;)
The Commentariat -- November 15, 2020
Afternoon Update:
Eleanor Mueller of Politico: "Public health officials, members of Joe Biden's transition team, and elected Democrats and Republicans urged ... Donald Trump on Sunday to begin the transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden, warning that continuing to waylay the process amid a spiking pandemic could endanger American lives. 'Of course it would be better' if public health officials could begin working with Biden's transition team right now, Dr. Anthony Fauci ... said on CNN's 'State of the Union.' 'That is obvious.'... [Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff, said on NBC,] 'Joe Biden's going to become president of the United States in the midst of an ongoing crisis.... That has to be a seamless transition.'... Asked on ABC's 'This Week' whether the Biden transition team should be allowed contact with health officials, the Trump administration's coronavirus testing czar, Brett Giroir, replied: 'This is an issue of public health and saving American lives. There's nothing more important than that.'"
Donald Trump's Twitter feed doesn't make Joe Biden president or not president. The American people did that. -- Ron Klain on NBC's "Meet the Press" ~~~
~~~ The Most Pathetic Loser. David Cohen of the Politico: "... Donald Trump has yet to concede the presidential election, but on Sunday he briefly came close to acknowledging that he lost in a tweet. 'He won because the Election was Rigged,' Trump tweeted. 'NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn't even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more!' But an hour or so later, Trump made it clear he was not conceding, tweeting 'RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!' and following it up with 'He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!' In the 12 days since the election, Trump has consistently claimed victory, while baselessly asserting that Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats had cheated to make it appear that he won. Trump and his legal team have lost numerous court cases trying to prove their theories due to a lack of evidence."
~~~~~~~~~~
Oliver Milman of the Guardian: "Joe Biden is piecing together what he has promised to be a diverse cabinet, with Michele Flournoy reportedly top choice for US defence secretary and Susan Rice considered a frontrunner for secretary of state. Flournoy was previously a senior defense adviser in Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's administrations and is considered a political moderate. Since leaving government she has been involved in various consultancy roles around military contracts. The appointment, if confirmed by the US Senate, would end a tumultuous period under Donald Trump, who has had five male defense secretaries during his presidency. The latest, Mark Esper, was unceremoniously fired on Monday for, among other issues, disagreeing with the president over the use of force against civilian protesters."
The Farce Still Be with Us
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Trump, the Republican party, their voters & supporters have made the U.S. the laughingstock of the world. Fascism & other sorts of dictatorships have never been satisfactory forms of government. What would make the supposedly intelligent people on the right think that re-enacting a failed scheme now was a good idea eludes me.
Mrs. McCrabbie: Poor, pitiful baby Donnie is beginning to try to face facts. Breakthrough 1! Friday Trump said he didn't know what administration would be in power after Jan. 20. Breakthrough 2! This morning Trump tweeted, "He won because the Election was Rigged." "He," we presume, is Joe Biden, the President-elect. The tweet goes on with more lies, and Twitter flagged it. But, wow!, we did read the independent clause "He won" on Donald Trump's Twitter account. Is that an official concession? What an embarrassment!
Doing His Best Nero Imitation, Trump Golfed While Americans Died. The New York Times' live post-election updates are here: "President Trump in his motorcade drove by hundreds of his supporters who showed up in Washington, D.C., on Saturday for demonstrations protesting the outcome of the 2020 election.... The president drove by in the motorcade on his way to his private golf club in Sterling, Va., and was greeted, according to a pool report, by applause and cheers. People who watched him go by carried signs reading 'Best prez ever' and 'Stop the steal.'" ~~~
~~~ Julie Zauzmer, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump's supporters had celebrated for hours on Saturday, waving their 'MAGA' flags and blaring 'God Bless the USA' as they gathered in Washington to falsely claim that the election had been stolen from the man they adore.... But ... the mood shifted, growing angrier as 300 or so counter protesters delivered a message the president's most ardent backers were unwilling to hear: The election is over. Trump lost.... In brief but intense clashes, activists spewed profanity and shouted threats, threw punches and launched bottles. On both sides, people were bloodied, and at least 10 were arrested, including four on gun charges.... After a week in which more than 750,000 Americans were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, almost none of his backers was wearing masks. Among their ranks were white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and far-right activists carrying signs demanding action that was already being taken: 'Count the legal votes.'"
David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump lost his reelection bid at the ballot box. But he said he could win it back in court.... It's not going well. Rather than revealing widespread -- or even isolated -- fraud, the effort by Trump's legal team has so far done the opposite: It's affirmed the integrity of the election that Trump lost. Nearly every GOP challenge has been tossed out. Not a single vote has been overturned.... Part of the problem is that Trump's approach has been backward: Declare crimes first, then look for proof afterward. Again and again, the president or his allies said they'd found evidence that would stun the public and swing the election. But, when Trump and his team revealed that evidence, it often was far less than they had promised. A 'dead' voter turned out to be alive. 'Thousands' of problematic ballots turned out to be one."
My Cousin Vinny Meets Marx Bros., LLC. Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "Senior [Trump] campaign aides scurried to urge organizers to kill the ... infamously staged [Giuliani press briefing] at the wrong 'Four Seasons' -- a landscaping business adjacent to an adult bookstore and a crematorium. But Giuliani plowed ahead anyway, delivering a conspiracy-filled rant that undercut the legal strategy the president's advisers had meticulously mapped out in the run-up to the election. Campaign officials described the episode as disastrous, saying it scared off many of the lawyers they spent months recruiting.... Yet Giuliani is taking on a heightened role. The president on Friday appointed him to oversee any new post-election litigation.... Republican officials said they viewed Trump's decision to promote Giuliani as an implicit acknowledgment that his legal options are closing and a sign that he's determined to go out guns blazing." Mrs. McC: In this story, the right-wing flame-thrower David Bossie comes out as the "rational" one. Tuck in your shirt, Rudy.
Pennsylvania. Nicholas Reimann of Forbes: "President-elect Joe Biden now officially has a big enough lead in Pennsylvania that the state will not conduct a recount, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar announced Friday, as ... Donald Trump's claims of fraud and lawsuits concerning the election keep falling flat as Biden's victory looks increasingly decisive. Trump can still request a recount, but in doing so would need to allege a miscount in the official vote tally. On Friday, Trump's legal team withdrew from representing his campaign in a legal challenge looking to block vote certification in Pennsylvania. In the unlikely event Trump were to be granted a recount, his campaign would have to pay for it and the recount would have to be finished by November 24." ~~~
Bob Christie & Nicholas Riccardi of the AP: "Republican leaders in four critical states won by President-elect Joe Biden say they won't participate in a legally dubious scheme to flip their state's electors to vote for ... Donald Trump. Their comments effectively shut down a half-baked plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House. State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they would not intervene in the selection of electors, who ultimately cast the votes that secure a candidate's victory. Such a move would violate state law and a vote of the people, several noted.... Still, it has been promoted by Trump allies, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and is an example of misleading information and false claims fueling skepticism among Trump supporters about the integrity of the vote. The theory is rooted in the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how electors are chosen. Each state already has passed laws that delegate this power to voters and appoint electors for whichever candidate wins the state on Election Day."
Walter Shaub in the New York Review of Book: "Trump's absurd insistence that he 'WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!' is easy enough to ignore. What is harder to ignore is what his appointee who runs the General Services Administration (GSA) is doing.... Congress ... does not appear to have contemplated the risk that a partisan loyalist appointed by a corrupt president would refuse to fulfill [her] duty when the outcome of the election was clear. Enter GSA Administrator Emily Murphy. Murphy is refusing to ascertain the apparent winner of the 2020 election as the president who appointed her disputes the clear outcome.... Murphy's refusal comes as great news to hostile foreign powers. Murphy has a sordid history in the Trump administration.... She cancelled a long-planned relocation of the FBI's headquarters in Washington, D.C. Circumstances suggest she may have been satisfying a desire on the part of President Trump to avoid opening real estate near his Washington, D.C., hotel that a competing hotel could acquire.... Murphy also appears to have been complicit in President Trump's assault on the civil service...."
Dennis Romero of NBC News: "A federal judge in New York City on Saturday said Chad Wolf has not been acting lawfully as the chief of Homeland Security and that, as such, his suspension of protections for a class of migrants brought to the United States illegally as children is invalid. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Trump administration wrongly tried to shut down protections under the Obama-era legislation known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. On July 28, Wolf nonetheless suspended DACA pending review.... Karen Tumlin, a lawyer in the case and director of the Los Angeles-based Justice Action Center, said ... the ruling applies to more than a million people, including more recent applicants and those seeking two-year renewals for protection under DACA." ~~~
~~~ Jerry Lambe of Law & Crime: "Attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Friday notified a federal judge that a previous claim relied upon to justify the controversial and likely unlawful appointment of Chad Wolf as Acting Secretary was not true." Mrs. McC: Are these lawyers -- sick of defending Trumpian lies -- growing bolder as Trump exits right?
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
Josh Kovensky of TPM: "The official in charge of the Trump administration's bid to speed up vaccine development wants permission from the White House to begin briefing the Biden transition, the Financial Times reported. Moncef Slaoui heads Operation Warp Speed, the joint Health and Human Services-Department of Defense program to spur the creation of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine. Slaoui told the newspaper that he would need approval from the Trump administration before he could reach out to the transition team led by President-elect Joe Biden. 'I hope nothing interferes with [Operation Warp Speed]. It is a matter of life and death for thousands of people,' he said. The FT reported that, when asked if the vaccine program's success was contingent on access to the Biden team, Slaoui replied: 'I would assume, yes.'"
Minnesota. Selfish, Irresponsible Bastards. Minneapolis Star Tribune: "A day after it was revealed that GOP state Sen. Dave Senjem tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Nov. 5 party caucus, news broke that Republican senators and staffers were informed in a Tuesday memo that 'a number of [GOP Senate] members and staff have been diagnosed with COVID-19.' DFLers [Democrats] were not informed of the rash of cases on the other side of the aisle."
As the Halo Slips. Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: “... after more than a decade of doubts, Pope John Paul II's reputation has fallen under its darkest cloud yet, after the very Vatican that rushed to canonize him released an extraordinary report this week that laid at the saint's feet the blame for the advancement of the disgraced former prelate Theodore E. McCarrick. The investigation, commissioned by Pope Francis, who canonized John Paul in 2014, revealed how John Paul chose not to believe longstanding accusations of sexual abuse against Mr. McCarrick, including pedophilia, allowing him to climb the hierarchy's ladder.... [The report] provides searing proof that the church moved with reckless speed to canonize John Paul and now it is caught in its own wreckage.... Citing John Paul's 'calamitous, callous decision-making,' which it said put children around the world at risk, an editorial Friday in the National Catholic Reporter urged American bishops meeting next week for their annual conference to 'discuss requesting that the Vatican formally suppress John Paul's cult,' or cease celebrating him. 'Abuse victims deserve no less.'"
News Lede
AP: "SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday on the first full-fledged taxi flight for NASA by a private company. The Falcon rocket thundered into the night from Kennedy Space Center with three Americans and one Japanese, the second crew to be launched by SpaceX. The Dragon capsule on top -- named Resilience by its crew in light of this year's many challenges, most notably COVID-19 -- reached orbit nine minutes later. It is due to reach the space station late Monday and remain there until spring."
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Reader Comments (15)
Good ol’ Charlie Koch, kind old man of the people, who has spent a lifetime getting liars and traitors elected, spitting on the poor, ratfucking the environment, and threatening any who say that his support for global warming is why Miami will be underwater in twenty years, sez “Sooooory”. Really Charlie? You’re “sorry” that you’ve been setting forests the size of Connecticut on fire, burning down people’s homes, extinguishing lives in the process? You’re “sorry” that you support lying crackpot fossil fuel apologists in Congress and are STILL DOING IT??
Well, I was raised Catholic and in religion class, the nuns always told us about the wonderful mystery of god’s forgiveness, and that even if you were Hitler or Uncle Joe Stalin (who, by the way, made ol’ Charlie’s family rich) who together were responsible for killing more people than Donald Trump (but only by a little), that if they were reeeaalllly soooorrry for their sins, and begged for forgiveness on their deathbed, even if they had just, ya know, shot eighty or ninety innocent people in the head, just for, ya know, old time’s sake, that they would be forgiven and would go to heaven along with Mother Theresa, the Good Thief, and Little Nell.
Yeah, okay. But one problem here: I’m not god! So fuck you and your “sorrys”. Do not pass Go, do not collect your $200 billion dollars, go straight to hell and burn for eternity, you hypocritical, scheming right-wing rat bastard son of a bitch, you and all your Joe Stalin billions.
You’d just prefer that history doesn’t rank you with the worst people to ever slither across the earth you’ve been scorching so you can live high and mighty. So now you’re sorry. Well, eat shit and die. I personally will petition Clio to stick your “sorry” ass in with the rest of the hell-bound miscreants and greedy, misanthropic assholes of history.
I’d like to say I feel better now, but I don’t.
AU REVOIR but NOT ADIEU
Roger Cohen, my favorite NYT's columnist, is bidding us farewell and leaves us with a most memorable column:
"Something about crazed nationalism, how it giddies people with myth, how it births their blood up building walls, how it births loony ideas like turning the east-west crossroads of Sarajevo [he covered this war and saw first hand its atrocities] into an ethically pure Serbian preserve, how its endpoint may be 100,000 dead or more in the rubble and the ashes. How it quashes tolerance, destroys civilization, enables dictators and devour freedom."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/14/opinion/sunday/roger-cohen-last-column.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
"On Lies is tyranny built"
WE and THEY : Rudyard Kipling
Father and Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way,
But-would you believe it? – They look upon We
As only a sort of They!
We eat pork and beef
With cow-horn-handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
Are horrified out of Their lives;
While they who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn't it scandalous? ) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!
We shoot birds with a gun.
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-.
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea.
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that, They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!
We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!
All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We As only a sort of They!
@AK: Atta boy!!! Go get-em tiger––I'm with you all the way! That "forgiveness myth"spouted by the Church of Devious doings makes me gag. It all fits in with confession–-jest wipes them sins away–-so go ahead and make your day any way you want cuz it don't matter none in the end–-if you repent–-whoosh! like magic–-gone! Pure as a newborn babe into the hands of the big fella in the sky. And maybe even make John Paul 11 a saint––oh, wait! too late, tis already done.
Akhilleus,
Way to let 'er rip!
No, the Kochs deserve no sympathy or understanding, certainly no forgiveness, no more than do the Sacklers or the Mercers or the Prince clan of unrepentent capitalist raiders whose only contribution to America's story is to provide the latest set of faces to illustrate the theme of greed that that runs through so much of our history.
And in Charlie's case, he ain't even really sorry. He still does not care a whit for the evil he did and does, certainly not for how he helped screw up the country. He cares only that his ploy did hot have the effect he desired.
He wanted smaller goverment and a balanced budget. Instead he got...the Pretender who had no interest in either.
The irony, of course, is that the Pretender perfectly personified the end point of greed the Kochs have always countenanced, caring about nothing but profit, justifying everything they did in its name. Instead, they tried to disguise their greed with massive donations to various charities and attempted to rationalize it with purchased quasi-philosophic ramblings, but their behavior was at heart no different from the Pretender's.
It's not just the Pretender's spending habits that Charlie doesn't like. What Charlie Koch really doesn't like about the Pretender is his crassness. The unvarnished view the Pretender offers of what greed really looks like: his naked narcissism and self-interest is the worm at the heart of the capitalist apple, crawling all over the outside of its shiny surface, visible to all.
Charlies is not really sorry. He's just embarrassed.
One more and back again to you, Ak: Check out Dowd's column which is pretty good and like you–-the other day-- she speaks of that golden goose.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/14/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-defeat.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Here's an interesting bit of historic fact sent to me by my friend in D.C. who is always up on the latest:
"Vice president-elect Kamala D. Harris is a trailblazer in many ways. She is the first female vice president. The first Black vice president. The first South Asian vice president. And, perhaps, the first vice president to sport Chuck Taylors...
But, as some have mistakenly claimed, she is not the first multiracial vice president or the first one of color. That distinction belongs to Charles Curtis, who served as vice president to Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933. Curtis’s mother was a Native American who belonged to the Kaw Nation, and he was raised on a reservation by his maternal grandparents, where he spoke the Indigenous language and lived in a tepee."
And I bet Charles had some pretty nifty "Chuck T's" of his own–-all Taylor made, of course.
We were walking this morning and I was not, for once, listening to NPR bothsidesing, and she said she had read two interviews that really left her upset. They were both health workers on the front lines of hospitals in one of the Dakotas, don't remember which one she said, and both were exhausted and aghast. They told of patients on ventilators, still gasping for air and declaring that the whole thing is a hoax, that Biden will ruin the country, that the pandemic does not exist, and they only stop rasping out these hellish statements when intubated and they can no longer speak. That happens to them every day. I don't know when a story has stuck in my head that way-- these people are so deluded they can't even admit they are wrong about this "flu" and maybe dying from it, when they are, in fact, dying from it! How does this happen? How do these people get that way? Daughter went on to say that half the people (well, 70 million of 'em) in the US need interventions and deprogramming!
I must admit, I am ready to expend no energy on that project, am ready to cross them off, take no time to "understand them." Am I supposed to pity them, like poor Charles Koch, now that they have lost an election? NO!!! They have not repented, and they will not be "saved" like they are sinners forgiven. They and their savior are not sorry, are not planning to work for world comfort, or interested in equality for all, but are still planning on attaining the kingdom of heaven. There is no indication that anything has altered or that they will change their wicked ways. These are lost people, and I don't even want them to rest in peace. I guess it isn't nice to be so angry at idiots, but I am not ready to make nice-- thanks, Chicks!
"The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously upheld laws across the country that remove or punish rogue Electoral College delegates who refuse to cast their votes for the presidential candidate they were pledged to support.....Thirty-two states have some sort of faithless elector law, but only 15 of those remove, penalize or simply cancel the votes of the errant electors. The 15 are Michigan, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Washington, California, New Mexico, South Carolina, Oklahoma and North Carolina." Chiafalo v. Washington, 7/2020
Nina Totenberg's write up. https://n.pr/3npGsEn
Although the GOP have proven themselves to be faithless in every instance, 3 of the 4 states cited in the piece above are in this list.
Jeanne,
I’m right there with you. Deprogramming won’t work with most of these people. We have to give them a reason to trust facts but I’m not sure how to do that.
But here’s my question now. Will the Times and the Post and 60 Minutes do interminable pieces about how Trumobots need to “understand” liberals and learn to see the world through their eyes? If I had to read one more interview with Trumpists coming out of a Cracker Barrel shouting about how liberals are all traitors and Trump is a great man, I’d be ready to stick needles in my eyes.
My guess is there will be no attempt to “understand” Biden voters.
But we’ll see plenty of stories about how wingers are seething that Biden wants to steal their freeedom by making them wear masks.
Chas. Koch isn't sorry for anything. His recent remarks only mean that he will henceforth buy Ds as well as Rs, exactly as cheaply, and for exactly the same purpose.
The most remarkable thing about Donald Trump is that he is -- and has been for years -- incapable of learning anything. After four years, he has no idea how to even "act presidential," much less be presidential. If you had suddenly found yourself of Jan. 20, 2017, taking the oath of office, you might not know what to do on Day 1, but by now, you probably would be at least a competent president, understanding your responsibilities & carrying them out to the best of your ability, with the help of competent aides. This guy is as ignorant & bumbling as he was four years ago. And his aides are even worse than the team he started with.
The most remarkable thing about Trump voters is that what they want in a president is what they got: an ignorant, incompetent buffoon.
We're not arguing a disagreement about the economic & societal ramifications of marginal tax rates. There's something really wrong with this picture.
In case you missed it (like I did), on November 7 Slate published a series of goodbyes to those who "who have made the past four years so difficult for so many people." From Goodbye Ivanka to Carson, these essays highlight who else besides the top of the ticket will thankfully soon be gone.
https://slate.com/tag/goodbye-trump-admin
" ... what they want in a president is what they got: an ignorant, incompetent buffoon ..."
True. So, who ARE these people? 70+ million of them and I don't recall ONE non-trivial editorial page endorsement (there was ONE in '16) nor ONE objective expert on ANYTHING who recommended re-election. Maybe I missed it, but it seems that there are 70 million people among whom there is not ONE who has any standing or recognition that anyone would recognize. There were quite a few "open letters" from varieties of co-signing eminences either condemning Trump or endorsing Biden, but I don't recall any counterprogramming on that. Maybe I read the wrong papers.
70 million and not one objective eminence endorsing DiJiT? Someone tell me I'm wrong. (And, no, Rudy is not an objective eminence).
@Patrick, Rudy is more akin to effluent grease.