Remember when we had a competent and very cool president? Not the fucking buffoon we have now.
Shoot your shot. https://t.co/XdZz4dh82T pic.twitter.com/elpBmzu6hV
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 31, 2020
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Memories...
Trump Is Killing His Own MAGA Faithful
Trump doesn't care if his MAGA followers get Covid-19 and die. As long as he gets worshiped by the mob at the event, he feels no guilt or remorse for the damage he is doing to his own supporters.
According to a new study from Stanford University, President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies have resulted in 30,000 COVID-19 infections that would not have happened otherwise — and 700 of the infected people died.
New @Stanford study estimates that 18 Trump rallies have led to 30,000 COVID cases and 700 deaths
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) October 31, 2020
(via @AaronBelkin) https://t.co/zcR4yKwnEl pic.twitter.com/1yaPivbYFS
Friday, October 30, 2020
Silence Trump - Just Takes a A Flick of the Wrist
The perfect way to turn off the Trump noise machine.
Uncle Joe, this is a brilliant ad. @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/Va0gGSzmzn
— the greg (@mistergeezy) October 29, 2020
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Trump's Version of "Herd Immunity" Is Racist To Its Core
Trump never intended to deal with the pandemic. He saw it as a distraction from his reelection effort and did everything possible to place responsibility onto the states. To achieve that, he first sidelined the CDC, removing the world's leading public health organization from its designed role on the front lines of the pandemic response to an almost invisible public role. And, even that diminished role was subject to oversight by Trump toadies to insure the CDC did nothing to contradict Trump's incorrect or deliberately false public statements.
Trump implemented his Covid-19 task force to insure that his message regarding the pandemic was the message provided to the public. On that task force, Trump marginalized the experts and for a time made himself the public face of the federal government response. He minimized the Covid-19 risks, promised almost immediate vaccines and attacked state and local officials who implemented quarantines, social distancing and mask requirements.
Ultimately, Trump turned away from the knowledgeable public health professionals complete and put his faith in Scott Atlas, a doctor, but not an epidemiologist. Atlas is a proponent of "herd immunity," which proposes to let the pandemic run it course. His assumption is the once a sufficiently large percentage of Americans have had the virus, the pandemic will be under control. No actual epidemiologist or public health specialist believes that herd immunity is the right path to follow. They recognize that achieving herd immunity would result in hundreds of thousands of additional deaths and potentially leave a vast numbers of Covid-19 survivors with long term physical disabilities.
Despite publicly downplaying it, President Donald Trump and his team of White House advisers have embraced the controversial belief that herd immunity will help control the COVID-19 outbreak, according to three senior health officials working with the White House coronavirus task force. More worrisome for those officials: they have begun taking steps to turn the concept into policy.
...those working on the government’s COVID response say that the attempts by the White House and Atlas to steer clear from using the phrase “herd immunity” are merely a game of semantics. Privately, one of those sources said, the actual policy pursuits have been crafted around a plainly herd immunity approach; mainly, that the government should prioritize protecting the vulnerable while allowing “everyone else to get infected,” that source said.
Even as Trump and Atlas pursue herd immunity, they are making no effort to the protect vulnerable. And, I think there is a simple Trumpian reason for that - racism. The most vulnerable Americans are Black, Hispanic and Indigenous (including Pacific Islanders). Trump is willing to deal with the deaths of quite a few white grandmas and grandpas, if the result is twice as many dead Black Americans.
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Trump - "incompetent political tourist"
Time for Trump to go. His presidency has been a disaster for our country and the world. It's something that was obvious well before his election to the office based on an arcane 233 year old process that denies the will of the majority of voters. This article build a personal case for Trump's defeat, but it also identifies the MAGA hat wearing enablers that helped boost this failure of a human being to his minority victory.
His relationship with his disciples is a match made in hell, given that his Red Hat fanboys have an equally stunted view of the presidency. I assure you, they'd never allow Trump-style behavior from their doctors, their kids' teachers or, hell, their airline pilots. If they hadn't been so badly brainwashed by the conservative entertainment complex, they never would have gifted the nuclear codes and the immense power of the presidency to such an unstable, erratic, incompetent political tourist who has utterly failed to grow into the job and rise to the occasion — who has failed to accept the intense gravity of his post.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Is Santa's Pushing Vaccine?
The Trump gang has confirmed that it intends to let Covid-19 run amuck in the US. They are going to let the body count and medical damage to those that don't die run its course. Trump will take credit for vaccines that real doctors and scientists have made an historic effort to get tested and approved and he will take credit for therapeutics that medical professionals have found to be useful in treating the virus. But, if another 100,000 or 200,000 die... He's good with that.
So it's not surprising that one of his hand selected goons came up the plan to promote the hopefully upcoming Covid-19 vaccine through shopping mall Santas and their helpers. Fortunately the plan has been abandoned for the time being.
The Trump administration has discontinued a $250 million advertising campaign aimed at promoting COVID-19 vaccinations that included a plan to offer Santa Claus performers early access to a vaccine in exchange for their help convincing the public to get vaccinated.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that, according to audio recordings of discussion of the plan, the deal would have been available to Mrs. Claus and elf performers, too. The idea was conceived by embattled Health and Human Services assistant secretary Michael Caputo prior to his leave of absence after a public meltdown last month in which he accused CDC scientists of sabotaging the Trump administration’s pandemic response.
The segment of the population at the most risk from Covid-19 doesn't seem to be the group most likely to be sitting on Santa's lap in December. And, the plan to compensate Santa and his elves with early access to a vaccine that will be in short supply at first instead of emergency and health care professions and elder care residents seems a bit short sighted.
This is how Trump responds to the country's most significant health crisis in a century. Give away vital medicine to Santa Claus.
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Javanka - Snowflakes
Public figures who can't take the heat. Melting like....what's the word? Snowflakes.
Javanka have threatened to sue the Lincoln Project, but the Lincoln Project folks don't seem concerned.
“Your clients are no longer more Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities. Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump are public officials. They have been public officials since President Trump, in a gross act of nepotism, awarded Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump senior White House positions in 2017. The placement of Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump in these high-level White House offices has been disastrous for Americans everywhere, but it is now also devastating to the prospects of your would-be lawsuit.”
Trump State Park - Nice Tax Write-off
Park isn't much to look at.
When Trump is convicted of tax fraud after he is fired by US voters, one of the charges in the massive indictment will be the huge tax write-off he claimed for property he was unable to develop in New York state. He turned a tract worth less than three million dollars into between a $26M and $100M tax write-off. This is one of many cases where Trump donated land that he was unable to use in exchange for large and very poorly documented tax write-offs.
In 2006, the reality TV mogul donated the undeveloped land to New York state, claiming it was worth $100m – an amount that, if claimed as a qualified conservation contribution, could have saved him a fortune in income tax, potentially carried forward for years. (Confusingly, Trump’s 2016 campaign valued the land at $26.1m in his public list of charitable contributions.)
The lucrative donation deal was approved by Bernadette Castro, a friend of Trump’s and former CEO of Castro Convertibles, a pullout sofa company, who was appointed New York parks commissioner by the then Republican governor, George Pataki. At an elaborate ceremony that year – reportedly complete with a catering tent, bottles of Trump-branded ice water, and TV crew – Castro lavished praise on Trump’s “magnificent donation”, and Pataki boasted the park would “provide recreational opportunities for families and visitors”. Trump declared: “I hope that these 436 acres of property will turn into one of the most beautiful parks anywhere in the world.”
Crappy park, but nice sign.
Having visited the park, it all feels like a big joke. The site is surprisingly hard to find – beyond a garish sign on the nearby Taconic State Parkway, there are no clear markers to guide potential visitors – as if the state hopes you won’t actually go. It’s not listed on New York parks’ website, either, although it is labelled a “passive park”, which means it is not maintained and has no amenities.
Upon arrival, you are greeted with nothing. The “parking lot” is an empty gravel patch with a noticeboard that warns visitors to beware of ticks. There are no restrooms, trash cans, or places to sit. The remainder is basically bramble bushes and an empty field with bits of trash. This, I guess, is what $100m looks like under late capitalism.
The Donald Trump Inaugural Song
How did these guys see all this coming while millions of Americans were (and remain) clueless?
Superspreader In Chief - Murders Tens of Thousands
If the US had followed the same testing, tracing and shutdown protocols as Canada or Germany, over one hundred thousand more Americans would be alive today. The abject failure and conscious cruelty of the Trump misadministration has had an incredible human cost.
“If the U.S. had followed Canadian policies and protocols, there might have only been 85,192 U.S. deaths—making more than 132,500 American deaths ‘avoidable.’ If the U.S. response had mirrored that of Germany, the U.S. may have only had 38,457 deaths—leaving 179,260 avoidable deaths,” the researchers wrote.
But, Trump isn't done with the murders. If he is reelected Americans can count on hundreds of thousands more unnecessary deaths.
Public health officials across the country are warning that the upcoming winter may be an especially brutal period as coronavirus infections rise to a third peak and flu season arrives. Adding to that gloomy forecast, the Columbia researchers wrote that the federal government’s “continued mismanagement” of the pandemic shows few indications of improvement: “The abject failures of U.S. government policies and crisis messaging persist.”
It's not just a question of "messaging," Trump's decision to disobey public health guidelines in every local where he holds his fascist MAGA rallies appear to frequently generate Covid-19 clusters. He doesn't care.
As President Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign rallies during the past two months, he didn’t just defy state orders and federal health guidelines. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake.
The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Fascism, Racism, Sexism - All Run Deep
It's not a given that this election will defeat America's fascists, but if Joe Biden wins it will be a start.
Joe Biden Wants to Help Us Make the American Idea Reality
America has always struggled between the ideas/ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution and the reality that our nation's founding documents were compromised by the enforced bondage of millions of people The idea that as a nation "manifest destiny" allowed us to violently and duplicitly steal the lands that had been the homes and that had provided the sustenance for other peoples for thousands of years. We have always clung to the idea, while often ignoring the reality. Maybe Joe Biden is coming along at a time when we are ready to move aggressively towards truly fulfilling the idea of America.
America was an idea. We've never lived up to it but we've never walked away from it before.https://t.co/VRCnKI0rfQ pic.twitter.com/xLuhhGyJVp
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 22, 2020
Note to Trump: It's the Pandemic, Stupid!
Is Trump's bubble about to burst?
In these closing weeks of the race, Trump has appeared increasingly trapped in the information bubble he has created around himself and his core supporters, relitigating old grievances and attacks rather than addressing issues atop voters’ list of concerns, notably the COVID-19 pandemic.Who is in that bubble? A good measure would be the roughly 1 in 6 Americans who say they rely on Trump and the White House for most of their news about the coronavirus, according to surveys by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
Among that group, 90% say the U.S. has controlled the outbreak as much as it could have, according to a survey Pew released last week. Over 7 in 10 in that group say the threat of the pandemic has been overblown.
Outside the bubble, more than two-thirds of Americans reject the view that the seriousness of the pandemic has been exaggerated, Pew found, and more than 6 in 10 say the U.S. has not done all it could to control the disease.
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Damn It, Erie. Why Did You Make Me Come Here?
Telling your most rabid supporters that you really didn't want to be with them.
President Donald Trump got remarkably candid on Tuesday night with his supporters in Pennsylvania, a state he desperately needs to win on Election Day, by telling them that if he had a choice, he wouldn’t have bothered to grace them with his presence.
“Four or five months ago when we started this whole thing….before the plague came in, I had it made,” Trump said during a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. “I wasn’t coming to Erie. I mean I have to be honest, there’s no way I was coming. I didn’t have to.”
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Put Me In Coach, I'm Ready to Lie
If only Trump had stuck with his promising baseball career instead of pursuing his lifetime goal of losing billions of dollars and hosting a reality TV show. Trump has been bragging for years (yes, if his mouth is moving he's bragging/lying) about his stellar high school baseball prowess and the fact that professional teams were sending scouts to his military high school, New York Military Academy, to evaluate him. Problem with this is that none of it is true.
I know you're shocked, but nothing that Trump says about his baseball skills are remotely accurate. For example, Trump tells a story about hitting a game wining home run and his excitement at seeing the headline in the local paper.
“I will never forget […] the first time I saw my name in the newspaper,” he continued. “It was when I got the winning home run in a game between our academy and Cornwall High School. It was in 1964 and it was in a little local paper. It simply said, TRUMP HOMERS TO WIN THE GAME. I just loved it and I will never forget it. It was better than actually hitting the home run.”
The problem with this glorious Trump remembrance? It appears to not have happened.
...After combing the Evening News and the Cornwall Local, the only local newspapers to regularly cover NYMA sports, and doing an extensive search on Newspapers.com, I’ve been unable to find “TRUMP HOMERS TO WIN THE GAME” in any local paper...
Perhaps that’s because in 1964, NYMA didn’t play Cornwall High School, according to the schedule in its yearbook. They didn’t play in 1963, either.
Perhaps Trump's did have a game winning hit back in 1963 or 1964, but this conversation recalled by one of Trump's teammates seems to be more in line with the records of Trump's less than stellar hitting abilities.
"We were walking together near the baseball field where, he reminded me, he’d played exceptionally well. He demanded that I tell him the story of one of his greatest games. 'The bases were loaded,' I told him. 'We were losing by three. You hit the ball just over the third baseman’s head. Neither the third baseman nor the left fielder could get to the ball in time. All four of our runs came in; we won the game.' 'No,' he [Trump] said. 'That’s not the way it happened. I want you to remember this: I hit the ball out of the ballpark! Remember that. I hit it out of the ballpark!' Ballpark? I thought. We were talking about a high school practice field. There was no park to hit a ball out of. And anyway, his hit was a blooper the fielders misplayed."Local newspapers also give some insight into Trump's prowess as a hitter. Keep in mind that Trump wasn't playing at a big school in a highly competitive league, so to interest professional scouts, Trump would have to put up some big hitting numbers. However, based on limited existing records, it appears that Trump was a lifetime .138 hitter.
Combined, the nine box scores I unearthed give Trump a 4 for 29 batting record in his sophomore, junior, and senior seasons, with three runs batted in and a single run scored. Trump’s batting average in those nine games: an underwhelming .138. (I found one additional mention of a hit and another of a hitless game in games that didn’t have box scores.
When you consider Trump daily menu of lies, his misremembrances of his high school baseball career aren't really germane. However, they do provide a clear insight into his character. His willingness to lie about the most insignificant events of his past is a simple indication of his willingness to lie about virtually every aspect of the present.
Pat Robertson Predicts Trump's Re-election And Armageddon
Ninety year old Cristo-fascist, Pat Robertson says that God has told him Trump will win the election. The bad news, for the billions of non-Christians in the world is that Trump's victory will usher in the end times when they will all be consigned to hell. So, really a bad news/bad news situation. The silver lining here? Robertson's record on the end of days isn't all that good.
Robertson has been predicting the apocalypse since at least 1976, when he forecast the world would end in October or November 1982, and in 1990 the Southern Baptist minister warned the world would be destroyed April 29, 2007 — which, of course, has proved to be inaccurate.
“But I am saying that if things that people thought would be during the millennial time with the coming of Jesus, they are going to happen in our lifetime,” Robertson said, “and the next thing is the election that’s coming up in just a few weeks, at which time according to what I believe the lord told me, the president is going to be re-elected.”
Trump and His 10 Monkeys With Flamethrowers
As a business man who has lost billions of dollars over his less than stellar career, Trump has presided over a staggering waste of nearly one billion dollars in campaign contributions as his re-election campaign staggers towards its finish.
“They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads way too early,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant who advised John McCain and Jeb Bush and is an outspoken Trump critic. “You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”
Trump's Blizzard of Bullshit
Sixty six lies in three days. Trump has discarded any pretense of telling the truth and his lies at campaign rallies are almost all totally irrelevant to the primary issues of the campaign.
For fact checkers, the period from Friday through Sunday was one of the most challenging of Trump's entire presidency: he made at least 66 separate false or misleading claims over that three-day span. In other words, it was 66 false or misleading claims without even counting all the times he repeated some of those same 66 claims over the course of the three days.
Yet, his MAGA followers don't seem to mind Trump blizzard of bullshit.
Monday, October 19, 2020
Trump Has Broken Our Intelligence Agencies
The United States intelligence community is hardly perfect, but it is an important tool for our government. It is populated by professionals who do a critically important job that is vital to the security of our country. Those professionals need to be allowed to provide the best possible intelligence to our political leaders. Information untainted by politics and uninhibited by political pressure. That's not the way things work in the "age of Trump's ignorance." Trump wants the intelligence to support his limited and horribly biased worldview. He had done huge damage to our country's ability to see the world and understand global events.
Trump’s actions, and the endless partisan battles over the Russia probe and impeachment, have left the intelligence community bruised and battered. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s advisers and allies in Congress are already thinking about what a heavy lift it will be to restore morale inside the agencies, legitimacy on Capitol Hill and public trust in the intelligence community’s leadership should Biden defeat Trump in November, according to more than a dozen people close to the candidate.
“This will be among the most important things a President Biden would need to do—and that he’ll want to do—immediately,” said Tony Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser under Barack Obama and is a top adviser to the Biden campaign. “I know from several conversations with him about this that he has deep concern about what has been done to the IC these last several years in terms of the politicization, and repairing that starts at the top with the president.”
Trump demands that the intelligence community validate his prejudices and ignorance. That's not the way things should work.
Empty Building, Empty Promises, An Empty Man
In 2017, Trump touted the proposed Foxconn manufacturing facility in Wisconsin as "the eighth wonder of the world" long before any actual buildings were erected. Today, a few building shells are in place, but none of the interiors are more than partially finished. The project has no purpose, as none of Foxconn's business units have any idea what they could profitably manufacture in the United States. Money spent on the facilities is well below commitments made by the company and the company's hiring process is based on hiring just enough employees to meet its annual commitment in November and firing them after the first of the next year. It's all a con that has been perpetuated by Trump and Foxconn on Trump's behalf.
But in actual reality, the project has succeeded in manufacturing mostly this: an endless supply of wonderful things for the President to promise his supporters. This past weekend, in an interview with a local Wisconsin TV station, Trump insisted Foxconn had built “one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen” in Mount Pleasant and would keep its promises and more if he was reelected. “They will do what I tell them to do,” he said. “If we win the election, Foxconn is going to come into our country with money like no other company has come into our country.”
No one wanted to believe promises like this more than the people who went to work for Foxconn in Wisconsin. They each came to regret different things: the wasted time, the jobs they’d left, the integrity lost making deals and offering jobs only to have the company change course. But one common theme was frustration that it hadn’t turned out to be real and that long after they’d learned the truth, they saw the facade still standing. “There are a lot of good people who fell for this,” said one employee, shortly before departing a job at Foxconn. “Who wanted to see it succeed.”
“We got screwed,” another former employee said. “The state got screwed.”
It's like Trump's casino business, built on fraud and financed by other people's money. And, like all of Trump's businesses, it's a con that simply falls apart when seen in the light of reality.
Sunday, October 18, 2020
14 vs 59,000
Math is tough for some. Trump pretends to be a business genius - one who loses more money than he makes. So, it should be no surprise that he can't understand the danger posed by Covid-19.
TeamTrump had this info waaaay back. And didn't use it. https://t.co/WtnHRbdUL5
— Dennis Herring (@dcherring) October 18, 2020
Unfit For Anything - Trump's Minions
These are uniformly bad people. Anyone who has worked for Trump in his mis-administration of the United States needs to be shunned professionally. They have demonstrated that they have no moral compass and many, if not most of them, have shown themselves to lie with the same lack of shame as Trump himself.
Assuming President Trump loses his reelection bid in a few weeks, the soon-to-be alumni of the Trump administration, who were warned that association with Trump would mar their careers and corrode their character, are now "hoping the Trump presidency isn’t a disqualifying blemish on their resumes or Google footprint as the door revolves the other way and they seek to land, once again, in the private sector,” The Post reports.
No one forced anyone to work in this administration. No one forced them to stay to the bitter end or to conceal wrongdoing or to attack critics. These actions have consequences. Instead of whining about unfair treatment, it is time for Trumpers to do some self-reflection and figure out how to make up for the damage they have done. Then they might be fit to hire.
They will never be fit to hire. Trump's stink will be with them for the rest of their lives.
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Vote the Bastards Out
The room where it happens. Is a voting booth or your kitchen table and mail in ballot. Vote.
New Zealand's Leaders Lead
Sit down, sunshine!
God, I love New Zealand!
— Oilinki (@oilinki) October 14, 2020
Winston Peters....deputy PM of New Zealand.
“Sorry sunshine, wrong place” :D pic.twitter.com/YzWg8mE4s7
New Zealand's government took early, decisive steps to deal with the pandemic. Leaders listened to scientists and public health experts and the people of New Zealand listened to their elected leaders.
Last week, New Zealand moved to lift the last of its virus restrictions after going 10 days with no new cases in Auckland, which had experienced a small cluster. Unrestricted gatherings are allowed throughout the nation, and there’s no physical distancing rules in bars and restaurants.
To date, New Zealand has recorded 1,800 positive tests and 25 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S., meanwhile, has tallied over 7,800,000 cases and 215,000 deaths.
Friday, October 16, 2020
Trump and the CDC
Everything Trump touches turns to shit. This article is an exceptional description of the damage that Trump's incompetence has done to the CDC. Once the "gold standard" of public health, now a demoralized and often ignored shell of its former self.
Once seen as an apolitical bulwark, the CDC endured meddling on multiple fronts by officials with little or no public health experience, from Trump’s daughter Ivanka to Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s immigration crackdown. A shifting and mysterious cast of political aides and private contractors — what one scientist described as young protégés of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, “wearing blue suits with red ties and beards” — crowded into important meetings about key policy decisions.
The Trump administration is “appropriating a public enterprise and making it into an agent of propaganda for a political regime,” one CDC scientist said in an interview as events unfolded. “It’s mind-boggling in the totality of ambition to so deeply undermine what’s so vitally important to the public.”
Trump is responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Americans and the devastation of the US economy. The near destruction of a vitally important public agency is simply collateral damage caused by a man without a moral compass.
The Speed of Lies
Trump's news cycle.
A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
It's Not the Militias, It's The Billionaires
Today, the Trump White House jumped on board with a call for the US to forget about trying to mitigate the impact of the pandemic through public health measures and instead focus on the development of "herd immunity" by allowing business as usual, except for high risk and the elderly.
Corporate records filed with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) confirm that the AIER operates as part of a Koch-funded network of climate science deniers who see environmental regulation as a threat to its vision of unfettered, deregulated markets....
... the AIER is not just a free-market think-tank. It receives a large bulk of its funding from its own investment activities, not least in fossil fuels, energy utilities, tobacco, technology and consumer goods. AIER owns a major investment firm, American Investment Services Inc., which harnesses the think-tank’s research to help inform investment advice. Security Exchange Commission filings seen by Byline Times confirm that AIER’s American Investment Services Inc. runs a private fund valued at $284,492,000.
The real authoritarian threat to our country isn't the right wing militias, it's the well funded, fascist leaning far right billionaires and their fellow travelers who pose the real danger. Those militia freedom fighters are just a pale imitation of Hitler's Sturmabteilung. The right wing billionaires realize that they can take over our country without violence. Control the media, control the courts and own enough legislators and you control the country.
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Just Follow the Signs to Your Free Covid-19 Infection Site
Trump will be taking his Covid-19 Superspreader Tour to Des Moines, Iowa on Wednesday. Of course, only minimal precautions will be made by the Trump campaign, apparently based on the assumption that any infections transmitted during the rally won't result in death until after the election.
Enemies of Democracy
Eighty-eight of Amy Coney Barrett's Notre Dame faculty colleagues have written an open letter to her asking that she request a postponement in her confirmation hearing until after the election. The fact that the hearings are taking place right now should be evidence enough that Barrett understands that she was nominated to do a job. Her acceptance of the job of undermining our democracy, just as surely as Vladimir Putin has done, was confirmed when she accepted the nomination. Fat chance she will do the right thing for the country.
The rushed nature of your nomination process, which you certainly recognize as an exercise in raw power politics, may effectively deprive the American people of a voice in selecting the next Supreme Court justice. You are not, of course, responsible for the anti-democratic machinations driving your nomination. Nor are you complicit in the Republican hypocrisy of fast-tracking your nomination weeks before a presidential election when many of the same senators refused to grant Merrick Garland so much as a hearing a full year before the last election. However, you can refuse to be party to such maneuvers. We ask that you honor the democratic process and insist the hearings be put on hold until after the voters have made their choice. Following the election, your nomination would proceed, or not, in accordance with the wishes of the winning candidate.
Per Capita Daily Infection Rates Explode in "Red States"
Trump blames the extent of pandemic cases on "blue states" and their Democratic leadership. It's true that the states with the highest case rates are more populous states which tend to be more Democratic oriented. But, the key is that they have larger populations so in gross numbers of cases/deaths these states tend to be at the top of Trump's list. However, if the cases/deaths are broken out on a per capita basis, then the impact of Covid-19 shifts dramatically to "red states".
“It’s just affecting Democrat cities and Democrat states.“
— Tony Clark (@AnthonyJClark) October 12, 2020
“It’s safe to reopen.“
“In April, when it gets warm.”
“Wearing a mask is a personal choice.“
“Even the CDC guidelines say masks aren’t necessary.”
“It’s a hoax.“
“We have it contained.”
“It’s going to disappear.” pic.twitter.com/yIh1lue1Hl
From a trend perspective, low population "red states" are far more dangerous than "blue states". Take North and South Dakota for example. If you look at the peak daily combined infection rate in New York and New Jersey at their peak, it averaged 538.1 infections per 1,000,000 inhabitants. It you look at the 14 day rolling average in the Dakotas right now, both of those states exceed the NY/NJ peak daily average and the rate is climbing.
Monday, October 12, 2020
Trump Faces A Flurry Of Lawsuits
Here's a list of nine civil lawsuits awaiting Trump in January 2021.
Trump is likely to face a litany of federal investigations if he loses to former Vice President Joe Biden next month. He may also be indicted for his role in covering up hush-money payments to Karen McDougal, a plot that sent his former lawyer Michael Cohen to prison.
Trump Commands, God Obeys
Republicans want to destroy the Affordable Care Act and Amy Coney Barrett is the tool the are using to do the job.
Stop the gas-lighting. How will Trump do this? He has refused to release a health care plan, despite promising multiple times to do so within "two weeks." https://t.co/6remIvG3gl
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) October 12, 2020
Today Trump intends to sign an Executive Order commanding the sun to rise in the west and set in the east. Can't wait for Kayleigh's Tweet confirming tomorrow's sunrise over Malibu.
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Only The Best People - Best For Trump That Is
Trump has always demanded loyalty from the people around him far more than their competence. Few of those initially selected to cabinet post would have been chosen by any other Republican president. And, those few competent and qualified people are long gone. Over a third of Trump senior staff was gone in his first year in office. Top to bottom the Trump misadministration is now staffed with incompetent sycophants and it shows.
There have been prominent misspellings in official White House statements (the pharmaceutical company whose treatment Trump took is Regeneron, not Regeron). Trump bungled the name of a well-known Republican senator (that’s James Inhofe, not Imhofe) in a video message. Communications Director Alyssa Farah did much the same in a television interview, repeatedly mispronouncing the name of Trump’s physician (it’s Dr. Sean Conley, with two syllables, not Connelly with three).
It’s easy to dismiss these flubs as minor communications errors, but communicating with the public is one of the most important things White Houses do. And this one has made such a hash of things that it has compounded the very real substantive problems confronting an administration that has more of its fair share of those as well.
In 2016, Trump told voters he was connected with the best people in every field of government, finance and public administration. It was just another of his tens of thousands of lies. The few competent people who joined Trump are long gone. They were fired for being competent or for actually taking their oath of office seriously. Or, they simple got sick of working for an incompetent buffoon. Now the White House is being managed by a crew that is being selected based on loyalty and administered by a personnel office headed by previously fired Trump personal assistant, Johnny McEntee. He was tossed out of the White House in 2018, unable to complete the security clearance process due to his gambling addiction and problems with the accuracy of his personal income tax filings (kind of like his boss).
The source of many of the poor staffing these days in the White House and administration that comes up time and time again in conversations with folks inside and outside the administration is the problematic role played by the Presidential Personnel Office, now headed up by 30-year-old former Trump body man Johnny McEntee, who’s viewed as the “keeper of the flame” in parts of Trump-world, but despised in other corners for foisting unqualified, but sycophantic, young appointees — some even without college degrees — onto their agencies.
It's our own fault. When Trump said he would only hire the best people, he meant the best for himself not the United States.
Saturday, October 10, 2020
"Trump plays golf..." Is Apparently the Theme of This Short Covid-19 Bio
When the person obligated to provide for the safety and security of the people of our country is a thoughtless, mentally deranged and intellectually incompetent person, this is what happens.
Timeline of exactly how Donald Trump handled Coronavirus in America.
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 10, 2020
Devastatingly heartless... pic.twitter.com/3bnNONPZpA
Friday, October 9, 2020
Trump Makes Time Magazine Cover (Sort of)
Time magazine's first Virus Superspreader of the Year award goes to Trump.
Trump Is Afraid
"Maybe on November 3, I just might lose this."
Wow. This is really good. pic.twitter.com/soVHgqXXMo
— John Aravosis 🇺🇸🇬🇷🏳️🌈 (@aravosis) October 7, 2020
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Old Folks - Here's Your $200 Bribe From Trump (Maybe)
On September 24, Trump surprised virtually everyone by promising America's seniors a, one time, $200 prescription drug card. His announcement caught folks at Health and Human Services and Medicare by surprise. Now, those people are trying to implement the plan so that seniors on Medicare drug plans will receive their card, with a signed Trump letter, before the election. Of course, this $200 is not a gift, it is money taken directly out of the Medicare trust fund, but the cost of producing and distributing these cards will also come out of the trust fund. So, Medicare will be forced to take money out of its trust fund to cover the cost of these cards randomly sent out, often to people who don't need them, leaving less in the already stressed Medicare trust fund.
The funding is going to come from the Medicare trust fund, and it's not cheap. It will cost $7.9 billion, including about $51 million to create and distribute the cards. That's taxpayer money that is supposed to be paying benefits for seniors, not on Trump's campaign. On top of that $7.9 billion, the administration is proposing spending $19 million this month, to send letters out to seniors hyping the plan. That's possibly because they aren't certain they could have the cards land in seniors' mailboxes before the election, so they want to make sure a letter signed by Trump reaches them before they vote. Just to be clear, this is the administration taking money away from seniors' Medicare to give it back to them, with some extra fees and costs tacked on for the cost of mailing and production. It's a boondoggle. It's worse.
"I Voted"
Dropped my completed ballot of at the Post Office this morning. Will get on-line notification when it is received and when it is counted.
Is It Time to "LIBERATE MICHIGAN" - Shhhh, Don't Tell Anyone Trump Said That
Just a coincidence.
News reports that FBI found this plot to overthrow the Michigan state government, including kidnapping the Governor, was:
— David Burbach (@dburbach) October 8, 2020
1) a right-wing militia angry about COVID restrictions
2) was organizing in "early 2020" https://t.co/Y6cFGMPvpZ
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Oh, Canada
Canada 173,123 cases, 9,541 deaths (252 per million).
Trump's USA 7,776,014 cases, 216,763 deaths (654 per million).
Trump has made the US the world leader in Covid-19 deaths.
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