No, 2000 and 2016 were not free and fair elections, and look how those turned out. We simply can’t afford another mistake.
I agree with you both. Their efforts are extremely ham-handed. Blazingly obvious, even. We could go so far as to say they no longer care who sees it. What was it Bill Barr said? He didn’t care how history would view him, because history is “written by the winners.” Then he flashed his fangs.
That’s the first of three facts that leave me uneasy. The second is, while it’s true Trump lost by a tiny margin in 2016 and is now significantly less popular, he simultaneously now has a shitload more power at his disposal. He will use it with zero compunction it until someone stops him. Republicans won’t stop him.
The third is, Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are extremely alarmed over classified information they have received regarding continuing foreign interference in the upcoming 2020 election. They can’t be specific, but they are practically sounding air horns. On Monday, they called for the entire Congress to be briefed by the FBI on this intelligence and asked also that the information be made public so voters can be informed about the extent of the interference. Without saying so specifically, they implied the big worry is (surprise!) Russia.
I never imagined in October 2016 that a joint announcement by 17 of our own intelligence agencies stating they believed with “a high degree of confidence” that Russia was working to interfere in the outcome of our election would or could be ignored by a significant percentage of our citizens. But it was.
Trump is an ignorant, corrupt horror show of a human being. On his own, he would easily be defeated. But there are some devious, desperate Republicans and Russians who want more than anything to keep him where he is. They scare me a lot.
Hey, fuckface! I don’t have a job because there’s a pandemic, you shithead! There’s no job for me to return to UNTIL YOU DUMBASSES DO YOUR JOB AND GET THIS PANDEMIC UNDER CONTROL!
What are you, a commie? How dare you dispute the fact that those on unemployment are lazy (black) bums who don’t want to work.
Sadly, that idea is the truth. Some friends of friends of mine on Facebook are saying exactly that. Conservatives, but (I used to think) reasonable people. And once again, Fuckface has no clue. How the fuck is reducing benefits going to help him get re-elected? The majority of people who would get the benefits are white.
Here is a scary thought - Trump has recently changed his “mind” a bit. He is now in favor of wearing masks. If he were to make a nationally televised address, outlining a coherent national strategy to deal with COVID, even if he did not follow through with it, he would win the election easily. All he has to do is talk about how brilliant he was in January and February with the ban on travel from China, and how he saved millions of lives, and how he was following the advice of scientists (and Fauci did say, early on, that he did not recommened wearing masks), and Trump says that we have learned more about the virus, and strategies have changed. And talks of a national plan.
Well, I like to quote my brother-in-law. “If you can think of it, someone else already has.” Trump would never think of this, but his advisors have, I am sure. And if Trump gives that televised address, enough of the voting public will buy it to get him re-elected.
While this might win him some votes, a lot comes down to when it’s done. Trump is so chaotic, so scatterbrained, that were he to try this quite sensible strategy in August, by November he’ll have done fifty stupid things to make voters on the margins forget about it.
A much better Republican strategy is what they’re doing right now in sending federal goons to cities to stir up trouble. They’ve convinced conservative voters that ANTIFA is actually a thing, and is a huge, malevolent, paramilitary threat behind the BLM movement and all opposition to Trump. That’s what will fire up his base.
Albuquerque. As dark clouds rise over the devastated city, roving gangs of the BLM/Antifa Alliance ravage and plunder. A brave citizen has recorded some of the horror on video, at great personal risk, his or her fate is unknown. But the video is available from Crooks and Liars, if you can stomach the gleeful gloat from anarchistic global statists,
While we all appreciate it, I think sarcasm is lost on the Trumpians.
I’m troubled by the ongoing protests…it just feeds into Trump’s narrative. His best hope for reelection is to feed the Us vs Them conflict. If the protests just disappeared tonight, he’d have nobody to fight with and absolutely nothing to talk about.
If they leave, Trump will claim a “victory” and say that the “riots” couldn’t have been quelled without the aid of his storm troopers. He will then use that as a basis to send them back whenever he chooses. Say, oh, I don’t know… around election time?
I think Portland is handling it well. They will not be deterred or intimidated. They are showing the “riots” for what they are: Pure farce and photo ops. It’s not a good look to be tear-gassing moms with flowers and dads with leaf blowers.
What I object to on the unemployment $600 bonus is that it goes away if you work at all.
If you find a job that pays $500 a week, don’t take it, you will be far worse off.
I do think that we’d be much better off if we had something like $300 for everyone, $600 for those on unemployment. That way, there still is an incentive to get a job, but if you can’t find one, you are still being taken care of. At least prorate the $600 to some extent.
You should always be better off if you are working, but you shouldn’t need to work to survive, especially when work is shut due to factors beyond either you or your employer’s control.
If we are going to incentivize getting jobs then there’s no point in pretending that we intend to, at least try, to slow transmission of Covid at all.
CMC
My employees do not come within 6’ of another employee, all are required to mask up while they are on property and to observe strict hygiene protocols, and the only person that interacts with the public is myself.
I am hiring.
It’s not about the “economy”, it’s about the fact that there is stuff that needs to get done. Some of the stuff we can hold off on indefinitely, restaurants, bars, venues and the like. Some of the stuff we can hold up temporarily, but we can’t just stop providing the goods and services that are essential to our daily lives.
All I am proposing is that rather than a steep cliff, where getting any job makes you no longer for the Covid stimulus, that instead, it is pro-rated, so that you are not punished for working.
I would also advocate that we keep the $300 a week forever, not just during this crisis, but that’s a whole different subject.
In that case, you your lips to the Final Bill’s pages.
'Cause if they don’t get more money into peoples pockets this is going to end up worse than a 'Zombie Apocalypse.
CMC
The Reagan Foundation has demanded that the Individual 1 campaign stop using images of Reagan in their ads. They are hinting at lawsuits.
My question is, the image they’re using is taken from a photo of Individual 1 shaking hands with Reagan in the 80s. Who took the photo? Wouldn’t the image belong to them, unless they were an official White House photographer, meaning the image belongs to the federal government and Individual 1 has no right to use it? Reagan Foundation calls on Trump campaign to stop using ex-president’s image to raise money.?
President Trump lashed out at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute on Sunday following a report that it had requested the Trump campaign stop using President Reagan’s name and image in fundraising.
The president made the remarks in a tweet that also shared a post pointing out that the Reagan Foundation’s chair, Frederick J. Ryan, Jr., is the publisher and CEO of The Washington Post. In his tweet, Trump also hit Fox News over recent polls that have showed him trailing his Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden.
“So the Washington Post is running the Reagan Foundation, and RINO Paul Ryan is on the Board of Fox, which has been terrible. We will win anyway, even with the phony @FoxNews suppression polls (which have been seriously wrong for 5 years)!” Trump posted.
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