Coming This Week: The Biggest RNC Clown Show In 28 Years

"It's always worth it to get the best seats in the center and enjoy our master's best melt downs!"


The  RNC begins this week, which elicits the question: Why would anyone with anything between the ears pay attention to what these screwballs claim, or their over the top displays of Trump love?   As most sensible citizens can agree it will most likely be the biggest clown show on Earth.  I have no intention of watching that 4-ring (4-day) circus, but predict the following "highlights" over the week:

1) Trump will resort to more  lies  about the alleged "great economy".  Like Adolf Hitler, his hero, Trump believes the more you tell a lie the greater chance it will be believed.  This may be one reason he keeps repeating the "strongest economy" ever which is bollocks.

Fact:  He has claimed more than 360 times that the economy on his watch was the “strongest ever.” Not even close.  No way and no how. Annualized growth under Trump ranked seventh among his 11 predecessors. And growth actually slowed during each of Trump’s three years.   Lastly, his terrible handling of the pandemic directly translated into the enormous problems we now face: an economy in its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

How Trump keeps an edge in polls (over Biden) concerning the economy and its performance is a question for the political cognoscenti to address.  All I know is he doesn't deserve any edge at all.   People who signal in polls they prefer Trump for the economy are either blind, brain dead,  fact-free ignoramuses  or inbred fools and morons.  There's no other explanation.

2) "Freedom" dog whistles to be sounded - on guns and masks

First, by Missourian Mark McCloskey who  - with his wife Patricia - will live on in infamy for the stunt they pulled back in May - pointing weapons at racial justice  protesters.



Expect Mark to wax  long and hard on "liberty" and how owning a gun - preferably an AR-15- helps to define it  Especially if you can point a loaded weapon at black protesters under the pretense they might raid your  property.  McCloskey's bunkum will be especially important given how the NRA has recently fallen from grace after reports of their financial shenanigans and misdirected funds.

Second, expect a known anti-Masker to claim - likely in a prerecorded session- how masks are an infringement on personal liberty and after all, shouldn't one be permitted to do with one's own body what he will? No thought that masks protect others from your germs.  

 3) Fear mongering on steroids:

- Expect to hear this canard (with some minor variations)  endlessly repeated: 

"If Biden wins expect Antifa goons to ransack cities, beat innocents and wreck businesses."   

Trump will also bellow: "If you like socialists and carnage then elect Biden!"   Of course, the truth is we've already seen all the carnage compliments of Trump, including infants separated from mothers and locked in cages, and innocent protesters being shot by impact weapons, tear gassed and beaten with truncheons.   Trump said it was done in the interest of "law and order.".  What's truly choice here is the most defiantly criminal resident ever invoking the "law and order soap box to dog whistle to whiteys, white racists, that he is their only protection against the "socialist, radical" hordes.  No one ever said the RNC lacked a sense of irony!

4) Making excuses and specious justifications for inaction on the HEROES Act.

For not putting another cent into a new stimulus program, and continuing to assert (without any viable data) that if a $600 bonus unemployment had been approved, people would have just sat on their bums all day eating Twinkies.  This inaction now as it is estimated 40 million Americans could face eviction by year's end, and 17 million will need food stamps - which Trump now plans to reduce access to by adding a new stipulation, i.e. that the person be able to produce pay slips to show s/he has been working.

The Repukes will also continue to have Trump's back (butt?) by insisting mail voting is a pathway to perdition, and will lead to massive fraud or even - god forbid  - unfairly taking the election.  All of which is nonsense given that-  as I showed in my August 21st post -  mail ballots are basically fool proof, hack proof, and Trump proof. Which is why Trump hates them.

5)  When the 4 days are concluded the foul air lingering in the location - and over the airwaves and "Twitterverse" - will surpass that left behind in 1992 when Pat Buchanan bloviated about the "great culture war."  See:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?31255-1/pat-buchanan-1992-republican-convention-address

The bottom line is don't expect anything constructive to come from this four day liar and traitor extravaganza.   It will be the same ol' lies and distractions we've been subjected to for 3 1/2 years, mainly how the country will go to hell in a handbasket if the Dems are given control. (Especially if they take the Senate too).  Oh, and how great leader Trump has been, as if the ongoing debacle people have beheld with their own eyes and ears doesn't count.

Wifey and I have concluded we will get more out of binge -watching the Game of Thrones, which is what we plan to do.

See Also:
Republicans’ ‘uplifting’ convention becomes a festival of fear

And:

Get Ready for TrumpFest, America — There's No Republican Party Anymore

And:
Republican Convention Takes on the Weighty Task of Boosting Trump’s Bruised Ego

How Colorado Achieved The Gold Standard In Mail Voting - And Why Every State Needs To Emulate It

Elections board assistant works with other officials to perform a ballot audit from the June primary election at the clerk's office on July 10th.   Safeguards such as internal ballot audits ensure there is no fraud with mail ballots such as Donald Dotard claims.

Let's now take time to examine mail voting, given the level of sabotage against the Postal Service, and Trump's bombastic lying about mail ballots (despite his filling out such a ballot two days ago, e.g.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903886567/trump-while-attacking-mail-voting-casts-mail-ballot-again

But done properly and in a coordinated  fashion there are few methods as secure and foolproof as mail voting - despite what the Dotard would have you believe.  Thus, it is instructive to see how one state (Colorado) has perfected the method so that other states now considering it can do just as well.  Here are the details of our process:

- A central core of guidelines - no 'freelancing' by counties.  Each of the state's 64 county clerks  runs elections according to guidelines set out by Secretary of State Jena Griswold.  There are a few minor differences, i.e. in some of the specific wording, but by and large the system is the same statewide.

- Voter Registry and Upkeep.   One of the most important security features of Colorado's election system is the voter registry and its diligent upkeep. The Secretary of State's office checks with the post office, the Colorado Dept. of Public Health & Environment, and the Department of Corrections monthly to ensure that if anyone moves out of state, dies or is imprisoned they will be removed from the registry and no longer receive a ballot.  The frequency of these checks always increases before an election.

-- Timeliness. All eligible voters receive their ballots about three weeks before a given election.  They can then complete their ballots and either return the ballots in the mail (up to 8 days before election day) or they can submit them in a drop box.

-  Collection.  Bipartisan teams collect ballots from Denver's 37 drop boxes , for example, locking the ballots containing them and labeling them by location before delivering them downtown.  The same procedure happens in other counties and note here ALL drop boxes are under mandated 24- hour video surveillance to prevent any tampering.  Once we fill out our own  Colorado mail ballots we plan to deposit them into secure drop boxes.  (Note: the current cases in Montana and Pennsylvania to stop the use of drop boxes is pure vote suppression,  nothing more.)

-  Signatures check.   One of the things the bellicose buffoon Trump was recently heard bellowing -  like a stuck pig -  is: "And all those signatures! Who signs those ballots?"  In Colorado the process is straightforward, there's no hocus pocus or playing fast and loose.

Incoming ballots are fed through a machine that checks the signatures on the envelope against each voter' on file signature. (That original signature is captured - collected  when people first register to vote.)   The machine kicks out envelopes if the signatures aren't close enough to those on file.  A bipartisan team of judges then steps in to examine the signatures further.   Ballots with mismatched signatures not resolved via voter inquiry are turned over to district attorneys to investigate further. (In the June 30 primary, of the 211, 626 ballots cast by mail only 3, 862 were rejected because of a mismatch.  Even then the reasons  for mismatch are mostly prosaic, i.e. people forgetting to sign, or printing their names rather than signing, or absent-mindedly signing their spouse's ballot instead of their own.)

- Coding, Counting & Tabulating:  In the next phase, ballots are imprinted with a unique and random 10-digit number and fed through another machine that tabulates the votes.  Until the polls close these ballots can be counted but not tabulated.  That means that the judges enter the votes into the counting machine but the results aren't applied to any given race, i.e.local school board officer.   At all stages equal numbers of Democratic and Republican judges review the process.  And note, the atmosphere bears no resemblance to the current toxic, political climate engendered by the Dotard.

Tabulation itself doesn't require differential calculus or ESP.  As long as judges can clearly see how a person intended to vote the results are tabulated accordingly.  (The judges work through batches of about 800 and it is estimated that between 5 and 10% have to be adjudicated.)  Finished  ballots are filed into boxes, dated and stored securely.

   The process can continue for days depending on how many ballots are cast and how many arrive on the final day.  This is, of course, why people must keep their senses about them on Nov. 3rd and not let Trump distract them with babble about a "rigged" election because final results are not yet forthcoming.  The nature of mail balloting is it takes time and it is quite possible we may have to wait days or even weeks for the final outcome.  If that is the case, so be it, we wait patiently.  We do not succumb to Trump's hollering, barking and  anti-mail ballot "fraud" bull shit.  Nor do we let emotions rule our heads or lapse into premature expectations!

- Redundancy.  The voting and  mail ballot tabulation process for most states (e.g. Washington, Utah) contains built in redundancies and safeguards but Colorado officials have built in at least two additional ones:

i) A risk-limiting audit that takes place about 2 weeks after each election.  In this process county clerks are mandated (by the Secretary of State) to find a specific number of ballots and to check those paper results against the votes tabulated by the computer.  The purpose is to make sure they match and that the machine read them properly.

ii) State law requires county clerks to keep the ballots and envelopes stored and secured for 25 months. Just in case, i.e. there is any litigation or question arising from the results.  Say if blowhard Trump wants a recount because the fool believes something was amiss.

As one Denver clerk (Paul Lopez) summed up the process ('The Colorado Gold Standard Mail Voting Process', Denver Post, Sunday, Aug. 16, p. 1A):

"It's safe. It's secure, it's transparent, it has been tested. It's tried, it's true and it's pandemic proof."

If only Donnie Dotard could process that instead of flinging lies and disinformation all around like he flings his turds when critics - like Obama - lance his fat ego.


See Also:

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/trumps-latest-voter-fraud-misinformation/

Will Young, Immature Voters Give Us 4 More Years Of Trump? A Sobering Take From The FT

Colorado College students yell 'Obamanos!' on their way to the polls in November, 2008.  Twelve years later too many 18-29 years old see no difference between Trump and Joe Biden -according to an FT article.

Ah well!  Just when one garnered some hope - from watching the Dem convention - we'd finally be on our way to ousting Trump, there appears a disturbing Financial Times piece by Patti Waldmeir ('Youngest American Voters Dislike The Choice In Front Of Them').  To which my initial response was: 'Huh? What choice? There is no choice!'    If you are given the choice of four more years of Hitler Jr. and a normal Democratic administration - what friggin' choice is there?  If you have to pick between a Nazi -loving, white nationalist loving swine and a decent human - albeit 78 years of age-   how hard can that be?

Evidently, pretty damned hard for the youngsters who think a national election is the same as a beauty contest or election for Prom King.   According to Ms. Waldmeir:

"America's youngest voters could hold the key to whether the U.S. elects its  oldest president in history in November. But, as Democrats convene online for a pandemic-plagued conventionthis week, they must face the fact that Generation Z (loosely defined as those born between 1995 and 2015)   are far from thrilled with the choices before them. 

That could translate into  fewer of the youngest Americans bothering to vote at all. A recent Pew Research Center showed that among 18 to 29-year-olds, strong support for their presidential   candidate was almost the same whether that person was the Republican president"

  WTF!?  Are you kidding me?  "Strong support"  for a petty, authoritarian racist wannabe Hitler?  What? Are these kids on an opiate and MJ high?   Any assclown with  an I.Q. over 10 can see there ought to be ZERO support among the young for Trump!  He is the one who will ensure their student debts keep piling up as his GOP enablers increase loan interest rates if he gets re-elected. Further, the ACA will be totally dismantled so they will have NO health care, period.  Plus, by the end of a 2nd Trump term we can fully expect 670,000 plus dead from Covid -19, the same number killed during the Civil War.  These imps really want to go there? Really? Or are they too fucking drugged and dumb to care? (Like the lowbrow college kid caught yelping "It's just a hoax!" on the NBC News last night- when challenged on his partying.)

 In the real world where normal brains and intelligence operates the young voter ought to be pro -Biden by 99-1. At least!  Oh, and they literally ought to be dragging their scrawny asses over "broken glass" to get Trump voted out. To use the metaphor from the 2018 midterms.

Ms. Waldmeir then cites a Pew Research poll of these young sprats, which at least found a 1-point advantage of Biden over Trump:  11%  to 10%.  Be still my heart!  I can scarcely believe it! A whopping 1 point margin..  Maybe these kids at least have a measurable I.Q. - even if not Mensa level.

She goes on (ibid.):

"And in the Pew survey, 67 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds do indeed put  themselves in the Biden camp. But a surprisingly high 30 per cent said they would either surely or possibly vote for Mr Trump, defying the  conventional wisdom that most Trump voters are older."

Again, one expects the younger vote would have more sense than aged Trumpie dotards, but evidently not.  I can only conclude from this that these Gen Z and Millennial voters are too low information to grasp the full dimension of the horrors Trump has already unleashed - and what he will if given a 2nd term to wreak havoc. 

"Even worse news for the Democrats: a Harris Poll conducted days before the convention found that 59 per cent of 18 to 39-year-olds said they would rather live in a socialist country  than a capitalist one, up 9 percentage points since last year. That could mean  only tepid support for the centrist Mr Biden, who ousted Bernie Sanders, the  favoured Democratic candidate among youthful socialists, in the primaries.

Speaking to Gen Zs from both ends of the political spectrum to find out how keen they are to vote, I learnt that some supporters of Mr Trump and the Democratic Socialists of America  have serious doubts.  Olivia Litzenberg, a 23-year-old DSA member from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Democratic convention is nominally being held, said the presumptive nominee most definitely will demotivate young voters.  You're not going to see us knocking doors for Biden!"

Uh, okay.  But can you at least get off your butts and bestir yourselves to vote for him?  As a long time DSA member myself, I also would have loved to have seen Bernie in the running, but also know the commie card would have been played against him big time by the Trump rats.  So the moderate voters we need to win in the general election would likely have themselves been demotivated to vote for a socialist.   But now, with Joe Biden the nominee, there is no luxury to pick and choose.  We have got to get rid of the embryonic Hitler in the White House, e.g.

Waldmeir quoting Lutzenberg again:

"She added, I am transgender, and living another four years under Trump will be directly deleterious to my standard of living. "

Standard of living?  How about being forced into a gender re-education camp guarded by QAnon recruits?    Think this is a joke?  Look at the history of how Nazi Germany came to be when the Reich laws replaced the normal ones.  And hey, anyone with even a normal I.Q. will grasp if he wins re-election Trump will be totally unfettered with no more elections to face.    

Even more degraded by 'stupid' (ibid.):

"Biden is the back to normal, and the normal sucked!"

Sucked more than the concentration camps you will get with Trump?  The slop you will have to eat in those camps, and the horrific treatment the QAnon guards will mete out to "make this trans kid cry"?

And of course there's the usual purist bellyaching - again disclosing radical immaturity and only rudimentary frontal lobes:

"Ms Litzenberg's partner, Pamela Westphal, 21, says the fact that Mr Sanders did not become the candidate was a wake-up call for a lot of young people, who felt that the system is failing us. She thinks Democratic turnout will be  suppressed. adding, 'I haven't met too many young people who are too gung-ho for Biden."

Awwww....poor widdo, disappointed kiddies.  You didn't get your guy picked in the primaries (never mind more voted for Biden, especially African Americans) and now you want to throw your sippy cups on the floor.  Or have another four years of Trump's horrors and Covid deaths.

As I wrote  in my June 16 post;

 "Here's what few of these idealist voters (and not- yet voters) don't get:  Not voting, going only the protest route instead, leaves the door open for much WORSE actors and outcomes. Exhibit A: Donald J. Trump.  In the words of a recent TIME essay (June 15, p. 30):

"If the George Floyd video was the match and the coronavirus the kindling, Donald Trump provided the gasoline. Since the start of his term Trump has turned the Oval Office into an instrument of racial, ethnic and cultural division. A man who both -sided a white supremacist march, went to war with NFL players protesting police brutality, called African nations 'shithole countries' and told American congresswomen to 'go back' to where they came from, was never going to appeal to harmony now."

Adding:

"I return to my theme that voting isn't just about getting "the ideal" candidate into office or having him or her perform to a preternatural, ideal standard of righting all wrongs, or sealing a "green New Deal". No, it also means,  even more importantly  - preventing the bad guys remaining in office or grabbing more power - like Trump, William Barr, Lindsey Graham etc.  Hence, the uber objective is stopping these vermin from completing their destruction of this democratic experiment.  In other words, voting is as much or more about limiting damage and eliminating toxic leaders as it is putting in the best."

The best thing these young, picky, undecided youth voters can do right now is get hold of   Masha Gessen's 'Surviving Autocracy', which sheds light on the destabilizing demagogue, Trump. As she writes: 

"No powerful political actor had set out to destroy the American political system itself - until that is, Trump won the Republican nomination. He was probably the first major party nominee to run not for president but for autocrat. "

  The past three and a half years, of course, have revealed not only his penchant for authoritarianism  - and worshipping autocrats like Rodrigo Duterte - but also for side -action destruction of the state and its protections via dismantling of regulations, blowing off congressional subpoenas,  and attacking everything from health care to women's  procreative rights and the environment. Oh, and sending storm troopers to attack protesters as in Portland.  It doesn't take a Mensa level IQ to see that all the above are set to be magnified in another Trump term. 

The youths covered in the FT piece notably display the same dismay at the "system" and their "powerlessness" to change it they always have.  But they seem disconnected to the fact they could wield the necessary power if they just voted in the same proportions  (65-70%)  every year as seniors do.   Waldmeir again:

"Those who feel ignored should vote to change that but they often don't. America's youngest voters could hold the balance of power in this election, but  that power matters little unless they choose to wield it. "

So why don't they? Who knows? But my best bet is political immaturity, especially those who express any indecision, or lean to Trump by even a minuscule degree.  Put simply, they have their heads screwed on backwards, or "up their asses" to use Janice's parlance.

Hopefully, the Young Turks will come to their senses in this pivotal election and before it's too late.  The WWII Germans who grew up in the Hitler era regret they never took the chance to keep Hitler out of power when they had it. None of them took him seriously, or his pronouncements and warnings.  They've had over 80 years to rue that lack of wise choice and remain one of the most hated peoples in Europe.  Let us hope our people are smarter,  or at least smart enough this time around to deny Trump another 4 years  in which his excesses will rival Hitler's first two years.

See Also:

Donald Trump

‘They like Me Very Much’: Trump Gives a Horrifying Answer When Pressed on QAnon

And:

Trump’s backing of far-right conspiracy theorist frames the stakes for 2020

Excerpt:

"No one should refer to what Trump is doing as “culture war politics” or “stoking divisions” or even “crazy Trump being crazy Trump.” It’s extreme radicalization. And we need to get the language right this time."


And:

Mission Imperative: Come November, Trump Must Go

by Michael Winship | May 13, 2020 - 5:50am | permalink

Excerpt:

"There must be one mission above all, one goal supreme: Vote this monster out of the White House. And along with him, tow to the nearest dump the clown car of malefactors who gave him license to cripple our republic.

The Fed Warns Of Economic Calamity If People Don't Change Behaviors - And Dotard Retweets Idiot Quacks

"I know it's true, what that Stella Immanuel said about demons! And I'm gonna retweet it! And yeah, I am a very stable genius!"

"I was probably the healthiest person you ever met. No pre-existing conditions, ski seventy to one hundred days a year.  But I got Covid, had sepsis, had MRSA, had a collapsed lung, and on a ventilator for thirty -one days. Hospitalized for sixty. Loss of blood pressure caused me to lose several fingers. I was on my death bed. This thing is for real, This virus is no joke,"      Greg Garfield,, Covid survivor, this morning on CBS

"It's so fundamental we can't say it enough. Until the virus is contained  the labor market won't be able to fully recover, leaving people in need of support. The path of the economy will depend significantly on the course of the virus."  - Fed Chair Jay Powell, WSJ, 'Business & Investing', p. B12. today.

As we learned this morning that the GDP shrank by 32.9 percent in the previous quarter (see WaPo link at bottom), we are now on notice that we had best change behaviors - or NO  part of the economy is coming back.  The news backed up  Federal Reserve  notices and interviews (over the past 4 weeks)  that if Americans don't collectively get on board in dealing with the virus, we are all for the economic high jump ('Fed's Outlook Grows Gloomier', WSJ, July 28, p. A2).    As noted therein:

"Officials have warned this month in speeches and interviews that the economy faces a deeper downturn and more difficult recovery if the country doesn't take more effective action to slow the spread of infection."

Boston  Fed President Eric Rosengren was even more blunt in his assessment:(ibid.):

"This economy will face severe economic consequences if the public health response doesn't improve."

Adding:

"The Fed's policy response is not going to be able to offset all the losses if we continue to make serious public health mistakes."

This was endorsed by Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan:

"How well we follow the health care protocols from here is going to be the primary economic tool we have.left."

In other words, the Fed is out of miracle moves to rescue the economy, and this is the crux of the problem - as so eloquently stated by Jay Powell (see top quote). . It's now up to U.S. citizens to get their act together and work together to alter the course of the virus in the U.S.  This instead of engaging in endless mask wars and other self defeating idiocy while buying into fake notions of personal liberty.  We have to understand in this moment of peril our personal freedom has to be sacrificed for the greater communal good.  If we don't grasp that, if we don't act accordingly, you could as well write our epitaph - and not just for the economy.  In addition, the economic disaster coming will almost surely be compounded if a new huge Covid benefits package  (HEROES ACT) isn't passed, and I mean by TODAY!  If that $600/week unemployment extra benefit isn't in the package you can pretty well kiss the GDP and economy goodbye.  GDP depends on spending, and little or none will be done without the enhanced unemployment benefit.  As  financial contributor Jill Schlesinger said on CBS this morning:

"That extra $600 a week was spent in the economy. So without a new package I think we are going to see the economy flatten out." 

Alas, any change in behaviors for the 1 in 4 Americans who think it's all a "plandemic" or "hoax" may be a long way off.  This is given we have a  leader who is totally incompetent in his response to the pandemic, and done everything -including sidelining top medical experts - to ensure the death toll hits hundreds of thousands by November.  Worse, he has now started pandering to a classic crackpot and spreading her idiocy with his retweets.

Maybe Trump  sings the praises of Stella Immanuel -  a Houston pediatrician and demon believer -

because he senses her IQ is as low as his.   Immanuel, leader of Fire Power Ministries,  believes endometriosis and other potentially dangerous gynecological conditions are the residue of sexual intercourse with demons.  Incredibly,  this quack based at  the Rehoboth Medical Center in Houston, also has claimed "alien DNA"  has been used in medical treatments.  (I do hope in none of my prostate cancer treatments, including cryo-freezing of cancer cells back in 2017.  Were these replaced by 'alien DNA'?  Inquiring minds want to know!)

This crackpot quack Immanuel also teaches that demons, known as “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives”, once walked the Earth in physical form. After they drowned in Noah’s flood, however, they carried on only in non-corporeal form. They visit humans in sexy dreams, which aren’t dreams after all but spirit spouses making a booty call. This is almost as cracked as one "minister" (Contessa Adams) once claiming incubi and succubi inhabited sex toys and could possess the humans using them, see e.g.

• BEWARE! Of Sexual Congress with Succubi!

By contrast, Immanuel's  demons are responsible not only for diseases of the female reproductive system but also for male impotence, most financial troubles, marital discord and spiritual malaise.

No, folks, you cannot make this bullshit up.  But this is the sort of irredeemable crappola our  great leader wastes his time tweeting and retweeting.  As well as watching on the tube.  Don't believe it?  You can find Immanuel on Trump’s Twitter feed, where she testifies to the power of hydroxychloroquine - the magic snake oil Dotard and his ass clowns have been humping for months now.   Sadly, millions of Americans heard or saw her advice, thanks in part to the Dotard's amplifying effect,  this before Facebook took down her page and the video (after 20 million views).

Earlier Twitter took down the offending video because (WSJ, July 29, p. A6):

 "It violated its Covid 19 misinformation policy which prohibits misleading claims asserted as fact to influence others' behavior."

In the wake of that a Trump spokesman fulminated (ibid.):

"It is beyond the pale for Twitter to silence the views of medical professionals who happen to dissent from the establishment's anti-hydroxychloroquine  narrative."

But those weren't "medical professionals" but a gaggle of medical quacks and associated hare-brained imbeciles, like Stella Immanuel.  As for the anti-hydroxychloroquine narrative, that is pure bollocks.  The malaria drug has already caused a number of deaths from inappropriate use and the FDA rightly revoked its emergency use authorization.

The most gratuitously odious event from Tuesday's show news conference? Trump asserting Dr. Anthony Fauci "had misled the public"  and also "Fauci and the Democrats perpetuated Covid deaths to hurt Trump."

Fauci fired back squashing the Trump claim.  As far as hurting Trump, the only one who's done that is the Dotard himself, because of his colossally incompetent response to the pandemic.  Tweeting his numskull conspiracy ideations and watching Trump TV when he ought to have been doing all he could to protect American lives.

The Reeptards, including two Colorado idiots now filing a lawsuit  in Fort Collins, to claim masks are "unconstitutional"  and are "political speech" - ought to be forced to see an image of an intubated Herman Cain - before he croaked from Covid.


 Cain, recall, posted a photo of himself at the Trump Tulsa rally, hamming it up with other unmasked goobers.


A pity this lot didn't see Greg Ip's WSJ piece today (p. A2) noting the death rate from Covid 19 is "5 to 40 times deadlier than seasonal flu."

Not that it would have made much difference.  It seldom does to those on the lower end of the IQ (Bell) curve.

See also:

Economy shrinks at fastest quarterly rate on record

And:

Conservatives and the Right | Covid-19

Disease-denying Propaganda Spews a Pandemic of Pandemonium!

by Robert Becker | August 3, 2020 - 6:19am | permalink

And:

Covid-19 | Donald Trump

Trump Storms out after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Puts Him to Shame for Promoting a Quack Doctor

And:

Covid-19 | Economic Policy | Media

Health Vs. The Economy? It Was Always a Bogus Choice, but the Media Helped Spread It

And:

Covid-19 | European Union

The Pandemic Reveals a Europe More United than the United States

At House Judiciary Hearing Barr Proves He's The Disreputable Trump Toad We Suspected.

Bill Barr proved he remains Trump's personal Toad ....errrr  toady, at the House Judiciary hearing yesterday.

Bill Barr, Trump's pet AG,  toady and gofer, faced a combative grilling during a House Judiciary hearing yesterday that proved how cannily he had mastered the dark arts of dissembling, distraction and disinformation.  In other words, Barr emphatically confirmed he was the Trump toad we always suspected: a shameless, clueless, pandering toady who'd do or say anything to protect his lord and master, Dotard.

Democrats on the House Judiciary committee pointed to the  reprobate's use of federal law enforcement to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, Washington D.C. last month.  This was so Trump could stage a photo op with a bible so toady Barr ordered a harsh crackdown using pepper spray, flash bangs and non-lethal projectiles  The same weaponry being used on protesters in Portland, Oregon.

Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler was blunt in describing to Barr what Trump was  up to:

“The president wants footage for his campaign ads, and you appear to be serving it up to him as ordered,” 

Adding:

"You use pepper spray and truncheons on American citizens. You did it here in Washington. You did it in Lafayette Square. You expanded to Portland. Now you are projecting fear and violence nationwide in pursuit of obvious political objectives. Shame on you, Mr Barr. Shame on you.”

Eliciting a question as I watched:  How do you shame a Toad?

Barr, of course,  denied the interventions were motivated by Trump’s re-election:

.

“I just reject the idea that the department has flooded anywhere and attempted to suppress demonstrators. The fact of the matter is, if you take Portland, the courthouse is under attack.The federal resources are inside the perimeter, around the courthouse defending it from almost two months of daily attacks where people march to the court, try to gain entrance and have set fires, thrown things, used explosives and injured police, including just this past weekend, perhaps permanently blinding three federal officers with lasers.”

But Rep. Pramila Jayapal wasn't having any of the toad's B.S.,  e.g.

“You take an aggressive approach to Black Lives Matter protests but not to armed right wing extremists' threats to lynch and behead a governor if it's for the president's benefit."

Pointing out bluntly that he went after the D.C. and Portland protesters because they are affiliated with Black Lives Matter, while he left the armed white nationalist,  extremist protesters  in Michigan alone- even when they invaded a state capitol building, e.g. 

 

The implication was clear: Barr and Trump are invested in protecting the Right's domestic terrorists and radical extremists (like the "Proud Boys"  and Boogaloo Bois)  who side with Trump, e.g.

Armed conservative groups are deploying to the front lines of the culture war

But not the innocent, peaceful BLM protesters  whose ranks have been infiltrated  by Agent provocateurs on the Right- who then use violence to impugn the protests as "violent"..  Barr actually responded:

“We are on the defensive. We’re not out looking for trouble"

Defensive, baloney!  Of course he wants 'trouble' lots of it.  Enough to incite images in protests that can be integrated into Trump campaign rally ads in the fall.  All to pump up the "law and order" theme and meme which is the only card Trump has left to play given his total fuck up in the pandemic response.  All of which justified Jerrold Nadler's harsh assessment of Barr's M.O in his opening remarks, e.g.

“The message these actions send is clear: in this justice department, the president’s enemies will be punished and his friends will be protected, no matter the cost,” 

And then there was the histrionic Reich buffoon Jim Jordan, a close Trump ally and serial bootlicker. He  chimed in his 0.02, echoing a Reich conspiracy claim that's been repeatedly debunked:

“Spying. That one word. That’s why they’re after you, Mr Attorney General!”

No,  they're after Barr because he deliberately misrepresented the Mueller Report, then went on to undermine the DOJ's cases against Trump's co-conspirators in the Russian plot - including Michael Flynn and Roger Stone,

Jordan, now on a tear, also said Barr has spoken “the truth” that Barack Obama’s administration spied on the Trump campaign, a claim that has repeatedly been debunked.

He then proceeded to play a selectively edited video for nearly eight minutes which showed TV hosts and Obama saying the words “peaceful protests”, then cut to the grieving family of David Dorn, an African American retired police captain killed last month in St Louis, Missouri, then to undated, un-located footage of people jumping on cars, buildings ablaze, an injured officer, a looted shop and people yanking and chainsawing a fence.

The clips echoed talking points by Trump and conservative media,  but they glaringly showed how the Right has almost uniformly become Trump's enablers and accessory traitors.

In his own opening statement, Barr acknowledged that “the horrible killing” of George Floyd  by a white police officer in Minneapolis saying it  “jarred the whole country”.  But then he insisted police forces were more diverse than "ever before".  Which statistics show is not true.  Well, check that- unless your reference point is the Jim Crow era of the 1950s.

Barr added in his typical disingenuous style: 

“Unfortunately, some have chosen to respond to George Floyd’s death in a far less productive way – by demonizing the police … and making grossly irresponsible proposals to defund the police … Violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims.”

Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas questioned Barr on whether he considered the killing of Floyd to be indicative of a systemic problem in policing. He said: 

“I don’t agree there is systemic racism in police departments generally in this country.”

Again resorting to a semantic ploy, given the  systemic racism typically  resides in police  unions.  

Barr then faced hard-hitting questions for pushing for a more lenient prison sentence for Trump’s ally Roger Stone, convicted of witness tampering and making false statements, a move which prompted the entire trial team’s departure. Trump eventually commuted Stone’s sentence, sparing him prison..

Barr said in reply: “Stone was prosecuted under me. I said all along I thought that was a righteous prosecution. I thought he should go to jail.”

Yep,  but he then insisted the original  sentence was far too harsh for an "esoteric" crime, as opposed to say a "meat and potatoes" crime. E.g.(WSJ, today, p. A1):

"Let me ask you, do you think it is fair for a 67-year old man to be sent to prison for seven to nine years?"

Forgetting that Bernie Madoff - at age 71 years - was sentenced to 150 years for his esoteric  crime of using a Ponzi scheme to bilk his investors out of millions. But in Barr's reckoning all tax cheats as well as the college scandal cheats (and presumably Madoff),   merited only relative wrist slaps because their crimes were "esoteric". As opposed to say, out and out armed robbery.

But he cleverly parsed the difference this way:

“I agree that the president’s friends don’t deserve special breaks but they also don’t deserve to be treated more harshly than other people and sometimes that’s a difficult decision to make, especially when you know you’re going to be castigated for it.”

Please, Barr, spare us the fake rectitude.    You merely show even more why you need to be impeached  like your master, Dotard.

Hopefully, the  House will do this sooner rather than later.   Especially given how Barr has essentially destroyed any trust in the rule of law-  and equal treatment - in this nation.

See Also:

William Barr

Bill Barr Goes to Congress

by Heather Cox Richardson | July 30, 2020 - 6:38am | permalink

And:

Homeland Security

To Stop Trump’s Military Police State, the House Needs to Withhold Funding From Trump’s Department of Homeland Security

No, This Senior Will Not Be "Sacrificing" For The Economy, I.e. Donnie Bonespurs

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