely! What is he doing in terms of programs to make it fair for both sides? Nothing, as far as I can tell.


The President's rhetoric proved and reinforced the former president's message. He was called a menace to America's democratic instittions. His response:

"[Obama] SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GOT CAUGHT!"

So Trump's response was to lie and to gin up a fake scandal.


Was the UAE agreement all about just a peace deal?

The secretary of defense, Mark Esper, was formerly the vice president of the F-35 sustainment program at Lockheed Martin. One F-35 retails for roughly $100 million.


The President complains of something he terms as "cancel culture," a concept that he himself practices with great enthusiasm. As usual, it's "Do as I say, not as I do."


$%#@&%!!!! So Postmaster General DeJoy has no intention of fixing the enormous damage he's caused!


VP Pence seems pretty confident about his upcoming debate with Senator Harris. I'm still confident she's gonna make him cry.

During his rally speech, the current VP says the Trump Administration needs four more years to "drain the swamp." Correction: They need need four more years to begin to get around to considering maybe possibly doing something about that overflowing swamp that's actually been growing on their watch!


The fact that Gaza has been under siege (nothing can come in or go out without Israeli permission) for well over a decade means that Israel can cut off necessities like electricity at will.


The President tries to blame the Governor of New York for a bad response to the pandemic. Problem is, no one outside of the White House, some sycophant governors and various Trumpists agreed that it was the responsibility of states to do that. The President very badly failed to see to it that the federal government did what it needed to do.


Stone Mountain in Georgia is the site of a really big Confederate monument and was the site of a really big confrontation. The anti-Confederates won!


Erm, I don't think the H1N1 Swine Flu is even slightly comparable to the COVID-19 pandemic. The two are not even in the same universe in terms of seriousness.


Makes complete sense. Trump Administration believes in what we call "crony capitalism." A sort-of, more or less classic capitalism, but one that relies heavily on personal relationships. This fellow was a personal buddy of the President so that makes him perfectly qualified to look for a cure for the pandemic.


The DNC was an unqualified success! Not only was it difficult to break away from (which is good as the party wants people to see as much as possible of their convention without networks interrupting), but viewership was up!. 26 million for the first night in 2016 and 28.9 million this time!

This is one thing I think conventions should keep from the coronavirus time, doing the convention roll call presentations from the states as opposed to from a convention hall. much better and less boring visually!


This blogger tends to carry on a lot about how all of the nation's newspapers in 1998 called for the President's resignation over his not telling the truth during a deposition over Monica Lewinsky. But he's right to do this as those same papers are quiet as can be over the current President's actions, which are worse by many orders of magnitude!


Eva Longoria was the hostess of last night's DNC Convention. Yeah, I know her mostly from Desperate Housewives, but I've seen her in celebrity news on and off, always about something positive. Republicans are jealous because they have to make do with C-List celebrities like Ted Nugent and Scott Baio.


Democratic Convention opens up. First night ends with really devastating speech by former First Lady Michelle Obama  (further coverage and commentary here). President responds. He calls the speech "divisive." I just had to shake my head. This is far beyond parody! Trump is probably the most divisive president since at least the 1860s!


What would Biden be campaigning on without the pandemic? I agree, there are plenty of issues to campaign on!


President is asked repeatedly, if the election is going to be a “disaster,” what is he going to do to try and fix the problem? His response is to keeps changing the subject.


Huh! So the most die-hard, super-supporters of the President pilots boats! Just think of all of the reporters going to dingy diners in mid-size cities to be close to "the people" when they could have been going to yachts instead!


A story about copyrights and living creatures. A fellow took a tardigrade (They can range from 0.05 millimeters to 1.2 mm (0.002 to 0.05 inches)) and blew it to be big enough to take part in a computer game. Several writers also featured a big tardigrade in their shows. Good news is that you can't copyright a living creature's abilities! Nobody made their tardigrade unique enough to be copyrightable.


This is a real problem. The NY Times comments on the 2016 presidential campaign, but they were very much a part of that story! By treating Clinton's emails as a story roughly comparable to Watergate/Iran-Contra, they primed and prepped the American public to be very sensitive to any new chapters in that very minuscule "story," so Comey's announcement had a far more significant impact than it should have.


The post features a "re-tweet," a statement that the President wholeheartedly endorses.

“Leave Democrat cities. Let them rot.”

*Sigh,* remember back in the old days (prior to 2017) when a president would represent and support all of the American people? Good times!


Senate Majority Leader McConnell is a full and complete partner and co-owner of the Post Office mess.


What are these “very impressive” numbers? Nearly 50k new infections on Saturday and over 169k fatalities since February. No, I’m not at all clear on what the President finds “impressive” about all that.


There was a lot of food insecurity before the coronavirus crisis began this year. It’s a lot worse now.

There’s been some aid to farmers from the states, but basically, they’ve just really cut back production. Vegetables are selling pretty well.


So for Mike Huckabee, religion basically comes down to reproductive choice. A "good" follower of Roman Catholicsm will deny choice to women. Matt Schlapp completely loses all credibility when he says

...Joe Biden and Kamala Harris road believe in no restrictions on abortion at any time, even when the baby is born...

But seriously, for these two, the "free" exercise of their religion requires them to force other people (women) to have children that they don't want!
"Freedom for me, but not for thee!"


The blogger warned us about this. Vote in the UN Security Council on Iran sanctions. 13 to 2, the US was on the losing team with only the Dominican Republic voting with us.

Adds some details on the failure of Iran policy. What's especially sad is Secretary of State Pompeo's "explanation" for why US policy was such a complete crash & burn failure.


The Trump campaign had weeks to prepare for Senator Harris or another black woman to be chosen as the Democratic VP candidate. Their problem is that a direct attack on a Black woman will energize a really core Democratic constituency, but will also energize the racist right-wingers in the GOP.


$%#@ rasm frasm $#@% ABC News is misinforming people on COVID-19 and immunity.


Good! the president has very frequently claimed, without evidence, that mail-n voting is filled with fraud. The judge says to put up or shut up!


Rachel Maddow has been reporting on Belarus over the last few nights. Olya Oliken adds what she can to the story.

Wasn’t aware that the Secretary of State had said anything abut Belarus. Problem is, it’s really difficult for the US to be taken seriously when the Secretary says: “...we were incredibly troubled by the election and deeply disappointed that it wasn't more free and more fair." Well, when the President is blatantly messing with the USPS in order to bend the US election his way, it’s rather difficult for any foreign countries to see the US leadership as being honestly concerned with democracy.


The blogger draws the connection between the endless and fruitless Benghazi investigations and the endless and fruitless investigation into Biden's actions in Ukraine. They were and are both designed to serve electoral purposes.


What’s happening with Post Office should be at the very top of every news cast, every paper, etc.

Is this another confession that the Postal system is being manipulated to serve the incumbent? Sure sounds like it to me!


Human-made beds go back at least 200k years.


Children are not soldiers and school is not any sort of battle. Governor DeSantis is being way too dramatic! No, sending kids into a place where they’re likely to catch a deadly diseases for which there’s no vaccine, no cure and is deadly in far too many cases is not “akin” to Navy SEALS carrying out a military mission!


As their first official Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate Act, Biden and Harris call for a national mask mandate!


Wow!

White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said Thursday. "So much of the Democratic asks are really liberal, left wish lists -- voting rights and aid to aliens and so forth."

I'd be fascinated to know how Republican Senators and Representatives feel about this. Is small-d democracy important to them or do they favor electoral victory at any cost?


Newsweek should be ashamed of itself for printing Birther crap! They knew damn well that Birtherism is racist. If they didn't they are far too ignorant and naive to be reporting news! I red Newsweek as a teenager. Sad to see how it's declined.

And, of course, the President cites this piece to suggest Harris is ineligible to be the Vice-President.

Good Newsweek has apologized for its racist op-ed on Senator Harris and her eligibility to be VP.
This is grimly hilarious: “We entirely failed to anticipate the ways in which the essay would be interpreted, distorted and weaponized.”
Good Heavens! What did they think would happen?!?!?!


Yeah, this is just absolutely racist as $%#@!!! President might as well just use the N-word freely.


"Donald Trump Gives Away The Game: No Funds For USPS Means No Mail-In Voting"

"Therefore they don't have the money to do the universal mail-in voting so therefore they can't do it I guess."

And why won't Democrats have the money to conduct a fair and safe election? Because the President is standing in the way! Reminds me of what Mary Trump says, that when her uncle throws up his hands and says "It is what it is," that just means HE doesn't want to fix the problem!


Despite being outspent six to one, Representative Ilhan Omar crushes primary opponent 57% to 39%! This is very good news for progressive Democrats!


One of the main functions of the Vice-President is to attack opponents in ways that would compromise the president/presidential candidate. Harris demonstrates she's up to the job!


Cool! Hallmark Channel enters the 21st Century! Thought they would've started featuring same-sex weddings a while ago!


Kellyanne Conway delivers a heartfelt talk about crime, but suggests that people's attention is mis-focused on the President. But for Homeland Security to send unidentified troops to Portland OR and to start arresting people and tossing them into unmarked vans did far more harm than good for Portland. They escalated the violence in the city rather than calmed it down.


Last month, members of the Trump Administration was using foest fire terminology, talking about "embers" and "flare-ups," suggesting that the pandemic was rapidly disappearing and that it was time to get back to normal. Nope. Not even close. In terms of forest fires, the pandemic is still burning hundreds of acres at a time. We are nowhere close to "coming down the other side of the mountain."


Aww! Agents of Shield is ending! Good show!


"Will Trump try to target voter access through an executive order?"

...at a White House press briefing early last week, a reporter asked Trump whether he'd consider issuing an executive order in the hopes of derailing postal balloting. "Well, I have the right to do it," the Republican responded. "We haven't gotten there yet, but we'll see what happens."

Erm, no. The President has no such "right" at all!


Absolutely fascinating that Brian Kilmeade of Fox News thinks that people in positions of authority and people like Malcolm X were having polite discussions about Civil Rights and that people on the left today are more radical and uncompromising than they were during the 60s!


Biden has chose Senator Harris as his running mate! Cool! She was my first choice for president!

Heh! Trump campaign adviser Katrina


Pierson went on to accuse Harris of having 'gleefully embraced the left’s radical manifesto' during her own unsuccessful bid for the Democrats’ presidential nomination...

This is exactly what we want left-wing Democrats to believe!


FB friend of mine posted this today and wondered why Don Jrs. kids all look so glum and depressed. I recalled that he dumped his wife just a few months ago for that former Victoria's Secret underwear model. Wouldn't be surprised if all three of the kids were seeing therapists.

Update (24 Aug ): Picture of Kimberly Guilfoyle, the woman Don Jr. dumped his wife for.


Got a piece of right-wing mail today that had a short list of the "great accomplishments" of our current President. Number one on the list was our greatly improved relations with North Korea. This piece from June shows...ehhh...not so much! Basically, NK doesn't feel anything has been accomplished and that Trump has been lying to them. My own impression is that he gave up a lot for nothing in return. Clearly, he has nothing to brag about here.


A reminder that the President is not acting by himself. If we end up with a tyranny, the Republican Party and especially Republican senators, played a role helping to tear down our constitutional and democratic republic.


AG Barr on Antifa: ""They are a revolutionary group that's interested in some sort of socialism, communism, they're essentially bolsheviks. Their tactics are fascistic," said Barr."
To be both bolsheviks and fascists is a contradiction in terms, but the real problem with Barr's description of Antifa is that
having taken part in many demonstrations over the past 3+ years, I think the AG enormously overstates the importance of any organized group to the protests against the President! Believe me, Trump is far more motivating to the opposition than Antifa is (Democrats too, for that matter).


"Trump To Vance: I Would Prefer A Civil, Not Criminal Subpoena"
Of the President could simply jand over the requested materials. But hey, t
he perp is unhappy with how law enforcement is doing its job.


Uuh, banning re-entry to people with valid US passports? I don't see that going anywhere!


Only problem with Donald Trump's 1987 book "Art of the Deal," is that it features a completely fictional character. This "consummate dealmaker" was never a real-life person. I remember reading as a teenager about Jimmy Carter learning so much about the Middle East that he could have written a doctorate on it. Now there was a dealmaker!

Again, what was clear from the beginning, is that the only way to get any more relief money out of the Senate is to take the Minority Party plus 10 or 15 Republicans and to simply ignore the economic illiterates. Brian Kilmeade admits that near the end of the conversation here. And again, the President's deal-making skills are nonexistent.


Two interviews on the dispute over a second stimulus. It's interesting to compare these two. Speaker Pelosi is deeply involved in the details of the dispute, Peter Navarro throws around utterly unbelievable claims such as that the President is hard-working.


People living densely (lots of people per square mile) does not equal people packed together in an unsafe way. Mere "urban density" is not the problem.


Some rather disturbing news concerning the two big New Deal programs, Social Security and Medicare.

Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer have had zero use for the President's Executive Orders! The orders aren't especially meaningful in any event.


Heh! Youngsters enjoying “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. I mostly remember it for Rebecca De Mornay in the 1983 film “Risky Business.”


The reporter’s charge comes though loud and clear: “It was a false statement, sir.” The President immediately ended the press conference and walked away. He knew that everybody had heard her. 


Seriously, the NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd should have been let go to seek other employment a long, long time ago! Dowd lists all the Democratic women who have run and forgets Hillary Clinton! 


Smart and informed people like ourselves know that preexisting conditions are already covered under the ACA/Obamacare. Low-information voters don't know that. They aren't just people who don't know any better, they're people who have deliberately refused to do any research into the issue, figuring "that black guy" must've messed it up somehow.


Electric bicycles, filling the gap between bicycles and motor scooters, until public transportation is fully up and running again.


President has a press conference/rally at his golf club. No masks, no social distancing. Are people compelled to attend? Well, they all paid $350k to join the club in the first place, so kind of, yeah.
Negotiations on a new stimulus measure have gotten nowhere because even though Democrats passed their own bill eleven weeks ago, Republicans are still putting out wish lists instead of serious negotiating positions.


The deadline on foreign countries being prevented from selling arms to Iran expires on 18 October. The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia are frantic to get that embargo renewed. Secretary of State Pompeo is trying some really dodgy tactics that will probably not work. In all likelihood, arms sales to Iran will resume in October.


The President would like to think that the world looks more kindly on the US since he took office. Uh, no.

In fact, Europeans are just absolutely stunned at what the US is going through right now.


Biden makes a bit pf a gaffe, suggesting the Latino community is more diverse than the African-American one. The President crows that Biden has “lost the Black Vote.” Ehh, kinda doubt that.


Director of National Intelligence warns that Russia is actively interfering in US election. China and Iran are both on record as preferring that Trump loses, but Russia is very clearly pro-Trump. Speaker Pelosi thinks the DNI has been slow with this important information.


Cool stuff on the atmosphere of Mars and ultraviolet light.


President Trump is a cosmopolitan?!?!?! Where does Dinesh D'Souza get that?!?! Actually, the President is nowhere near as well-travelled as D'Souza makes him out to be and really doesn't have much curiousity.


When Congress was given two separate briefings, one for the Rs and another for the Ds, I took that as "case closed" that the Russians had indeed paid the Taliban to kill American troops. Now the Secretary of State has provided further proof. And again, we have the question as to why the President (the Asset) never discussed this with Putin (his Handler).


Status of the already-passed bill by Democrats versus Republican proposals.

And as Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer make clear, the President is insisting that the final bill "must" lean his way!


Yeah! Yeah! How dare these young people take meaningful pictures that show that the school is derelict in its duty and it's exposing young people to the coronavirus! But the kids violated their social media policy!

This student's got a good attitude! And I agree, the world needed to know how unsafe that school was being.


Took me a while to get my head around this as the NRA has been around for such a long time. The charge is that the NRA is so hopelessly corrupt, it can't be saved. It just needs to shut down and be dissolved, period!


Democrats are fighting the good fight, pointing out that this is the worst possible time to institute cost-cutting measures for the USPS!


Are schools ready to re-open? Of course not. This isn’t a close call.


75th anniversay of Hiroshima Day.


Y'see, watching Erin Burnett interview Peter Navarro makes me wish Bette Midler could be the interviewer! Burnett is simply not equal to the challenge.


Officer reached the right conclusion and did the right thing, but only after hugely overreacting to a fake 911 call! Police seriously need to examine the situation first and only then to react as though they're facing a deadly threat.


The US military is being hit very hard by COVID-19!


Teachers are 100% right to protest being rushed back into school before the pandemic is over!


"Pompeo Brushes Off Inspector General Resignation In Speedy Presser: ‘This Happens’"
Well yeah, "this happens" all the time when you're a criminal and trying to stay one step ahead of the law!


Big news! Good News! Seems Deutsche Bank was subpoened quite a while ago and has complied, delivering lots and lots of evidence on the President's finances!


Massive blast in Beirut, Lebanon. People very quickly figured out that the explosion was caused “by a fire in a depot of highly explosive material."
The President’s casual, offhand statement that the explosion might have been an attack was just stunningly irresponsible and demonstrated that he has learned nothing over the past 3 ½ years.
Massive explosion occurs in Beirut, Lebanon. Why? Corrupt, lazy, dysfunctional government. An effective and efficient government would have moved the highly dangerous material out to where an explosion wouldn't have harmed anyone. Instead, they kept it in the middle of a busy port city.

Good! The people of Lebanon have decided that the blast happened because the government was corrupt!


In an apparent admission that Trump will lose in November, he’s trying to arrange for the Census to be finished by December so that Republicans can undertake re-allocation/re-districting based on whatever they’ve gathered up to that point.


every congressional democrat: here, we've done all the homework, we've done all the math, all we need to do is pass this bill that will help tens of millions of americans.
mcconnell: lol, democrats are bad
every major newspaper: congress fails again

Unfortunately, this is exactly how the politics of the coronavirus relief bill are being reported.
Also part of the larger blog post is that electorally endangered Republican senators are really anxious to get a bill passed, but the only way that’ll happen is if a Republican minority joins the Democratic minority to make a majority. That’s the common-sense solution, but I just don’t see it happening. The Senate Majority Leader is convinced he needs the President’s buy-in, his active collaboration, to make any bill work. As Trump acts like a fluttering moth, that’s a really tall order.


An examination as to why the President is fighting discovery on his taxes so hard.


Dr. Deborah Birx is in a lose-lose situation. No one who serves this President with any degree of loyalty can ever escape being tagged as a Trump loyalist. Even if the President turns on you and denounces you, you’ll never be accepted by the non-Trump people. As they say: “Everything Trump touches...dies.”


So the essential read on the coronavirus bill is that the two top Democrats and two people from the Trump Administration are talking while the Senate Majority Leader is just sitting back and waiting to see what the other four come up with.


The first action of the French Revolution was to overturn the basis for the Medieval economy. That truly was a "wholesale reordering of [their] most basic institutions." Did George "Floyd's death [change] everything?" No. The President refused to take even the most symbolic steps. He refused to re-name military bases that were named for Confederate generals and refused to see statues of Confederates taken down. The Senate has put the re-naming of bases into the latest military funding bill and some statues were taken down anyway, but no. Tucker Carlson greatly exaggerates both the violence at the beginning of the protests and how much "reordering" there was.


This is very, very bad news for all parents with school age children! President is still in denial about how risky school opening is.


The President wonder how the Civil Rights Act “worked out.” He appears to be going back to Trent Lott’s 2002 statement of

“...if the rest of the country had followed our lead [in opposing the Civil Rights Act], we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.''


Notes of a citizen from Dongguan dealing with the coronavirus. A story with a happy ending.


So, a years-old government-run statistical effort was suddenly replaced with a private company on very short notice.

Local officials and hospital representatives later complained that HHS, which ordered the change, hadn’t briefed them on how the shift to TeleTracking would affect their data entry operations — nor given them adequate time to prepare. The result was widespread chaos.

Gee (He says. Deadpan.) What a surprise. The switch-over is, of course, a complete cluster$%#@.


So the President is predicting disaster for the election (three months away from today). Okay, so what's he prepared to do about it? How does he intend to prevent that oncoming disaster? He won't say.


From a daily round-up of COVID-19 news:

The *entire* European Union — population 446 million — is still averaging fewer cases per day than Florida alone.

That's depressing as hell!


ABC10 shows film of a Black youth who has clearly surrendered (he placed his hands on his head) and still gets tackled!
Grossly, grossley excessive use of force! And then they wonder why Black people protest!


The true hell of this is what is the moral currency that the US has to stop this brutality? Under this President, we have none.
Yeah, I'll look around for any pro-Uyghur demonstrations taking place.


"Dr. Birx Gives Non-Response On Why U.S. Pandemic Response Has Failed So Miserably"
Dr. Birx gets out some good advice near the end of her talk, but she basically just filibusters the time away. Birx just doesn't want to come out and admit that the Trump Administration completely blew it.


"Congrats: Philadelphians Are Among America’s Top Mask-Wearers, Per Study"
Woo hoo! Very happy to live among a community that takes this life and death matter with the seriousness that it deserves!


Nah, Bette Midler's right. Herman Cain's death from COVID-19 is a cautionary tale about how we have to be careful. No, the assertion that "the Left" is attacking him and praising his death is, as the President would say "Fake News."


"Rep. Raúl Grijalva tests positive for COVID-19, is symptom-free"
This is infuriating because Republicans insisted that Grijalva couldn't just do his business via teleconferencing, nooo, he had to show up in person!


One of the problems with "With my guns, I will defend freedom!," is that, what if you get your political information from Fox News? What definition of "freedom" will you then be defending? Is the tyranny seen on the streets of Portland OR, so bad if it's if it's right-wing tyranny?

And no, I don't regard a refusal to support the cattle rancher Cliven Bundy in 2014 as meaning liberals are automatically pro-government. Bundy was a lousy citizen, a lousy rancher and a really crappy environmentalist.


Iran's leader Ali Khamenei rules out doing anything that might help get our current President re-elected.
Very interesting fact: "53% of Americans don’t trust what Trump has to say on Iran..."


Maggie Haberman at the NY Times has covered Trump for a long time and covers the Vanity Fair article in a pretty lazy fashion, not acknowledging that Trump and Kushner actively dismissed the COVID-19 problem because, hey, it was just affecting Blue states.


Woo hoo! ExxonMobil is crashing hard! Electric vehicles are eating their lunch!


The President was challenged two weeks ago about his plan to replace the ACA/Obamacare. He claimed he'd have a replacement plan ready for signing by now. Nada, zip, zilch.


Still more manipulative crap on the Census.


So if we really wanted to blame anyone for COVID-19, we really should be blaming Italy. But there's no anti-Italian constituency in the US, so the "China virus" it is!


On the Rachel Maddow Show last night, Ali Velshi quoted the Press Secretary as saying she rejects the premise of the Vanity Fair piece that Senator Warren quotes here that hey, the coronavirus is going to hit the Blue states, so whatevuh!. But the President very clearly saw the protesters in Lafayette Square on 1 June as people who hadn't voted for him and who weren't going to vote for him anyway, so $%#@ 'em!


July


"How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan 'Went Poof Into Thin Air'
The most immediate problem that the piece covers is that the UAE supplied the US with 3.5 million test kits for $52 million. Problem: There was never an official contract for the kits and they don't appear to have been properly refrigerated, so many of them were contaminated and useless, so the UAE is out $52 million!
This is truly, horribly, disgustingly evil:

"The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

Part of the problem was that Dr. Deborah Birx had been sharing overly optimistic models that showed the pandemic just going away on its own. The Trump Administration had an extremely thin "bench" of experts to rely on, so even though Birx was saying what people wanted to hear, their lack of working closely with other medical experts meant that Birx had an outsized voice.


"While Senate Republicans take 3-day vacation, White House backstabs them on relief funding"
Amazing! Just absolutely frikkin' bloody amazing! Bunch of incompetent nitwits!


Congressman Lewis’ last words, spoken a friend of his.


Democrats passed their follow-up bill on May 15th. Republicans, including the President, just started work on it in the past week.


"As economic aid talks falter, where's the 'ultimate dealmaker'?"
Sure would be nice if the fellow presented to us in the book Art of the Deal wasn't just a PR fiction.


This is just tragic because all of the rise in cases since early July were completely unnecessary. If we had national leadership, we would have learned from New York.


Herman Cain has died of COVID-19. He caght it at the Tulsa rally. This was really stupid of Cain, but yeah, there's nothing to gloat at or celebrate here.

Mildly interesting. The President puts out two tweets on the late Herman Cain. Never once mentioned that Cain died of COVID-19 and that he didn't wear a mask to the President's Tulsa rally.


The President really hates the idea of people voting by mail:

"The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race."

No, we don't "know" any such thing. To fake voting by mail requires having a great deal of information about each and every voter. Even if you have the resources of a foreign governments printing press, cheating at vote-by-mail is very, very difficult.
The other, follow-up questio of course, is "What does he plan to do to help fix the problem?" That answer, of course, is nothig.


The Sachems head symbol has been displayed on our high school (Winchester MA, 7 miles NE of Boston) since it was built in the 70s. The School Committee has decided to remove it.


More on the CWs Kate Kane (Who's always been white in the comics) being replaced by a Black actress. Piece ponders how directly the new Batwoman should address racism.


Yeah, this is a sign of very serious trouble and of people doing a lousy job of representing their colleagues:

Senate Republicans complained on Tuesday about key provisions in the GOP-authored coronavirus relief bill one day after its unveiling...

Again, the GOP had ten weeks to come up with an alternative to the Democratic package!


A racist "dogwhistle" is something only fellow racists can hear. Yeah, this is a racist (and classist) foghorn! The President's tweet:

I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood.

Thought the battle over the Census was all over and done with, but evil never sleeps.


Depressing evaluation, but seems pretty solid.

A grim possibility is we'll see a global Covid decoupling, where much of Europe and Asia is mostly able to keep epidemics at bay but the U.S. can't, and sees higher and persistent infection and slower GDP growth; and has a cordon sanitaire remain imposed on us from other nations.


Y'know, Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski had beliefs that were considerably more tethered to reality than those of the average QAnon supporter.


Interesting right-wing perspective on Black Lives Matter from an educator. It's probably not a bad idea for liberals to be aware of how she sees the issue. The person I got this from is pretty sure that the teacher had some social media restrictions in her contract, so it's doubtful that the story raises free speech concerns. The teacher would have been better off taking her points to an anonymous message board.


Fotomat booths were useful for several decades. Digital photography in the late 90s and early aughts killed them off. In the same way, wind, solar and other forms of alternative energy are killing off coal. This is a piece about how the President has tried really, really hard to save coal. Fortunately for the fate of humankind, his efforts have been a complete and absolute failure.


“[I]f I get [COVID-19],” Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told CNN in June, “you’ll never see me without a mask.”
***headdesk***
If you catch the coronavirus, it's too late to start wearing a mask!!! The point of the mask is mostly to keep you from spreading it to others, but also to prevent you from catching it! BTW, Gohmert has caught the coronavirus.


Sorry to see John Saxon go. Good genre actor. Yeah, I remember him in Enter the Dragon that starred Bruce Lee.


Biden has embraced the role of Not Being Trump. The title to the bigger piece is sad, because it's so true! "Vote for Biden, He’s Not Trying to Kill Us All"


President says he's "not sure he could have done more about COVID-19." As of 10 August, the US has suffered 5.044 million cases, Brazil 3.035 million,  India 2.215 million, everyone else below a million, starting with Russia, South Africa, Maxico, Peru, Columbia, Chie and Iran. The US has done massively worse than everyone!


Very happy to see that AG Barr showed up for his House testimony! I was expecting him to dodge it somehow. TPM is live-blogging it. Sounds pretty contentious!

Sorry, but AG Barr's description here of what's been happening in Portland, OR, sounds highly implausible!

"Every night for the past two months, a mob of hundreds of rioters has laid siege to the federal courthouse and other nearby federal property. The rioters arrive equipped for a fight, armed with powerful slingshots, tasers, sledgehammers, saws,knives, rifles, and explosive devices."


Israel appears to be just making up an attack by Hezbollah.


People ask: "Where's the President's pandemic plan?" Problem is, GOP is a "post-policy party" these days.


Historical context to keep in mind when observing events in Portland, OR.


"Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years"
Very important context whenever the President or any Republican discusses Antifa. Also, there's no such thing as “far-left fascism.” You're either a leftist or a fascist. Being both is like having pool that is both full of water and is at the same time empty. Can't be both. It's one or the other.


When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded back in 1986, it created some fungus that protects against radiation! We might be able to use for long-term space flights.

Radiation shields made from living organisms could help us head deeper into the cosmos.


After the President's minions convinced him that "Red" (Republican) states were suffering from the coronavirus (He wasn't concerned when it was just the Blue Democratic states), Trump decided that

“This could have been stopped. It could have been stopped quickly and easily. But for some reason, it wasn’t, and we’ll figure out what that reason was."

Uh, yeah. He coulda gotten off his butt and done his job. Anyway, the real head-slapper is that he decided to put Dr. Deborah Birx and son-in-law Jared Kushner in charrge of the investigation to find out why the administration's pandemic response was so fouled up. As Birx and Kushner were part of the effort, we can expect their "investigation" to go nowhere.


The smarmy-looking jackass kid confronting the Native American man (Click through to get to NY Post piece) has just settled his case. Respectable Lawyer here figures the kid got peanuts after he claimed damages in the hundreds of millions. Kid's a mini-celebrity in MAGA World, so no need for anyone to feel sorry for him.


Soledad O'Brien reviews the entertainment line-up for the Republican Convention. Funny, "Diamond & Silk" are included. Thought these two had been kicked to the curb. Guess when you're running short on performers, you can't afford to be choosy.


The economist Paul Krugman said several months ago that an economic recovery is impossible until the pandemic is resolved. He repats himself here because he's still right.


Fox News host Jesse Watters talked about QAnon.

"Q can do some crazy stuff with the pizza stuff..."
Pizzagate alleged that Hillary Clinton and others were running a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza shop. The building doesn't have a basement!

"...and the Wayfair stuff..."
The furniture company was (stop me if you've heard this one) alleged to be running a child sex trafficking ring. Why was the allegation tossed aside? Complete lack of evidence.

"...but they also uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to Epstein..."
QAnon uncovered absolutely zippo when it came to Epstein, a real pedophile.

"...and the deep state.”
Deep State refers to people like Valerie Plame, someone who knew the Iraqi WMD claims were horse manure and that the younger George Bush was lying about them.


Whoa! DHS considers attacks on statues of Confederates to be a national security threat?!?!?! Yeah, the department's gotta go! I can still recall people back in the time that DHS was founded saying "Gee, that's an awfully Nazi-sounding name."


Here's a blast from the recent past. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida from back in May. This did not age well! "...he attacked the media and declared victory over the virus."

Florida Today: "Coronavirus in Florida, July 25: State counts more than 12,000 new cases, 124 deaths"


Speaker Pelosi is right, we need to spend lots and lots of money to beat the coronavirus!


Regis Philbin passes away. Sorry to hear this. Watched him both with Kathie Lee Gifford and with Kelly Ripa.


It's highly likely we'll see US-Iran policy dramatically changed. Biden might be more hostile than friendly, but we'd have a much more coherent, thought-out policy.


Senate Majority Leader McConnell is really good at obstructing. What he's very poor at is building any sort of consensus for any kind of constructive action. The Republican Party, including the President, has had TEN WEEKS to build a consensus on how they wanted to handle the fiscal cliff that Americans are now facing and they're just now starting to assemble a consensus among themselves!!!


Interesting comment from Nikki Haley:

"[The President] has a great story to tell on how he turned our economy & foreign policy around."

Well yeah, but he didn't turn our economy around, it was already going in the right direction. For the first three years, Trump benefited from inheriting a good economy.
He turned our foreign policy downwards. Pew Research (January 2020) showed attitudes toward the US were still pretty good, but attitudes towards Trump were very sour. Those who had confidence in the President were 29%, those who had no confidence were 64%. The US as a whole still enjoyed a 54% majority.


How the already wealthy are benefiting from the pandemic. For instance, Amazon is benefiting because it's safer to shop by mail than it is through personal contact, etc.


Cheerful polling news! The President has a lot of support in Texas and if the attack on citizens up in Portland, OR, was going to get him more popularity, Texas is the place where it would happen. According to a poll taken since the attacks up there started, the Republican Party has actually lost popularity! Not very much, but definitely a point going in the wrong direction for Trump and Barr.

Update (16 Aug): No occupations since Portland. If the above poll had been good news, I'm sure we would have seen further occupations.


This is something that I got in my spam folder. It starts off accusing liberals of overusing the accusation of racism, but never shows where we've improperly accused someone who wasn't actually a racist. It speaks of Joe Biden being a racist, but doesn't bring up any examples that are less than 20 years old. It mentions Senator Robert Byrd. Yes, Byrd was in the KKK, but he changed his mind and supported equality for Black people.

No, liberals aren't hoping people will "forget (Biden's) extensive history of racist gaffes," we're hoping people will recognize that people can change, that just because someone was once a racist, that doesn't mean they're forever going to remain that way.

The piece also mentions Biden's "You ain't Black" comment. Yeah, that was a stupid comment.


Yeah, as I remember reading about this "innovative idea" of opportunity zones back in the 1970s, this is hardly the blazing of new paths the President apparently thinks it is. And as the blogger points out, it helps the cronies of the President far more than it does Black people.


AG Barr claims the federal government had a "surge" in Kansas City where they made 200 arrests. That was certainly news to Kansas City.


Amateur hour with the Republican Convention and coronavirus relief.

The Speaker of the House and the Senate Minority Leader are righteously pissed at the failure of the Trump Administration and the Republican Senate at the failure of coronavirus relief and they have every right to be!

The utter cluster%$@$ over renewal of COVID-19 aid to people who were told to stay home because of the pandemic.


This sounds pretty cool! Riker's Island, within the New York City Metropolitan area, holds 7k inmates now, but is due to close in a few years due to unsafe conditions. The plan is to use it for renewable energy!


"Judge Orders Michael Cohen Released From Prison"
Good to hear this as it sounded quite a bit like a First Amendment issue! The President appears to have been trying to silence a critic.


My photo-essay on a rally at the African-American Museum.


The important point here is that the Republican-led Senate has had ten weeks to ensure that people don't face food insecurity and/or eviction by the end of this week!


Huh! People always thought that if fascism came to America, it would do so in an efficient, competent and effective manner.


Reporter asks the President a really good question, which of course he doesn't really answer. His answer is somewhat, kind of, sort of on point.

After claiming that his administration is "ready, willing and able" to go into Democrat-run cities "with great force," Trump was pressed on why he blamed former President Barack Obama in 2016 for the increased homicide rate in Chicago then and why he doesn’t hold himself responsible for the supposedly "out of control" crime rate in the Windy City now.


Wow! So Kellyanne Conway did an about-face on a dime and is now urging caution for states to re-open! Funny, but I recall Betsy DeVos urging that schools be re-opened now, now, now!!! From the piece in the comment: "she agreed with President Trump's threat to redirect the department's funding from schools that do not reopen in the fall."


Well, that's pretty cool! Usually, when items like space capsules with people in them come back down to Earth, they go into the water and are then picked up. With these nets, the item from space never gets wet!


So the collection and presentation of coronavirus data was snatched away from the CDC and handed to HHS. Well, the HHS doesn't have the capability to handle the data, so they hired a private company to do it.

That has some experts concerned. The company’s track record just doesn’t compare to the CDC’s, said Karen Hoffmann, former president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).


For a politician who's famously brutal towards women political opponents, the President was very, very gentle when discussing Ghislaine Maxwell, who apparently played an active role in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls.

BTW, it is good to see the President advocating the use of masks! His advocacy is several months late, but is welcome.


A round-up on what's been going on in Portland, OR. Good, creative ways to counter non-lethal weaponry. Important to remember that the situation there was calming down. Bringing in DHS troops got it all revved-up again.


"McEnany makes a new indefensible claim: Trump saved ‘3 to 4 million lives’"
Y'know, we could sit here all day long and talk about the number of deaths that were prevented. As to deaths that did happen, the countries close to China are:Cambodia, Mongolia, Taiwan, Laos, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam. Together, they all suffered 1,492 deaths. China itself suffered 4,634.
The countries suffering above 10k deaths were Brazil, India, Russia, Peru, Iran, Mexico, Italy & France.
US has by far the largest number with 144,896. The closest other nation is Brazil with 81,597.


Considering the third person involved claims he didn't see or hear Representative Yoho's rather disgusting, unhinged conduct, I'm inclined to take Repesentative AOC's word for it. The dispute was over whether poverty and unemployment lead to crime, which to a liberal is "Duh!"

Around the 7:00 minute mark, Representative AOC points out that accosting her gives other men permission to accost Representative Yoho's wife and daughters with impunity. A powerful speech.


Heh! Liz Cheney vs Matt Gaetz! A somewhat, more-or-less sensible Republican (She supports Dr. Fauci and science generally) vs a Freedom Caucus member.


From Biden's speech:

"What people don’t realize–and one of my avocations is theology — is that we all come from the same root here in terms of our fundamental basic beliefs."

I very sincerely doubt the current president knows this.


Yeah, the right-wing blogger asks us to imagine today's situation if Clinton was President instead of the current guy. Problem is, if Clinton was in charge, we'd far more likely be, as Governor Cuomo said about New York, "coming down the other side of the mountain." The coronavirus situation would be far more under control and deaths would be far less than they are. Clinton would never have tried to push off federal responsibilities onto the states, as apparently the White House Chief of Staff advised the President to do.


The RNC (Republican National Convention) is due to take place in about a month. As a blogger has pointed out, the GOP is a "post-policy party" right now and is really not capable of planning a convention in a way that will allow security professionals to ensure it will be safe.

The hilarious thing about the GOP cancelling their physical, in-person RNC event in Jacksonville is the millions and millions in donor cash that's now been flushed down the drain!


Governor Mike Parson of Missouri shows an amazing ignorance of how germs work. Sure, kids might go home and just "get over" COVID-19, but there's a very chance they'll die from it!


Another right-winger who didn't support Representative John Lewis when he was alive offers insincere praise upon his passing. Please STFU!


Absolutely infuriating because yeah, this is all necessary. It's absolutely insane to try and open schools now and I completely understand the arguments about why home-learning is definitely a second-best alternative for the majority of students. The thing is, home-learning is not going to result in a fatality!


Hooo-weee!!! The President's got some batshit-crazy notions! The second to last is a classic, he's going to sign a completed health care plan in two weeks. Yep, the plan that they've struggled to compose for a decade is going to be completed, while the new coronavirus bill is signed (Republican Party has had since mid-May to come up with an alternative plan and no one has any idea of what such a plan may even look like).

Update (14 Aug): Did the plan ever materialize? Ha, ha, ha! Of course not.


Wow! The corruption in the office of the Secretary of State is so very deep! This puzzles me though:

Others, the complaint states, “tried on several occasions to obtain clarifications and guidance from senior leadership in [the executive secretariat] and from the Office of Legal Advisors, but were blocked from doing so.”

Why does the SecState have the authority/ability to block their subordinates from talking with Legal Advisors?


"Federal Judge Rejects Additional Discovery in Case Concerning Hillary Clinton’s Emails"
Good! This appears to be a case that has just been dragged on endlessly without any possibility of resolution. At least part of it is being cut off.

And BTW, as Joy Reid is taking over the 7pm slot at MSNBC, she'll start off on Monday with a Hillary Clinton interview.


Very interesting. Thought Russians had simply settled for Putin being in charge. But as many pointed out, authoritarian regimes don't handle pandemics well.


Very good question on how we should view the DHS troops in Portland, OR.

Serious question for my 2A, anti-tyrannical, militia minded friends (who have been very silent lately).

Is this a cop? Homeland Security? Or a paid mercenary?

Do you follow his orders and get in the van, or do you use your 2A rights to stand your ground and shoot first?

You have one second to decide.

What do you do?


So you're walking along, minding your own business, your legal, concealed firearm is in its holster. This guy pictured below (Note: no identification as to who he is) asks you to get into an unmarked van.
What good does your gun do you? If you pull it out, he'll blow you away before your gun is fully out of its holster. Sure, you could have pulled it out before he asked you to step into the van, but why do you want to take the chance of overreacting?

Yeah, all of the "small government" people should be up in arms about what the Acting (Not Senate confirmed) head of Homeland Security is saying about what his department intends to do!

Details on the anonymous federal force that's been working in Portland, OR.


This talk is so full of such BS!!! From the 1:45 mark to 2:10, the President delivers a complete contradiction in terms. He says we have a national supply program, but then he says states are unevenly supplied. Which is it? Do we have a national equipment supply or is it up to each state? The news I've been getting is that no, we don't have a national program and never did.


Powerful story on what went wrong: Trump's approach to the virus was not just a misjudgment but a deliberate strategy to pass off responsibility to the states.

Sounds about right, that the whole strategy was to get people to accept that it's not the President's job to address a pandemic. Of course, it IS his job, so let's hope the strategy goes nowhere.


When the Department of Homeland Security was organized and named under the younger George Bush, many people across the political spectrum thought the name reminded them of Nazis. Chad Wolf, the current Chief of the Department, tweeted "Our men and women in uniform are patriots. We will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch."
Problem is that a "uniform" usually identifies the wearer by name, rank and unit. When I was in the Navy, my everyday dungaree uniform had my last name, stripes of rank and USN on them. The military-style fatigues that these people wear do nothing to identify the wearer.

According to the Mayor of Portland OR, the situation in the city was settling down. The introduction of DHS troops re-escalated the situation.

The troops brought in by the federal government attacked a community-organized provider of free food. Protesters, the homeless and people who just wanted a bite to eat were getting free food. It was also providing free medical and legal help. The DHS troops raided the place, confiscated all the food and put up a fence to keep anyone from returning. This didn't calm anything down.
Visibility is the best weapon liberals have against this!


So the first-term Congresswoman AOC is leading the multi-decade politician Joe Biden around by the nose, eh? That certainly won't hurt Biden's candidacy with young Democrats, that's for sure!
Piece has some fact-checking for other things Ronna McDaniel says.


These Senators are taking good and sensible actions now! Problem is, they should have been taking these same actions back in February and should have been pressing for a better, centralized supply system since January.
Good actions, but really, really late!


Very heartening to see the American people deciding for two very good and legitimate reasons, that this President simply has to be replaced. COVID-19 is the most important issue of the day and he's failing that test miserably. The second is Lafayette Square  and how he treated that piece of ground like it was enemy territory instead of part of America.


Yeah, somehow, I don't get the impression the President really considers the minimum wage to be a priority. It might help his election chances in terms of the sheer numbers of people it would appeal to, but it would anger his super-wealthy supporters, so don't think it will happen.


"Trump Declares War On America, Invades Portland [OR] To Look Strong For Re-Election"
Portland appears to be a test case.

Let's keep in mind that while secret police in Oregon are for "Law 'N' Order," they were silent and invisible when Michigan was under siege by right-wing militia members.


The Trump campaign team is "split" over more in-person rallies?!!?!? Google figures for Oklahoma (The rally there was held on 20 June) are 331 coronavirus cases for the day of the rally and hit 1,075 on 15 July. Why is there any controversy?!?!?!


Very sad to see Representative John Lewis has passed away.


Y'know, if US cities are "under siege," wouldn't that be a good reason to get a permanent, Senate-approved, Homeland Security Secretary into office?

And also, if everything is terrible 3 1/2 years after electing the current incumbent, why does anyone think re-electing him will improve anything?


I found this statement to be amusing. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said: "We want to focus on bringing this country back, rebuilding it, restoring it, and renewing it," he added. "And that means law and order, and justice."
Funny, but in the years 2017-2018, Republicans didn't appear to have possibly cared less about any of that, about seeing to it that Democrats had a voice of any sort. Democrats will give Republicans a voice, but we're basically gonna treat 'em like red-headed stepchildren.


"McEnany defends Trump's poll numbers: 'His historic COVID response speaks for itself'"
Heh! Why yes. Yes it does! "Historic?" Historically abysmal, yes. "Speaks for itself?" Yes, It's saying the President is the leader of a "post-policy party." The Republican Party no longer cares for the tough job of governing and is instead concerned exclusively with public relations, collecting campaign cash, running for office, etc.


Update on tech details on Twitter being compromised and false messages being sent out. Turns out the jokers who did it got $300k from various fooled people.


Ana Navarro, a Latina Republican Never-Trumper, knows full well that Trump and his people don't really care about laws. Laws are just annoying technicalities to them.


If Americans adopted a universal use of masks, we could crush the disease and save perhaps 40k lives.


"White House Tells Hospitals to Skip CDC and Send Coronavirus Data Straight to HHS"
I can't see any legitimate reason for this.

So the HHS is now receiving pandemic data instead of the CDC. How's it working? Well, during the Civil War, one of Lincoln's pitches for his re-election was "Don't change horses in the middle of a stream." It's working as poorly as everybody feared it would.

Update (12 Aug): "HHS took over Covid hospitalization data and the data has dried up."


Looks like Netanyahu also pushed for a too-early, premature re-opening of schools and that it turned out badly.


The President adopts a “both-sideserism” perspective on police killings of Black people.


Lots of things would be happening if the Republican Convention were a "go." They aren't, so clearly, it's not.


"Jeff Sessions Ends His Political Career in a Blaze of Racism"
Good! Having lodt his primary, the Senate career of Jeff Sessions is now over for good! He will not be missed. Just because "The Evil Leprechaun" is now hated by the President does not move him from he category of villain to hero.


This is yer classic two-fer plan. Both to solidify Biden's position with younger Democrats who would prefer Senators Sanders or Warren and a way to rev the economy up again. The blogger comes up with good reasons to think this is a plan that Biden is likely to stick with, it's not just a campaign gimmick.

Saw someone comment today that when you have Angela Davis and Bill Kristol in the same coalition, that is one heck of a large coalition!


"Trump Bizarrely Warns That A Biden Presidency Would Result In 'No Ratings' For The Media"
Nah, there's nothing the slightest bit mysterious about what the President is saying. Biden would provide a boring, rational, science and facts-driven presidency. No more "thrills & chills," no more wondering "OMG! WTF is the President up to now?!?!?!"
Gimme boring and facts-driven any day!!!


Nikki Haley argues that conservatives prefer "listening to people with different views and working toward solutions that address root causes." But she's against "mob-led statue removal," that is, removing statues of Confederates. But that's something our black fellow citizens would very much like to see as it would demonstrate what side people in leadership are on. So which is it? Are conservatives serious about finding solutions or not?


Nikki Haley argues against police defunding. Bit of a problem here is that no police departments have been defunded yet, so her "list of horribles" has nothing to do with the defunding movement.


When your team consists exclusively of people who can tell you off the top of their heads how the stock market is doing, you get ideas and advice like this.
"New White House pitch: tax cuts for rich, odd advice for jobless"


The major distinction between what Tucker Carlson says on his Fox News show and what his head writer wrote on a message board was vulgarity. Same basic message, less elegant language.

Very good point on the Roger Stone commutation:

reminder: when Bill Clinton made controversial pardon during final days of his presidency, NYT covered as news story for three months  

Also, the President had seven months to come up with a convincing reason to pardon Roger Stone from multiple felonies. The time was not well-spent.


Here's a blast from the recent past (April 30th). Saw on TV this morning that the President wants to hold rallies in Michigan, among other states. Gee, for some strange reason [/snark], the Democratic Governor there appears to be unwilling to bend rules on crowds to allow him to hold the kind of rally he wants!
"Hundreds of protesters, some carrying guns in the state Capitol, demonstrate against Michigan's emergency measures"
Keep in mind that the President approved of this heavily-armed protest!


Giving anonymity to sources sometimes makes sense. In some cases it's a good idea. Someone in the White House wants to spread dirt about Dr. Fauci, they need to be told: "Sorry, but I'll need to identify who told me this." If they won't go on the record, don't print what they say!


There are very sound and sensible reasons as to why European schools are successfully opening and why American schools can't do so safely yet. Sweden is cited as a success story.
It isn't. It is simply unsafe to open schools whie the pandemic is still raging!!!
Tucker Carlson has blamed teacher's unions for not wanting schools to be re-opened and we all know who the President listens to, eh?


Oh, good grief! The President sobs and moans about how he's the victim of recent events.

...he begins those conversations with a preamble, a sort of woe is me monologue about how unfair all of this is...

This is interesting.

"...and how people are protesting in the streets about what happened to Floyd in Minneapolis and it's hurting me."

Hmm, ya think maybe if the President didn't jump to defend Confederate statues, maybe that might have gotten the protesters to not see him as the villain of the story?


Speaker Pelosi is absolutely correct.

“This is appalling,” Pelosi said. “The President and his administration are messing with the health of our children. We all want our children to go back to school. Teachers do. Parents do. And children do. But they must go back safely.”

Gee, I just can't imagine who could possibly be right on this one [/snark]. I mean, It's just so hard to think of who's the greater expert here! This is about a disagreement between Dr. Fauci and the Governor of Florida. Florida is right now suffering a massive spike in coronavirus cases! More in this post on Dr. Fauci versus various idiots.


Education Secretary wants schools to re-open, but doesn't appear to have any idea as to how to ensure staff and student safety while re-opening.

And where there are little flare-ups or hot spots, that can be dealt with on a school-by-school or case-by-case basis.

The Press Secretary recently described the overall effort against the pandemic as just "stamping out embers," but the US is dealing with a raging, multi-hundred acre forest fire, not just "flare-ups" or "embers."

Thinking about school re-opening plans, nursing homes are similar in that they hold lots of people together under one roof in close proximity. How're they doing? Poorly. Residents are dying at a pretty high rate and the trend isn't slowing down.

See, the problem is that Florida wants to jump to the step of opening schools back up, but they haven't made it past the first step, that of getting COVID-19 under control to begin with!
Gotta crawl before you can walk, Florida's trying to jump all the way to running a marathon without being able to crawl fiirst!


It's good that the President's wearing a mask (Finally!), but look at the headlines that finally drove him to do it!


The Exceutive Editor of the NY Times describes what he calls the "blank notebook" approach to reporting news. Personally, I have never used any such approach. For instance, I believe the Trump-Pompeo approach to Iran is fatally flawed and will never result in success because I know something of the Iran issue and have some knowlege of history.

Speaking of which...this is a very unsatisfactory headline from the NY Times on Roger Stone's sentence commutation.

That sounds quite noble - he “spared” his “longtime advisor.” How about - he used the power of his office to save himself by stopping his co-conspirator from providing information about him.

*Sigh!* Why aren't all of our governors saying this?!?!?!

I want to make this clear — I will not send our kids and our education workforce into our schools unless it is safe to do so, plain and simple. I have made decisions based on science and facts to keep Michiganders safe since the beginning, and won’t stop now.

Very cool news about Oklahoma, the Creek and other Nations and SCOTUS.


The President's REAL base!

Not working class white people but rich yuppies who adopted "redneck" as a personality during the Bush administration.


"Trump commutes Roger Stone's sentence"
Roger Stone was found guilty on all seven counts that he was tried on. He was just a few days from reporting to prison. The only fact that had any bearing whatsoever in Roger Stone's case was that he was a long-time, close buddy of the President's. Everything that the President cited was nothing more than noise.

A few quotes here from Republicans, just enough to prove the corruption goes all the way down. There is no floor, no bottom.

Proof the President is guilty as %$#@!!!

What really, really annoys the President was that agents of the US Government were investigating him and his cronies in the first place. He's also really ticked off that Stone's defenses weren't simply accepted at face value.


Heh! Remind me of "Ya throw a rock into a pack of dogs. The one that yelps, that's the one you hit!" New York City paints "Black Lives Matter" on the street and the President regards that as a personal attack. How very, very interesting that he'd think that.


Whoa! Da fuq?!?!?! A bit under 120 days until the election and the Trump team is already making accusation so disgusting (the fellow here suggests that Biden is a pedophile) that the Fox News host has to cut him off.


"Supreme Court rejects Trump's argument in key tax-return case"
One very positive aspect of this rulings was that the argument that the President enjoyed "absolute immunity" was decisively squashed by all nine Justices.
The President then attacks the Senate Judiciary Committee for failing to come to his defense.

In response to the SCOTUS saying that "absolute immuity" is not a thing, the Press Secretary asserts that it is too a real thing.


"Biden-Sanders Panels Unveil Progressive Policy Blueprint"
As I said, Senator Sanders didn't need to engage in any delegate manuevers. Biden knows full well that he needs to appeal to younger progressives.


The Flynn case that the DOJ wanted to quickly and quietly dismiss is just not going away!


Florida Governor DeSantis makes an incredibly ignorant assertion:

"If you can do Home Depot, if you can do Walmart, you can definitely do the schools."

To which our commenter responds:

hell yeah I'm always spending 7 hours a day at Walmart. I eat a couple meals, sit in 10 different chairs, use the community computer, complain about the lack of air conditioning, it's rad even in quarantine

Tweet from CBS News - "The U.S. is running short on masks, gowns, face shields and gloves — again." The US invaded the island of Guadacanal on 7 Aug 1942 and cleared it of Japanese on  9 Feb 1943, six months and 2 days. For the US to run short of critical supplies now is like the US in 1942 not being able to secure Guadalcanal because it couldn't get food and ammmunition to its troops.


President's getting more and more delusional and prone to wishful thinking!

Trump complains to Hannity that the media reports on spiking coronavirus cases: “In most cases, they automatically cure. They automatically get better.”


David Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He has endorsed Trump for reelection and Fox News host Tuclar Carlson for his Vice-President. Both men have, of course, rejected Duke's endorsement.


In today's Philadelphia Inquirer, a columnist complains about "The media’s mischaracterization of Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech..." Problem is, I'm not sure the speech was "mischaracterized." The President did indeed toss in a number of pro-black people, anti-slavery statements, but when it came to tearing down statues, he skipped past figures like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis and went straight to figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. This is an "elephant in the room" because the Charlottesville incident, which significantly shaped liberal views of the President, started over a statue of Robert E. Lee. Trump simply can't skip over this question and have anybody think he subscribes to the common view that Lee was a traitor to America. No, the media didn't mischaracterize the President's speech at all.


"Masks and other protective equipment 'running low again' as pandemic hospitalizations surge"
The problem is not that the US couldn't have produced the supplies we needed, it's that idiots in the chain of command made overoptimistic projections.


Back in the 60s, there was a Batwoman in the comics (as opposed to Batgirl). In 2011, DC brought Kate Kane to the comics as the new Batwoman. The new Batwomn appeared in her own live-action TV series in 2019 after doing some appearances in other CW shows. Now we get a whole new direction as she'll be played by a Black actress


In contrast to the incumbent, Biden actually has a plan to deal with the coronavirus!


"Tulsa Official: Trump Rally 'Likely Contributed' To 500 New COVID Cases This Week"
The President stopped off in Tulsa about two weeks ago. Takes about that long for infections to turn into cases. Sure hope those people had a real good time at that rally!


I understand that Lt. Col, Vindman doesn't want to be a pawn in a political game, but this is an infuriating situation. The Army could have handled the situation much better. This is essentially a self-inflicted wound.


Good analogy:

Every single problem we’re dealing with now stems from the fact that we never actually suppressed the virus and then put the infrastructure in place to keep it suppressed. It’s like we’re trying to figure out a way to live in a burning building. It doesn’t work.

"Trump Health Secretary Says US Healthcare Workers 'Don't Get Infected' With Covid-19 (94,000 Have Contracted the Virus)"
We also knw that at least 760 health care workers have died from the coronavirus.
Medical personnel are at a little bit less risk because they know how to protect themselves, but again, we come to the complete and utter failure of the Trump Administration to produce adequate supplies for front-line health care workers. This failure is especially tragic because this is something the federal government could have very easily done.


"Claire McCaskill Dunks On SCOTUS Birth Control Decision: Doesn't GOP Want Fewer Abortions?"
The ACA/Obamacare prevented abortions by providing birth control and family planning. That's exactly what SCOTUS just took away from women!
Piece ends with hilarious video from the blogger, who acts as a "sidewalk counselor" just as anti-choicers do!


"cc: everyone who told me about how great Sweden was doing."
Yeah, I remember right-wingers talking about how Sweden was doing it right and how those who wanted to shut down their states were doing it wrong. Oops!


OMG!!! This thing about people driving cars into protesters has really got to stop!


The blogger wrote a book about the GOP being a "post-policy party." The President, for obvious political reasons, wants schools to re-open in the Fall. But he wants to brush aside all questions about safety, figuring the pandemic...y'know...will just...um...go away by then. Yeah1 That'll work!

The POTUS and the VPOTUS are both being perfectly clear: They want to re-open schools, period! If that means sacrificing your children or grandchildren, hey well, whatevuh. They're perfectly willing to do that.


"Too Much and Never Enough"
Donald's niece Mary writes a book about him.
Everything we know so far from the Mary Trump book.

But Mary Trump, who got her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 2009, claims her uncle expresses all nine clinical criteria for a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.


Not terribly surprised to see that the UN has concluded that the aerial assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport on January 3 was unlawful.


The Republican senator who runs the Senate Homeland Security Committee appeared pretty confused about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic back in March. Now that the situation is vastly worse, he appears even more confused and out of it.


As the President refuses to stick to a position on the Confederate flag, his acting Head of the DHS can't take a position either. CNN's Brianna Keilar keeps trying to nail him down anyway.


"WH's McEnany: 'The world is looking at us as a leader' on pandemic"
I presume the Press Secretary is accurately representing the President here. She and he are very seriously delusional if they think that the US is leading the way in any way on the pandemic.


These two things happened in America at the same time. An Asian man was attacked for "Bringing that Chinese virus over here" and a young Asian girl sees an Asian actress on "Hamilton" and exclaims "That's me!"


"Televangelists, Dallas megachurch that hosted Pence approved for millions in pandemic aid"
The idea of the Paycheck Protection Program is so that small businesses can get by during the pandemic, but hey, "Free Money!"

The Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, a conservative-allied group headed by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, took Covid-19 small business relief funds from the federal government, according to data released Monday.

How in the heck the Roman Catholic Church managed to benefit from the Paycheck Protection Program.


"Iowa's Ernst has wildly different standards on Ebola, coronavirus"

It's a genuine shame to see what brazen partisanship can do to someone's perspective.

Interesting to see how Senator Joni Ernst describes Obama's "failed" response to Ebola:
...the Democratic president was "apathetic" about Ebola, and was "just standing back and letting things happen." The Iowa Republican added that, as far as she was concerned, Obama hadn't even "demonstrated" that he "cared" about Americans' safety. The reality is that Obama was on the case from the very beginning and only two people died.


"Int'l Students Taking Online Classes Because Of COVID Can't Stay In U.S., ICE Says"
Just a cruel, heartless, vicious, completely unnecessary measure.

Update (15 July): After lots of pushback from US colleges and universitis, this rule was abandoned.


This piece on the President's appeals over the weekend reminded me of the recent movie "Jojo Rabbit," a film about the last days of Nazi Germany. Germany was still, even with the Allies storming the gates, concerned with purging and purifying "bad" elements. They were still hanging "subversives," groups at a time.
The enemies list of the President has grown from foreigners trying to get into the US to

...the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who, in many instances, have absolutely no clue what they are doing....

And if you think that list won't expand, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya, cheap and on an easy payment plan!


*Sigh!* Back during the 1918-1919 pandemic, people understood the importance of wearing masks to slow the spread of the disease, but the lack of celebrities willing to popularize the wearing of masks caused many, many deaths.


This piece has an extensive excerpt from an NY Times story on the President's ugly and horrible speeches over the July 4th holiday.


Georgia's Stone Mountain has several large Confederate memorials. It was occupied by peaceful, but heavily armed Black protesters. The blogger comments:

Gotta admit, these guys are hella more organized than the usual straggly mob of Threepers, "free speech libertarians", Boogaloo Bois, and ammosexuals the media obediently documents threatening female governors and random public-health officials for the cameras.

Senator Marco Rubio criticizes governments that "jail people who criticize those governments & its leaders."
Has he met our President?

Senator Joni Ernst is asked about how the President is handling the pandemic. Ernst filibusters away.


The GOP Chairwoman celebrates the President who speaks of equal opportunity and equal justice. But the Atlantic has a piece on how black voters wait an average of 45% longer to vote than white votes do. When Latino voters wait 46% longer, it’s clear this is not coincidence.


Good! Business appears to be increasingly getting onboard with green energy!


Did the President create a "strong wall" in the early days of the pandemic? Ehh, not so much.


The idea of Israel annexing parts of the West Bank has been around for several months. They're getting lots of pushback on it.

Washington is also reported to be cool on an idea that would endanger relations with America’s moderate Sunni allies across the Middle East, and risk unrest in neighbouring Jordan.
Notes on anti-annexation rally.

Fox News is trying hard to pretend the pandemic is getting better. It isn't.


Good summary of President's messaging on the pandemic. One of the problems it notes is that Trump thinks the governor's needs are satisfied. But several governors spoke with VP Pence and said there were many things they needed.

The US Government's message is that we "need to live with it," but Europe didn't. The difference was not anything magical. It was mask-wearing and social distancing.


President shows anger about the pandemic, blames China. We can argue about how the pandemic started, but there's no question that it was thoroughly botched by the President's actions and lack of actions. My advice to the President: "Forget China and do your own damned job!"

Just watched a bit of MSNBC where host Ali Velshi interviewed Trump Administration economist Peter Navarro. Navarro wanted us to stop blaming the President and to focus on China because that's were the coronavirus started.
But the point is that the coronavirus is already here! Where it originated is of historical interest, but is irrelevant now. The point is, what is the Trump Administration doing to solve the problem now?!?!
Navarro says the President is encouraging the wearing of masks. Velshi pointed out that at the Mount Rushmore fireworks show, he's not going to wear a mask himself, he's not insisting that anybody wear masks and he's not even encouraging social distancing!


Looking at the Republican minority's wildly irresponsible and excessive use of the filibuster from 2007 to 2015, Democratic senators are highly inclined to simply do away with the filibuster altogether. Senate Majority Leader McConnell is showing his nervousness about holding on to a majority in the Senate by defending the filibuster (Which, BTW, is not in the Constitution).


Since 1999, we've had a law that limits the amount of public housing in the US even though the number of people who need such housing has grown. Thanks to AOC, the amendment that was holding that back has now been repealed!


Senator Tammy Duckworth is holding up 1,123 senior armed forces promotions until she is assured that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman gets his promotion right along with everyone else. There's been suggestions that the Pentagon will delete Vindman's name before the list of promotions gets to the White House. Duckworth is saying no, if Vindman is to be denied promotion, let the denial get blamed on who is actually to blame. a vindictive President!

Update (8 Jul): "Lt. Col. Vindman retires as a result of his testimony."


Eric Trump proves, yet again, that he's "the stupid one" (not that Don Jr. is a whole lot smarter). Yes, there was a relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and his girlfriend and the Clinton family, but as people on Twitter very rudely reminded the younger Trump, there was much more of a relationship between his dad and Epstein!


I was just past the age of 10 when Nixon slapped on his wage & price controls, so I had some awareness of it. I was into Mad Magazine, which had a generally cynical view of Nixon and the song "Ohio" also shaped my view of our president at the time.
This piece says: "The success of Nixon’s actions is still debated today. What can’t be debated is that Nixon took action [with his wage and price controls]—unlike Donald Trump [wih his weak actions against the pandemic]."
*Sigh!* Yep, that villain Nixon is now a hero compared to Trump.


It is acknowledged that the President Daily Brief (PDB) contained a notification that Russia was paying the Taliban bounties for dead American soldiers. Fox & Friends says hey, the PDB is so thick, the President couldn't keep up! Erm, isn't that disqualifying?!?!?!


The blogger and I are both confounded that

...more than 100 newspapers demanded Bill Clinton step down from office because he uttered a single false sentence under oath about his extramarital affair,

but Retired US Army General Barry McCaffery on MSNBC said (about the Russian bounties paid for dead American soldiers and the President's apparent indifference): "It's sickening on so many levels." But those same papers are not calling on Trump to resign! Why not?


Joe Sinnott, an inker for Marvel Comics, passes away. I recall him inking for the Fantastic Four a lot. Drawing a comic book was (and in many cases remains) a multi-part process. The penciller would draw the actions of the story, the inker would go over the pictures so that the drawings would show up for the printer and then the page would get colored. Inkers often have a distinct and easily recognized style.


"Rambo Who Pointed Guns at Protestors in St. Louis Now Claims His Life Is Ruined, Hires 'Self-Proclaimed Expert' Lawyer"
Considering that none of the nearby houses suffered any damage as Black Lives Matter protesters passed by on their way to make speeches in front of another house, I kinda suspect that if the couple had just remained inside or watched quietly from their porch, they wouldn't have suffered a single trampled blade of grass.

Update: (15 Jul): President defends couple
'They were going to be beat up badly, and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down."


The planned theft of land from the West Bank was supposed to begin yesterday. The coronavirus is either a reason to put it off or is being used as an excuse. Delay is good as that allows opposition to build. Biden is on record as opposing it.


President is convinced virus will disappear on its own. We call this "wishful thinking"


Good! Biden knows damn well that the President is going to try every trick in the book! Biden is pulling together a team of hundreds of lawyers to keep a sharp eye on how the election goes.


Pennsylvania now requires masks in all public spaces.


"Healthcare voters prevail in one more red state: Oklahoma votes for Medicaid expansion"
This is seriously bad news for those politicians who wanted to eliminate the ACA/Obamacare and really great news for the rest of us. People realize that the choice is between the ACA and a return to the bad old days.


"Sanders, AOC, Tlaib Threaten to Cut Israeli Funding if Netanyahu Annexes 1/3 of Palestinian West Bank"
Good! This is a good response to what would be a blatantly illegal act.


"House Dems reject Trump's 'hoax' talk on Russia, bounty scandal"
Both Rs and Ds left with lots and lots of questions about Russia allegedly offering cash to the Taliban for dead American troops.

Looks like the story has been advanced a bit. Secretary of State Pompeo "said that his department had responded in 'precisely the correct way' and that U.S. and coalition forces were 'postured appropriately.'” I'd very much like to know precisely what this "correct way" was.

The story is kind of a mess right now.
The Trump administration has insisted that the intelligence on the bounties was unverified and its credibility in doubt as an explanation for why it didn’t reach Trump’s ears. However, per the Times, it was significant enough to have been shared with British intelligence last week.

Update (30 July): State Department response was allegedly to tell Russia in secret that there was potential for blowback if the story ws proven to be true. Trump Administrations claims that information was not credible enough to take action on.


Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida a while back:

“We’ve succeeded, and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it,” the governor said outside the White House on May 20 — as the deaths in his state plateaued at around 40 per day.

National Review then chimed in “Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology?”

Update (July 12th): Biggest one-day spike in COVID-19 cases is 15,300 infections.


Oh yeah. Gee. This is definitely the sign of a totally innocent group of people! No one needs to hear about foreigners assisting a presidential campaigns!


GOP senators who were at the WH this morning are defending Trump against claims that he didn’t read the PDB. “How thick is that?” Sen. Johnson quipped, referring to the PDB. “It was not to the level of verification that it was highlighted in the president’s daily briefing.”

Wow! That is just...wow! That's an amazingly weak excuse! Let's try this: If it's in the President's Daily Brief (PDB), it has been verified! The PDB is the Intelligence Community's best judgement and most conclusive, verified information they have! The blogger develops several likely scenarios going forward. We can expect AG Barr to be brought in to find the leaker.


"Sarah Sanders: More People Could Have Died from Coronavirus 'If Donald Trump Hadn't Been President'"
When we say that the President deserves a grade of "F" for his pandemic response, that doesn't mean he spent the whole time sitting around, feet up on the desk, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the ceiling. It means his actions were less than 60% correct. He largely spent February and March purging the government of anyone who might investigate his actions. He was responding to his recent impeachment by trying to make sure all of the potential whistleblowers were stomped out.