The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making Part Deux (Part 1)

Qatar appears to be paying Trump for an unused office. Coincidentally, these payments started at the same time Trump decided that Qatar was actually not supporting terrorism.

Considering that it was the Republican primary ballots that they were canvassing for “errors”, it is not that unlikely that any errors they found would be for Trump. He did get 92% of the vote.

However, people are stupid, and when they hear this, they will think that there is some sort of conspiracy against Trump voters, because people are stupid.

Here’s another piece about those “naked ballots”

^From the Daily Kos story linked to in your post.

Serious question: why shouldn’t the House impeach Barr?

It’s not as though they’d have to scramble to find counts of impeachment. And it’s also not as though lots of Americans would say ‘what, again?!?!?’ (which is the main reason for refraining from impeaching Donald again, richly though he deserves it).

Why not impeach this lawless AG? Why not hold hearings to place before voters all the facts of his malfeasance?

pa is going to have a total saturation psa thing on how your vote by mail ballot needs to be filled out.

during the court case it was estimated that 40 thousand to 60 thousand votes could be thrown out due to being “naked”. there is around a dozen states that require the envelope.

Of course this happened :man_facepalming:t2:

Something doesn’t smell right about that Daily Kos story (based solely on my reading of the quote a few posts above).

First, the other MSM reports I’ve seen suggest that some or all of them were indeed in security envelopes, and were removed and then (sloppily) re-inserted into security envelopes. (Or, perhaps, not in those envelopes to begin with but were then put into them? Unclear.)

But, bigger qualm: I can’t believe in a million years well, at least not in 30-40 minutes, that any rejected ballots are (or should be) thrown away into a dumpster. Those things are always subject to further review/dispute. I expect that ballots rejected, for any reason, would be segregated and kept in a separate pile/stack/safe/shippingcontainer.

Is this something PA has announced they will do (cite?) or just your expectation/assumption of what they now must/will do? It’s certainly what all the states ought to do.

I’m careful about citing Daily Kos, too, as it’s a clearly left-leaning blog. But the story of the ballots has been posted on other websites.

I see this as an attempt by Barr to assert more federal jurisdiction.

The Washington Post seems to have the most depth (bold and italics theirs).

Because these ballots were returned in envelopes similar to absentee ballot requests , elections officials opened them. If the ballots weren’t then enclosed in another envelope that shielded the actual vote being cast, they may have been considered “naked ballots,” a term used to describe mail ballots returned without the voter’s intent being protected.

If that’s the case, which again isn’t clear, that meant that elections officials who were opening the envelopes to see what they contained may have had to discard the votes, given a recent ruling by the state’s Supreme Court.

The Associated Press reported on that decision, writing that the court’s extension of the period in which ballots could be returned was a win for Democrats.

“In wins for Republicans,” the report continued, the court “rejected requests to let voters who aren’t disabled give their mail-in ballot to someone else to deliver; to require counties to let voters fix disqualifying problems with their mail-in ballots, such as not signing their return envelope; and to require counties to count mailed-in ballots that arrive without a secrecy envelope.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the requirement to count naked ballots.

There will be a big push as the ballots are mailed.

Next we can expect the Republican lawsuit to shut down the public information campaign.

Pennsylvania Public Address system is called what, again?

HHS is about to embark on an ad campaign to “defeat despair over COVID-19”, featuring celebrities like Dennis Quaid and CeCe Williams, and they are also trying to get Mehmet fucking Oz and Garth Brooks.

The budget for this effort to make people feel better about the trainwreck will be $300M, overseen by department spokespiece Michael Caputo.

How much goes to the effort and how much goes to the spokesthing?

From the linked story,

So, only fifty million. A pittance.

I thought Caputo was on sabbatical in some Home for the Bewildered.

Is that what they’re calling the White House?

To be fair, I don’t think the eagle was attacking Trump. I think it was attacking the thing on top of his head, which is easily mistaken for a small prey animal, possibly an orange marmoset:

Isn’t Michael Caputo the guy on The Godfather who was played by Al Pacino?

Anyway, I admire the spirit of this. It’s how Free-dum in Republican America is supposed to work. If you totally fuck something up and instead of fixing a problem, you bungle it so badly that you make it far worse and become the object of pity and ridicule in the rest of the world,
the solution is to spend $300 million on ads lying about it.

But this isn’t good news. This is consolation for continuing bad news.