Coup, Coup Summer

Sown in the fires of Armageddon, or some such nonsense. Can’t even with these guys…

So.

So… sigh…

About the coup that General (retired) Flynn, Sydney Powell, Mike Lindell, Donald Trump, and pretty much all of Qanon is calling/praying/screaming for.

Ain’t gonna happen. At least not the way the way the Qer’s think it’s going to happen.

The military is not going to arrest Joe Biden, round all the mean ‘ol Democrats, and re-install Donny as president. In fact, I’m betting the leaders of the military were relived when Trump lost so decidedly. While Trump pretended to ‘respect’ for the military, he really has respect only for those named ‘Donald J. Trump’, or those at the heads of other countries who wield ‘ultimate’ power (murderous dictators). This is why he sucked up to Putin, to Kim, to MBS and Saudi Arabia, to China, (until his advisors told him to knock it off during covid), he likes those who strut and those who kill. Who kill reporters and protesters, that is. He’s just mad he can only strut. No, he has no respect those he can’t understand, those who seem to be sacrificing for others with nothing in it for themselves. If the answer to the question ‘what’s in it for me?’ is ‘honor and duty to country’, that’s a hard pass.

So, no, I really don’t fear the military rising up to help a man who insulted them as “losers” and “suckers”, no I fear the followers. The army of the deluded dead-enders, the ones still holding boat parades, still plotting on Parler and Telegram, the people who have been going on a four-year gun buying spree to arm themselves for the day when their particular ‘skills’ would be needed. Call it ‘boogaloo’, ‘race war’, ‘Armageddon’, or just ‘Civil War’, they’re down will alllll that. They desperately miss their guidance from Donald and especially from ‘Q’, and have been wandering around, seething and straining, fighting any battle they can (masks, vaccines) waiting for the bat-signal that will allow them to descend on America and ‘take back their country’. They’ve been waiting for a long time.

Trump, Flynn, Powell, Lindell (the Three Stooges and a spare), are giving it too them. They’ve giving them a date, a month at least; August. Don’t worry, Trump will be back in August, now please give us money. The Qanoners believe this stuff, like they believe Tom Hanks kills babies to drink their adrenaline. They think the military and Trump are actually running the country and that Joe Biden is either a clone, a doddering old man who has no idea where he is while Kamala Harris runs things, or was illegally installed and will be forced out. Or all of it, or bits of it. They’re nuts, what can I say?

Many Trump supporters are waiting, wanting, eager, and trembling to be part of a violent act in his name. Encouraged by Trump they have already committed violence in his name and are ready to do it again. It wouldn’t take much to do it again. Powell and Lindell, two people loved and respected in the cult, say Trump can be re-instated in August, Trump (the God of the Cult) repeats the August date, Flynn endorses a military style coup. If the military won’t step up to do its duty, the ‘anoners are very excited to do it for them.

 They are already plotting now. They haven’t really stopped in four years.

Trump gave them a month, they can figure out a day, a place and a time. He thinks with his announced rallies, his constant firing at them with fundraising emails, the constant repeating of the Big Lie and telling them he’ll be re-instated only if they ‘fight’ (you know that is coming) that his followers will bring about ‘the Storm’ (TM) (see video below), he’ll be back in power (and safe from prosecution) and they can round up all the ‘pedos’ together. They’ll all be the shining heroes they always knew they were. Jesus might even come back.

All they have to do is fight.

“Fight For Trump!”

Oh good, another summer made interesting for all the wrong reasons.

Crazy Qanon video below, shown at their conference last week where Flynn made his coup endorsement.

A Party of Trolls

See the happy trolls. See them use Twitter! Troll them libs, trolls, Troll!

Remember when the Republicans put forth polices, proposed new bills, and fought for their passage? Remember when they composed a party platform that clearly stated their ideals, their values, and their plans for America?

You remember that?

Well, you’d have to be somewhere in your late 40s, because they haven’t done much of that since the 80s, and it wasn’t pretty even then. The 1980s was when the GOP’s ‘War on America’ started in earnest, with hacking at the social infrastructure, huge tax cats that were supposed to ‘kickstart’ the economy (they didn’t) and other draconian measures that undermined the middle class and increased poverty while increasing the number of billionaires.

More Billionaires demanding more tax cuts to be paid for by an ever-shrinking middle class.

Because more billionaires is just what the country needed, of course.

After a while of attacking the poor as lazy, cutting taxes for the rich, defunding or under-funding social programs, and starting wars based on lies (Thanks, George W.), the Republicans grew exhausted, (and lost the White House for eight years) and decided instead of trying to govern, which was hard, they would just… not. Not govern, not try to pass anything particularly helpful, even to their own voters (their donors are another story), just not really do much of anything except make sure nothing that they didn’t propose themselves (and they proposed next to nothing) would pass. Didn’t matter if it might be beneficial to the American people, if the Democrats like it, it must die. No Republican would be allowed to vote ‘yes’ on any Democratic legislation.

Mitch McConnell’s stated goal was to make sure Obama was a ‘one-term president’. If it hurt America in the process, well, tough. The stimulus Obama and the Democrats managed to pass after the crash of 2008 was too small, and everyone knew it. But it was all they could do because of McConnell and the GOP. The Republicans didn’t give a F. Economists now say it lengthened the recession by probably four years. That was McConnell’s plan, to screw the country to kill Obama and the Democrats to gain power, America was just in the line of fire. And it worked.

The GOP has passed one major piece of legislation in ten years, the Trump tax cuts which has already added trillions to the debt, and will add trillions more. As usual, they were sold as a revenue ‘enhancer’ and failed to be so. Sold on lies, just like everything else the GOP has advanced in the past 40+ years. Passed, btw, though reconciliation, which is good when they do it, but totally unfair when the Democrats do it.

Feh.

The Republican party is not a party of policy, it’s a party of trolls. I mean that literally; they don’t live under bridges (if they did they would know how badly those bridges need repair and pass the infrastructure bill) but they live for bullying and trolling others, especially liberals and everything they classify as ‘liberal’. It’s not just the only thing they got, since they’ve abandoned policy (and don’t have the votes to shove through far-right judges anymore), trolling the libs is the only thing on their agenda, it’s what they live for. Troll tweets, troll appearances on Tucker, Hannity, and Pirro, troll bills, troll amendments to bills, troll commercials (that idiotic ‘taking-my-Glock-to-congress thing? What the F was that about?), troll signs outside congressional offices, troll calls for ‘debates’, even chasing after their fellow congresspersons in the halls to scream at them for the cameras. Liberal bait, thrown out to catch liberal outrage. Fox News is a 24/7 troll bait/outrage machine. It’s how they keep the ratings up.

Throw in some White grievance and you got yourself a network.  

The GOP is a proud party of proud trolls. Especially the ones elected in the last few cycles, the younger ones with social media savvy got themselves elected not to change the country, to make anything better, but to tweet, Facebook, Tic-Tok, Instagram, and get in front of as many cameras as possible. Screw policy, their job isn’t legislating, it’s being a media star and then moving on to a berth at Fox, or, in a pinch, OANN, or even NewsMax if they have to. Maybe they’ll start their own media empire using the taxpayer’s salaried position as a stepping stone.

That’s right, we’re funding their own little troll staircase to better things. This is where we are, an entire party that acts like a frat’s twitter account. All performative, all bad faith, all smug and snort, not an honest click of the keyboard among them.

Now this is the place I’d say what we should do to combat this. I don’t have much for you, except to ignore the worst of it, but that’s hard to do with the amplifiers they have. It’s not just the right-wing media turning up their volume, it’s also the left and the mass media helping spread their nonsense. The left gets pissed, and the MSM both-sides the ‘controversy’. Just hunker down and keep doing the work that makes them troll in the first place. Don’t engage. Be like AOC and keep walking. Let them collect their embarrassing campaign b-roll, they will anyway.

They’ll keep pushing until they humiliate themselves, if they can actually feel shame or humiliation.  

They Wanted a Massacre

Trump’s MAGA mob of traitors, bringing shame to the nation.

This was UGLY. The more we know about what went on, the uglier it is. They came with bombs, guns, Molotov cocktails, flex cuffs, knives, homemade weapons. They were looking for blood, chanting 'hang Mike Pence'. They were invited to DC by Trump himself, promising them it would be 'wild'. Trump and his enablers were calling anyone who actually acknowledged the fair outcome of the election was a 'traitor'. Rudy called for a ‘trail by combat’, Trump told them Mike Pence held the power (he doesn’t) to turn the election, and the White House, over to them, if he would only ‘do the right thing’. Anyone who stood in the way were traitors. ““We’re going to the Capitol,” he said. “We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

The president added: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he invited them to ‘walk to the capitol’ and ‘cheer’ the lawmakers on.

Vice President Pence announced that he would not object to the vote, which the president tweeted about, to his followers, the fired-up and angry mob he had just sent to march on the US Capitol. Trump told them, but his own rhetoric that Pence was now a ‘traitor’. He refused to do what Trump wanted him to do, but what he legally could not do. He would now just be part of the cast of traitors that stood between them and their prize

And they went looking for those 'traitors'. They went looking for a massacre.

They beat cops, they beat up reporters, smashing their equipment, the broke down doors, smashed windows, they ransacked the offices of the capitol, smashing and vandalizing as they went. They shit and peed on the floors and walls, looted, probably allowing foreign agents access to the building, including the Speakers laptop which went missing.

They beat a policeman to death.

Five people died during this insurrection, this attempt by Donald Trump to overthrow an election he can't admit he lost fair and square. He nearly got his own Vice President killed. It was ugly, deadly, and disgraced America in the eyes of the world while delighting its enemies.  

And they had wanted it to be worse, they had wanted actual blood for their ‘tree of liberty’.

Now, the very people who incited this travesty, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Keven McCarthy, Hawley, Cruz, and every Republican who defended this ‘stolen election’ nonsense, the 147 Republicans who objected on Jan. 6th to the certification of Joe Biden’s election, these people with blood on their hands are calling for ‘peace’, ‘healing’, ‘unity’, they are demanding not be held unaccountable for their own actions, their words, for inciting a mob that tried to do exactly what they were asking them to do.  

No.

Just. No.

The House will vote to impeach Trump, making him the only president to be impeached twice. He deserves it, a thousand times over. He’s a literal traitor to his own country. The rest must be held accountable, held to the oath they took when they were elected:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

“All enemies, foreign and domestic”. That includes the President and those that supported and enabled the actions that led to the debacle, the insurrection aimed at installing Donald Trump as a king over America, because that’s would he would have been, that was Trump’s endgame here and that of his supporters. It failed, as any rational person knew it would, but Trump and his supporters are not rational. Never have been.

The only way to deal with them is the take them out of power and make sure they never get back in.

Never.

The Soft Coup in the Time of Covid

245,557+ dead Americans.

We set four new records for infections, that's worldwide. Over 100,000 new cases a day.

We are on track to have 400,000 dead by inauguration.

Trump is busy desperately defending bogus claims of 'voter fraud' rather than trying to save the lives of Americans. Prominent Republicans are backing him in this. He is refusing to concede, refusing to allow Biden his transition budget, offices and access to the materials, and to people he needs to be ready on January 20th. Trump is not allowing Biden to be briefed on the security issues he will need to know for the safety of this country. It’s a slow-motion, soft coup, happening right in front of us. No one seems to be in charge; those who want to do something aren’t allowed, those who are supposed to be doing something want to burn things to the ground. And around a thousand people are dying from covid every day.

In Texas, El Paso has had so many deaths, they had to order more refrigerated ‘morgue’ trucks just to store the dead. Utah announced they will have to shut down due to mass outbreaks of the virus. There are huge spikes all across the Midwest. We are setting the wrong kinds of records.

So much winning.

All this death, all this pain, all this grieving, and we have no stimulus package, no help is coming, and probably will NOT be coming as long at Mitch McConnell is in charge of the senate. He's always more interested in power than people, if screwing Americans allows him to keep that power, so be it. He did it before in whacking the American economy and slowing recovery under Obama. He will cite the debt that he and Trump ran up (adding over two trillion from their tax cuts with more to come) and will stand in the way of any help to people that desperately need it. That’s the playbook he worked from before, that’s what he’ll do again. They don't care, unless it's about them. Hell, they all have get free health care, they’re good!  

Who is in charge of the covid-19 program, why has is been a disaster? Trump and Pence, and Jared (sometimes, kinda, sorta, but yeah). They turned it political, made it an act of defiance to go to Walmart without a mask and film yourself swearing at the clerks. Very brave. And once Biden is in charge, how much will his polices be blocked by spite and McConnell’s power plays? President-Elect Biden announced on Monday the members of his new coronavirus task force, a shadow-cabinet that will take on the task that Trump never really bothered to do. That’s the good news, finally an adult is on the room and making decisions. But how much will he be allowed to do, and now much will the GOP try and stop him from doing antything?

I celebrate having decent leadership once again, but worry the GOP will stymie that leadership as much as possible, letting Americans die to keep their power. They are signaling just that right now.

McConnell said he wanted to make Obama a 'one-term president' and he undercut the country to try and do that. He will do it again, and people will die. Again, it’s all about power. They are a minority party, running a minority government, unrepresentative of the country as a whole, and they know it. That’s what installing all the judges has been about; if they get voted out, their policies won’t die, not with the far-right judges keeping them alive, like zombies. If people have to die to keep power, to ‘own the libs’, then so be it.

Trump is pulling a soft coup right now, covid be dammed. We can’t let him.

We must watch, we must keep on this, we must help the Georgia senate run-off races, we must help Biden/Harris fight, because this isn't just their fight, it's ours.

We have to fight for us, and for the 445,557.

One Night, Four Years in the Making

Count every vote. We now have to actually demand, and make sure, that all the votes are counted. 2020 folks.

Four years ago, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes. That was when the folks who weren’t around for the 2000 fiasco got a lesson in the Electoral College. I had already had that lesson, staying up all night in November of 2000 watching the vote totals shift and the cable news anchors sweat. It was not pleasant, and the fact that the recount of the vote in Florida was never completed due to Republican shenanigans on the ground and the most ridiculously biased ruling in the history of the Supreme Court made it even more unpleasant.

No. “Unpleasant” is too mild a word for a stolen election. I don’t really have a word that can describe that one. It radicalized a lot of people, probably on both sides; the GOP saw what they could do, what they could get away with because the other side believed in ‘norms’, ‘rules’, and ‘laws’ and pushed forward into new frontiers, and the Democrats and liberals learned just because there are ‘rules about such things’ doesn’t mean the other side will follow them.

No, I take that back. The Democrats didn’t learn that, as the last four years have shown us. The GOP and Trump have mowed down the rules once more, and that there was little they could do except to point out that there are, yes, ‘rules about such things’. Ten years of the GOP pulling this crap, twenty if you start at 2000 (which I do), now maybe they’re finally learned that the GOP, as a party, are not their friends.

Now, here we are, another election night, after four years of nearly constant turmoil in this country, fueled by Donald Trump and the Trump (formerly GOP) Party. 237,000+ Americans didn’t live to see this night, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd didn’t live to see this night, and many more who should be here will not see this night. This is our mission, a sacred one, to change this country, change this government, change this world, so there will be fewer virus deaths, no more Floyds, no more Taylors. And no more demagogues like Donald Trump.

It seems silly to say we have to save democracy, but that’s exactly what we have to do. It was hurting and fractured long before Trump came on the scene.  We had taken poor care of it, allowing evil men to steal parts of it, not extending its cover to all that deserved its protection, selling off bit and pieces for money, security, and because of cowardice. If Trump and enablers are allowed to hold onto power, I fear we won’t have a country in four years’ time. At least, not with a semblance of the democracy we have left.

Why is this night like no other?

Because tonight is election night in an election like no other, a chance to change, to fix, to take back.

These past few weeks we have been voting, praying, huddling together on social media, drinking, and fretting with anxiety. Today, some of that will end, but new anxieties will come as we have to watch Donald Trump act like a firehose, spraying us all with anger, lies and bile. I believe he’s going to lose, and lose big. And, insane as this is, we all now have to see just what the hell he’s going to do about it. We have to wait, tense and with jaw clenched, while the President of the United States figures out what he will do about losing.  

We are living in a new version of the infamous Chinese curse:

May you live in unprecedented times.

Take care of yourself. We will see each other again, on the other side.

Vote for the Human Middle Finger

Donny, innocently ‘scratching’ himself. Yeah, subtle as ever.

It is now blatantly clear: Trump has no plan to deal with the coronavirus. None. The closest he came to a plan was to cross his fingers and hope he could lie it away. 231,000 dead Americans later, we see just how well this has worked. He rails about his great economy, and if everyone would just stop worrying about the virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, ignore all precautions and open everything up again, the economy would come ‘roaring’ back. He’s never understood that to save the economy, you have to control the virus. It’s like selling an old car; ‘two dented fenders, seized motor, broken windshield, otherwise mint’. You can’t ignore what’s in front of you and skip to what you want it to be. Everyone knows this.

But to around 40% of voters, that doesn’t matter. They don’t care about the Trump administration’s display of utter incompetence, doesn’t bother them at all. Some will support him no matter what, believing him to be the most sinned-against president in history (he’s not), dragged down and plotted against by the evil cabal of liberal elites (no to that as well), others seems to think his ‘policies’ (racism, misogyny, fewer taxes on the rich and large corporations, snuggling up to murderous dictators, kidnapping children, I could go on and on…) are great for Americans, or at least for them as an individual. Then there are those who just want to see the world burn, who see Trump as a human ‘middle finger’, a ‘fuck you’ to all they and he, hates.

Trump hates all the things that they hate. Fuck you! 

They don’t care that Trump has no plan for the next four years, that he can’t articulate even a vague plan. They just care about ‘owning the libs’ and ‘liberal tears’, the fact that another Trump term will finish his campaign of tearing apart democracy is something they don’t care about, just as long as those ‘libs’ keep crying. The world burns and they’ll go down with it, as long as the evil liberals go first.

Four More Years?

Just what are they torching democracy for? They can’t say, but then neither can the GOP or Trump himself. The Republican platform was literally thrown out for the first time since… the founding of the party? The new plan was ‘Whatever Trump Wants to Do”.

Here’s what Donny told the ace, tough interviewer, Sean Hannity, when he asked what Trump was planning in a second term:

"Well, one of the things that will be really great -- you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience, I've always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It's a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times, all of a sudden, I'm president of the United States. You know the story, I'm riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, this is great. But I didn't know very many people in Washington. It wasn't my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now, I know everybody and I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes like, you know, an idiot like Bolton. All he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don't have to drop bombs on everybody. You don't have to kill people." 

And when he was thoughtfully given a do-over chance at the question again:

“I think I’d be similar.”

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe four more years of an out-of-control pandemic, hundreds of thousands of more deaths, economic free-fall, more Nazis killing people, more racial protests, more of the decline of America’s position in the world is exactly what they want, I mean beyond drinking all those sweet, sweet liberal tears. Maybe that’s exactly what they want to happen. Bring on the new civil war, as they were itching to go ‘elite’ hunting anyway, a zombie apocalypse, with liberals as the zombies and Trumpers as Rick and Chuck.

Vote for the Human Middle Finger, bring it on faster.

And watch the world burn.

Hunter Biden is STILL Not Running for President

Former VP Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Only one of these guys is actually running for president.

The NY Post ran a story Wednesday that claimed they had ‘secret’ Hunter Biden emails. Within minutes, the story was crumbling to pieces. Sketchy, untraceable documents, an even sketchier chain-of-custody, the involvement of known bad actors (Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani!), a bottom-feeding newspaper, with the byline of a Hannity producer (their first, evidently).

Sounds totally legit, right?

Trump and his associates have been going around and around on this Hunter Biden/Ukraine nonsense for the past couple years, or more. Where did they dig it all up? Russia, where else. It started off as Russian propaganda (someone to blame for the actual Russian interference and hacking in the 2016 election), and Trump latched onto it as a way to excuse his Russian pals and put the blame on Hillary and the Ukrainians. Somehow (stay with me) Hillary conspired with Ukraine to take down the Trump campaign because, that’s something an American presidential candidate would do, right? They also claimed Ukraine ended up with the server that had been hacked at the DNC (they didn’t, it’s still at the DNC).

It’s pretty crazy, right?

Once they bought that, then the Russians started with the whole idiotic ‘Hunter Biden’ nonsense. That story goes Hunter got a job on the board at a Ukrainian energy/gas company, Burisma (that’s true). They claim the county’s prosecutor, Viktor Mykolayovych Shokin was investigating Burisma, and Hunter used his father, Vice President Joe Biden, to pressure the president of the Ukraine to fire Shokin and end the investigation. The problem with this is, well, reality.

Viktor Shokin was corrupt, and the international community was calling for his ouster. He wasn’t investigating Burisma, which was part of the problem. With Shoklin dropping investigations and opening political ones, the western democracies took note and wanted Skokin out, as did the Obama administration. In fact, it was the policy of the Obama administration to get rid of Shokin. President Obama dispatched VP Biden to get the job done. Biden, again with the support of the international community, demanded the Skokin be fired. He was.

And of story.

Except that Skokin, angry at his dismissal, cooperated with the Russians in helping spread disinformation about his career, about the Ukraine, about the Bidens. The far right lapped it up, with ‘reporter’ John Solomon, through his position at the right-leaning The Hill newspaper, helping disseminate the story here in America. From there, it went to Trump who called in Rudy Giuliani (his personal lawyer) and dispatched him to the Ukraine. Once there, Rudy met for help and introductions with a couple shady ‘business men’ (now in federal custody) who illegally contributed millions to the GOP and Trump (hence the federal custody). It’s an ugly mess, made worse by deliberate disinformation and politics.

Trump, he seems to sincerely believe all this nonsense.

Culmination of this stupidly? Trump threatens to withhold needed financial aid (voted on and passed by congress) to Ukraine unless the new president announces a sham investigation into… Joe and Hunter Biden. Withholding aid for a personal foreign contribution to his re-election campaign. Word gets out gets out, complaint is filed, knowledge of the complaint is leaked, transcript is released (take that!) and Trump is impeached. The GOP-controlled senate let him go, of course. And then, the same GOP senate, to help out Trump, held a weeks-long ‘investigation’ that found… nothing. But spent a lot of tax payer money doing it. They released a report in which they shoved every extraneous, embarrassing detail they could find about Hunter Biden, smearing a guy who is not even running.

Not a great moment for a Republican senate that was already an embarrassment to the country.

So, here we are again. More Russian disinformation about Hunter Biden, dripping with sketchiness and pushed to try and affect an election in the last couple weeks. And it’s about emails as well! It’s like Trump figured ‘it worked once, it’ll work again!”

This is not 2016, and no one, beyond the heavy breathers on the far right, cares about Hunter Biden’s fake emails.

Go. Vote.

Trump Fatigue

Trump, putting himself to sleep.

He is exhausting.

By design.

Trump creates chaos in everything he does, in everything he says; in tweets, at his rallies, his responses to bad news. Chaos is where he lives, where he breathes, where he thrives. He lies, he struts, he frets his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury…

…signifying nothing.

And that’s the way he likes it. He likes being a human headache, a whirlwind of contradictory ideas, saying one, and then the opposite, always ready to drop that for whatever advantage he can get. And then denying he’d ever said anything else. And his supporters constant noise cheering him, praising everything he does, egging him on and begging for more. So tiring. And what are you going to do? After a while you stop trying to figure out what to do and just throw up your hands.

It just wears you out, starts to numb you; the next insane thing tops the last insane thing which topped the one before that. It’s just… exhausting.

By design. It is in that exhaustion Trump and his enablers do their best work. To them chaos and exhaustion means people aren’t paying close attention, it their version of the magician’s distraction, the coin palm while waving the other hand in your face. But even during this slight-of-hand we need to pay attention, close attention.

But the madness brings tiredness, numbness, brings depression, anxiety, anger overload, brings Trump fatigue.

How can you fight when you’re too tired to keep caring? This is part of what Trump is after; the tired-of-it-all, giving up, screw-them-all exhaustion. How do you deal with it?

Take a break. Stop hitting refresh on the news sites, stop doom scrolling on Twitter and Facebook, stop arguing with trolls, old high friends and family members. Shut it down. Turn off the phone, close the laptop. Talk to someone about something besides the election or covid, take a walk, get out and get away. For your own sanity.

Take care of yourself, you don’t want to break down in the final days of the most important election of your life, right? If you have early voting, try to do it now, or when your ballot comes, fill it out and get it back right away. Believe me, once you had that ballot in (and track it to make sure it’s been received) you’ll feel a lot better.

Take care of yourself and your mental health, then get back into it.

Because it ain’t over.

Trump’s Presidency is Sick

Trump has killed his own presidency, and he used the coronavirus to do it.

The facts are he ignored a deadly virus, which went on to kill more than 220,000 Americans, caught it himself, spread it throughout the White House, and has yet to be fully honest about it.

Most voters, I think, don’t see his battle with the coronavirus as a show of strength, but one of weakness and stupidity. One that could have been completely avoided but for Trump’s own carelessness. In 2016, he counted on a lot of swing voters and people ‘feed up with the system’. This time Trump is the system. Many who voted for him last time are now fed up with him. He learned nothing from his sickness. Trump has learned only one thing since the last election; his ‘base’ got him elected and it will be his ‘base’ that will get him re-elected.

There’s a problem with that; he’s driven off the independent and swing voters in order to keep that supposed base happy. He’s losing college educated Whites, seniors (seniors!), and women, lots of women. And everything he’s doing, or not doing, is driving them ever farther away.

Those that are not enough to see him win the election. This is why he’s losing; in the states were Trump, most show either he’s flat-out behind or within the margin of error. In the 2020 election, Texas and Florida could be swing states! The latest stunt Trump is pulling with Covid-19 shows that he still doesn’t understand, care or empathize with anyone not named ‘Donald Trump’.

This the covid infection that is really hurting him, both physically and electorally. As I said, he refuses to be fully honest about it. What we know about the timeline is; he and Hope Hicks spent time traveling around to RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. McDaniel tests positive for the virus, which means both Trump and Hicks have been exposed. Ignoring this, continue to attend fundraisers, hold and event at the White House Rose Garden, hold meetings, attend rallies, all this, like I said, after being exposed. Trump knew he’d been exposed when he went to the debate, arriving too late to be tested as the rules he agreed to said. He probably figured he wasn’t showing signs, so he was fine.

Wednesday, Hope Hicks starts showing signs, and tests positive. Trump has been in close contact with her for days, protocols say he should quarantine and get tested. He does neither, he goes to a fundraiser instead. No masks, no distancing, potentially infecting everyone there. He doesn’t care. Then (the timeline here is murky because the WH won’t release the information or keeps giving out different stories) Trump takes a test Thursday, comes back positive, and then takes another later in the day, also positive.

So now nearly 40 people in the Republican leadership have tested positive, most coming from the Rose Garden event, most of them had in contact with the president. Trump was probably the super spreader at the event, infecting dozens of people. Seeing how stupid and dismissive of the virus this administration has been, something like this was inevitable. Trump himself insists on spreading misinformation to the public about the virus, somewhat delighting in downplaying it. And in the devastating response of the government to the coronavirus and it’s no wonder he’s shedding support, especially among seniors; they think he going to get them killed.

Women see how dismissive he is of their concerns (choice, healthcare) seniors see the GOP trying to kill Social Security and Medicare, collage educated and people of color look at his racism and response to protests and turn from him, but it’s the virus that’s scared many supporters away. It’s dragged all the selfish incompetence into the daylight. He’s still got angry White guys, so there’s that.

Trump and his response to the virus has killed 220,000 Americans, killed the economy, and has nearly taken down the country. The USA’s reputation has taken a hit it will not likely recover from for decades. I change in leadership will help, but the world’s confidence is shaken.

His base will never leave him, but he needs more than just his base. Those votes he’s driven off. 

Vote.

Never Promised You a Rose Garden

The Covid-19 Class of 2020

How sick is the president?

What treatments are being used?

What is Pence doing and who has the power?

Has a transfer of Presidential power been drawn up and readied to sign, just in case?  

Answer to all the above?

We don’t know.

We don’t really know the status of the President. We had his doctor, an osteopath (not a virologist) perform a very misleading and evasive press conference where he refused to state whether Trump had been on oxygen (basically, ‘not today’). He spoke more like a lawyer with a guilty client than a doctor informing the world (as the world has a stake in this as well) about the health status of the leader of the United States. Then he gave some ‘alternate facts’ about the timeline of the President’s infection and treatment (placing his diagnosis as last mid-day Wednesday (it was announced Friday morning) and his treatments starting on Thursday (previously announced as Friday). And then walked them back in a rushed press relase (with misspellings).

Does anyone here know what the hell they’re doing?

Of course, I’ve been asking that for nearly four years.  

And how did the most protected man in the US get Covid-19? Really, Trump lives a viral bubble, you’re not supposed to get coronavirus anywhere near him or he’ll cry.

Again, does anyone here know what they’re doing?

And now we are finding out, almost by the hour, that the exposure most likely came from the nomination announcement/party thrown at the White House Rose Garden by the Republicans to celebrate their latest power grab at the Supreme Court. So far, we have President Trump, Melania Trump, Sens. Lee and Tillis, the President of Notre Dame University, Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager Bill Stepien, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Sen. Ron Johnson and now Former Gov. of New Jersey Chris Christie, all testing positive from either direct attendance of this little shindig, or from contact with someone who was there. The pictures from the gathering are eerie, like a people posing on the Titanic before it sailed. You look at them, mostly maskless, hugging, leaning in to talk over the noise and think, ‘this is not going to end well’.

And they were warned, many, many times. Blinded by arrogance and political opportunity, they just sailed on, disregarding all precautions and safety measures, secure in their virus-free world. But corona don’t care.

It doesn’t care. If you’re aggressively stupid, if you politicize the basic measures available to you, mock them, make a show of flaunting them, it will find you, it will sicken you, it will kill you. It is the Liam Neeson of viruses. It doesn’t care.

I feel no sympathy for them. They showed no sympathy for those trying to stay safe, those with underlying conditions, those who wore masks, who stayed home, who cared enough to try to even keep them safe. They didn’t care, they showed their contempt daily, eagerly, gleefully. Now, many of them are paying a price. No sympathy. We’ll likely hear about more infections as those who have announced have probably infected others. They will probably infect others who have been working to keep safe, who have been playing by the rules. Drivers, aids, maids, servers…

Those people deserve some sympathy, (and the same healthcare) as do others across the world who depend on a strong America, and now see the weakness of a man so caught up in his power fever he refused the science and help that were offered, smacked it to the ground and dug his heel in it.

Trump and the GOP have failed America, on purpose is seems, to benefit their personal political desires. They’ve taken every opportunity to lie and downplay the threat to this nation, and now their arrogance has come back on them. Trump has endangered everyone near him: staff, Secret Service, supporters, other members of the GOP leadership, donors, hundreds of people he's personally responsible for exposing to this killer. The GOP leadership is taking a huge hit. And they only have to look in the mirror to see who is at fault.

Trump and the GOP are a complete and utter disgrace. to this country. Frankly, it was inevitable Trump would get this with his defiance of commonsense and science. He deserved it. 

And we still don’t know how he is. Like nearly everything this administration does, they’re not giving us the complete truth.

We all hope he pulls though, as that is one more thing in this disaster-movie-without-end year of 2020 we do not need. We all hope he’s learned something on the other side, maybe empathy and compassion.

But I doubt it.

It Was Inevitable

Donald and Melania, both taken ill.

My mother had this thing; if there was a problem she didn’t want to deal with, she just ignored it. She did it with everything; a bill needed paying? She ignored it until the power was literally turned off. Bathtub leaked? Ignore it until the floor rotted so much under it, it had to be replaced. Over and over she tried to gaslight her problems, until they grew so huge it couldn’t be ignored anymore and others had to step in to fix them.  

Then she went right back to ignoring them again.

This is Trump with the pandemic (with many things really).  

He tried to ignore it, he “downplayed” it, he flat-out lied about it. And now, surprise of surprises, he has it. Of course he does. It was inevitable. I’ll say it: with his behavior, he had it coming.

No, he's not faking it. As I said, he's been trying desperately for months to get people to look away from the pandemic. He’s not about to do anything to call people's attention to the virus. And he’s not trying to duck another debate, he thought he was great Tuesday night! He won, just ask him and the non-existent polls he quotes.

I hope he gets better, but I can't say I have a lot of sympathy for him personally. He has rigorously and purposely avoided taking precautions, not just for himself but for his staff: not wearing a mask, holding huge rallies with no care to his supporter’s health, and mocked those who actually worried about the health of others. Mask wearing in Trump’s White House is taken not as a sign of care, but of weakness. He downplayed and ignored the seriousness of the coronavirus, even just outright lying about it to the American people, while bragging in private to reporters about how deadly it was. It was inevitable he would get it.

Even after finding out he had been exposed (probably from Hope Hicks, whose infection we learned about in a leak, not an announcement) he went to a fundraiser in New Jersey while showing symptoms, without a mask and exposing over a hundred other people. To say nothing of the big rally in Michigan the night before. Selfish and stupid. Now we find Republican Senator Mike Lee has tested positive, and had been attending rallies and fundraisers as well, not taking any precautions, the head of the RNC is ill, and dozens have been exposed. How many prominent Democrats v Republicans have been infected? Why aren’t they taking this seriously, even after Herman Cain? To do so would be admitting the fact that they hadn’t been before, that they have been running a political sham operation to cover up their own negligence and incompetence. They would have to ‘self own’.

Can’t do that.

Now I see Fox is using pics from weeks ago of Trump wearing a mask he mostly, stupidly, refused to wear. Shamelessness is their brand, after all.

From the Trump down, the GOP is rotten. Proud, aggressive and purposeful ignorance. Insanity as a matter of course. 211,000 dead Americans, and they're still brushing this off, still trying to ‘own the libs’ and will continue to do so.

Until they die.

He Makes Everything a Train Wreck

Biden and Trump, the New Odd Couple

Good lord, that was a train wreck.

Seriously, what did we just watch?

Over at CNN, Jape Tapper called it “Horrific.” Co-anchor Dana Bash went one better: “You used some high-minded language — I’m going to say it like it is: that was a shit show.”

Shit show. Dana for the win.

Chris Wallace struggled hard to maintain control, but no one can control Trump. He was spewing nonsense on his time, on Biden’s time, talking over Wallace and at times, even interrupting himself.

Insanity. It was supposed to be 90, but it felt like hours. Trump was all over the map, rarely answering the actual question, insulting, lying, arguing, constantly interrupting. Just being an asshole, just being Trump. He was treating the whole thing as a monologue, as if it was a Trump rally.

And when was the last time you saw a moderator tell a sitting president to shut up? We did tonight, several times. Poor Chris Wallace, poor audience. And when Trump was finally, briefly, quiet, he sneered and pouted unable to keep still.

As usual, Joe Biden was, mostly, his calm and affable self. Trump was a bully, verbally shoving and pushing. Even Joe blew up a couple times. Telling Trump to ‘shut up” told him “You’re the worst president America has ever had. Come on!”and criticized his comments calling soldiers ‘suckers’, with Biden’s voice rising in anger, telling Trump that his deceased son who served in Iraq was not a ‘sucker’.

So, did we learn anything?

Well, Biden did fine, and will do fine. He stood up under the Trump blizzard of lies about as well as you can, the verbal vomit coming fast. He wasn’t thrown off too much. Trump is desperate to get attention and has a list of far right-wing conspiracy talking points that he got in regardless of what the actual question was. Biden tried to stick pretty much to the question and get through the constant interruptions.  

Some key moments?

To me, the key moments came towards the end, when Wallace asks both candidates about mail in ballots. Trump went off on his usual slurs and lies about the process, claiming non-existent fraud, and ended with “not going to end well.” It sounded like a threat. When asked if both candidates would pledge to call for peace from their supporters while the counting was going on, and to support the result once the votes were counted. Biden said, outright, of course he would. Trump?

Trump said he would send his supporters to the polls, to ‘watch the polls’ because of ‘fraud’. And he refused to answer the second part, about respecting the results. He said he might have to go to the courts, to the Supreme Court to ‘have the look at the ballots’. So, flood the polls with ‘watchers’ and try to get it in front of the Court where three of the Justices owe their seat to him. Of course that’s what he wants to do. Of course.

Tried to this is the other moment of the night, when Wallace asked Trump to denounce his violent supporters, the white nationalists and ‘militias’ that show up armed to protests. Both Wallace and Biden pressed him, and he hemmed and hawed, and said violence is “not a right-wing problem” and then finally, “Who, who? Give me a name”

Both Wallace and Biden suggested the ‘Proud Boys’, a white nationalist group that often threatens, and does, violence. “Sure, Proud Boys, stand down and stand by.” 

“Stand down and stand by” is not a condemnation. It’s telling armed thugs to ‘wait’. Maybe go to those polling places, with your guns. You know, to ‘watch’ and make sure everything is ‘fair’. Trump kind of ‘fair’.

Trump is dangerous, Trump is trying not to win an election, he knows he can’t, but he’s letting people know how he will try to steal it, and how they can help him do it. The Proud Boys erupted on Twitter at Trump’s ‘shout out’.

Biden won the night, but it wasn’t much of a night. He showed the world a contrast of decency versus angry bullying, clear competency versus incompetency, planning versus no plan. And I hope that will be enough

Dana Bash was right, total ‘shit show’.

Let’s go vote.

“Get Rid of the Ballots”

Angry Trump. Angry, angry, Trump.

This is not a chaotic election year. There is no widespread election fraud. None.

It simply isn’t happening. That doesn’t mean there isn’t stress, isn’t worry, isn’t anxiety over the pandemic and voting. Be calm, be clear of your goal in this election. Take a breath.

Counting the votes might take a little longer, but the outcome isn’t always known on election night, it’s not a big deal, and definitely not unusual not to know the winner right away.

So where is the fear, the shouts of ‘voter fraud, the stress over the election coming from, ’? Why are people running around, hair pulling and hand wringing? Because of the one person who should be calling for calm, who should be reassuring people and working to make sure that everything will go smoothly; the President of the United States.

Donald Trump is working hard to undermine the election, to cast doubt on the voting, on the voters, on the process, on holding elections themselves. He’s interfering with the Post Office, slowing down deliveries and hampering their ability to process what is looking to be a huge increase in mail-in ballots. He is trash talking the ballots, and whole concept of mail-in voting as is it were some illegal and alien thing, full of evil intent and dubious outcomes.

He isn’t even subtle about it

“Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power after the election?” a reporter asked.

His answer:

 “Well, we’re gonna have to see what happens. Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a peaceful—there won’t be a transfer, frankly, there’ll be a continuation.”

Throw out the ballots, get rid of those bad, non-Trump votes and there will be a “continuation”. He’ll win, one way of another.

He wants to create chaos. Chaos is his brand, he lives and breathes chaos. In chaos, in doubt, in uncertainty, things can happen; votes can be tossed, election results ignored, boards of illegitimate electors put in place that don’t reflect the will of the people, and another Republican who lost the popular vote is installed with the assistance of the Trump/McConnell engineered 6-3 split on the Supreme Court. It’s Bush v. Gore, again.

I remember watching the GOP steal that election. I had already realized they had no morals after the stupid 'Whitewater/Vince Foster/any bullshit-they-want-to-investigate nonsense of the 1990’s. The GOP was incredibly partisan, spittle-flinging partisan, but I didn't realize they wanted to completely undermine democracy until that 2000 election. Here I learned they would stop at nothing to kill democracy and seize power by any means.

All they had to do was say "The Democrats would do the same" and that justified anything. Obviously, this was not true, as the Democrats didn't fight tooth, nail and congressional interns to stop the counting Florida as the GOP did, so fuck that. The GOP relied on getting the case to the SCOTUS, who stepped in and gave the election to Bush in a decision even they were embarrassed by.

Insane, but Gore (who won the popular vote and the Florida vote (which wasn't fully counted until after Bush was declared the winner) stood by and let Bush be inaugurated, even though many wanted him to protest it.

He didn't.

He was actually worried about America and democracy.

You think Trump and the GOP are worried about that?

No,

They are trying to figure out how they can stay in power despite the vote.

This is what we face: the same GOP in 2000, but even more desperate, more racist, more angry and more convinced of their own grievances. Anything they do, even bringing down democracy as we know it, is justifiable.

The Fire This Time

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died. In case you’ve been living under a bush the past several decades, she was a hell of a woman. In her 21 years on the bench (appointed by President Clinton) she has been an inspiration to friends and not-friends, ruling with passion and honor. During that time, she’s personally battled both with colon cancer, and won, and then pancreatic cancer in 2009. She fought it hard for 11 years, but succumbed on Sept 18th, in the Year of our Hell, 2020.

We have now gone from ugly election, in the middle of a pandemic that has killed 203,361 Americans, to a full-pitched political battle for the direction of the country for decades to come.

It didn’t have to happen. It really didn’t.

In 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, died suddenly. With 11 months still left on his term, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, just the kind middle-of-the-road jurist that was Obama’s speed. All taht threre was to do now for the Senate was to follow the Constitution, hold hearings and a vote. Easy.  

No. Anything but a far-right fire breather would sway the court and change the majority, which is historically one of the farthest-right ones in decades. This can never be. So, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, already famous for a reputation of ignoring rules when it came to accruing himself and his party power, literally just made up an excuse not to do his job.

“The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

Mitch McConnell, 2016.

Complete bullshit, with no legal or Constitutional basis, but the right-wing Senators and pundits cranked out volumes defending it, casting aside any reputation for seriousness they might have left. Really, they’re a machine of obfuscations and out-of-context quoting. They were fooling nobody, probably not even themselves. This was no stand of integrity by a man who has displayed little his entire career, this was yet another smash the rules power grab.

And he got away with it. 

And the GOP and Trump have gleefully proclaimed their willingness to destroy the remaining public legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

Full screeching stop.

It didn’t have to happen. Still doesn’t.

Here we are, another justice beloved by their ‘side’ and died, some 40 days before a presidential election. How is that infamous ‘McConnell Rule’ applied?

“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,”

Mitch McConnell, 2020.

One Mitch, two different rules for two different presidents. And this is why the GOP is a party of hypocrites.

I’m just totally shocked. This is my shocked face. May never go back.

How bad is the hypocrisy? You have probably seen the quotes a dozen times by now, but here they are:

Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 2018:

“I’ll tell you this...if an opening comes in the last year of president Trump's term and the primary process has started we'll wait to the next election.”

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)

Late in 2016, in an op-ed defending the McConnell’s decision: “voters — not a lame-duck president — should decide the composition of the highest court in the land.”

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)

“The next president of the United States should have the opportunity to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Our next election is too soon and the stakes are too high; the American people deserve a role in this process as the next Supreme Court Justice will influence the direction of this country for years to come.”



Sen. Susan Collins (R-MN) have said similar things, as has Sen. Lisa Mukowski (R-AK), Mitt Romney (R-UT) is a wild card in this, sometimes showing some backbone. We’ll see.

Now, I suppose they’re not actually hypocrites yet, as they haven’t announced which they’ll vote, but past performance predicts future actions. They’re already coming up with bullshit exemptions to a bullshit rule, like the kid in a cops and robbers game calling out excuses why he wasn’t really shot.

Now, the question is; will they hold to what they have said in the past, or will it be exposed as so much ‘of-the-moment, forget-it-later’ hypocrisy? Well, looks like McConnell has probably solved that one for us. He will gather, pressure and threaten his caucus until he gets the result he wants, he sees what as his job; principles are things that stand between him and what he wants, he doesn’t understand them. This was already going to be a divisive election, one with decades long implications poised to make or break us as a country; now it could be a bloodbath.

It doesn’t have to happen, it really doesn’t. If Trump, McConnell and the GOP would put, for once, country above party, we can step back from the abyss. McConnell would abide by his completely made-up rule, and the choice would go to whomever won the presidential election. McConnell, of course, would never consider such a thing. He makes and breaks rules as it occurs to him to do so; when one is no longer convenient, new one’s spring forth from the head of Zeus, given the little ‘legitimacy’ that McConnell has left, and is treated as if it was always there in the first place.

Maybe the far-right’s beloved Federalist Society could step in to halt the coming destruction, announcing that the seat open should be left open. This would go a long way to cooling the flames and give cover to Republicans who might not to burn down the SCOTUS, not so soon at least.

There is literally no way this will happen.

The Federalist Society, McConnell and the GOP have been on a literal RBG death watch for years now, probably hitting refresh on their browsers to keep check, lists of names already disseminated and ready to announce.

Do I sound cynical? Decades of watching the GOP has made me so. I know to put nothing past them, to ‘trust but verify’ in Reagan’s smug but utterly nonsensical phrase. But I can’t even do that anymore.  

Mitch McConnell could have ended it, simply by following his nonsense ‘rule’ (not a rule), but he cannot pass up yet more power for his dying party. So, he will not.

Trump also could stop it, but he also cannot. This is his ultimate owning of the libs’ and he lives for the moment he can put his boot to the back of his ‘enemies’ neck and grind their face into the dirt.  

They like to see the world burn and fate has given them a blowtorch.

Maybe, just maybe, those Republican senators quoted above, maybe joined by Mitt Romney, will step up to save their party and country and vote either ‘no’ or ‘present’. Or just announce their intentions, denying McConnell and stopping the official vote at all.

But that wouldn’t stop them; the right would tar and feather them, in the press and literally if they could. They’d be fielding death threats like leaves in a windstorm. And Trump and McConnell would hold their vote anyhow.

Save the party or the country.

And the world will burn.

He Won’t be Happy Until We’re all Dead.

Smug, smug, smug.

He won’t be happy until we’re all dead.

In the last two days, reports have come out that the Trump administration had interfered extensively at the Center for Disease Control, changing guidelines for political purposes, bending and breaking the scientific facts that didn’t fit the Trump reelection campaign, muzzling and contradicting career scientists and doctors, and continuing to deny the seriousness of the pandemic affecting every country, even continent on earth.

For reelection. That’s the only, incredibly selfish reason. Petty. But that’s Trump brand, and if people have to die to achieve that reelection?

So be it.

Then we have the Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, testify that a vaccine will not be widely available until sometime in the third quarter of next year. Most experts agree with this, but one self-appointed ‘expert’ does not. The President does not, can not agree with this because he wants to hold the hope of a vaccine over the heads of Americans until the election is over, even if one doesn’t how up, he wants that out there as an excuse to ‘reopen’, to get kids back in school, to shove people back into their jobs, to give some voters an excuse to overlook his disastrous handling of the virus that got us here in the first place.

Open now, because next month the vaccine will be here!

Dr. Redfield then veered off the topic of vaccines, held up the facemask he’d worn into the hearing and said that ‘this, this mask is even more important than a vaccine’, that it offered more protection than a vaccine will the first few months one will be available. He’s stated in the past that if everyone in the US just wore a mask in public for 6-8 weeks we could be out of this. We could, maybe, if we had leaders that supported public health, that cared about safely ending this pandemic nightmare or at least tamping it down, if…

… But we don’t. After Dr. Redfield’s testimony, Trump immediately announced a press conference with the sole aim of contradicting own director of the CDC. And he did; the vaccine was coming, soon, maybe end of October, maybe sooner, and masks aren’t that great (he continually doesn’t wear one himself and mocks those who do), and went back to his unproven talking point ‘lots of people say masks aren’t all that great…’

You would think he has a funeral parlor franchise.

Today, we have the news that a $150 million in prescription drug cost relief program that would have helped thousands was killed. Why? Because Donald Trump’s demanded that $100 “Trump Cards” be mailed to seniors before the election. 

From the New York Times:

“Then the agreement collapsed. The breaking point, according to four people familiar with the discussions: Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, insisted the drug makers pay for $100 cash cards that would be mailed to seniors before November — ‘Trump Cards,’ some in the industry called them,” the newspaper reported. “Some of the drugmakers bridled at being party to what they feared would be seen as an 11th-hour political boost for Mr. Trump, the people familiar with the matter said.”

So, the needed program was killed. Because Trump wanted ‘gift cards’ to go to seniors with his name on them. Now no one will get that benefit, as Trump has crossed his arms, stamped his foot, and walked off.

For his reelection.

He won’t be happy until we’re all dead…

…and he can sign the death certificate.

In sharpie.

Your Vote is Illegitimate

“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”

If you don’t vote Trump, your vote doesn’t matter, and can be rejected. End of story.

This is the message Trump is telling his supporters, telling them that the other side, no matter who they are, are illegitimate; their votes are illegitimate, their opposition is illegitimate, their opinions are illegitimate, their protests are illegitimate, they, themselves, their lives, friends and families, are illegitimate. It’s okay to ignore them, okay to treat them as less, okay to maybe kill them, they’re illegitimate after all. As his HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo said: “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. The drills that you’ve seen are nothing,” he added, “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

Okay to kill those who disagree with you; they are other, they are wrong in themselves, they are dangerous, they are illegitimate.

Trump also claims the Governor of Nevada, Steve Sisolak (D) “is the same guy that’s gonna be in charge of the ballots. I’m winning that state easily (he’s not) but the one thing we can’t beat, if they cheat on the ballots, now he will cheat on the ballots, I have no doubt about it.”

Trump is giving himself and his supporters permission to ignore the results of a fair election. Any election he loses is not a fair election. Any election he loses needs to be resisted, fought against, and put down.

Arm yourselves, they are coming for you.

This is designed to do tremendous arm to civil discourse and society. This is designed to encourage the violence and panic Trump claims he is against. This licenses his supporters to do anything, by any means, to keep Trump himself in power. This is openly calling for the civil war the right has been talking about, and thirsting for, for decades

This is the insanity that fuels the grievance on the right, the anger and belief that they’ve been screwed, and it’s the left doing the screwing. For this you have to ignore the decades of the GOP (and the Democrats, yes) shipping jobs overseas, of the ‘trickle down’ promises that never, ever materialized, of culture baiting for votes while shifting power and wealth to the rich. Once you’ve established this to your own satisfaction (not hard to do when you’re inside the bubble, talking only to true believers like yourself) than anything you do to ‘fight back’ is justified. Arm yourself, the ‘libtard’ mob is coming for your home, you women, your country.

This undermining of democracy is not a secret, it’s happening right in front of us, right in the open. Trump has captured most the election machinery, and what he can’t control, he is openly undermining, with the enthusiastic help of the GOP. First, you declare the other side to be illegitimate, you demonize them, making any move against you (like, say, voting) seem as a move against the country, against your followers ‘values’, as something ‘sick’ and unnatural. Then you go about encouraging violence against anyone who disagrees with you (see the support the armed mobs charging statehouses get, the police brutality and the shooting and running over of protesters), then denial of of legitimate votes that don’t go ‘your’ way, stating things like only that the votes counted the night of the election are legitimate, and then you undermine the USPS and vote by mail as ‘fraud’.

Trump is stealing the election and encouraging his followers to fight any vote that doesn’t end with four more years of Trump in the White House. He refuses to say if he’ll accept any result that doesn’t go his way. His minions have called for armed insurrection if they don’t get the result they want.

As David Frum said:

“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” 

They are warning us right now of what they intend to do.

Take them seriously.

The World is Burning

Oregon, burning.

My home is burning.

I have lived in the West, in Washington State, nearly all my life, half in the dry, near-desert Eastern part, the rest in the green, wet Western part. I have lived in California and Oregon, have friends and relatives in both still. And our worlds are burning.

Today Seattle is dense with smoke from three different states, as Eastern Washington, Oregon and California are battling wildfires. I stand on my back porch and the house on the other side of the alley is hazy, the trees down the street are phantoms in the smoke. A warning has been issued for parts of all three states; stay inside, the air is unsafe. The very air can make you sick. On the other side of the Cascades, Yakima County is burning. Over 600,000 acres, a record, have/are burned/burning in my home state, and more are aflame every hour, every minute. Already one of the regions hit hardest by covid-19, now Eastern WA has to suffer another form of hell, a more literal one.  

Whole Oregon towns have completely disappeared into the flames, 500,000 residents are under evacuation orders. Thousands have been evacuated, dozens missing, several dead. I talk to friends who say the skies are literally red, like being on Mars, or the depths of hell. Idiot rumors spread, of wild gangs of Antifa running about with torches, coming to your town! Setting fires! Beware! Some people refuse to evacuate, sitting on their porch’s instead, clutching weapons and looking down the roads, waiting for the BLM and Antifa mobs to come and… set fires in the middle of a fire?

Holy hell. In the midst of so much to fear we make up boogeymen to add to the misery.

And the skies glow hot red.

A heat wave and a dry summer have baked California, temperatures over 120 degrees in LA County. Over 3.2 million acres of California have burned in a wildfire season barely begun. 28 different wildfires are burning there now, including the largest in the history of the state.

“I have no patience for climate change deniers,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. Indeed. We are often the cause of our own nightmares, and climate change is becoming the biggest nightmare we face, even in this time of covid. And the biggest fool of all, the idiot in the White House taunts California, refusing to help because they were rude enough not to vote for him.

“You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests,” the president of only his own voters’ yells, ignoring the fact that nearly 48 percent of the land in California is federally owned. These are his floors, his forests that are burning. Insanity builds on insanity until it collapses into madness.

And the West burns.

Trump is coming to look at the ashes, shake his head, and get in some digs at the Governors. Washington, Oregon, and California will go on beating, stomping, spraying, and dousing the flames, trying to help those that need help and avoid breathing in too many ashes and soot.

And covid.

 So much lost; lives, houses, animals, land, forests.

The world is burning.

The Lawless Law and Order President

Angry little man rages at the press.

Donald Trump loves him some Twitter. He’s on there incessantly, obsessively, tweeting Fox & Friends talking points, retweeting racist crap that he ‘didn’t know’ was racist, attacking people and name calling, you know, all the things a president with any decency or integrity would not be doing. Anything besides working.

Lately the thing he’s been spewing out is ‘Law & Order!’ Oh, excuse me, that should be ‘LAW & ORDER!!!’ Because all caps makes it that much more serious. But, here’s the thing; how are we supposed to take that message seriously when it comes from the most lawless president to ever occupy the office?

Trump has turned the Department of Justice into the Department of Trump Justice, with Attorney General William Barr his personal lawyer, the ‘Roy Cohn’ he’s always wanted in that position. He has been manipulating the Border Patrol and federal prison guards into his very own secret police and using them against American citizens. He’s breaking laws without repercussion or redress, because he’s captured any organization that would stand against him; The Republican Party is now the Trump Party, and not the least bit interested in bringing him to account. The DoJ? Forget about it. The courts? There are enough good judges left, but Trump has been shoving as many far-right and unqualified people into every open slot he can find, so we might not have much justice there for long.  

And that’s the way he wants it.

He’s been using these captured agencies to go after his perceived enemies, he sends his fellow Trumpublicans after anyone that doesn’t toe the Trump line, fires anyone that dares to contradict him, and has been ‘investigating’ those who had investigated his own shady and illegal actions, threatening political opponents with jail.

Today, we find that one of those political investigations has lost a head prosecutor. Nora R. Dannehy, member of the one of the Durham investigation, named after U.S. Attorney John Durham. Durham was appointed to investigate the people who investigated the Russia probe. While once thought of as a respected career lawyer, Durham is seen more and more as someone doing the will of Trump and Barr. Dannehy quit, citing political interference in the investigation, as Barr presses them to release their conclusions before the election so Trump can use them against his ‘enemies’. Lord knows he needs something else to talk about.

This is the sort of thing Nixon dreamed about; using the powers of his office to attack and possibly jail anyone who might dare rise up and tell him ‘no’. This is the Trump goal, the dream, anyone who has a cross word, anyone with an unwelcome thought will be destroyed. Not fired, not mocked on Twitter, but eviscerated, ruined, burned to the ground and the earth salted after. He is a scorched-earth authoritarian, burning his imagined foes to the ground even if it takes the country with them. As long as he personally doesn’t get burned, why should he care?

The country can burn, as long as he gets his way.

Donald Trump is a con man, a tax cheat, a pathological liar, a fraud, and that was before he got into office. Now that the spotlight he has been so desperate for has been burning him for nearly four years, and it hasn’t been good for his already sady reputation. These nearly four years have exposed Trump, reduced and defined him down to his essence. Pure rage and grievance. He and his supporters are burning the country to the ground with it.

And salting the earth after.

“LAW & ORDER” indeed.

The Weakest Strongman

Kim and Trump, love at first site.

Trump just can’t give up Obama. Even when sitting around, shooting the shit with murderous dictators, Trump is the guy on a date that wants to rag on his ex. He just brings everything back to Obama:

“I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump told Woodward in an interview for his new book, ‘Rage’. “I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.” Trump added that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un thought Obama was “an asshole.”

Kim Jong Un thought Obama was an asshole. Huh, great. Did you get those nukes from him Donny, like you promised?

No. What we learn from Woodward is that Trump has a sick crush on a killer.

Trump goes to say he was overwhelmed in meeting Kim for the first time in 2018 in Singapore: “Holy shit,” he thought, this guy Kim is “far beyond smart.”

“Beyond smart.” In comparison to Trump himself, I suppose.

Holy shit indeed.

Trump, the president of the United States, sitting around with Kim Jong Un, a dictator who thinks nothing of starving his own people to build up his nuclear arsenal, talking shit about the previous president like two Mean Girls in the cafeteria.

How is this not treason? How do we even deal with bullshit like this?

Good lord. And now we have those ‘beautiful’ letters, the ‘love letters’ between these two leaders. They write mash notes back and forth, praising each other in a psychotic mutual admiration society, Kim calling Trump "Your Excellency”, which Trump just giggles and gushes about. Trump also brags about Kim giving him all the details of how he killed his own uncle, Trump drinking it all in enviously, probably thinking about a few reporters he’d like to try these new pointers on.

A special, special friendship.

But the best (worst, most insane) quote?

This one right here (and thanks to Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark for pointing it out):

“Trump reflected on his relationships with authoritarian leaders generally, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them,” he told Woodward. “You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”

It needs no explanation, we all know what it means.

And it ain’t funny.

Because This is What We Want

WTF. Linden Cameron, 13, was shot repeatedly by police after his mother called 911 to ask for help with the autistic boy, his family says. If all you have is a gun, everyone is a victim.

When Golda Barton called 911, she wanted a crisis intervention team to help with her autistic son who was having a mental health crisis.

She got guys with guns.

When activists say 'defund the police', they are NOT saying 'eliminate the police'. That is the political 'interpretation' of those who want to use the violence these communities are suffering against them; using their pain to scare voters in shutting down any sort of reform. Often this is led by the police unions, scared they might lose their power over the population.

THIS is what is meant by defunding the police; take away those functions where police are not needed. Police are not medical experts, crisis or social workers, and have to stop expecting them to be. Helping an autistic child doesn't require someone with a gun. Yet, here we are again, another officer solving a metal health crisis by shooting or assaulting the person having the crisis. Problem solved.

I haven’t written anything here since my article about Jacob Blake. Really, the horror, the disgust I felt about that ‘incident’ left me bereft of any warm feelings toward humanity. Truth. Every day I wake up to more grotesque actions and celebrations or utter inhumanity. As iof this is somehow the new ‘normal’ in Trump’s America. Good lord.

It’s… insanity. I try to understand why the police feel the need to shoot, wound, and kill unarmed ‘others’, but I really can’t. I… just can’t.

It doesn't have to be this way… yet it is. The powers that be would rather a few kids, men, women die than allow a broken system to be fixed. They'd rather use any attempts to reform the small things, (say, like tracking overtime pay) against the reformers for fear they might try to reform the big things (police killing of unarmed people, of beatings and unjustified use of force). They live in fear of reformers, so they make sure it never happens. And we get Linden Cameron, we get David Prude, we get George Floyd, we get Breonna Taylor, and so many others, every damn day. '

This is the way we must want it, because this is what keeps happening.