Open Thread – 10/16/2020

Posted by TomCat at 9:25 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 162020

It’s another tired day, here in the CatBox. My meeting with Diana yesterday was Routine, as was grocery delivery, but by the time I finally got to bed I was too tired to sleep well last night, so I’m really shot today. Deborah, my Home health doctor is coming this morning for my routine monthly checkup. I am gradually expanding my diet, so that if I do have a problem, I’ll know what caused it. This morning I had pancakes for breakfast. Wow! They were almost as good as a dawg! Tomorrow I have nothing extra to do, and Sunday is a morning WWWendy day. TGIF!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:12 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

1016TrumpVirusMap

US Cases: 8,223,181
US Deaths: 222,836
Plus all the Trump*/GOP plague murders Republicans are hiding from us

Short Takes:

From Crooks and Liars: A ruling by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that whitewashed racism in the workplace shocked the Internet this week.

In a recent report on Barrett’s notable opinions, the Associated Press highlighted a 2019 workplace discrimination ruling that Barrett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.

According to the the [sic] report, Barrett said that there was no evidence that use of the n-word “created a hostile or abusive working environment.”

The AP reported:

“The n-word is an egregious racial epithet,” Barrett wrote in Smith v. Illinois Department of Transportation. “That said, Smith can’t win simply by proving that the word was uttered. He must also demonstrate that Colbert’s use of this word altered the conditions of his employment and created a hostile or abusive working environment.”

According to Barrett’s racist Republican perspective, this is the mere exercise of their God given right and patriotic duty to hate Blacks. RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Trump Fuels Range Of Conspiracy Theories With Town Hall Answers

Bad as these are, Criminal Fuhrer Trump* is hammering on absurd conspiracy theories because there is nothing else he could say that wouldn’t be even worse for his electoral prospects. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Neil Young – Heart Of Gold

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Open Thread – 10/15/2020

Posted by TomCat at 9:20 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 152020

It’s a busy day, here in the CatBox. Diana should be here in a short time change my patch. Then, it’s a grocery delivery day. Store to Door should be here at around Noon. I scheduled an appointment on the morning of Friday 10/23 for a CAT Scan to get an idea of how bad my tumors are and to what extent, if any, the immunotherapy infusions are helping me. May all your Republicans be unemployed. However, those who are where they deserve to be may have prison jobs. (Diana just left.)

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:06 (average 5:13). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

Click for more maps

US Cases: 8,156,124
US Deaths: 221,895
Plus all the Trump*/GOP Plague murders Republicans are hiding from us

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Every Republican Supreme Court nomination follows the same pattern:

Nominee builds up a record of statements showing their allegiance to the most extreme positions on a set of topics dear to the far right.
Federalist Society vets the nominee against strict ultraconservative checklist on the same list of topics.
Republican senators pretend that 1. and 2. never happened, as nominee protests they couldn’t possibly speak to any of those topics. Or to anything else.

It’s become commonplace for a candidate who has spent their career signing their name to statements calling the Roe v. Wade decision barbaric to suddenly discover that they have nothing to say on the subject while in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Nothing, that is, except for meaningless hand-waving about “precedent.” But sometimes a non-answer can speak more loudly than a scream. That’s the case when a nominee is confronted by a question that should generate a response as automatic as breathing. That was certainly the case on Tuesday morning, as Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett weasel-worded her way through an answer that left absolutely no doubt: She intends to be there if Trump needs her to overturn the results of the election.

Earlier in the session, Barrett had been asked if she would recuse herself on a series of cases in which she had a personal or political position. Barrett’s response on all of these was the same—she would follow the rules of the Supreme Court.

This answer has a simpler meaning. It means “no.” That’s because, unlike lower courts, there are no actual rules requiring a Supreme Court justice to step back from any case. Since there are no spare justices to substitute for a recused justice, each is given absolute personal latitude to determine if they feel they need to recuse themselves on a particular topic. No one can make a Supreme Court justice recuse themselves from a case, even if that case is ruling on something in which they have a deep personal involvement or even a fiscal interest.

That also means that every appeal to Supreme Court guidelines is nothing but a dodge. Because there’s essentially nothing to those guidelines but “whatever you think best.” Barrett repeating that she would follow these guidelines is simply a refusal to answer, nothing more. [emphasis added]

Lets be real for a minute. Nobody in their right mind could think Barrett would have been nominated had she not made it cleat that the will overturn the election on behalf of her Fuhrer, if he needs it! While SCOTUS may use conscience as a guideline, Republican Injustices in SCROTUS (Republican anti-Constitutional Venereal Disease) have no conscience. RESIST!!

From NY Times: On the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Trump declared on Twitter that the coronavirus was “very much under control” in the United States, one of numerous rosy statements that he and his advisers made at the time about the worsening epidemic. He even added an observation for investors: “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”

But hours earlier, senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident. Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser to the president, told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the American economy. To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.

The next day, board members — many of them Republican donors — got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Hours after he had boasted on CNBC that the virus was contained in the United States and “it’s pretty close to airtight,” Mr. Kudlow delivered a more ambiguous private message. He asserted that the virus was “contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don’t know,” according to a document describing the sessions obtained by The New York Times.

The document, written by a hedge fund consultant who attended the three-day gathering of Hoover’s board, was stark. “What struck me,” the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus “as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.”

The consultant’s assessment quickly spread through parts of the investment world.

No matter what fallout effects the economy, some investors will make money and other investors will lose money. The Republican Reich made sure the 0.1%, the super-rich, had the insider information to protect themselves financially, while Trump* lied to the rest of us. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Billy Joel – Piano Man (Video)

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Squatch’s Open Thread 14 October 2020

Posted by Lynn Squance at 4:38 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 152020

Oh my! Twice within one week! I had a favourite meal — turkey and the trimmings! Canadian Thanksgiving is now a memory. Normally I and a number of others would get together for our Thanksgiving feast of turkey, ham, veggies and salads. Of course there would also have been the obligatory pumpkin pie. But alas, COVID-19 put that off until next year at the earliest. Instead, I ordered a turkey dinner with all the trimmings from my favourite restaurant and ate at home. It was sooooooooooooooo good! I also treated my 3 fur babes to fresh roasted chicken which they scarfed up like Hoover uprights! While we were scarfing, the news did not stop. I am taking a course in Indigenous Studies from the University of Alberta online and I am also taking a course on racism based on Ibram Xendi’s book “How to be an Anti Racist” through my church. It has been a busy week of studying and will continue to be until mid November.

CNN — “The unmasking is a massive — it’s a massive thing,” Trump said shortly after the release of the names. “It’s — I just got a list. It’s — who can believe a thing like this? And I watched Biden yesterday on ‘Good Morning America’ being interviewed by one of your colleagues, George Stephanopoulos, and he said he knew nothing about anything. He has no idea. He knows nothing about anything.” …

So important to Trump was this unmasking news that Attorney General William Barr tasked John Bash, the US Attorney in San Antonio, in late May with conducting an investigation into whether the unmasking was politically motivated.

That investigation has ended, according to The Washington Post. And it has ended without any charges being brought against Biden or any other Obama administration official. Or even any public report of its findings. …

There’s a pattern here, of course. From his initial insistence that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election (for which he has provided zero evidence) right through these unmasking claims, Trump has desperately seized onto anything and everything that would suggest that not only did the so-called “deep state” work to keep him from winning but it has also done everything it can to hamstring his presidency. …

Remember how Trump repeatedly raised questions about whether Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 election to help him and hurt Hillary Clinton? Well, the intelligence community, special counsel Robert Mueller and the US Senate Intelligence Committee all said that that’s exactly what happened.

Or how Trump said that the entire Russia investigation was politically motivated by people out to get him? It wasn’t.

Or how Trump said that President Barack Obama and Biden had “spied” on his presidential campaign? Also, debunked.

Or how the DNC email server was somehow in the possession of the Ukrainians? It isn’t.

Or how Google and social media sites are biased against conservatives? Not quite.

The more recent events have led Trump to be extremely unhappy with AG Barr because he did not do Trump’s bidding to Trump’s satisfaction. In a comment within the past few days, Trump was asked if Barr would be his AG pick for a second term should he win. Trump would only say he was not happy. With Trump it is one thing after another, one scandal after another, conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory after another. Trump is a walking case of paranoid delusions and a national security risk.

Canadian Press — She’s accurately predicted the Brexit vote, the 2016 American presidential outcome, and last year’s federal election in Canada.

Now, a Canadian-made artificial intelligence system called Polly is forecasting next month’s U.S. presidential election, using public social-media data and algorithms.

Polly is profiled in the new documentary “Margin of Error,” which premieres Saturday on Ontario’s publicly funded network TVO, and across Canada on tvo.org and the station’s YouTube channel. …

The predictions currently update daily and have a high margin of error that will become smaller closer to the Nov. 3 election, but as of Wednesday afternoon, she had Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with 346 Electoral College votes vs. U.S. President Donald Trump at 192.

Polly also had Biden with 55 per cent of the popular vote vs. Trump at 45 per cent.

“But of course the huge caveat in that, particularly in the U.S., is issues of voter turnout, vote suppression, early voting and discounted ballots,” …

Definitely check out the interactive map at https://advancedsymbolics.com/us-election/. I don’t know about you, but I like Joe Biden’s numbers there. Of course there are many factors involved, but if previous uses are any indication, Polly may have star status . . . assuming nobody screws with the algorithms, this just may a new and reliable tool. The article has more detail so I encourage you to read it.

AlterNet — President Donald Trump urged California Republicans to defy a state order to remove fake “official” ballot drop boxes after numerous top officials called them “illegal.”

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Monday issued an order to the California GOP and three county chapters requiring the removal of unofficial ballot drop boxes erected in front of locations like gyms, gun stores and churches that were falsely marked “official.”

Trump, however, urged the party to fight the order in court.

“You mean only Democrats are allowed to do this? But haven’t the Dems been doing this for years?” the president tweeted, drawing a dubious comparison between the boxes and the legal “ballot harvesting” efforts by Democrats that have drawn his ire. “See you in court. Fight hard Republicans!” …

“Screw you!” Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said in response to Newsom’s tweet, according to Politico. “You created the law, we’re going to ballot harvest.” …

The offices of the attorney general and secretary of state said in a cease-and-desist order to the GOP that the law required “persons to whom a voter entrusts their ballot to return to county election officials provide their name, signature and relationship to the voter.”

Becerra and Padilla also argued during a Monday conference call that the boxes were “illegal,” because they were designed to trick voters by claiming to be “official.” The boxes lack the security requirements mandated for official collection boxes installed by election officials, they added.

Just like a Republican to twist and obfuscate well intentioned laws. I have not read the actual California law, but as Bill Maher says, “I just know it’s true.” Trump has encouraged North Carolinian Republicans to vote twice, once by mail and once in person. I hear the same has been conveyed to Trump supporters in Florida. Now over and above all the other Trump bullshit, he is encouraging voters and the Republican party to break the law . End the madness and DUMP TRUMP and as many Republicans as possible.

The Atlantic — The most important ballot question in 2020 is not Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, or Democrat versus Republican. The most important question is: Will Trump get away with his corruption—will his crooked and authoritarian tactics succeed?

If the answer is yes, be ready for more. Much more.

Americans have lavished enormous powers on the presidency. They have also sought to bind those powers by law. Yet the Founders of the republic understood that law alone could never eliminate the risks inherent in the power of the presidency. They worried ceaselessly about the prospect of a truly bad man in the office—a Caesar or a Cromwell, as Alexander Hamilton fretted in “Federalist No. 21.” They built restraints: a complicated system for choosing the president, a Congress to constrain him, impeachment to remove him. Their solutions worked for two and a half centuries. In our time, the system failed.

Through the Trump years, institutions have failed again and again to check corruption, abuse of power, and even pro-Trump violence.

As Trump took office, I published a cover story in this magazine, arguing that his presidency could put the United States on the road to autocracy. “By all early indications,” I wrote, “the Trump presidency will corrode public integrity and the rule of law—and also do untold damage to American global leadership, the Western alliance, and democratic norms around the world. The damage has already begun, and it will not be soon or easily undone. Yet exactly how much damage is allowed to be done is an open question.”

We can now measure the damage done. As we near the 2020 vote, the Trump administration is attempting to cripple the Postal Service to alter the election’s outcome. The president has successfully refused to comply with subpoenas from congressional committees chaired by members of the opposing party. He has ignored ethics guidelines, junked rules on security clearances, and shut down two counterintelligence investigations of his Russian business links, one by the FBI, the other by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He has assigned prison police and park police to new missions as street enforcers, bypassing the National Guard and the FBI. As in 2016, he is once again welcoming Russian help for his election campaign—only this time, he controls the agencies that are refusing to answer the questions of Congress and the American people.

Those who would minimize the threat that Trump poses take solace in his personal weaknesses: his laziness, his ignorance of the mechanics of government. But the president is not acting alone. The Republican politicians who normally might have been expected to restrain Trump are instead enabling and empowering him. …

…Trump has normalized the minority rule. …

Republicans in the Trump years have gotten used to competing under rules biased in their favor. They have come to fear that unless the rules favor them, they will lose. And so they have learned to think of biased rules as necessary, proper, and just—and to view any effort to correct those rules as a direct attack on their survival. …

To understand how the U.S. system failed in Trump’s first term—and how it could fail further across another four years—let’s look closer at some of Trump’s abuses and the direction they could trend in a second term. …

Inciting Political Violence

Trump has used violence as a political resource since he first declared his candidacy, in the summer of 2015. But as his reelection prospects have dimmed in 2020, political violence has become central to Trump’s message. He wants more of it. After video circulated that appeared to show Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and killing two people and wounding a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, Trump liked a tweet declaring that “Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.” “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Fox & Friends on August 27. Two nights later, a 600-vehicle caravan of Trump supporters headed into downtown Portland, Oregon, firing paintball guns and pepper spray, driving toward a confrontation during which one of them was shot dead. …

Trump’s appeal is founded on a racial consciousness and a racial resentment that have stimulated white racist terrorism in the United States and the world, from the New Zealand mosque slaughter (whose perpetrator invoked Trump) to the Pittsburgh synagogue murders to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Gilroy, California. In recent weeks, political violence has caused those deaths in Kenosha and Portland. A second Trump term will only incite more such horror. …

Trump uses power to enrich himself and weaken any institution of law or ethics that gets in the way of his self-enrichment. He holds power by inflaming resentments and hatreds. A second term will mean more stealing, more institution-wrecking, more incitement of bigotry. …

Voters in 2020 will go to the polls in the midst of a terrible economic recession, with millions out of work because of Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. But the country is facing a democratic recession too, a from-the-top squeeze on the freedom of ordinary people to influence their government. Will the president follow laws or ignore them? Will public money be used for public purposes—or be redirected to profit Trump and his cronies? Will elections be run fairly—or be manipulated by the president’s party to prevent opposing votes from being cast and counted? Will majority rule remain the American way? Or will minority rule become not a freak event but an enduring habit? These questions are on the ballot as Americans go into the voting booth.

Although the article is long, to me it is “a call to arms” to VOTE and to vote wisely taking into account Trump’s and Republican corruption. Author David Frum, usually considered right of centre, also covers Trump’s Abuse of the Pardon Power, his Abuse of Government Resources for Personal Gain, and Directing Public Funds to Himself and His Companies. Americans cannot afford to let this mad man take the country hostage for another four years!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!!

Personal Update – 10/14/2020

Posted by TomCat at 12:36 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 142020

It’s a crazy day here in the CatBox. WWWendy and I ran late, co I’m way behind schedule. Happy Hump Day,

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:15 (average 4:24). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Is it any wonder that the Republican Reich wants to ditch the UN?

Trump* Virus Update:

1014TrumpVirusMap

US Cases: 8,097,973
US Deaths: 220,989
Plus all the Trump*/GOP plague murders Republicans are hiding from us

Short Take:

From YouTube (a blast from the past): America – A horse with no name (clip HQ)

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Video Thread 10/13/2020

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 2:18 pm Open Thread, Politics

Oct 132020

Aaaaaw.

Brayden — you have heart, courage, and maturity beyond your years. You have unlimited potential — and I can’t wait to see what your future holds. pic.twitter.com/7t2mHOXNMa

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 11, 2020

Deliberately, obviously doctored Biden ad responding to doctired Trump sd …

Donald Trump is running TV ads taking Dr. Fauci out of context and without his permission.

So, here’s a message from the President in his own words. pic.twitter.com/WCYbIfrQLR

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 12, 2020

American Bridge

Don Winslow

Meidas Touch

Sound and Fury Messaging has two –

The Lincoln Project has two (it must be close to the election. Well, my ballot is in the mail today because yesterday was a federal holiday.)

Robert Reich – From his studio, or wherever he creates, to God’s screen. I’m not picky about how we do it (except that our methods should hild up legally), but we must do something – if we win – and this is why this election is so important!

And I’m even saving a couple, hoping for a slower day. But I can’t leave Keith out.

SCOTUS petitions update
Demand Progress
DLCC

Open Thread – 10/13/2020

Posted by TomCat at 11:03 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 132020

It’s another crazy day, here in the CatBox. WWWendy is coming a day early tomorrow to de-stink the TomCat and semi-goop, since she can’t come Thursday, her regular day. (Diana comes Thursday morning to change my patch.) I don’t know what time tomorrow WWWendy is coming, so I’m planning a Personal Update day, but that’s still uncertain. It’s Tuesday, so please remember to Flush Your Republicans.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:13 (average 5:04). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

Click for interactive maps and charts

US Cases: 8,038,543
US Deaths: 220,027
Plus all the Trump*/GOP plague murders Republicans are hiding from us

Short Takes:

From Crooks and Liars: Furball Fables calls on all of us to Purrsist and Vote!

CAT is where it’s AT, but all true authentic CATS are DemoCATS! RESIST!!

From Common Dreams (Hat-Tip Mitch [ours, not BBMM]): California’s top election official is investigating reports that the state’s Republican Party has set up unauthorized ballot drop boxes posing as “official” in several major counties, an illegal practice that could deceive voters into depositing their ballots at unsecure locations.

“Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes—especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes—is not just misleading to voters, it’s a violation of state law,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement responding to reports of unauthorized ballot drop boxes in Fresno, Los Angeles, and Orange counties

As the local Orange County Register reported late Sunday, “In a photo posted to social media last week, a young man wearing a mask with Orange County congressional candidate Michelle Steel’s name on it is holding a mail ballot and giving a thumbs up next to a box about the size of a file cabinet labeled ‘Official ballot drop off box.'”

“The post, from Jordan Tygh, a regional field director for the California Republican Party, encouraged people to message him for ‘convenient locations’ to drop their own ballots,” the Register reported.

That was just one of several instances of potentially illegal election activity by Republican officials that has been reported in recent days. On Saturday night, the Register noted, reports emerged of “a metal box in front of Freedom’s Way Baptist Church in Castaic that had a sign matching the one on the Orange County box.”

Although voter fraud is still extremely rare, Republicans are still working overtime to find a successful way to do so. Why have they not succeeded? Because Sheeple are stupid. And why have Democrats not succeeded? Because they aren’t trying! RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven (Official Audio)

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Video Thread 10/12/2020

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 2:08 pm Open Thread, Politics

Oct 122020

Meidas Touch

Lincoln Project – No CC – Transcript does not include sarcasm, so feel free to supply your own.

Thank you, Mr. President, for taking off the mask. Thank you for threatening America with violence when you lose, [and?] that only yout votes are counted. And for trying to rig this election and intimidate voters. For embracing the tactics of the tyrants you admire, and trying to use those tactics against the American people. Thank you for showing the American people exactly who and what you are. Because we’re perfectyly aware that you aren’t joking and you aren’t trolling any more. The future you and your pet Senators want is just as [unintelligible] as yours, but your time is running out. Your legacy and your place in history awaits – a legacy of failing – a blight on our history. Defeat is coming. Accountability is coming. We are coming.