;)
The Commentariat -- November 19, 2020
Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "An emotional President-elect Joe Biden praised Republican governors and others who have bucked President Trump to endorse more-stringent measures to control the spread of the coronavirus, while warning Wednesday that a 'tough guy' approach contributes to preventable deaths. Biden contrasted restrictions imposed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and a growing number of other Republican leaders with what he suggested is Trump's negligence. 'Now you have the governor of North Dakota, you have others figuring it out, that this is real. We've got to do something,' Biden said as he led an on-screen briefing with nurses, a firefighter, a home health aide and others with firsthand experience dealing with the pandemic. 'And it's not a political statement. It's not about, you know, whether you're a tough guy or not a tough guy,' Biden said, breaking off. '... It's about patriotism. If you really care about your country, what you want to do is keep your neighbors and your family safe.'" ~~~
~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: There is only one president at a time in the U.S., and Joe Biden seems to be the guy. ~~~
~~~ Kristen Holmes & Devan Cole of CNN: "The Health and Human Services Department will not work with President-elect Joe Biden's team until the General Services Administration makes a determination that he won the election, Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday, even as public health experts stress that a smooth transition is a critical part of the government's response to the worsening coronavirus pandemic. 'We've made it very clear that when GSA makes a determination, we will ensure complete, cooperative professional transitions and planning,' Azar said at a briefing. 'We follow the guidance. We're about getting vaccines and therapeutics invented and get the clinical trial data and saving lives here. That's where our focus is as we go forward with our efforts.'" ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Alex says he's "about savings lives." I get that Alex is such a weenie that he's afeared of a guy who doesn't do his job at all & is about to be evicted from government housing. But how is it "about saving lives" to refuse to share necessary information with the team who will be in charge of distributing the life-saving viles of vaccines? Alex knows he will not be around to pass out the viles, but he won't tell the team that will have the job where the storage locker is & where the transport trucks are. Clearly, Alex is not "about saving lives." This is not a policy issue; it's a logistics issue. Presumably, both Alex's team & Joe's team have the same goals. So what's the problem?
Natasha Korecki & Christopher Cadelago of Politico: "Joe Biden's transition team has tried to project calm as ... Donald Trump refuses to concede and many Republicans -- and even one key part of the federal government -- continue to have his back. But behind the scenes, Biden's advisers are in the midst of a fierce lobbying blitz to get Trump's allies to crack. They're dispatching emissaries from past administrations -- Republican and Democrat -- along with a wide array of business and interest group leaders to intercede on Biden's behalf. According to three transition officials, Biden's team is in talks with multiple Republican leaders and officeholders to end the transition stalemate, warning them of risks to national security and public health if the president-elect isn't granted access to the government. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are also deploying aides and allies to ramp up public pressure on General Services Administrator Emily Murphy, who has refused to acknowledge Biden's victory and thus allow the transition to officially begin." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie BTW: If you too would like to annoy Miss Emily, contributor Julia suggests you give her a call at 1-844-GSA-4111 (1-844-472-4111). Julia says you do get a person if you press 1 after the menu readout. Or you could email Emily at emily.murphy@gsa.gov ... I think Emily may be in. Yesterday a reader told me privately that Emily looks like Donald Trump in drag. Private communication being the appropriate place to start a conspiracy theory, I immediately speculated that there is no Emily. The Emily who occasionally shows up at GSA is in fact Donald in drag. CNN is reporting this morning that in the last 16 days, Trump -- who is challenging democratic principles to keep a government job he doesn't do -- has had 12 days with nothing at all on his schedule. So maybe some of that time, he's over at GSA being Emily.
Evan Perez, et al., of CNN: "A handful of current Trump administration officials, as well as some political appointees who left in recent months, have quietly started to reach out to members of President-elect Joe Biden's transition team, according to people briefed on the matter. The outreach is a sign that ... Donald Trump's refusal to concede the election and the continued obstruction from the White House is beginning to frustrate even those affiliated with the administration."
Nicholas Riccardi of the AP: "President-elect Joe Biden's winning tally is approaching a record 80 million votes as Democratic bastions continue to count ballots and the 2020 election cracks turnout records. Biden has already set a record for the highest number of votes for a winning presidential candidate, and ... Donald Trump has also notched a high-water mark of the most votes for a losing candidate. With more than 155 million votes counted and California and New York still counting, turnout stands at 65% of all eligible voters, the highest since 1908, according to data from The Associated Press and the U.S. Elections Project. The rising Biden tally and his popular vote lead -- nearly 6 million votes -- come as Trump has escalated his false insistence that he actually won the election, and his campaign and supporters intensify their uphill legal fight to stop or delay results from being certified, potentially nullify the votes of Americans."
The Clown Car Is Full
I wonder what happens when you call up Loser.com
The Washington Post's live election updates Wednesday are here: "President Trump has abandoned his plan to win reelection by disqualifying enough ballots to reverse President-elect Joe Biden's wins in key battleground states, pivoting instead to a goal that appears equally unattainable: delaying a final count long enough to cast doubt on Biden's decisive victory.... His personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has taken over the president's legal team, asked a federal judge to consider ordering the Republican-controlled legislature in Pennsylvania to select the state's electors. And Trump egged on a group of GOP lawmakers in Michigan who are pushing for an audit of the vote there before it is certified. Giuliani has also told Trump and associates that his ambition is to pressure GOP lawmakers and officials across the political map to stall the vote certification in an effort to have Republican lawmakers pick electors and disrupt the electoral college when it convenes next month -- and Trump is encouraging of that plan, according to two senior Republicans who have conferred with Giuliani and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. But that outcome appears impossible. It is against the law in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin law gives no role to the legislature in choosing presidential electors, and there is little public will in other states to pursue such a path." The page is free to non-subscribers.
Nick Corasaniti, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump’s false accusations that voter fraud denied him re-election are causing escalating confrontations in swing states across the country, leading to threats of violence against officials in both parties and subverting even the most routine steps in the electoral process.... In courtrooms, statehouses and elections board meetings across the country, the president is increasingly seeking to force the voting system to bend to his false vision of the election, while also using the weight of the executive office to deliver his message to lower-level election workers, hoping they buckle. The effort has been joined by surrogates like [Sen. Lindsey] Graham, who has used his visibility as a senior United States senator to make false claims about vote processing in Nevada; [... pressured the Georgia secretary of state to find ways to disqualify Democratic ballots;] forward disputed accusations about mail ballots in Pennsylvania to the Justice Department; and level unsubstantiated accusations about supposedly fraudulent votes for Mr. Biden." The report includes, among other tidbits, more info on those two yahoos -- Monica Palmer & William Hartmann -- who first voted not to certify Detroit's votes.
Kendall Karson & Meg Cunningham of ABC News: A "chaotic few hours in Wayne County[, Michigan,] stemmed from two Republican members of the board -- Monica Palmer, who serves as the board of canvassers chair, and William Hartmann -- initially refusing to certify the county's election results, in a move that was sharply criticized as flagrantly partisan, only to reverse course just hours later.... Despite the about-face, the drama fueled fears about the Trump campaign coordinating an effort across critical battlegrounds to subvert the democratic process by pressuring GOP-controlled legislatures to override the will of the people and choose their own slate of pro-Trump electors to vote for the president at the Electoral College's December meeting.... Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser with the Trump campaign, wrote, 'This evening, the county board of canvassers in Wayne County, MI refused to certify the election results. If the state board follows suit, the Republican state legislator will select the electors. Huge win for @realDonaldTrump.'... [BUT] State leaders in [Michigan,] Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, too, are putting distance between themselves and any possible strategy to circumvent the popular vote...." ~~~
~~~ About Jenna. All the Best People, Fascist Enabler Edition. Andrew Kaczynski, et al., of CNN: "Jenna Ellis has been one of President Donald Trump's most ardent defenders since joining his campaign as a legal adviser and surrogate a year ago, but in early 2016 she was one of his toughest critics and deeply opposed his candidacy.... Ellis ... repeatedly slammed then-candidate Trump as an 'idiot,' who was 'boorish and arrogant,' and a 'bully' whose words could not be trusted as factually accurate. She called comments he made about women 'disgusting,' and suggested he was not a 'real Christian.'" In one March 2016 Facebook post, Ellis said Trump's values were 'not American,' linking to a post that called Trump an 'American fascist.'... In March 2016, Ellis attacked Trump supporters in a Facebook post for not caring that the Republican candidate was 'unethical, corrupt, lying, criminal, dirtbag.'" --s
Mrs. McCrabbie: BTW, the Trump legal team's "win" rate is 1-29, according to CNN. In the one of 30 cases the team won, no vote totals changed.
Michigan. Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "After three hours of tense deadlock on Tuesday, the two Republicans on an election board in Michigan's most populous county reversed course and voted to certify the results of the Nov. 3 election, a key step toward finalizing President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the state. Now, they both want to take back their votes. In affidavits signed Wednesday evening, the two GOP members of the four-member Wayne County Board of Canvassers allege that they were improperly pressured into certifying the election and accused Democrats of reneging on a promise to audit votes in Detroit." Emphasis added. ~~~
~~~ Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "Election certification is supposed to be routine: Canvassers at the county or municipal level (depending on the state) review precinct results, make sure every ballot is accounted for and every vote was counted, double-check the totals and send the certified numbers to state officials. It's the process by which the results reported on election night are confirmed.... If the canvassers find possible errors, it is their job to look into and resolve them, but refusing to certify results based on minor discrepancies is not normal.... It is also highly abnormal to suggest, as [one of the Wayne County refuseniks, Monica] Palmer did, that canvassers certify the results in one place but not another when there is no meaningful difference between the two in terms of the number or severity of discrepancies. Before the deadlock was resolved, Ms. Palmer had proposed certifying the results in 'the communities other than the city of Detroit.'&" That is, she was happy to certify the results for whitey-white areas, but not for Detroit, which is 80% Black.
Pennsylvania. Jon Swaine & Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post report on Rudy's first court appearance in nearly three decades. In his oral argument, for instance, Rudy told the judge his side wanted "to ensure opacity." He did admit, "I'm not quite sure what 'opacity' means. It probably means you can see." The judge had to explain to Rudy that it meant the opposite. ~~~
~~~ Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post finds her inner Rudy and writes a 3 am infomercial for his $2,000/hour services: "Hi! I'm Rudy Giuliani! Have you been injured in an election? Do you think you should be president, but due to an unexpected setback, you've wound up short by thousands of votes in key states? Hire me, and you will get the settlement you deserve!.... I have a surefire way to overturn any election result you dislike, or this isn't the Four Seasons Hotel! Call toll-free now!" ~~~
(~~~ Readers pick the Worst of Trump winners as Gail Collins of the New York Times totes up the write-in votes. Mrs. McC: You may want to demand a recount, but it could cost you $20K a day in legal fees, especially if you live in Philadelphia and/or come in a darkish hue that is not painted on your face. ~~~)
~~~ Josh Gerstein of Politico: "... Donald Trump's campaign has filed yet another version of its lawsuit over the election results in Pennsylvania, now contending that he should be named the victor in the presidential contest there or that the state legislature be given the authority to assign the state's 20 electoral votes. The third iteration of the suit also restores legal claims dropped in the second version that the campaign's constitutional rights were violated because of allegedly inadequate access for observers during the processing of mail-in ballots. The campaign eliminated those claims in a version of the suit filed on Sunday, but Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has said that was due to a miscommunication prompted by harassment and threats directed at lawyers who represented the campaign. The new complaint claims 1.5 million mail-in or absentee votes in seven Pennsylvania counties 'should not have been counted' and that the disputed votes resulted 'in returns indicating Biden won Pennsylvania.'" ~~~
~~~ Jerry Lambe of Law & Crime: "Attorneys representing President Donald Trump's re-election campaign in challenging thousands of ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania agreed to sign court documents on Wednesday informing the court that there was no evidence of fraud or misconduct pertaining to those ballots. The lawsuit -- filed last week by the campaign as well as the Republican National Committee and two GOP candidates for state office -- sought to have the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas invalidate more than 2,200 'defective ballots' that were counted following a review by the Board of Elections.... During a Tuesday hearing, both parties also agreed that election observers from each party were permitted access to watch the pre-canvassing and canvassing processes. Despite President Trump's oft-repeated false claim that he 'won Pennsylvania by a lot' and that he is only losing the state to Joe Biden due to fraudulent ballots, Trump's campaign lawyers have had to take a far different approach when they get before a judge."
Arizona. Nat Naham of Law & Crime: "Arizona's Secretary of State blamed the violent threats she and her family have received on President Donald Trump's's misinformation campaign regarding the 2020 election results. Secretary Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday that the president and his allies in the Republican Party have 'encouraged' and stoked distrust in the election outcome."
Wisconsin. Jeff Zeleny & Casey Tolan of CNN: "The Trump campaign said Wednesday that it will seek a limited recount of some Wisconsin counties. The campaign needs to officially request the recount, any pay an upfront fee, by 5 p.m. CT Wednesday. Wisconsin election officials confirmed on Wednesday that they received a partial payment of $3 million from the Trump campaign. These officials said last week that the price tag for a statewide recount would be approximately $7.9 million. 'The Wisconsin Elections Commission has received a wire transfer from the Trump campaign for $3 million. No petition has been received yet, but the Trump campaign has told WEC staff one will be filed today,' the election commission said. CNN projected that President-elect Joe Biden will win Wisconsin. According to unofficial results, Biden leads ... Donald Trump by 20,470 votes, or 0.62%." (Also linked yesterday.)
Georgia Senate Race. Insider Trading. Sam Brodey of the Daily Beast: "Right before he was put in charge of a powerful Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the U.S. Navy, Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) began buying up stock in a company [called BWX] that made submarine parts. And once he began work on a bill that ultimately directed additional Navy funding for one of the firm's specialized products, Perdue sold off the stock, earning him tens of thousands of dollars in profits.... Perdue's activity is unusual in how his leadership of a very niche subcommittee lined up with his investment in a company squarely within that niche -- just as work began on the federal legislation most important to that company's bottom line.... Perdue's investment in BWX is not the first time the senator, one of the most active stock traders in Congress and one of its wealthiest members, has engaged in conspicuously timed trading."
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Wednesday are here: "The United States passed a grim milestone on Wednesday, hitting 250,000 coronavirus-related deaths, with the number expected to keep climbing steeply as infections surge nationwide. Experts predict that the country could soon be reporting 2,000 deaths a day or more, matching or exceeding the spring peak, and that 100,000 to 200,000 more Americans could die in the coming months."
Lauren Leatherby & Rich Harris of the New York Times: "Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. But the surge is worst now in places where leaders neglected to keep up forceful virus containment efforts or failed to implement basic measures like mask mandates in the first place, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the University of Oxford." Lots o' charts & graphs.
Lauren Aratani of the Guardian: "More than 900 employees at Mayo Clinic, a top research hospital that is based in Rochester, Minnesota, have contracted Covid-19 in the last two weeks. At a press briefing on Tuesday, Dr Amy Williams, dean of clinical practice at the hospital, said that the vast majority of staff who were infected -- 93% -- were not infected at work, according to the St Paul Pioneer Press. Most of those who were infected at work contracted the virus while eating without a mask during their breaks, Williams said. The hundreds of employees who have contracted the virus over the last two weeks make up over a third of all employees who were infected since the start of the pandemic. The hospital is experiencing a shortage of 1,000 employees at its headquarters in Rochester, according to the Pioneer Press." (Also linked yesterday.)
Sophie Kevany & Tom Carstensen of the Guardian: "Seven countries are now reporting mink-related Sars-CoV-2 mutations in humans, according to new scientific analysis. The mutations are identified as Covid-19 mink variants as they have repeatedly been found in mink and now in humans as well." --s
Trump Could Not Be Bothered to Pick up the Phone. Josh Rogin of the Washington Post: "When it comes to diplomacy in Asia, showing up is half the battle. But President Trump couldn't be bothered to attend two key Asia-related summits last weekend, even though they were held virtually. This was the lame-duck president's latest and hopefully last insult to the United States' Asian allies -- and an unforced error in the greater competition with China. For the third year in a row, Trump declined to participate in the annual summit of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes a meeting between leaders of the group's 10 member nations and the United States. The president was also a no-show for the East Asia Summit, which President Barack Obama began attending in 2011. And Trump wasn't the only one. For the first time in this administration, no Cabinet-level official participated in either event. No travel was required; all they had to do was call in to corresponding video forums." (Also linked yesterday.)
** Nicole Gaouette, et al. of CNN: "President Donald Trump's order of a further withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq is the latest foreign policy move on a growing list in his final weeks in office that are meant to limit President-elect Joe Biden's options before he takes office in January.... A second official tells CNN their goal is to set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out. It's a strategy that radically breaks with past practice, could raise national security risks and will surely compound challenges for the Biden team -- but it could also backfire. Analysts and people close to the Biden transition argue the Trump team may act so aggressively that reversing some of its steps will earn Biden easy goodwill points and negotiating power with adversaries." --s
** Corey Dickenson of Stars & Stripes: "Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on Wednesday ordered the Pentagon's top civilian overseeing the military's special operations community to report directly to him, effectively elevating U.S. Special Operations Command to the same level of the Pentagon's military departments.... The change makes the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict a service secretary-like position responsible for the oversight and advocacy of the military's special operations forces.... Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a former aide to Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn, is now filling the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict role on an acting basis." --safari: This should ring serious alarm bells.
Joseph Cox of Vice News: "The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps.... The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others include a Muslim dating app, a popular Craigslist app, an app for following storms, and a "level" app that can be used to help, for example, install shelves in a bedroom.... The news highlights the opaque location data industry and the fact that the U.S. military, which has infamously used other location data to target drone strikes, is purchasing access to sensitive data." --s
Oliver Holmes of the Guardian: "Mike Pompeo is expected to tour an Israeli winery this week built on land Palestinian families say was stolen from them, a deeply provocative act that would make him the first US secretary of state to officially visit a settlement in the occupied territories. The top diplomat's visit has been widely reported by Israeli media but not confirmed by Washington. If it went ahead, it would be a parting gift to Israel's nationalist government and the settler movement, as the Trump administration scrambles in its final weeks to impose a vision for the Middle East that has deeply favoured Israel's far right." --s
Aram Roston of Reuters: "Before William Barr became President Donald Trump's choice to lead the U.S. Department of Justice, he represented Caterpillar Inc ... in a federal criminal investigation by the department. Much was at stake for Caterpillar: Since 2018, the Internal Revenue Service has been demanding $2.3 billion in payments from the company in connection with the tax matters under criminal investigation.... A week after Barr was nominated for the job of attorney general, Justice officials in Washington told the investigative team in the active criminal probe of Caterpillar to take 'no further action' in the case.... The decision, the email said, came from the Justice Department's Tax Division and the office of the deputy attorney general, who was then Rod Rosenstein." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Trump's policy of turning away migrant children at the border as public health risks, ruling that the expulsion of thousands of children without due process exceeded the authority that public health emergency decrees confer. The Trump administration has since March used an emergency decree from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to effectively seal the border to migrants, rapidly returning them to Mexico or Central America without allowing immigration authorities to hear their claims for asylum. Top homeland security officials have cited the potential spread of the coronavirus that could come from detaining asylum seekers in border facilities. But Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, an appointee of President Bill Clinton's, said that while the emergency rule allows the authorities to prevent the 'introduction' of foreigners into the United States, it did not give border authorities the ability turn away children who would normally be placed in shelters and provided an opportunity to have a claim for refuge heard. The order applies across the country."
All the Best People, Farce Edition. Sky Palma of the Raw Story: "A former speechwriter fired from the White House in 2018 after he attended a conference alongside white supremacists has been appointed to a commission tasked with preserving Holocaust-related sites across Europe. According to a press release from the White House this Tuesday, Darren Beattie will join the Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad." --s ~~~
~~~ Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "The White House drew criticism from a prominent Jewish group [-- the Anti-Defamation League --] on Wednesday, a day after it appointed a speechwriter it fired for attending a gathering with white nationalists to a commission that helps preserve sites related to the Holocaust. Darren Beattie, who was fired in 2018, was appointed to the Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad for a three-year term that will last into the next administration. Mr. Beattie's dismissal followed the revelation that two years earlier he had appeared on a panel with Peter Brimelow, the founder of the anti-immigrant site VDare, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a 'hate website.' The commission, founded in 1985, is tasked with identifying and preserving cemeteries and historic buildings in Europe, including sites used to kill primarily Jews during the Holocaust."
Marianne Levine & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Two months before Joe Biden assumes the presidency, Senate Republicans are racing to install a series of conservative nominees that will outlast Donald Trump. While Trump still refuses to concede the election, the Senate GOP is moving quickly to ensure that the president's stamp sticks to the Federal Elections Commission, Federal Reserve Board, the federal judiciary and beyond." Mrs. McC: One could almost conclude that the Turtle's gang thinks Joe Biden won the election.
Sarah Ferris & Heather Caygle of Politico: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi secured her caucus' nomination for another term leading the House on Wednesday as Democrats kicked off their multiday leadership elections for the new Congress. Pelosi is running unopposed and only needed a simple majority of the Democratic Caucus during the secret ballot vote. But she'll still have to clinch 218 votes on the House floor in January to officially become speaker -- and she has a much narrower majority to work with this time around after Democrats lost more than half a dozen seats on Election Day." (Also linked yesterday.)
Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "A former Green Beret conspired to spy for the Russian government while serving in the Army and as a defense contractor with a top-secret security clearance. Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, 45, of Gainesville, Va., pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiracy to commit espionage. He will be sentenced Feb. 26 in federal court in Alexandria and faces up to life in prison. Born in the United States but with family ties to Russia, Debbins told investigators in a written statement that he had a 'messianic vision' of saving Russia from its own leadership and thought the intelligence operatives 'would be my allies in overthrowing their government,' according to court papers. He said he also became concerned about the impact on his wife's family if he did not engage and was bitter about his experience in the U.S. Army." The AP's story is here.
Beyond the Beltway
Texas. Jake Bleiberg of the AP: "The FBI is investigating allegations that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton [R] broke the law in using his office to benefit a wealthy donor, according to two people with knowledge of the probe. Federal agents are looking into claims by former members of Paxton's staff that the high-profile Republican committed bribery, abuse of office and other crimes to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, the people told The Associated Press.... Each of Paxton's accusers has resigned, been put on leave or been fired since reporting him. Last week, four of them filed a state whistleblower lawsuit against the attorney general, claiming he ousted them as retribution.... The full nature of Paxton and Paul's connection remains unclear. In 2018, Paul donated $25,000 to the attorney general's reelection campaign. The developer also said in a recent deposition that Paxton recommended a woman for her job with his company. Two people previously told The Associated Press that Paxton acknowledged in 2018 having an extramarital affair with the woman, who was then a state Senate aide." (Also linked yesterday.)
News Lede:
CNBC: "Jobless claims totaled 742,000 for the week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, ahead of the 710,000 estimate from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. That total also represented an acceleration from the previous week's 709,000 and a continuation of the job market struggles since the coronavirus pandemic hit in early March. The week-over-week increase was the first after four straight weeks of decline."
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Transition, Trump Style
Remember that story about how Clinton people supposedly removed the W’s from all the keyboards in the White House as a sort of FU to the incoming Bush team? Yeah, I know it didn’t happen, but the Bushies were happy to spread a story that made the previous administration look petty and small.
Trump is taking that idea a few hundred steps further. He’s wiring all the keyboards with explosives. Okay, not exactly, but pretty close. And in many ways what he’s doing is much worse.
Not content to bollix up the Biden team by being petulantly uncooperative, Trump is now planning a series of drastic foreign policy moves in Afghanistan, China, Iran, and Yemen and rushing through an enormous arms sale to the UAE, which has the immediate effect of upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East, all designed to “set as many fires as he can” to fuck Biden up before he even takes the oath of office.
This isn’t just despicable, this is fucking up American national security just to stick it to the guy who made him look bad.
There aren’t many more words left in the language to adequately describe what a dangerous lunatic this fat fuck is.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/trump-biden-natsec-transition-fires/index.html
@Bea:
I totally believe that Emily is Donny-in-Drag, so I immediately uploaded video of this and it went viral. Unfortunately, the only video I could find was of Porky Pig with lipstick on.
Do you think anyone will notice?
So now HHS refuses to speak to the incoming real president’s team because Emily what’s-her-face (or Drag Queen Donnie) sez he’s not, in her exalted opinion, the winner of an election in which he received the most votes in the history of US presidential contests.
Once again, how in the bloody blue blazes does a fucking unelected appointee—and a hyper-partisan hack, to boot—have this kind of power? How is it that this one obstructionist hack can freeze out an entire (legitimate, for a change) administration?
Of course she is just the most visible example of how the Fat Fascist has warped and twisted the US governmental departments and agencies into servants of his warped and twisted desires and grifts.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of similarly unqualified Trumpist hacks sucking the life out of the country like swamp leeches. I read a report yesterday about how terrible things are at Swampy Bottom (previously Foggy Bottom). The State Department, under Pompeo, has been hollowed out of serious and diligent career diplomats and employees and replaced by imbeciles who couldn’t even find the United States on a map, but are working like mad to fuck things up to suit their treasonous little king.
This has been the case all across official Washington. No one with any decency, expertise, or self respect will work for a traitor. What’s left is the dregs of the dregs.
Like Drag Queen Donnie.
Or Dreg Queen Donnie.
How right-wing extremists have infiltrated German Security forces: with transcript and video:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-right-wing-extremists-have-infiltrated-german-security-forces
Check out the two late entries from yesterday's comments: the parody video and @unwashed Vanity Fair piece on Ivanka by her once upon a time good friend.
And speaking of drag queens: In one of my favorite films, "The Bird Gage ," the scene where Gene Hackman disguises himself as a drag queen in order to escape the press puts to mind what a display Fatty would present if in the same garb. Hackman was a most unlikely specimen to resemble a female which, of course, was the point and garnered all the laughs, but the thought of Trump parading around in drag is stomach churning at best–-maybe a most accurate picture was described by that silly, sassy Sarah as "Lipstick on a Pig!"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/opinion/trump-policy-mean.html?
Hearkening back to an earlier discussion, Greenhouse presents--unintentinally--a good case for vigorously prosecuting the whole passel of Pretender scofflaws.
The gang of Pretender functionaries who have promulgated harmful, as Greenhouse says downright mean, and often illegal policies, put them in place, then waited, often years, for a court to slap their hands before they sought another way to double down and do the same mean thing again.
Over and over again, in the DACA case even ignoring the will of the SCOTUS.
And never any consequence. None.
Even when the law is not an ass, it is proved toothless.
The Courts get to say all the nice words, but those nice words do little to stop men and women of ill-will from doing very bad things.
@Ken: "Even when the law is not an ass, it is proved toothless." This was one of my points yesterday; when the law's teeth are missing–-or are rotten to the core–-then we are functioning without safeguards and even the good guards at the gates cannot keep us safe. What is happening in Germany (see my link) is terrifying and we seem to be close cousins in that terror.
AK: I have never heard or seen in print the phrase "bollix up" since my mother used it years ago. Are you sure you aren't my mother? That would explain how she "disappeared" but since we put both mom and pop in the Allegheny River years ago (Probably illegal now--) I don't see how you could be... But this isn't the first time this blog has included commenters that sound like her language, and for me it is pleasing nostalgia. So thanks for that!
I have lost all hope that this election will result in anything but an extension of the 2008 election. The growling hordes are not dying off fast enough, although the pandemic is surely trying. The rise of Moscow Mitch will ensure that his "party" behaves just as cruelly as they did then, through now. I hope some law firm or other will add to their list of Dump criminalities the fact that his incompetence and placid enabling are killing more and more people. Biden can try as hard as he can, but when one monster like Ms. Emily can bollix up the entire system, it indicates to me that the system is totally broken and not fixable. I will no longer defend her on HuffPo and Esquire when the commenters remark on her appearance. I have been doing so for days. No more.
All of T****’s moves are making things harder for Biden, yes, but much worse is that every single move harms our relationship with allies while emboldened dictators. And Rs are just fine with that. 80 years of diplomacy are being flushed down the toilet.
Jeanne,
Bollix is an only just slightly more refined version of an expression my Irish cousins know only too well, bollocks. That version, which technically, I suppose, refers to testicles, is almost universally employed as an expression of disarray or a major botch job. For instance, “We went to that party last night. What a bollocks!” I’m not sure how when Americans adjusted the spelling, probably to make it less crude to the more effete listeners, but it’s a perfect word to use in referring to anything touched by King Midas in Reverse, little donnie trumpy, master of the fuckup. A total bollocks if there ever was one.
But the word has Maintained a certain salacious currency.
An infamous British punk band once released an album in 1977 entitled “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols”.
A favorite “bollocks” story of mine came courtesy of an old friend from County Cork. As a kid, he would go with his friends to the movie theater in his town. In those days, commercials would run between feature films. One product routinely hawked was Lux soap, and the lads waited giddily for the announcer to name off the various types. “There’s blue Lux, and red Lux, and green Lux...” at which the boys would all shout “And BOLLOCKS”. I guess 12 year old boys are the same everywhere.
Just a thought to pull the little king's tail. Trump has spent four years with his presidential hero Andrew Jackson glowering down on him. I hope that whoever takes over as Treasury Secretary jump starts the removal of Jackson from the 20$ bill and sees to it's speedy replacement by Harriet Tubman. If I recall correctly it was all but finalized in 2016.
Bobby Lee,
Harriet Tubman replacing slave owning genocidal Old Dickery is a great idea, but a non-starter for Fatty and his race baiting enablers. A white supremacist replaced by a black woman? And a slave to boot? A slave who helped other slaves run away from their rightful owners??
Never.
Rudy Giuliani, who hasn’t set foot in a courtroom since people with tin ears thought “Achy Breaky Heart” was a good song, did what he does best. Embarrassed the shit out of himself. In addition to not knowing what “opacity” means (he got it wrong, the nice judge corrected him; he had a 50-50 chance to guess the right answer; he blew it), he also, in his court filings, referred to “pole watchers”.
I’m guessing this was a holdover from his last trip (the night before?) to a strip club to watch the pole dancers. Maybe he thought they were all from Kracow. Who knows. He also got the judge wrong. Just a minor thing.
Can you imagine if Rudy were a surgeon, who hadn’t touched a scalpel in 30 years and couldn’t tell the difference between a polyp and a pull up? “Sorry, I don’t do pull ups anymore. Call Dr. Miller.”
Just who you want representing you in a big court case. The guy with a fourth grade vocabulary, who forgets who the judge is, and wants the court to make a ruling on poles.
Thanks, AK! I am always happy to get a history/culture viewpoint from you-- you are so well-read.
Someone on Charlie's column said that this Emily woman reminds them of the infamous Kim Davis of KY-- that's exactly what it is. Only this time it is an ENTIRE country being held hostage by a bureaucrat who doesn't seem to get what her job is, since she perceives that the obvious thing she should do conflicts with what she wants to do. What part of "apparent" does she not understand?? It's not about her. It's about us and our election. She should just fade away...