Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Monday, November 9, 2020
·
104 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
A public service announcement:
Even though Trump’s ongoing attempt to steal the election through bogus allegations and a corrupt judiciary is almost certainly going nowhere, that doesn’t mean that the attempt is not being made.
It also doesn’t change the fact that at least several GOP senators and governors are openly on board with this plan, while a majority of GOP officials stand silently by.
It’s not hard to imagine what would be happening if the outcome hinged on a single state.
While I do not disagree with Biden’s conciliatory language, Democrats should realize that the GOP has abandoned democracy.
Authoritarianism and permanently entrenched minority rule is what they are after.
Headline of the day. I love the Scots.
South Ayrshire Golf club owner loses 2020 presidential election
There has been a lot of talk about the Biden team “healing wounds”, “moving forward”, or “reconciling” all of which is just a sideways way of saying, “ignore the crimes of the Trump administration.” This course of action would be devastating.
Those who believe that honesty and decency matter often struggle with the reality that liars and tricksters have an advantage not available to the other side. Fortunately, there is at least one other advantage for the side of decency. The liars and the tricksters rarely employ their deceits only on behalf of political ideology. They are also likely to be personally corrupt.
Of course the Biden administration should not go on a witch hunt over ideology. But they should go after the crimes and corruption of the Trump officials with absolute determination. Pleadings that they should ignore these in the interests of reconciliation removes a strong and legitimate weapon from their armory to no real purpose, and instead teaches the corrupt that they can commit their crimes and then plead “mercy” and that decency is just another word for fecklessness.
@MarkedMan:
“No justice, no peace” sums it up nicely, I think.
There has to be some kind of reckoning before things can go back to normal.
How can one live in peace if a single lost election is likely to mean the permanent loss of basic political rights?
@Jen:
Oh, that’s perfect. Too funny.
Mary Trump on the end of Uncle Donald: all he has now is breaking things
Good news on the COVID-19 vaccine front.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/09/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-effective/
Can we call them Dead-Enders?
BTW, these are not spontaneous.
Trump backers join ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in San Antonio
TikTokers are trolling Trump’s voter fraud line:
Self-identified voter from Georgia:
Is there a betting line as to whether Trump will attend the inauguration? I am the only one in my family who believes he will. By Jan 20th he will be worn down, a defeated man, and Ivanka will convince him it will help his legacy.
@SenyorDave: It will be interesting to see how Biden’s inauguration looks. Certainly he won’t be pushing for the usual gathering of many thousands on the National Mall.
Regardless of how the event is structured, if Trump does choose to attend, the fucker better wear a mask.
@SenyorDave:
Not a chance. As someone who has lived in NYS or CT (but not NYC) for 21 years since 1978, I’m all too familiar with Donald Trump. He has failed spectacularly at everything he has ever done and while the failures are varied they all have certain things in common. One of those is that he goes into silent mode for months after each. I’ve always thought Trump would have done exactly that six months into his presidency, but that’s just not an option for a President.
[Edit] He also never, ever associates or even mentions the name of any partners he had in these failures.
@Mikey: My wife and I are tentatively planning to go. Of course, if the Pfizer vaccine news holds we may decide to play it even safer than we are now. It’s one thing to take chances when there is no end in sight, but another when we could have this behind us in a year.
One thing to remember regarding the Pfizer vaccine news when Trump and his supporters try to take credit for it: Pfizer is NOT part of “Operation Warp Speed.”
@MarkedMan: We haven’t been to any inauguration and we live 30 minutes from DC. I guess it’s like people who live in NYC but have never been to the Statue of Liberty.
To your larger point, yeah, it would suck to let your guard down and get sick when you could have waited a few months and been vaccinated.
@SenyorDave:
This is an interesting question, because apparently Jared and Melania are pushing Trump to concede, and Eric and Don Junior are pushing him to fight. Ivanka’s position is unknown to me.
@MarkedMan:
I agree. Trump will never go to Biden’s inauguration. He’d be on display as the world’s biggest loser.
@Mikey:
While these are results form the big phase 3 trial, keep in mind they are preliminary, and that results may vary when released to the population at large.
So, yes, these are good results, but keep some caution with the optimism.
@Mikey:
@MarkedMan:
@CSK:
If Biden for some reason wants Pessimus to attend, he has an incentive to offer: If you don’t come to the inauguration, you can’t ride home on the VC-25 Jumbo otherwise known as Air Force One.
I also wonder what will come first, the self-pardon* or the concession.
*even if he resigns to get Pence to pardon him in the thirty minutes of presidency allotted, that’s still a self-pardon in my book.
@Kathy: Yes, of course. From the NYT piece on this vaccine trial:
@SenyorDave:
“Is there a betting line as to whether Trump will attend the inauguration? I am the only one in my family who believes he will. By Jan 20th he will be worn down, a defeated man, and Ivanka will convince him it will help his legacy.”
I bet you’re right. In his mind the crowd will be there for him, his biggest one yet!
@Kathy: FWIW, I’m on a conference call right now and one of the attendees is the GM of our UK office. It turns out that Pfizer is building a plant to produce this vaccine in the industrial area our office is located in, so he’s been following it pretty closely. The goal is for the plant to be up and running in May, and he doesn’t know the capacity once it is running. So that’s 7 months per plan and then probably many more months until there are enough doses to make a serious dent. He also doesn’t know if it’s the only plant, or what the capacity of the line is that they used to create the trial vaccines.
@MarkedMan:
Beyond all that, keep in mind it’s an mRNA vaccine. This means it requires ultra-low temperature storage (liquid nitrogen range), and it’s also a two-dose vaccine.
All vaccines require refrigeration of some sort, but usually in the range of a few degrees C above zero, or what a common household fridge can easily manage. Lower temps require either very powerful freezers, liquid nitrogen, or dry ice. This complicates distribution and delivery. Failures of refrigeration will render the doses useless.
So it will be a while.
The same, BTW, goes for Moderna’s vaccine, but not for the Oxford vaccine.
@ImProPer:
If Trump comes to the inauguration, it will be only to gloat that there are fewer in physical attendance (of necessity) than at his own.
Turns out someone I’ve met (the brother of a good friend) is a poll worker in Georgia. He is reportedly quite put out about Trump’s baseless slams of their work. But of course, he is required to withhold comment.
Totally legit then.
@drj: It’s like an “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” episode with Danny DeVito played instead by Rudy Giuliani.
Utah has issued a statewide mask mandate and limited social gatherings outside the home for two weeks. Guess Herbert isn’t scared of the mean Presidential tweets anymore!
The comments on this article…..the “There goes our liberties” crowd is getting piled on a little more than they were, at least.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50044988/we-must-do-more-statewide-mask-mandate-social-gathering-limit-coming-to-utah-amid-covid-19-surge
@drj: Ezra Klein was interviewing Georgians, and I swear to god every white person either said the Democrats were cheating or doing “shenanigans “.
20 years ago I lived in Valdosta. The most racist person I ever met worked with me. He would keep dead batteries in the console of his truck and throw them at black people walking beside the road as he drove by them at night.
Good piece by Jon Chait over at the New York Magazine:
America, by and large, never wanted Trump to be president. The public opposed his presidency from the moment he took office, and he trailed Joe Biden in polls continuously. The first chance the country got to correct the mistake, we fired him unceremoniously. He suffered the rare ignominy of becoming an incumbent president denied a second term, a category that over the last century includes Hoover, Carter, Bush and now Trump. Of this sad group, only Trump had the benefit of a growing economy.
…
The disgrace of this presidency will cling to his enablers forever. The rest of us can exult. America is far from perfect, but it is also far better than Donald Trump. Our problems may not be solved, but our nightmare has ended.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/biden-defeats-trump-election-2020-president-repudiation.html
Let the history books show that the American people – not the states, not the electoral college – never wanted DJT president. We never wanted him representing us across the globe, we never wanted his executive orders, we never wanted his judges, and we certainly didn’t want his disgusting brood sliming their way around the White House and AF1. We the People knew better, but shackled by the EC and our founding fathers’ hubris that they knew better than the voters of today, we were stuck with this nightmare for four long years. But it’s coming to an end I will absolutely relish every pathetic attempt the orange man-child makes to wriggle out of his impending doom.
According to some unnamed Republican sources, Trump is referring to Biden as “the phony president” and is refusing to concede as well as refusing to attend the inauguration.
@Teve:
Oh come on now. He wasn’t acting out of racial animus; he is just protecting himself, his family, and his neighborhood. Sheesh, it’s always about race with you people.
@CSK:
Just as I predicted a few weeks ago:
Not that I deserve much credit for something that’s been blindingly obvious for years (hell, he would’ve said the same about Hillary had she won).
@Mikey: “We haven’t been to any inauguration and we live 30 minutes from DC. I guess it’s like people who live in NYC but have never been to the Statue of Liberty”
I think a closer analogy would be people who live in Pasadena and have never been to the Rose Parade…
@Kurtz: to make it worse, I didn’t find out about it on the sly, he bragged about and started laughing.
“It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” Attributed to Yogi Berra.
That said, I was disappointed mostly in the quality of the polls as regards the Senate. I understand probability, and I know that a 75% chance of Democrats taking the Senate is far from a sure thing. But also that races in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maine should have been closer to justify the polls in those states.
We have a chance to take two spots in Georgia, but judging by the general election results, we’ll be lucky to get even one. That leaves 51-49 GOP Senate. then the only chance for a successful Biden presidency is to get one GOP Senator to defect.
This is eminently possible, and there is ample precedent. But is there any suitable candidate? Prior to Kavanaugh, I’d have said Susan Collins. In her favor, she voted against Amy Covid Barret, and against repeal of the ACA. Against her, she voted for Kavanaugh.
Getting two GOP Senators to defect would be nearly impossible, IMO.
Both candidates appear to have mobilized more voters (e.g., Wisconsin).
This is where the real analysis will be. I’ve always been somewhat suspicious of this notion that the balance of unmotivated potential voters was all Democrats.
@Kylopod:
Well, yes, but I do believe that Trump saw 2016 as a branding exercise and didn’t expect to win. He might have made a few token protests about Clinton being a fake president, but I doubt it would have driven him to the insensate rage the Biden win did.
@CSK:
I agree. But the fact still remains that Trump has never admitted defeat in an election, and he has always accused his opponent of cheating. He said this during the primaries whenever Cruz won a state. He even said it about Hillary regarding the popular vote, and he preemptively said he wouldn’t accept the results if she won.
@Kylopod: If I ever get elected Congresscritter, I’m going to put forth a bill that states anyone who runs for President has to take an oath that he will accept the result of the election.
We have too many people acting like spoiled brats in the U.S. Just because you lost an election doesn’t mean that there’s a conspiracy against you. It might just be that people don’t like you.
@Kylopod:
This is the story of his life.
I’ve been thinking about a small matter of numbers.
COVID-19 is the deadliest disease we’ve faced in a century. While disease like Ebola have a higher mortality rate, their spread is far more limited (it’s far easier to catch COVID than Ebola). And yet there’s been more panic about Ebola in countries unaffected by it, than about COVID-19 in countries very affected by it (namely America).
Why?
We know people tend to exaggerate low-probability risks and underestimate high-probability ones. But consider raw numbers and percentages.
With an infection count of about 10 million, this means about 3.05% of the population has had it or currently has it. This means, too, most people by now know someone who’s had or has COVID. But you also know many ore people who never got it.
Next, with around 250,000 deaths, that a mortality rate of 2.5%. Meaning you’re likely to know someone who died from it, but more likely to know someone who recovered (with or without hospitalization).
So it doesn’t seem so dangerous.
On the other hand, lock down, the recession, the closure of businesses (temporarily or not), affects everyone. That’s one thing that will annoy or bother people more than the fear of COVID will. Unemployment or other loss of income has also affected far more people than COVID.
then there’s what people don’t see. We do not see the overwhelmed hospitals that would have occurred had no measures been taken. We do not see mass graves and millions dead. even though such things can still happen if we don’t take the pandemic seriously enough.
In other words, we’re dying and getting sick in larger numbers due to shortsightedness and an inability to endure long term inconvenience, plus the inability of the government to provide effective economic relief on an ongoing basis.
@drj: Four Seasons Total Landscaping is likely more than 1500 ft away from schools, churches and playgrounds. The choice of locations is beginning to make sense.
@Gustopher:
Why hasn’t there been a black Sharpie correction? It would be easy to scrawl “Four Seasons Hotel” in black Sharpie over the photos of Giuliani et al. after all.
@grumpy realist:
I actually disagree–slightly.
First of all, I think such a law would be borderline unenforceable. Second, it would prevent people like Al Gore who had serious, legitimate objections to the results from contesting the election. Now, you might object that Gore was simply asking for a legally sanctioned recount. And after the SCOTUS ruled against him, some would say he “accepted the results” in the sense that he agreed not to fight anymore (what more could he have done, though?) and encouraged his supporters to accept Bush as president. However, it’s very clear he viewed it as a stolen election, and he pretty much said so thereafter.
And I agree with him. It was a stolen election. The difference between Gore calling it a stolen election and Trump saying the same thing about 2020 is that Gore actually had evidence to support his assertion. We have a flawed electoral system in this country, and cheating does happen. There are always going to be candidates who make groundless, fact-free accusations of cheating. But to make a blanket prohibition on contesting election results is going too far, because there are many situations when that’s valid.
@Kathy:
Or die, and be replaced by a Democratic Governor.
Now, who do we know that was recently covered in strange bruises, and hails from a state with a Democrat as Governor? A noted Terrapin-American? A man who savored the death of a beloved Supreme Court Justice? A man whose blood the poets might be demanding for justice?
I’m just saying that the same year that brought us a turn like Rudy Giuliani discovering that the election has been called for Biden during a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping between the adult bookstore and the crematorium might also give us man who gleefully celebrated the death of Ruth Badger Ginsburg shifting the balance of the Supreme Court himself dying and shifting the balance of the Senate.
Like, if you had to estimate the likelihood of each in advance, the latter seems way more plausible.
@Gustopher:
Far easier to induce a politician to change parties than to die.
@Kathy: Oh, that is not true.
But I’m hoping for death by natural causes, like abscesses or respiratory diseases, which often kill pet turtles.
@Kathy:
We really do not know. Any polls are likely to be way off and the general election is irrelevant.
@Joe:
“If Trump comes to the inauguration, it will be only to gloat that there are fewer in physical attendance (of necessity) than at his own.”
Doesn’t sound unreasonable, but I’m guessing that even in the age of covid, Joe’s will be much, much bigger, than Trump’s pathetically small inauguration.
@Gustopher:
I believe Kentucky is one of the states that requires naming the replacement to be of the same party as the replaced senator.
@drj:
“The first person Rudy Giuliani, the attorney for President Donald Trump, called up as a witness to baseless allegations of vote counting shenanigans in Philadelphia during a press conference last week is a sex offender who for years has been a perennial candidate in New Jersey.
Totally legit then.”
Wow, as one would expect, Rudy going straight for his big guns. Could this be Q, and the long awaited storm?
Nandi is in the New York Times!
Dave Grohl, 10-Year-Old Nandi Bushell and One Very Epic Drum Battle
That, she certainly is.
@Mikey: The edit function has gone away again, so I’ll have to use this comment to credit our very own Michael Reynolds for the Tweet that contained that link.
According to CNN, Ben Carson has tested positive for Covid-19.
@charon:
Ok. So you take a rabid liberal, they switch to the GOP, they are appointed to the Senate, the next day they switch to Independent and choose to caucus with the Democrats. All technicalities have been observed.
It’s like when a player in college cannot start in the lineup, as a disciplinary measure. You put them in the field on the second play.
Now that Trump is lame-ducked, red states notice there is a pandemic.
https://twitter.com/soonergrunt/status/1325656969001119744
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1325682118320660480
This via the daily Covid post at BJ.
@Kurtz:
Obviously economic anxiety.
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1325627076221820930
@charon:
If the average stays at 11 days for one million more new cases, there will be an additional 6 to 7 million more cases by the time Trump leaves office.
On the other hand, maybe now that Trump’s lost, more red state governors will take stronger preventive measures. One can hope.
I’ve no hope for a new relief package before February 2021.
@Mister Bluster: Esper had balked at using military troops against Americans exercising their rights. I wonder if Miller is considered more…amenable.
The purge has begun-Trump fires DOD Sec. Esper.
I saw a clever meme today about the Georgia runoff elections: “Georgia, get ready to Warnock your Ossoff.”
Just ordered, on the recommendation of a friend, 1 pound of Lapsang Souchong to go with 1 pound of Earl Grey. E.G. is really great for making sweet tea. The other…I’m not sure how I feel about it. Very strong unusual flavor.
@Teve:
Lapsang Souchong is smoked over pine fires in bamboo baskets on wooden racks. The pine pitch and smoke flavors infuse the tea. There are claims that this was the first black tea, invented in desperation when the (green) tea harvest was missed/ruined due to invading armies passing through at the wrong time. That was back in the 1600s.
@CSK: @Kylopod: Not much of an insult coming from a guy pretending to be president.
Do you know what the scariest thing about this election so far has been? Trump has gotten 8 million more votes than he got four years ago. 12.7% More.
@Teve: That’s precisely what I was getting at in my comment above.
My guess is that voting became kind of a zeitgeist this year, and a lot of people who typically DNGAF went out and voted…some, maybe because they had strong feelings about the candidates. Some got peer-pressured into it. Some just wanted to be part of the crowd.
There are a few questions surrounding this, including: How many of them will vote in the next cycle, which won’t be a presidential cycle? How many of them lean R? How many of them lean D? How many of them are young voters who voted Republican? Etc.
Some increase in the raw number of voters might be expected in a hyper-politicized and chaotic election cycle, but what happens when we go back to normal (whatever that is these days)?
@Jen:
Another question I have: What will happen to those voters who were inspired to vote by Trump himself, and previously had not been regular voters before? I’ve met people like this. How common were such voters? Will they drop off the map? Continue voting R? Latch onto new figures who can convince them they’re continuing Trump’s legacy?
The soon to be former occupant of the WH is floating a 2024 run
https://www.axios.com/trump-2024-presidential-run-4add0d86-02be-41f9-b2fd-5aaca96ce6ce.html
I can just see the attack ads on him using old footage of Trump attacking Biden with the too old line.
Butters is all for it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/525120-graham-trump-should-consider-running-again-in-2024-if-he-loses
@Sleeping Dog:
Convicted felons aren’t eligible.
@Sleeping Dog:
@DrDaveT:
Not to toot my own horn (which is never much of a disclaimer), but I called it 😉
Still, this may be the incentive for the current GOP establishment, especially those eyeing a 2024 run, to drop any opposition to a successful prosecution of Pessimus Trump.
People on Twitter are having fun analyzing today’s political cartoon in the UK Times of Biden holding a mop and bucket while surveying a completely trashed Oval Office. Twitterati are pointing out all the details: the empty spray tan bottles and stains on the walls; the Statue of Liberty lying on the floor beneath a Confederate flag; the bust of Putin (one of the few intact items); the bottle of bleach with a straw; the mis-colored American flag picture beside a crayon; golf clubs; fast food containers and soda cans; and best of all, outside the window, Trump being dragged away.
@Monala: a couple more: a torn Constitution and Trump’s meandering red tie.
Loeffler, Perdue call on Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to resign
I took the liberty of filling in the blanks of their joint statement for everyone.
Wow. I just came from a creationist website and they are sure the Democrats committed election fraud all over the place with countless fake ballots and Trump is with certainty going to win the election.
Plans for the D. J. Trump Presidential Library.
😉
@Teve: To my way of thinking, usually more people voting is good.
But more people voting for Trump makes me wonder what they were thinking.
I think they were thinking things like “OMG socialism! That’s bad right?” Or “Biden is the most corrupt politician to ever hold any office”. Or “Biden is senile, and he’s gonna let AOC disband all the police departments in the country, and the criminals will run wild” Or “I can’t possibly let the baby-killers win”. Or, “The economy is great”. Or “COVID is just a bunch of hype for the election”.
I think the biggest laugh I have is that they think Facebook is bad for (conservatives, Republicans, Trumpists). I think it’s the best thing that ever happened to them.
@Teve: So, Democrats conceived of election fraud so complex that it gave Biden the presidency but didn’t change ANY House or Senate races?
That’s…interesting.
I think all of these Republican officials need to be a bit more circumspect about this, after all, who is the one who encouraged his supporters to vote twice to test the system?
@Jen: John Moe’s 2006 book Conservatize Me includes the following account of the Nixon Library, which should give maybe a scintilla of a hint of what we’re in for with the Trump equivalent:
Ha. Kayleigh McEnany was giving a press conference and yelling about Pennsylvania votes being fraudulent and Fox News actually cut away and said we can’t air this, there’s no evidence for this.
@Jay L Gischer: “
I think they were thinking things like “OMG socialism! That’s bad right?” Or “Biden is the most corrupt politician to ever hold any office”.”
I picture them saying “durrrr I like French fried potaters…”
@Jen:
Better than last time, when they committed fraud to inflate Clinton’s popular vote totals, but not he electoral college votes.
Wouldn’t it be absolutely great if all of Trump’s efforts succeeded in throwing out duplicate votes for him?
Remember, Ate, Goddess of mischief, still wonders the Earth, has a sense of humor, and a penchant for playing tricks on rulers. 🙂
@Teve:
Than they are in for a very unpleasant surprise when they wake up on 01/21 and realize it was not all a dream and yes, that was Joe Biden that they watched put a hand on a bible and take the oath.
I am like 110% not stressed because Biden is our next Pres but it will be a long couple months before the reality of the situation finally settles in and GOPers accept that life will go on even with Biden as Pres. Us liberals accepted reality when Trump won and the GOP will too but it will take them a bit longer.
@Jen: Gawd DAMN…. Somebody put a lot of work into that.
@Mikey: I saw this on Cavuto today while I was at the gym. I’m relieved that a news agency covered the story, too. Good news indeed.
@Jen: @OzarkHillbilly:
The real DJT library will probably be very similar, except with more pictures and more statues of Trump and perhaps a gallery of Ben Garrison cartoons and John McLaughlin paintings.
@Kathy: I have little hope for an economic recovery package AFTER February 2021 either. Republicans in Congress will be concerned over the rising deficit and assert that we need to be frugal.
@Teve: I liked Lapsang Souchong as is, but you may not want to/be able to drink a lot of it. I used to bring a thermos of it to work with me and eventually had to cut way back as I was getting an ulcer. Now the issue for me is caffeine as well as level of acidity. Additionally, my Korean doctor told me that green tea wasn’t really the only type that was high in Vitamin K; that I really needed to be careful about any teas other than fruit ones–ginger, honey citron, jujube (a type of date), which were better choices.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Oh, but by then reducing deficits will come back in fashion.
BTW, has anyone else had a thought like: Meanwhile in a parallel universe, President Clinton announces changes to her cabinet after winning reelection in a close race against John Kasich*, as COVID-19 cases in the US approach 2 million?
*I know. Cruz seems more likely.
Can the media please stop fricking around and call it what it is…the GOP is attempting a coup. Politico notes that McConnell is backing Trump and other GOP controlled Red States are too. They want to push this to the Supreme Court, where Trump figures that since he hand picked enough Conservative Justices to tilt the balance of power that they would side with him.
Seriously, the GOP needs to stop fricking around and be warned that an attempted Coup will be met with widespread violence and possibly scenes of U.S. Soldiers killing U.S. Civilians on the nightly news…is Trump really worth this future?
So maybe I am a bit worried, but if the media starts saying the GOP is attempting a Coup maybe folks on the right will start to sober up. What use is power if you are residing over cities on fire, which is what will happen if the let Trump get away with a Coup.
Oh…and screw it, I am not going to declare that I am aware I am heading toward tin foil hat territory because what is going right now is an attempted Coup by the Republicans, folks in the media need to call them out on their words and actions. I suspect I am far from the only person who is thinking that this is what is happening right now.
Coups are messy, has McConnell really thought this through? He just feels we will shrug our shoulders and go so what that we voted or Biden but Trump just wants to continue as President for four more years so we will just give him what he wants to keep him happy.
It is profoundly disturbing that the GOP thinks they can just ignore the will of the people and there will be no repercussions. I really hope this is just a case of the GOP letting emotions get the better of them and cooler heads will soon prevail.
By the way, if you find straight-up brazen lies entertaining, you have to be following Laura Ingraham on Twitter.
@CSK:
PAINTING ONE!—A STILL LIFE REPRESENTING THE DIFFICULTY FW DECLERK HAD ENDING APARTHEEEEEIIIIIIID. MORT KONDRAKE YOUR THOUGHTS
@Teve:
I stupidly screwed up the name: Jon McNaughton is the artiste I meant. Don’t look at his works unless you want to get queasy.
@CSK: I was just yanking your chain. 😀
@Teve:
I took no offense. What you said was funny.
@inhumans99:
A saying sometimes attributed to Lenin about omelets and eggs comes to mind for some reason. I can’t quite put my finger on either the saying or the reason, though. Hmmm…
@inhumans99: While I was in Korea and we still had down votes, I frequently got downvoted for making the following statement. (The record, as I recall was 8, so I never got to HWMNBN or Superdestroyer levels, though.)
I have to go with yes, presiding over cities on fire would be worth it to them.
(And you thought you were in tin-foil hat country. Amateurs… [shakes head])
@CSK: Yes, it was funny! 🙂 😛 😀
Idiots are funny. Right now on Twitter you can watch one tell Anand Giridharadas, born in Shaker Heights, Ohio in 1981, that he should change his name to one that’s more American, because people will assume he’s from India.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: why is trump building a big new unscalable fence around the White House right now?
Anand should learn to dribble. Basketball fans have no trouble pronouncing names like Šarūnas Marčiulionis.
And to fan the flames of coup warnings, it seems Barr issued an order today authorizing the investigation/prosecution of voter fraud, and it led to the the head of election crimes stepping down in protest.