That's Not the Best of Health, Y'all

I normally don't want to watch donald trump gaslighting / bloviating / spewing lies on national television, so I didn't watch this morning's Meet the Press to see this happen (via Laura Esposito at the Daily Beast):

The president, 79, furiously stormed off an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press after journalist Kristen Welker confronted him on his election conspiracies.

Trump began to sour on Welker after she pointed out in the interview that aired Sunday that there’s “no evidence” of rigged elections in the United States.

“Do you have evidence?” she asked after Trump slammed California’s elections as “rigged.”

The president then fired back: “All I have to do is look.”

When Welker replied: “That’s not evidence,” the interview took a turn.

“You’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked, and so is ABC and CBS and CNN one-sided crooked networks. Let’s call it quits, because I’ve had enough,” Trump raged. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

Confronted with questions he can't answer, confronted with even the simplest requirement that he present evidence of voter fraud - something he's NEVER been able to do since 2016 or 2020 - trump would rather attack his interviewer - especially when it's a woman - and later claim he "won" the argument even though he fled like a coward.

But that's not the thing that should be troubling today.

If you watch that video clip, as trump tries to get up to flee the scene, he cannot stand upright on his own. he has to put a hand on Welker's shoulder to maintain any balance, and as he shuffles away he's bent over like he's got back pain.

Add to this the reality that trump's had his third "annual" medical checkup in 13 months, trump keeps falling asleep at Oval Office gatherings to where Congress members are questioning Cabinet members about it, and growing rumors about CHF (congestive heart failure) and we're dealing with a clear constitutional crisis that nobody among the Republican ranks wants to deal with.

The moment where IT HAPPENS is coming closer by the minute.

Observations of the November 2025 Elections

So there were a number of elections across the United States - in what is an off-year between the 4-year presidential cycle and the congressional midterms - this November 4th 2025, involving city, state, and a few special federal elections that tend to indicate the overall mood of the American electorate heading into the 2026 midterms.

At the top of the list were key elections in Virginia and New Jersey for governorships and other state officials, a retention vote for Democratic judges in Pennsylvania, a special election in Texas' US House 18th district, a referendum in California that would grant the Dems in control there to gerrymander against the Red state gerrymandering attempting to rig the 2026 House districts for Republicans, 

And the top observation - considering how the Democrats and mostly liberal-leaning referenda won the votes across nearly the entire country even in Deep Red Republican places! - is: Wow, a lot of voters are PISSED at the Republicans.

Via Stephen Fowler at NPR:

Democrats flipped two seats on Georgia's statewide Public Service Commission by wide margins, one of many surprise victories for the party Tuesday up and down the ballot in the handful of races across the country.

Polling shows the Democratic Party is historically unpopular, but at polling places this year voters have helped the party overperform in elections against the backdrop of President Trump's even less popular policies.

Beyond the blowout victories in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races, Zohran Mamdani winning a majority of votes in New York City's mayoral election and California voters approving a plan to temporarily redraw the state's congressional districts to add Democrat-leaning districts, the party continued its trend of electoral success in the 2025 general election...

In terms of blowouts, the governor wins for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherill in New Jersey were around 13 percent over their Republican opponents. In this age of polarized voting bases, getting to double-digit wins means A) your own base (Democratic) of voters showed up in droves, B) their base (Republican) failed to show, and/or C) the independent voters that tend to go 50-50 (at best 60-40 leaning to one party) really hated everyone and everything the Republicans were offering this time around.

But those results alone don't describe just how overwhelming the Blue Wave was this year, even when you throw in how Democrats in Virginia secured control of both houses of the state legislature. Back to Fowler:

In Georgia, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson will be the newest members of the state's five-person public utility regulator after earning roughly 60% of the vote. It's the first time Democrats have won a nonfederal statewide office there since 2006 and one where soaring energy costs and displeasure with incumbents dominated the race.

Pennsylvania voters chose to retain three state Supreme Court judges that were first elected as Democrats after millions of dollars in outside spending driven by conservative billionaire Jeff Yass' efforts to reshape the state court's politics. Democrats also won special elections for a seat on Pennsylvania's Superior Court and a seat on its Commonwealth Court.

Also in Pennsylvania, Democrats swept the top "row offices" in the purple-hued Bucks County, electing the county's first-ever Democratic district attorney and defeating an incumbent Republican sheriff a year after Trump narrowly won there. Democrats similarly notched commanding victories in county executive races in Erie, Lehigh and Northampton counties, all bellwether counties in recent presidential elections.

At the state legislative level, Mississippi Democrats have broken a GOP supermajority in the state Senate after flipping two seats in that chamber plus another pickup in the state House. A federal court ordered lawmakers to redraw 14 total House and Senate districts after finding the maps drawn in 2022 discriminated against Black voters...

In many local races across the country, Democrats touted victories that will reshape their communities, like the flipping of all three city council seats in Georgetown, S.C., the unseating of the last remaining Republican city council member in Orlando, Fla., and winning back mayoral races in Connecticut...

I knew things were really skewing well for Democrats when I heard about those Georgia state committee wins. In a Deep South state heavily dominated by Republicans, and where any Democratic wins in the past decade were down to the wire, getting over 60 percent of statewide voters in blowout wins is a huge sign of anger by voters towards the Far Right GOP.

An opinion piece by Rex Huppke at USA Today spells it out:

Polling had already shown how much Americans broadly dislike everything the Trump administration is doing. But in the first election of Trump’s second term in office, voters in red, blue and purple states made clear they aren’t buying the smug cruelty and king-like behavior the president and his lackeys are selling.

In the most high-profile races – for mayor of New York City and governors of Virginia and New Jersey – Democrats fended off millions of right-wing dollars and relentless Islamophobic and anti-transgender fearmongering to win all three offices convincingly.

What happened in New York City where the Far Right, the billionaire elites, and even the mainstream media attacked winner Zohran Mamdani for his Muslim heritage underlined the racism and fear that drives the Far Right. And in Virginia, the Republican candidates' open transphobia - in an attempt to build on the DEI fearmongering that propelled outgoing governor Youngkin in 2021 - ignored the voters' ongoing concerns about cost-of-living/affordability issues that are still hampering a majority of Americans in this post-pandemic world.

In short: the Republicans were too desperate to mudsling their Democratic opponents to remember that most voters still care about their financial and familial well-being. They were able to lie about the price of eggs in 2024 to ruin Biden/Harris' and the Democrats' chances to win, but with the GOP in full control of the federal government - and responsible for the economic downturns happening under that control - they couldn't fearmonger their way out of this election cycle. As Huppke notes:

This is the kind of ballot-box walloping that’s earned, highlighting the simple fact that Trump has gone to great lengths to anger and outrage Americans since his second term started in January.

Consider this multitudinous array of deceptions, blunders and outrageous acts:

After promising to lower food prices and inflation on Day 1, food prices are increasing and inflation has risen every month since April and is now higher than it was in January.

The U.S. government is in its longest-ever shutdown because Republicans want to do away with Affordable Care Act subsidies and Democrats won’t agree. Health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, and now food aid is in limbo because the Trump administration is delaying funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, putting millions of Americans in danger of going hungry...

Also in short: trump and his Republican allies are acting like assholes. That may impress the mainstream punditry - who always misinterpret arrogance for leadership - but it doesn't impress most voters.

The night before SNAP benefits expired, Trump posted a slew of photos showing off his fancy marble remodel of the Lincoln Bathroom, then he attended a "Great Gatsby"-themed Halloween party at his Florida resort.

Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for a massive ballroom that nobody asked for, thumbing his nose at the optics of desecrating a historic building and erecting a monument to opulence while Americans struggle to afford meat.

The GOP has secured tax cuts for billionaires while slashing Medicaid and putting a squeeze on rural hospitals...

None of this is popular. None of this has made any regular American’s life better. None of this has brought down grocery bills, made housing more affordable or provided better health insurance.

Perhaps a president who gleefully shows off a video of himself wearing a crown and flying a jet that drops poop on the heads of protesting Americans is a cool thing inside the MAGA bubble. Maybe anti-transgender hate and cruelty against immigrants bring the good kind of tingle to a small subset of the population.

But as the Nov. 4 blue wave demonstrated, most Americans don’t find Trump’s childishness cool. They don’t get off on cruelty. And they aren’t, in any way, shape or form, feeling the good kind of tingle.

While it's good news that a sizable plurality of American voters across the whole nation are wising up to how bad the Republicans under trump are performing, the bad news is that past experience with Republican setbacks is that these assholes will double-down on the ineptitude, cruelty, and graft. Especially trump: he can never admit he is in the wrong, that his conduct is offensive, or that his policies aren't working (and will never work).

It's going to take the 2026 midterms and the other state-level elections that year for most American voters to hold the Republicans and this crooked trump accountable for the ongoing damage they're committing and threaten to make worse. That is, if the Republican-controlled Supreme Court will let us have fair elections next year... /rage

Keep resisting, America. This isn't over.

O Canada! (Thank God)

God exists, and She's Canadian (yes this is a Gen X Dogma reference).

Canada held their national elections this Monday, facing down a potential conservative flip the way most other western liberal nations were facing in the post-COVID reactionary world. However, thanks to one unavoidable factor - donald MOTHERFUCKING trump, out here hitting their nation with high tariffs and taunting them with threats to make them "the 51st state" - affecting the overall mood of the Canadian electorate, the results are favoring the liberal party under new-ish leadership to continue their fight against trump's bullying ways.

Ed Kilgore over at New York's Intelligencer site took note of how trump screwed it up for himself and his wingnut conservative allies in the Great White North (paywalled):

...The bookmark at the end of the month was Monday’s national election in Canada, which Donald Trump worked hard to make a referendum on his various threats to our most important trading partner’s economy, independence, and even integrity. Elections are rarely defined by a single issue, but there’s not much doubt north of the border that Trump personally turned a certain victory for his Conservative counterparts into a stunning win for the left-for-dead Liberals. The ruling party made mobilizing the country against Trump’s various provocations the successful formula (personal edit: search for #ElbowsUp, kids!) for a fourth consecutive national win under the leadership of recently appointed prime minister Mark Carney, who is sort of the Kamala Harris of Canada, given long-time leader Justin Trudeau’s handoff to him in January.

Despite clear signals he was putting Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in an impossible spot, Trump never let up, issuing this especially provocative bit of advice to Canadians on Truth Social on Election Day itself:

Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!

Trump was essentially offering to displace the entire Canadian election system and extinguish that country’s sovereignty in exchange for his benevolent rule from Washington.

So Trump has produced a revived government in Ottawa with a distinct mandate to fight him tooth and nail. But that’s not the only way he was a loser on Monday. It’s not at all unusual for politicians to rally domestic support by picking a fight with other countries; it’s a jingoistic political tale as old as time. In this case, there is zero evidence (outside the hardest core of MAGA loyalists) that Americans have rallied to Trump’s Canada-bashing cause. Au contraire, as they might say in Quebec. An April 22 Washington Post–ABC–Ipsos poll showed Americans opposing a takeover of Canada by an astounding 86 percent to 13 percent. Even Republicans opposed it, 71 percent to 27 percent. Yes, many of them viewed this “idea” as a classic example of Trump just trolling the world. But if that’s what it was (and he has denied he’s trolling at all), he’s taken the joke far beyond the point where anyone in Canada is laughing, making himself a bit of a laughing stock in the process...

Somewhere in trump's aging, dementia-addled brain, he's gotten the notion that he can coax, bully, and/or harass the entire nation of Canada into succumbing to his will and joining the United States as one huge state (never mind the geographic, logistical, political, and cultural nightmares that would all cause). He clearly flunked out of 19th Century U.S. history, which would have taught him that Canada resisted even American military invasions during the War of 1812. Hell, that resistance developed their own rise of nationalism and pride in having defended themselves against our arrogance. They view the Battle of Queenston Heights the way Americans view Yorktown, or Gettysburg, or D-Day.

For trump to keep insisting that "it'll be better" for them to surrender to trump's annexation pleas is a huge ongoing insult to Canada. If he's doing it to intentionally troll them, to get them to roll over in his tariff negotiation tactics, he horribly miscalculated. He's made it so that anything even indirectly related to trumpism such as the conservatives in Canada - who probably made hourly phone calls to their American buddies begging them to get trump to shut up for even a day - got the Elbows Up treatment. It's telling that the leader of the national Conservatives Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat, a humiliation even UK Tories leader Sunak never endured (via Promit Mukherjee at Reuters):

Canada's main opposition leader Pierre Poilievre lost his seat in Monday's general election, results from Elections Canada showed, as the Conservatives were beaten by the incumbent Liberal Party.

Poilievre, 45, failed to retain his seat in the Ontario district of Carleton, losing it to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy...

Poilievre, a career politician, looked set to become Canada's next prime minister at the start of the year as he pitched himself as a change from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had led the Liberals since 2015.

Poilievre rode an anti-Trudeau wave and his sharp one-liners resonated with the public.

But as U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and often mused about making it his country's 51st state, opinions shifted in favor of Carney over Poilievre...

Poilievre tried to deflect any anti-trumpism by loudly decrying trump's tariffs and calling on national pride, but his own rhetoric style and decades of attacking liberalism made Poilievre the one target Canadians could punish. They couldn't punch trump - safe behind our border - but they could punch him.

Granted, the Conservatives did gain seats - there is a terrifying trend of young men voting far right in Canada as much as here in the U.S. - but they failed to win the plurality, giving Liberals the opportunity to form another coalition. Poilievre may lose his spot as party leader now that he's ousted from office, but now it's a question of the next party leader and how Far Right they'll be (and how susceptible they'll be to trumpian Far Right ideology takeover).

For the Center-Left in Canada, there is relief. For the Center-Left in America, there is a sliver of hope.

For the ongoing trade and border wars trump is threatening to escalate...

Four for the Fourth 2024: And Farmer George Thought HE Had it Bad on His 4th of July...

This will be a 4th Of July long remembered in Great Britain.

The United Kingdom held their parliamentary elections today, and it turned into a "bloodbath" for the ruling Conservative Party projected to suffer their worst defeat in over two centuries (via Brian Wheeler at BBC News):

Labour is set to win a general election landslide with a majority of 170, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky.

If the forecast is accurate, Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – just short of Tony Blair's 1997 total.

The Conservatives are predicted to slump to 131 MPs, their lowest number ever...

The exit poll, overseen by Sir John Curtice and a team of statisticians, is based on data from voters at about 130 polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales. The poll does not cover Northern Ireland.

At the past five general elections, the exit poll has been accurate to within a range of 1.5 and 7.5 seats...

If the exit poll is correct it will be a remarkable turnaround for the Labour Party, which had its worst post-war election result in 2019, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority.

The Conservatives may avoid the wipe-out predicted by some opinion polls but they are still set for the worst result in the party's history, losing 241 MPs - a devastating blow after 14 years in government...

I'm not sure how the Tories are going to convince themselves they know what they're doing after a massive shift in voter support like this. They had picked up a major victory in 2019 gaining an 80-seat majority, and by the next election are losing 170 seats. A comparable situation would be like the House Republicans getting their 6-seat majority in 2022 only to have the Democrats flip it to a 60 seat majority in 2024 (one hopes).

I still have not heard any results for the election most watched this night: the turnout between Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Count Binface (okay, there's a few other party candidates as well). Sunak's polling numbers were low enough that he's facing a historic first: First Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election. Most of those predecessors tended to be in safe districts, but in this election cycle almost none of the Conservative seats were safe. (Update: Sunak was able to win his seat, alas. Dammit, Richmond and Northallerton! A Raving Looney candidate was right there! You had one job!)

That's how bad the Tories had performed over the past five years to lose so much support.

It'll take some time for the actual ballots to get counted, but even if the projections are off by their statistical norms, Labour has still won a decisive turnout.

Next will be a question of how Labour is going to fix all the damage - the austerity economics getting out of the Great Recession, the various scandals over their tenure, and of course Brexit - this inept, corrupt Tory leadership has done since 2010.

Happy 4th of July, Brits!

Hope you saved some of the fireworks from Bonfire Night.

Here's George III taking it like a champ in Hamilton:

This Earth, This Realm, This 2024 British Election to Tell Tories to Sod Off, Eh

It's been a busy weekend, but here's news about the British Prime Minister calling for a snap election - months ahead of when he was required to hold one - that may well spell the end of almost two decades of Conservative Tory rule (via Helen Lewis at The Atlantic (paywalled)):

One of the perks of being Britain’s prime minister is getting to choose the date when voters deliver their verdict on your government. Most push their advantage by selecting a time when their party is ahead in the polls, the economic mood is buoyant, and their supporters are optimistic about success.

None of those things is true now for Sunak and his Conservative Party, who will face voters on July 4. Since the last election, in December 2019, the Tories have dispensed with Boris Johnson for partying through COVID and Liz Truss for somehow tanking the economy in a mere 49 days in office. Sunak, who has been prime minister only since October 2022, was required to call an election by December, but no one quite understands why he has done it now...

The recent local and mayoral elections were bloody for the Tories. They lost nearly 500 local councilors, the mayoral elections in London and Birmingham, and a special election in the northern-English constituency of Blackpool South. “For the Conservative government the message is crystal clear,” Rob Ford, a political-science professor at Manchester University, wrote on Substack after the results came out. “Voters want them out, everywhere, by any means necessary. That mood is as strong as ever and time is running out to change it.” Added to this, Sunak’s personal ratings are woeful: Polls show that a majority of Britons find him incompetent, unlikable, or indecisive...

So why call an election now? Presumably because Sunak thinks, in an inversion of the song that soundtracked Tony Blair’s election victory in 1997, things can only get worse. And sure enough, when Sunak made his announcement outside Downing Street, a protester outside the gates started to play “Things Can Only Get Better” at ear-splitting volume, drowning out the prime minister’s recitation of his record in office, and of the threats currently facing Britain. As it turned out, things could also only get wetter, as spring rain soaked the normally dapper Sunak. He was just a man, standing in front of an electorate, asking them not to humiliate him at the ballot box...

Something that Lewis barely mentions in her article - the word itself only shows up three times - is Brexit. The biggest policy gambit since Margaret Thatcher's undoing of the social safety net, the one policy that Conservatives - pushed by Boris Johnson, Brexit's biggest advocate - campaigned hard for back in 2019, the one thing affecting nearly every economic decision made by Parliament since 2016... and you'd be hard pressed to find ANY Tory or major UK media outlet bringing it up as an issue for the voters. Not even Labour - the major opposition party poised to retake Parliament this cycle - wants to discuss Brexit's impact on the United Kingdom.

Which is weird considering how Brexit's been a negative effect on Britain ever since Johnson pushed a hard Brexit departure from the European Union. Even the economists like Bloomberg's Matthew A Winkler can't put a positive spin on it:

Far from being the bloated, inefficient bureaucracy derided by Euroskeptics -- led by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he was the fabulist journalist for the London Telegraph -- who colored the prevailing Brexit media narrative, the EU economy is growing 2.3 percentage points faster than the UK’s on an annual basis, with GDP advancing 24% since 2016, compared with the 6% for the UK. During the 10 years before the Brexit referendum, EU GDP lagged behind the UK annually by 12 basis points, since 2000 by 9 basis points and the two decades preceding Brexit, by 149 basis points, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The dichotomy is similar for GDP per individual among the 20 countries sharing the euro. The bloc’s per capita GDP increased 19%, or 2.19 percentage points more than the UK on annual basis since 2016, an overwhelming reversal of the decade prior to Brexit. During the 10 years preceding Brexit, annualized euro zone growth was barely eight basis points better than the UK, and between 2000 and 2016 the euro zone trailed the UK by six basis points.

Contrary to the overwhelming perception, Britain had everything to gain from its EU inclusion and little to lose as the bloc expanded with the fall of the Soviet Union's Berlin Wall and rapid integration of Eastern European countries. Between 2011 and 2015, the EU's jobless rate expanded from 1.3 percentage points higher than the UK to 4.6 percentage points above. Only after the Brexit vote did the situation reverse, with the EU's additional joblessness rate narrowing to 2.9 percentage points as its citizens secured employment at a faster rate than their UK counterparts...

Among other things that happened - even when you take the COVID pandemic of 2020-22 out of the equations - have been the increased red tape within the UK itself trying to deal with trade with multiple different partners instead of a unified EU bloc. Supply chains got disrupted and show no signs of getting better.

Conservatives can't resolve these matters because they dare not admit - even to themselves - that they bolloxed their prized policy stance this poorly. Every response they could offer from their agenda - tax cuts and deregulation - could well trigger apocalyptic reactions from their markets (like it did when Liz Truss tried to pitch a massive tax cut plan that nuked her Prime Minister job in record time). Labour doesn't want to talk much about it - even though they're likely to repair some of the damage to fit their own policy ideas regarding trade and finance - because they have their own concerns about the EU that hampered their own campaign stances back in 2019.

If the Tories have any advantage, it's that their district-oriented, first-past-the-post election system could split the anti-Conservative anger among the voters between Labour and the third party Liberal Democrats. Much like what happened in 2019, where the Lib Dems - the only major party to openly oppose Brexit - and Labour competed to their detriment letting Conservatives to eke past both in key districts. While this time around, there's more calls for "strategic voting" between Labour and Libs to ensure that doesn't happen again, there's no guarantee the voters will pay attention.

Tories have basically been in control of the UK since 2010, over 14 years of economic austerity and Brexit ineptitude that has broken most national services and created this social and economic malaise. Toss into that scandal after scandal that have exposed the Conservatives as liars/hypocrites/failures, and there's little that the party can offer as any kind of successful leadership. 

There's far too many British voters now angry at them, since there's no one else to blame now.

Time for them to depart, they have sat too long for any good they have never done for the nation or the world. In the name of Doctor Who, go.

P.S. As a side note, it's been pointed out how Sunak is calling for this election to fall on July 4th, which is a rather embarrassing day in British history all things considered; and a pretty funny act of irony for us Americans who'll be celebrating our Independence Day then. Considering how I celebrate that day - blogging like mad to make it Four for the Fourth - I am likely to comment on the election results, so I got that to look forward to. ;-) 

The trump Façade Krakens In Georgia

It's been awhile since I've checked in on donald trump's status as an alleged criminal racketeer. While there's been slow going in South Florida over the stolen documents case, and furious legal battles waged in Washington DC over his role in the January 6th Insurrection, in Georgia the Fulton County case is racing ahead on six cylinders as a number of the 19 indicted alleged co-conspirators are close to facing their courtroom dates with destiny.

In one such matter, a major player in trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results decided to play ball with DA Fani Willis' team and took a plea. Via Kate Brumback at AP News:

Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia, becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors.

Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also recorded a statement for prosecutors and agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials...

That last part is important, because Sidney Powell is one of the major actors in trump's planning and staging to disrupt the Electoral Count in Congress that January 6th 2021. As Jeremy Stahl notes over at Slate (paywalled):

...This is awful news for Donald Trump, as Powell also immediately becomes the highest-level known cooperating witness against him. Given what we know about Powell’s role in the days surrounding Jan. 6 and the very lenient terms of her plea deal, she appears poised to offer damning testimony against the former president...

Powell is only the second domino to fall among Trump’s alleged co-conspirators agreeing publicly to cooperate against Trump. So far, she is the most damaging for Trump, but she is likely to be joined by others who were targeted in the 19-person RICO conspiracy case filed in August by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and her cooperation places further pressure on others to agree to testify against Trump...

Under the terms of Powell’s agreement, she will receive a small monetary fine and a six-year sentence of probation, and she will have to write an apology letter to the people of Georgia. This may seem like a slap on the wrist for one of the top figures implicated in the Jan. 6 cases, but it could mean she gave up a significant amount of evidence against even higher-level figures as part of her deal. Indeed, the agreement included a pledge to turn over all documents, testify against all of her co-defendants, and offer a recorded statement to prosecutors. She’s already done the last part.

That testimony against her co-defendants could start as soon as next month, when the trial of Chesebro is projected to begin. While Powell is not obligated by the agreement to testify against Trump as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution, scheduled for March, any testimony she gives in the Chesebro trial could potentially be used by Smith’s team. If Powell refuses to testify in the federal case, Judge Tanya Chutkan could decide to admit any Georgia testimony. “Her testimony will be on the record and potentially admissible,” in the federal case, said Eisen...

What’s more important, for the purposes of the prosecutions against Trump, though, is that the House Jan. 6 committee revealed that she was an active participant during a critical White House meeting in the weeks before Jan. 6, during which Trump allegedly sought to have her appointed as special counsel in order to seize voting machines. Eisen called that the “the Oval Office meeting that has been described as one of the craziest of the Trump administration,” and said testimony on it is likely to be critical to the overall conspiracy charge...

Powell was literally in the room when it happened. She was going to play whatever role trump wanted her to do in order to disrupt the vote counts and overturn the results to favor himself.

This was a trumpian supporter who jumped from state to state, filing legal motion after legal motion to delay, overrule, and eliminate any election results that went to Biden. Rallying to a battlecry of "Release the Kraken!" Powell blundered through every case with poor and ill-informed legal challenges lacking credible witnesses or documentation, and that pretty much got herself laughed out of each and every courtroom.

With Powell flipped, she becomes an eyewitness to most of everything trump's inner circle of election deniers - Bannon, Stone, Giuliani, and many others - planned and committed before, during, and even after January 6th blew up.

I doubt any of the marquee names are going to flip - not yet - because their own grifting and personal fortunes are on the line to where fighting it out in court is the only path they can take (and still make money from MAGA believers).

But the lower-tier people in the plots and schemes don't have such options. They're facing serious jail time, and in Georgia there's no chance for parole until AFTER they've served in prison.

We're all just waiting for the rest of the Fulton County 19 to flip to save their own hides.

Get kraken, you fools. The ones who make the quickest deals get the best deals.

No Debate: trump Was Lousy At It Anyway

In minor news today - since all the major news like Putin's genocide in Ukraine gets a bit overwhelming - the Republican Party voted this week to stop joining the 4-year farce of Presidential debating because as it turns out trump is too much of a pussy to risk it anymore. Well, that's MY take on it. Let's hear from the official reporting from Reuters (via The Guardian link):

The Republican National Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, saying the group that has run the debates for decades was biased and refused to enact reforms.

“We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,” the committee’s chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, said in a statement.

What McDaniel means by "bias," by the by, translates into "the moderators wouldn't let trump go bugfuck psycho like he wants to."

The move, which followed months of wrangling between the RNC and the commission, will potentially deprive voters of seeing Republican and Democratic candidates on the same stage.

Millions of Americans usually watch the presidential debates and many viewers say they help them to make up their minds about whom to vote for, according to research by Pew Research Center.

The RNC’s decision follows grievances aired by former president Donald Trump and other Republicans about the timing of debates, debate formats and the selection of moderators.

Defenders of the debates say they are an important element of the democratic process, but critics say they have become television spectacles in which viewers learn little about the candidates’ policies.

Trump refused to participate in what was supposed to be the second of three debates with Biden in 2020, after the commission switched it to a virtual contest following Trump’s Covid-19 infection.

What the article didn't mention was how the first debate between trump and Biden in 2020 turned out: A complete and utter disaster for trump. Don't take my word for it: Every other pundit who watched it were sickened by trump's bullying behavior. Here's the link back to what David Frum documented for The Atlantic:

Instead, he talked to Facebook conspiracists, to the angriest of ultra-Republican partisans, and to violent white supremacists. He urged the Proud Boys to “stand by” because “somebody’s got to do something” about “antifa and the left.” He refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the (likely) event that he loses. He threatened months and months of chaos if the election does not go his way.

Trump yelled, threatened, interrupted—and changed nothing. All he did was confirm the horror and revulsion of the large American majority that has already begun to cast its ballots against him.

Correction: Trump did one thing. On the Cleveland stage, Trump communicated that he will seize any opportunity to disrupt the vote and resist the outcome. He communicated more forcefully than ever that the only security the country has for a constitutional future is that Biden wins by the largest possible margin...

Even Frum could see by September 2020 that trump was plotting a coup to hold onto power even when he lost the election that November.

Many people will criticize how the moderator, Chris Wallace, managed the debate, and surely he could have done better. But really, nothing short of a shock collar around Trump’s neck would have disciplined the man who is, after all, the president of the United States. A president who does not respect tax laws, does not respect the FBI, is surely not going to be constrained by a debate moderator. It was pandemonium. But it was revealing pandemonium. Who and what Trump is could not have been more vividly displayed in all the psychological reality. Debate one was not Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, or red versus blue. It was zookeepers versus poop-throwing primates...

It was the worst public behavior out of a President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) in modern memory. There had been times when Presidents like LBJ and Reagan were combative or defensive during public pressers, and in private the likes of Nixon behaved so much worse. Those were mere flashes compared to trump's performance: trump heckled, he interrupted, he spoke out of turn, he YELLED out of turn, he did everything except physically assault Biden. If trump had been graded by the Toastmasters for his debate behavior, they would have flunked him in the first three minutes.

And it wasn't like trump was masterful in his debates against Hillary Clinton back in 2016. He flared out in the first debate, he acted like a bully during the open forum format of the second debate, and he failed to impress during the third debate. 

You have to remember: trump never won the popular vote in 2016 and in 2020. If debate performances are meant to sway undecided voters to your banner, trump only succeeded in rallying his base. His Democratic opponents were able to do that as well, and in Biden's case rallied an uptick in voter turnout that trump couldn't surpass.

This move by the Republicans has all the markings of a sore loser - trump - deciding he wasn't going to play the game on a level field. Either he's hoping that this will force the Debates commission to revise their policies and grant him more power to set the rules his way, or he's hoping he won't have to face the embarrassment of losing debates in 2024. It'll probably be the latter because the commission is supposed to be non-partisan managed between both major parties, and the Democrats on the commission will refuse to yield to trump's antics.

Part of me even wonders why the debates still matter. I understand the optics of it - a public demonstration of the American electoral system, the spectacle of holding elected officials accountable to the issues that matter to the voters - but the mechanics of it have broken apart the past twenty years as partisan hackery took over the democratic (small d) process.

It's not as though our Presidential elections needed these debates over the nation's history. Impractical back in the day before railroads or cars or airplanes that could allow a large gathering to watch a debate of that scale, it would take something like mass communication of radio and television to pull it off. 

Previous elections didn't even have the candidates campaigning all that hard: Late 19th Century tradition made it that they didn't even leave their front porches. Most candidates still stuck to their individual campaigns, avoiding direct public forums as though to avoid giving their opponent any validation.

There aren't any full explanations I can find why candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy agreed to televised Presidential debates in 1960. Kennedy had his reasons because he was trailing the polls as a still-obscure figure, while Nixon was better-known due to serving as Vice-President under Eisenhower. It could have been that television was still a new technology and both sides saw potential in reaching national audiences. We were in the middle of a Cold War versus Communism, so there may have been the appeal of debating with a free exchange of idea(l)s between candidates to market the virtues of elective democratic republics like the United States.

The results were disastrous for Nixon. He debated well enough on the issues, but his image paled in comparison to Kennedy's charisma. Nixon lost his polling lead and then lost a close election. It should be telling that the following elections in 1964, 1968, and 1972 there were no Presidential debates at all (as Nixon ran in '68 and '72, there was no way he was going to fall for that trap again).

It took Nixon's Watergate, and the distrust in elected leaders, for the debates to return in 1976, as President Gerald Ford and Candidate Jimmy Carter both needed them to appeal to an electorate that barely knew both of them. But the rationale - the open discussion of ideas and opposing views on how to answer crises - for hosting these things quickly devolved.

By the 1990s, the focus of the debates were to avoid getting pinned on any ideological position that would get used in attack ads by your opponents, and to basically avoid saying anything dumb to ruin your poll numbers. The Saturday Night Live skit in 1992 aptly titled "Debate ’92: The Challenge to Avoid Saying Something Stupid" pretty much spelled out how bland and boring these debates became.

Nothing's really ever gained in these spectacles, to be honest. The candidates appearing at these debates are prepped into one-sentence ten-words answers that don't say anything, oft-times stuck with those one-liners creating gaffes of their own. Undecided voters tuning in to watch are mostly watching for those gaffes, not for leadership potential or for policies that matter to them. Decided voters don't want to tune in because we already know why we're voting for our candidate. The partisan nature of our nation's political parties have gotten to where the issues don't even matter (look at how the Republicans didn't even create a new platform for the 2020 elections).

We don't need these debates anymore, or at least not right now. Not when the choices are already too stark and the issues are so easily ignored.

It's actually a good thing donald trump doesn't want to do debates anymore. It means less airtime on my television screens to where I and millions of others don't have to look at his orange-painted lying face.

You Wanna Hear a Scary Story This October?

This ought to scare the crap out of you.

There is currently nothing standing in the way of donald trump regaining the Republican nomination in 2024.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)

Let's face it. Unlike previous One-Termers who tripped into the shadows of history to write memoirs and appear as commentators on History Channel specials, trump has not gone away and if anything the Republican fanbase still worships this failure. Let us read what Emma Brockes at the Guardian has on the matter:

There was a time – millennia ago in political years – when Trump’s wacky syntax and random capitalization might have been cause for, if not for amusement, exactly, then at least some degree of dismissal. Since the inauguration of President Biden in January, it has been relatively easy to convince oneself that his predecessor has gone away. Sealed up in Mar-a-Lago with various family members, Trump has remained largely absent from public life, surfacing on the 20th anniversary of September 11 this month to commentate on a novelty pay-per-view boxing match with Don Jr in Florida, but otherwise, for those not seeking him out, gone.

The discovery that he has not in fact gone, but is still lurking on the internet disseminating conspiracy theories about the election, brings on the sick feeling you get two-thirds of the way into a horror movie, when a sense of calm is introduced prior to the biggest jump scare. Unlike the first time around, there is no possibility of laughing Trump off or assuming his idiocies won’t find a sympathetic audience. At the rally last week, two Republican congressional candidates addressed the group. A recent CNN poll found that 78% of Republicans didn’t believe that Biden legitimately won the presidency. Rightwing America, and therefore America as a whole, has yet to shake this guy off...

Historically speaking, most One-Termers have the sense to know they lost due to their unpopularity with the majority of American voters and step aside for the next round of party figures to rise to leadership roles. The only one who made a successful run after leaving the White House was Grover Cleveland, because he actually won the popular vote but lost the Electoral (an inversion of trump's situation in 2016) in 1888 and so had an actual advantage in 1892 to win again.

trump may be factually unpopular right now - and likely well into 2024 - to where he'll never perform like Grover Cleveland, but trump's never let the facts get in the way of his constant grift.

trump is running again because he keeps his Big Lie going that "I actually won, if only those idiot state elections officials stooped to cheat for me." he's running because not doing so would undersell that Big Lie to an audience eager to buy that shit up, and this political grift is the only con game he's got left.

Also, trump is hoping that by 2024 the Republican-controlled states would have rigged their electoral counting methods to ensure he and they can steal like they tried to in 2020.

If this doesn't terrify you, that 2024 will generate yet another trump-based constitutional nightmare, then you're not fully understanding the horror.

If there are any hope spots in this horror movie, it's that trump remains under civil and criminal investigation for various misdeeds ranging from defamation, tax evasion and fraud, as well as charges like interfering with elections. Thing is, it's late 2021 and we've (the nation AND the whole planet) been waiting for that shoe to drop, and given how trump's lawyers work every trick in the book to Delay, Delay, Delay we're running into the risk of NONE of these legal matters getting resolved before the next Presidential primaries. 

Tick-tock, state attorneys and local DAs. There's a monster roaming the countryside and you're the ones supposed to stop it.

How Shall We Stretch Our Eye When Capital Crimes, Chew'd, Swallow'd and Digested, Appear Before Us

(the title quote is from Henry V Act II Scene 2)

If donald trump's call to Insurrection back on January 6 - to block Congress from its constitutional duties to confirm the 2020 election results - looks and smells and quacks like a coup attempt, that's because it was.

More documentation is getting out, and the paperwork is showing that trump and his inner circle knew what they were doing to start a riot at Capitol Hill and force his own Vice President Pence to throw out the results for Biden to allow trump to steal the Presidency. One of trump's lawyers involved in the planning (John Eastman) drew up a six-point memo laying out how it could work: It probably wouldn't, since the end result would have been civil war; still, the fact they were finding any rationale at all is horrifying. 

Along with that, Adam Serwer at The Atlantic pointed out all the other things we've learned trump did to cheat the American people that came close to subverting everything (paywalled):

Prior to November, the possibility of Trump attempting a coup was seen as the deranged fever dream of crazed liberals. But as it turns out, Trump and his advisers had devised explicit plans for reversing Trump’s loss. Republican leaders deliberately stoked election conspiracy theories they knew to be false, in order to lay a political pretext for invalidating the results. Now, more than 10 months after the election, the country knows of at least five ways in which Trump attempted to retain power despite his defeat.

1. Trump tried to pressure secretaries of state to not certify.

Trump held early leads in vote counts in several states—not because he was ever actually ahead but because of discrepancies between when states count mail-in ballots and Election Day ballots. This so-called blue shift was written about long in advance of Election Day, and was partially the result of Trump’s own attacks on voting by mail. Nevertheless, Trump made this a key part of his election conspiracy theories (as many predicted he would), insisting that Democrats were somehow inserting fraudulent ballots into the vote count in the presidential election (something they apparently forgot to do in close House and Senate races, in which Democrats did worse than polls had anticipated). To help substantiate these falsehoods , the Trump campaign attempted to pressure secretaries of state to either not certify the results or “find” fraudulent ballots...

The most infamous of these attempts was trump's call to Georgia's Secretary of State Raffensperger, which got caught on tape and which should have led to trump getting arrested for election interference and harassing a state official. Last I heard the attorney investigating the matter is getting stonewalled by the same guy trump threatened, alas...

2. Trump tried to pressure state legislatures to overturn the results.

Trump personally attempted to coerce state legislators to overturn election results in a few states that voted for Biden, on the dubious legal theory that such legislatures could simply ignore the results of the popular vote in their own states. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia, Trump publicly urged Republican-controlled statehouses to “intervene to declare him the winner” and tweeted, “Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself...”

Thankfully that attempt at social media bullying didn't go very far. Some of the state legislators made a show of it but none of them did it in sufficient numbers to pull it off. Nobody wanted to be the ones held accountable by their state voters afterward.

3. Trump tried to get the courts to overturn the results.

...As part of this effort, we can include the baseless “Kraken” lawsuits, filled with conspiracy theories about vote changes. Trump attempted to coerce the Justice Department into providing him with a pretext to overturn the results, but his attorney general, Bill Barr, refused to do so. Had DOJ leadership acquiesced, it would have lent credibility to Trump’s other corrupt schemes to reverse his loss. In a meeting with the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, according to contemporaneous notes taken by Rosen’s deputy, Trump said, “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me...”

If you kept track of trump's lawsuit efforts, well... There were 61 lawsuits overall (last count) and the only one his lawyers won was a procedural move to force a ballot count to end early. All that did was end that ballot count in favor of Biden. Everything got dismissed or turned down in court because trump's lawyers could not prove any massive vote theft/fraud had happened. 

Leading up to one of the craziest things I've ever seen in political history:

4. Trump tried to pressure Mike Pence to overturn the results.

It is hard to pick the most ridiculous means of executing a coup, but insisting that the vice president has the power to unilaterally decide who won an election is up there. Trump publicly hounded Pence to reject the results prior to the traditionally ceremonial electoral-vote count in Congress, and Pence reportedly took that demand seriously enough to seek advice from (former VP) Dan Quayle on the matter, “asking if there were any grounds to pause the certification because of ongoing legal challenges,” according to Costa and Woodward. That this got so far is profoundly disturbing, but even more disturbing is Eastman’s memo, which shows that the Trump team had thought very deliberately about how this scheme would work...

Quayle's advice to Pence to not knuckle under to trump's bullying is pretty much how we survived this ordeal. But look: When Dan FREAKING Quayle (he of "Potatoe" infamy, Murphy Brown bashing, and misquotes of folly) is the goddamned VOICE OF REASON in this entire Kabuki dance, you know damn well that History has given up and gone off to get drunk at a nearby pub. You can't make this shit up.

5. When all else failed, Trump tried to get a mob to overturn the results.

At the rally prior to the vote count in Congress, Trump urged the crowd to act, saying, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” The explicit goal of the rally and subsequent riot was to pressure Congress, and Pence in particular, into overturning the election results. Trump told his followers, “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election...”

trump and his defenders can try to repaint his rally all they like, but trump laid it out there to his riled-up mob that they had to pressure Pence to "do the right thing" (i.e. throw the results out and let trump "win"). And that's what happened when that mob crossed the streets to Capitol Hill and smashed/bullied their way in.

This is all out there now. Hundreds of cases are going on right now, with tens of trump's arrested rioters pleading their way to guilty charges to avoid harsher sentences. More and more reporting is digging up details like Eastman's memo showing just how everyone in trump's circle was plotting this out. More "revelatory" books like Bob Woodward's Peril is showing how insane the whole thing surrounding trump's election shenanigans was.

And there might be even more getting out there. Biden's administration is thinking of taking the unusual step of removing "Executive Privilege" of trump's White House documents so that the Congressional committee investigating the Insurrection can review them. To refer to Betty Cracker's take at Balloon Juice (she links further to the Washington Post article, but it's paywalled be warned):

The article cites a bunch of experts, including lawyers who served Democratic administrations and in pre-Trump Republican White Houses, and the consensus seems to be that post-executive privilege isn’t a thing. Unsurprisingly, one of the two go-to celebrity Trump-defender legal beagles disagrees:

“There is an unbroken tradition of deference by the incumbent presidents to their predecessors,” [GWU Professor Jonathan] Turley said. “In the past, incumbent presidents would generally support their predecessors in restricting access, despite partisan differences. It appears we may be poised here to shatter that tradition.”

In the past, incumbent presidents weren’t dealing with predecessors who claimed they won an election they lost and incited violence to cling to power. Dump those docs...!

I'm with Betty on this. A lot of our political structure is/was based on previous behavior as much as the written laws, but that was all based on Good Faith between parties to uphold the spirit of the Law as much as possible. trump went out of his way to destroy all that Good Faith, proving full well that "tradition" and respect for predecessor's guidelines should not apply to himself. Well, that's his petard getting hoisted now: Biden should not respect any preferential protections to the man who disrespected the office of the Presidency.

And it came out during this evening that the Congressional committee is taking that next step into the inner circle of trump's final days, with their subpoenas of people who had to have been in the room for the planning stages when all that shit went down (via Claudia Grisales at NPR):

The Democratic-led House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued subpoenas to four former Trump administration officials, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and strategist Steve Bannon.

The panel also issued subpoenas Thursday to former Trump White House deputy chief of staff for communications Dan Scavino and Kashyap Patel, who served as chief of staff to then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

The subpoenas — the first issued by the select committee — compel the four to produce sought-after documents relevant to the deadly attack by Oct. 7, and then sit for a deposition the following week, on either Oct. 14 or 15...

"The Select Committee is investigating the facts, circumstances, and causes of the January 6th attack and issues relating to the peaceful transfer of power, in order to identify and evaluate lessons learned and to recommend to the House and its relevant committees corrective laws, policies, procedures, rules, or regulations," Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement.

In individually addressed letters, Thompson details further why the recipients are believed to have key information for the panel.

Thompson tells Meadows, for instance: "You were the President's Chief of Staff and have critical information regarding many elements of our inquiry. It appears you were with or in the vicinity of President [Donald] Trump on January 6, had communications with the President and others on January 6 regarding events at the Capitol, and are a witness regarding activities of that day..."

There is no doubt that these witnesses will fight appearing before Congress to the last letter, apostrophe, and comma on the paperwork, but they are on notice: These witnesses either have to double down being on the side of  Head Insurrectionist trump facing justice sooner rather than later, or speak to what they know and try to walk away without jail time for what they did nearly destroying America for that con artist.

If they're any smarter than the low-level foot soldiers already pleading out for their roles in the January 6th Insurrection, they'll testify. If they're any greedier (and sadly they might be) they'll try to ride this grift far past its expiration date, still dooming themselves but the rest of us in the process.

Gods, I do want to see justice moving a little faster than this...

Just Another Rambling Florida Man, Full of Violence and Full Of Bull

Welp. Florida Man got a reputation for stupidity and violence to uphold.

From Marc Caputo at Politico, a Republican primary candidate for the Tampa Bay area congressional district (13th) - being vacated by Charlie Crist as he plans another run for Governor in 2022 - threatened another Republican primary opponent with a Russian-Ukrainian hit squad. Yes, he went there:

During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned the activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seat because he had access to assassins. The seat is being vacated by Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), who is running for governor.

“I really don't want to have to end anybody's life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” Braddock said at one point in the conversation last week, according to the recording exclusively obtained by POLITICO. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a f---ing speed bump in the road. She's a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood...”

Olszewski denied editing or altering the recording. She said she made it because she was concerned about Braddock’s “unhinged” dislike of Luna that he had previously expressed. After she made the recording just after midnight last Wednesday, she promptly turned it over to St. Petersburg, Fla., police and gave a heads-up to her friend Luna, who filed a petition for an injunction against Braddock. Luna and Olszewski each received a temporary restraining order against him last week. Braddock filed to run Monday...

“...I have access to a hit squad, too, Ukrainians and Russians,” he said about three minutes into the call, adding “don't get caught out in public supporting Luna. … Luna’s gonna go down and I hope it's by herself...”

It's unclear exactly why Braddock has such dislike toward Luna. The two do not appear to have any previous connection to one another, and Braddock is a lower-tier candidate in an increasingly crowded race for Crist’s seat. Already, two state lawmakers and a former Obama administration official have entered the race, with others expected to jump in...

I have a pretty good idea why Braddock has that much dislike towards Luna. One, she's openly as wingnut a candidate you can find among Republican ranks, railing against Socialism and praising Sarah Palin. Braddock doesn't want the competition for the MAGA vote. Two, she's a woman, and the goddamn misogyny underlining male conservative ideology tends to trigger this kind of violent response.

But there's a lot more to unpack in all of this insanity.

Braddock is bragging that he's got the money and the connections to hire foreign hit squads. This isn't the kind of thing you post on your resume, nor something you bring up in a PowerPoint presentation to the local Rotary clubs. Either he's just announced he's that dangerous to others he views as rivals (in either politics or business) or he's lying and bragging about shit he can't back up, which still makes him dangerously insane.

And it's telling that when he brags about this, Braddock is calling on "Russian-Ukrainians" as a specific foreign ethnicity at his beck and call. This brings forward the ongoing scandalous behavior of Republicans and Far Right business figures constantly getting caught committing dirty work within the sphere of Putin's influence. He's not talking about ex-SEAL mercs, or sniper teams from a Central American nation that got U.S. backing during the 1980s. Braddock is going to the one overseas nationalist white-power country in Russia (with Ukrainian expatriates in the mix) that has gotten its hooks into every level of Republican leadership the last ten years.

To anybody who takes national security and political integrity seriously, this is a major ongoing scandal threatening the whole United States.

Braddock, one way or another, is exposing a lot of the problems consuming the Republican Party: Obsession with wingnut purity, the easy talk of violent actions towards rivals, the willingness to threaten and harm women, reckless bravado bordering on stupidity, and open association with a foreign power that is in opposition to the United States and our European allies on the global stage.

This may be yet another Florida Man moment, but it's not funny.

Gods help us. 

The Post-Election 2020 Super Conniption Blues

(Update: Many thanks to Infidel753 adding me to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this morning! I'm a little busy working on NaNo today so... good luck writers!)

While the Presidential election is still getting counted out in the final states, with everything literally on the line for 270 Electoral Votes, there are a few things I wanna get off my chest tonight.

Ahem.

WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK IS WRONG WITH MOST OF YOU?

I'm not even yelling at the trump voters from 2016 who voted again for the WORST SHITGIBBON ON THE PLANET, because they have been lost to us since even before 2016 2010 2000 1992. They're gleefully showing up for a man who will infect them with the Coronavirus at rallies and still vote as though he's their Personal Jesus Reagan.

No, I'm talking to a number of you Independent or centrist voters who didn't care to vote or voted differently in 2016, only to show up this election cycle to vote for a man in trump who spent the last four years objectively being the WORST POSSIBLE PERSON TO EVER SERVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THIS IS GOING ALL THE WAY BACK TO JOHN ADAMS FOR GOD'S SAKE AND EVEN ADAMS HAD FCKING INTEGRITY, HELL EVEN GRANT AND HARDING WERE NEVER THIS BAD, ONLY JOHN TYLER AND ANDREW JOHNSON WOULD GIVE THIS SHITGIBBON A RUN FOR HIS MONEY SO WHY THE HELL DID YOU VOTE trump THIS TIME?!?!

Ahem.

Here, I tweeted this earlier today:

trump has 66 million voters so far. short of Biden's 68 million but an improvement on the 63 million he got in 2016.
WHERE THE FCK DID trump FIND 3 MILLION MORE VOTERS WHEN HE WAS BEING SO FCKING DIVISIVE???

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@PaulWartenberg) November 4, 2020

I'd been noting for four years how trump never moved to the center of the political spectrum, never made himself more appealing to moderate voters to broaden his base, that he kept pandering to the 42-44 percent of the population that would have never guaranteed a popular vote win.

And the SOB still garnered more votes to him.

This was after constant and well-documented violations of the Emoluments Clause, revelations about bribing mistresses and porn actresses, case after case after case of him sexually assaulting women as proof of the vulgarity he revealed before the 2016 election. This was after trump's taxes went public this year, highlighting tax dodges and questionable claims that demonstrated trump wasn't just a failed businessman but arguably a tax fraud.

It was as though a massive plurality of Americans, maybe not a majority of us, just didn't give a fuck about ethical and honest leadership after all.

This was after a near year-long failure of leadership by trump and his administration in combatting and managing a global pandemic that was manageable if someone competent and caring set federal mandates for public safety (masks and social distancing) and fought hard to get Congress to fund for state aid and expanded benefits for the citizenry. trump refused to lead, even mocked the COVID-19 pandemic even as it spiraled out of control, even after he contracted the damn thing himself he never acknowledged the severity of it all. trump has a goddamn body count of 230,000 preventable deaths (and growing by the day) far worse than most wars other Presidents had overseen, and at least those leaders held themselves to account in some form or another. trump's failure on this matter made the United States one of the worst nations to handle the pandemic, likely prolonging it far longer in ways to make our recovery longer and more painful than what our counterpart Western European nations will do once we can get a safe vaccine going.

And the SOB still garnered more votes to him.

And the most obvious problem of all: How this openly race-baiting, rage-inducing tinpot encouraged the very worst in America, through appeals to violence, through the insults and denigration of Blacks, Latinos, Women. trump never appealed to the better angels, he always took the opportunity to summon the worst demons and historic wrongs that haunts our nation to this day. It's the one thing constant about trump that his fanbase will always fall for, always love him for. Allowing them to be as vulgar and hateful as he is.

And the SOB still garnered more votes to him.

I know we are living in a nation where there are far too many people being assholes than we had realized until 2016. I know. I can't understand it, but I know - like Rude Pundit in 2014 and Ed at Gin and Tacos in 2018 both pointed out - that the partisan divide in the United States created by the Far Right exists and can never be fixed. What I'm railing about now is how somehow, with all the bad shit trump served us for the last four years, even more Americans decided - against the availability of a reasonable, relatively normal political figure in Biden - to go with the SOB.

I may live in Florida, I may be half-mad myself. But Jesus Christ, even I know where the line shouldn't be crossed. trump shouldn't have even gotten 63 million voters this year, he didn't do anything to deserve getting 50 million voters this year. 

And the ETERNAL SHITGIBBON THAT IS trump is still one bad state turnout against Biden away from stealing off with another goddamned Electoral College theft.

This is unforgivable shit here, America. What the hell.

This ain't the end of my ranting. I am still royally pissed and will add more thoughts about all this.

Election Night 2020: I'M PERFECTLY CALM

JUST LOOK AT HOW STEADY MY HANDS ARE.

I AM TOTALLY CALM HERE.

I know it's going to be a long night and there's obviously going to be a few bad steps here and there and some states may not vote the way I'm praying to God they should vote but you know it's a free country and and and and um JESUS FCKING CHRIST AMERICA STOP VOTING FOR THAT SHITGIBBON! 

VOTE BIDEN! VOTE BLUE! VOTE FOR A BLUE SENATE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU BE SANE FOR LIKE ONE ELECTION DAY FOR THE SAKE OF ALL HUMANITY!

Okay, I'm eating ice cream now and will try to avoid watching the poll results - the skewed, too-early-to-call-it poll results that the media loves to shove down our throats until we're begging them to stop.

I'll update when I can.

HOPE YOU VOTED. HOPE YOU VOTED FOR BIDEN AND SANITY.

Update 8:47 PM. Fuck. They already called Florida?FUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.

Update 10:35 PM. I will never understand it. I mean, I *know* we are surrounded by an army of assholes, but you would think that after trump's epic failures of leadership - letting Puerto Rico fall apart, his tariff war follies, the evil of his family separations at the border, the financial corruption, and this year alone allowing a pandemic to rampage across our country... we still have too many Americans buying trump's bullshit and voting for him. His pandering to their most sadistic hates and their most ill-informed fears, and he's still... God. This is insane...

trump's supposed to be losing the suburbs what the hell is happening...?

Florida 2020 General Election Ballot: Summon the Blue Wave, Please

Time again, another Presidential election cycle here in Florida with EARLY VOTING STARTING MONDAY OCTOBER 19, so I want to take a moment to post how the ballot looks - at least where I am in Polk County, here's a sample ballot - and offer suggestions on what to consider when you cast your vote.

(dramatic beat)

Okay, for anybody who's been following this blog for the last eight twelve years, you probably know that my overall suggestion is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

It's not just me. There are several prominent conservative figures who have recoiled from the monstrosity their own party has become and they're pretty much saying the same thing. This Republican Party will not reform itself or move away from its madness until they are utterly humiliated and driven out of power. (another beat) For the next fifty years.

The only way this happens is if enough Americans not only fully Progressive but also Center-Left and Independent show up to vote in unity against the corruption that the modern Republicans - not just trump but everyone from Mitch McConnell all down - are openly planning to commit.

So here's my bit, trying to educate my fellow Floridians on what to look for.

President

What part of "trump IS A VULGAR SUBHUMAN BULLYING SH-TGIBBON" have you missed on my blog?

I could go into 500 different reasons why you should NOT vote for trump/Pence in any way, shape or form. I can go into at least 5 reasons to vote FOR Biden/Harris. 1) Biden is a Passive-Positive Character in the Taft vein, 2) Biden will work towards a Big Tent party for Democrats of all stripes to join in for effective ideological gains, 3) Biden will restore the social safety net that the Republicans have been hacking at with fireaxes the last 20 years, 4) Biden will put on his Cabinet people who are dedicated to effective governance and will repair the damage done by trump's corrupt regime, 5) Biden will not turn every fcking day into an anxiety-riddled, Twitter-driven, Hellish STRESS TEST.

So in short: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE BIDEN/HARRIS

Congress

Florida does not have any Senate races this cycle, so it's all down to the House seats - all 27 of them - and with any luck the Democratic voter turnout will flip at least 14 of them Blue so that in case there's a Delegation vote in the House to resolve a compromised Electoral College result the vote will go for Biden.

In my case, I'm in the 17th District, covering south Polk County and much of the south inland counties, which are lightly populated and heavily conservative. Port Charlotte (Charlotte County) is kind of the only other major population center in the district, and I'm not familiar with the area but given how much of its population buildup was in the late 1990s with a lot of conservative shifting, I don't have my hopes up.

Yeah. I live in the middle of trump Country. Every other oversized Coal Roller truck has the worst taste in bumper stickers. And yet, I WILL DEFY YOU, STARS. I am calling for everyone in District 17 to vote for Allen Ellison. 

I am calling on everybody I know from Pinellas County to Pasco to Alachua to Broward to Duval even: BLUE WAVE, peeps. 

State Legislature

There's 120 State House seats up for vote, so that's about 120 seats we NEED to flip BLUE, Florida. It's only 61 seats to control the House (okay Republicans have a 71-to-46 advantage (3 vacancies), but all we need is to gain 12 seats on the 46 held along with filling those three vacancies...). 

Okay, in Polk County, that's Districts 39 (Dem Chris Cause), 40 (Dem Jan Barrow), 41 (Dem Jared West), and 42 (Dem Barbara Ann Cady) up for consideration. I'm in District 56, so I'm putting a vote in for James Davis.

The State Senate goes in groups, they are doing odd-number Senate districts this cycle and somehow Polk County does not carry any part of them (I am in District 26, so...). I may not have a direct vote for any of the 40 Senators, but I do call on the voters who ARE voting in the odd-numbered districts to VOTE BLUE WAVE. It's a 23-to-17 Republican control of the Senate, so if the Democrats can hold their 17 seats and flip 4, that would make it 21-to-19 in favor of Democrats... Just gotta flip ONE of the legislative houses, and then we'll see DeSantis held accountable for his mishandling of the pandemic...  

County Commissioner

The county seats go in rotations, so this year it's just District 3 up for a vote and that's Democrat Bob Doyel we need to support.

State Supreme Court / District Court Retention

We have a system in place where judges are appointed but then subject to voter approval to retain. In 2020, there is currently one person up for the State Supreme Court, Carlos Muniz. To sum him up: He was on trump's short list to replace Ginsburg's seat this month. Yeah. That's all you need to know. If you want more, he worked under Pam Bondi. Uh-uh. I don't trust his credentials one bit. VOTE NO and remove him.

The Appellate Court votes to retain are spread out, so here in Polk County (2nd Court District) we've got Drew Atkinson, Morris Silberman, Daniel Sleet, and Andrea Teves Smith to consider. At the moment I can't find anything on their biographies so I can't say who brought them to the table. For now, I'll trust to the better natures of our angels and VOTE YES to retain.

School Board

There doesn't look to be any listed this cycle. Hmm.

Lake Region Lakes Management

There's a race between John Lewis and Steve Enzor, but not much information on them. Going by Facebook pages, Enzor seems to have the background working with the city of Winter Haven and previous water management commission work, while Lewis shows more engagement with the community but I'm not sure what his full bio is. I leave it to you, Lake Region, if you know which is the better candidate.  

State Amendments

I've made my views on the State Amendments earlier, and while I'm set on certain ones I am willing to admit I may be wrong on my earlier opinions. I've been getting more pushback against the Open (Jungle) Primaries and the peeps chatting me on it are making valid points. Thing is, as a NPA voter, I still feel the need to support making the Primaries open to all and to encourage more voter turnout. If you want to vote NO against that, you're free to (I will vote YES because I think the Jungle Primaries are manageable and I want the NPA voters like myself to have more say in these votes). 

To repeat, I am NO on 1 (Citizenship requirement to vote, which is ALREADY a requirement), YES on 2 (Minimum Wage), YES on 3 (Open Primary), NO on 4 (Forced Second Ballot Referenda), NO on 5 (More tax exemption) and YES on 6 (Tax exemption carryover to widows of military veterans, I know this could be a NO vote but it's family-related).

Polk County Referendums and Charter Amendments

There's also County matters to vote on, and what we got are:

Referendum One: Extension of Limited Property Tax Exemptions for Businesses Creating New Jobs

Shall the board of county commissioners of this county be reauthorized to grant, pursuant to s. 3, Art. VII of the State Constitution, limited property tax exemptions, for a limited time, to new businesses and expansions of existing businesses that create new full‐time jobs in the county? The time period for such reauthorization would commence November 6, 2022 and expire on November 5, 2032.

This sounds like a good idea, don't it? Supporting our Jobs Creators in the county. Thing is, how well is this exemption enforced? How are we guaranteed that our major employers in-county are fulfilling these obligations? In the short term, there's no guarantee of job creating while a pandemic is underway, and in the long term, businesses that need to hire full-time are going to hire full-time anyway. There doesn't need to be a tax credit to encourage them. I'd vote NO.

Charter Amendment One: Increasing Time Period Between Charter Review Commissions from 8 Years to 12 Years

Kind of what it says on the label. The argument in favor of this goes "We need to reduce expenses, and the Charter Review Commission doesn't need to meet THAT often." That may sound reasonable, but it runs the risk of the County facing administrative or committee crises that may flare up regarding the county charter during that longer time period. This doesn't feel like a smart thing to do. I'd vote NO.

Charter Amendment Two: Expense Reduction of the Efficiency Commission

The plot here is about cutting expenses for Polk County by deleting Articles 8.6 through 8.6.4 in their entirety of the County Charter, referring to the Polk County Efficiency Commission. You don't know what that would entail unless you actually READ Articles 8.6 through 8.6.4, so here goes (link goes to Charter PDF):

8.6 Polk County Efficiency Commission

Not later than January 31, 2005 and of every eighth year thereafter, there shall be appointed a Polk County Efficiency Commission...

Okay, what Charter Amendment 2 is doing is PURGING the Efficiency Commission altogether. They're cutting off an arm of the county government here. I am not entirely sure what the commission does, but since the title involves "Efficiency" I'd expect them to be going through the code of county ordinances weeding out overlapping rules, any outdated rules, and other stuff. Which may actually make things more affordable for the businesses and residents restricted by guidelines based in say 1897 but useless in 2020.

Thing is, it does not look like the county will replace this Efficiency Commission with anything more cost-friendly that would still do the same job. Without that, I'm worried the lack of an efficiency oversight committee would let the county commissioners reinstate unwieldly stuff. I'd vote NO. 

And just for those of you still following me for the Pasco County Mosquito Control Board election (Yeah, Mom reminded me by email this Monday), there's two seats (One and Three) up for vote for 2020:

Mosquito Control, Seat 1

Randy Evans (incumbent)
Seth Weightman 

Mosquito Control, Seat 3

James E. Bailey
Shanon R. Holm
Gary W. (Buck) Joiner (incumbent)

In previous years, I had little information to go by as the seats are too minor for the local papers to even name the candidates, but I think I found a site (Vote411 Voter Guide) that tries to cover the local stuff, so I've got the links above set to that site. Weightman didn't provide any info, so he's a blank and I can't recommend. The Seat 3 candidates at least provided responses, but Holm is the only one to check YES on the question about supporting sustainable energy and recognizing the Climate Change issues. So I'd suggest going with Holm if he's on your ballot. These are supposed to be non-partisan seats, so I won't consider a partisan stance on (OH FCK IT, VOTE BLUE IF YOU KNOW IT).

Okay. That's all I got for the Florida balloting. The Early Voting is Monday. Get to it.

#VoteBlue2020 #VoteBidenHarris 

Hell No, trump

So trump dropped a tweet or three this morning, in the middle of a thousand other things happening, where he expressed his interest in suspending the 2020 General (and Presidential) Elections. The excuse was concern over the possibility of "ballot-by-mail fraud" (which still hasn't been proven in court) and the pandemic (which was trump's own damn fault letting it get out of control).

It prompted a day-long Twitter Trend of HELL NO, and brought a lot of angry people to bear worried that trump was now at full dictator mode.

To quote Ian Millhiser at Vox: trump can't do it if he tried.

A trio of federal laws set Election Day for presidential electors, senators, and US representatives as “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.” If Republicans want to change this law, they would need to go through the Democratic House.

The 20th Amendment, moreover, provides that “the terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.” Thus, even if the election were somehow canceled, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s terms would still expire as scheduled — although, as explained below, the question of who would succeed them is devilishly complicated...

trump could try to argue that his emergency powers would override the existing laws, but there's no way he can argue past something written in stone the way the 20th Amendment is. Supreme Court justices, even trumpian Far Right ones, do not take kindly to that kind of scam. And Chief Roberts has already expressed his disdain with trump's legal shenanigans. Back to Millhiser:

Under the 20th Amendment, “the terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d [sic] day of January.” So, if no one is elected to replace these officials, Trump and Pence cease to be elected officials the minute their terms expire on January 20. Members of the House serve two-year terms, so all members of the House will cease to be representatives on January 3; one-third of senators’ terms also expire on that date.

Ordinarily, if the Presidency and Vice Presidency are both vacant at the same time, the office falls to the Speaker of the House. But if there is no election, there will be no Speaker when Trump and Pence’s terms expire because all House seats will become vacant on January 3...

I've seen other arguments online that there's a possibility that Nancy Pelosi, the current serving Speaker, might still qualify under the 25th Amendment because the Speakership still belongs to her. The rules of the House are that she remains so unless voted out from office (which technically did not happen, there just wasn't a vote period), if majority control flipped to another party (which hadn't happened, due to no vote), if she was voted out by a No-Confidence motion (which is rare, and does not apply to this), or if she resigned. Technically, anybody could be voted as Speaker even if they were not elected to the House at all (which did come up during the struggle to find a replacement for Boehner when he retired), so Pelosi as sitting Speaker could remain so if the election was suspended.

But to continue Millhiser's reasoning:

If there is no President, Vice president, or Speaker, the next official in line is the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, a largely ceremonial position that is traditionally held by the most senior member of the majority party. Right now that is Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

But wait! Recall that the terms of many senators also expire on January 3. As it turns out, 23 seats held by Republicans and only 12 seats held by Democrats are up for election this year, so if no election is held, Democrats will have a majority in the Senate once these seats become vacant. Which would mean that Senate Democrats would be able to choose a new President pro tempore. If they follow the tradition of choosing the most senior member of their caucus, that would place Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) next in line for the presidency.

Things actually get even more complicated from here. The 17th Amendment permits state governors to name temporary senators to vacant seats, but not all states allow their governors to do so. It’s also not immediately clear who would be the governor of many states if no election takes place in 2020, because much of the line of succession in those states could be rendered vacant as well...

Personally, if it works out that Pat Leahy ends up as President through all this, I'd be happy because it'd mean we'd get a President who personally stared down the Joker.

It's a pretty thought experiment to try, but the reality is trump can't stop this election cycle: It is hardwired into our system. Not just in the law but by tradition: We held a Presidential election in the middle of a Civil War, for God's sake. he'd have to order a straight-up military coup into the states to shut down the local election setups, especially in the Blue states that won't obey any suspension order he gives.

But that's not trump's true intention here. trump know how to play a long con, and he's setting the groundwork to invalidate the election after it happens. Per David A. Graham at The Atlantic:

Trump has repeatedly and falsely alleged that the election will be tainted by widespread fraud due to increased use of mail-in voting stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. (He has also repeatedly and falsely claimed major fraud in the 2016 election, which he won.) While voting by mail, like all methods, is susceptible to fraud, no evidence suggests widespread fraud that could affect the result of the election...

However, there are legitimate worries about the ability of many Americans to properly and safely vote, and many reasons to fear that the November election will be a train wreck. COVID-19-related complications, including a huge increase in demand for voting by mail and a shortage of polling places and poll workers, threaten to swamp already struggling local election systems. Election experts worry that final election results will not be available for weeks after Election Day, as votes are slowly counted. Any delay in the day of the election would only exacerbate this problem by making it even harder to meet other deadlines. Also under statute, the Electoral College must meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. According to the Constitution, the new presidential term starts at noon on January 20 of the following year...

trump is setting up now his ability to throw a wrench into that process, delaying things through court challenges at every mail-in ballot against him that nothing can get counted in time and force the Electoral College to not even vote. That would send the whole mess into the US House where by a quirk of the election rules each state (50) gets ONE vote (not proportioned out to each Representative), with the majority of each state dominating their single vote (there are 26 controlled by Republicans, one split, 23 controlled by Democrats). It wouldn't matter if Democrats have 230-plus Representatives: It would only matter that Republicans control 26 state delegations. The only way this doesn't work to the Republicans' advantage is if Democrats flip delegation control of three states, but there's no guarantee of that despite the signs of a Blue Wave in congressional elections.

This could happen even if Joe Biden secures both the popular vote (which is likely) and the Electoral vote (which would involve flipping back three to five - even six if Texas goes Blue (!) - states that went barely for trump). Just imagine it: Biden wins 374 EV by securing all the 2012 Blue states plus Arizona and North Carolina and maybe one more, and does so with 70 million voters to trump's 61 million with a nice 53 percent popular count. Yet trump and his Republican cronies still in control of Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Wisconsin contest the votes forcing a delay similar to what happened in 1876, compelling the system to toss it all to a US House where Republicans hold 26 delegations.

It'd be a huge risk to piss off 70 million Americans, but like any political party relying on Minority Rule, the Republicans right now do not give a fuck about the Majority.

Back to Graham:

Trump’s unpopularity is one of the peculiarities of his proposal to delay the election. There aren’t many historical precedents for such a move, but when they exist, they have been undertaken by politicians who are extremely well liked... 

Such leaders could argue that their constituents needed and wanted continuity. Trump, by contrast, is a widely reviled politician. Most of the country feels that things are on the wrong track, and he knows it. This is, in fact, the likely motivation behind this proposal. It’s more a means of preemptively contesting the outcome of an election he fears he will lose than trying to actually move it...

If Trump loses the election in November and wants to argue that he was cheated and the voting was not legitimate, he can’t start on November 4. He needs to lay the groundwork ahead of time—for example, by repeatedly warning that the vote will be fraudulent and rigged, and by telling his supporters that he tried to postpone it but was denied by “Them.”

Some observers have focused on the question of whether a defeated Trump would actually leave office, as required by law, or stage some sort of coup. That still seems tough to envision, though the president’s complete disregard for the rule of law makes it hard to rule anything out. But a concerted effort to undermine the election, and to convince 35 to 45 percent of the electorate that the balloting was never fair, would do its own damage...

Either trump wins by cheating, or he wins by burning everything in his wake as he scurries out the White House door. It's both bluff - to cower us to behave - and threat - making sure his violent obsessive MAGA fans riot over his loss even if Biden tops him with 55 percent of the popular vote and a solid Electoral win.

We are too far into a disastrous trump regime to cower in fear. We've had 232 years of this nation to build our resolve and our faith in the United States to let this tiny, whining Shitgibbon get the better of us.

Vote however you can. Vote by mail even as trump destroys our Postal Service. Vote in person using every safety and health precaution you've got. Overwhelm trump's diminishing support. Overwhelm every Republican attempt to suppress our votes.

Make it so the turnout is so lopsided in favor to the Democratic Party that the state-level Republicans won't risk playing trump's con game to delay the counts.

Make it so the Majority - the TRUE Majority of Americans who want normalcy again, who want a working federal government again - finally gets their say after decades of abuse by a Republican Party that no longer represents us.

Don't play trump's game. Beat him at ours.

Hell No, trump.