Hoist on Trump's Petard of Lies

This is sad but bodes well for Democratic control of the Senate. Some Georgia Republican voters are so convinced, by Trump's egregious lying on the matter, that there is massive fraud in the voting system that they're asking why even show up for the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia on January 5th. (Trump also called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger "the enemy of the people." Raffensperger and his family are dealing with death threats.) Here are some of them quizzing Republican Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel:

In Georgia today- @GOPChairwoman Ronna McDaniel forced to respond to Republicans demanding more effort placed on President Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud- instead of the incredibly important #GASen runoff.
Our report from Marietta: pic.twitter.com/Pf2yxUb8w4

— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) November 28, 2020

Here's CNN's news story following their coverage there.

Just as well, some are calling for a write-in vote for Trump for one of the Georgia senate races. That would be just as good for seeing a Democrat elected, if not both.

Ex-governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal said, in 2013, the Republican party has become "the stupid party." David Brooks, a conservative Republican (back when that meant someone with integrity), had more in Thursday's New York Times, The Rotting of the Republican Mind.

Why Trump Pardoned Flynn

 

Trump Calls America a Shithole Country

Yesterday, Nov 26th, Trump spoke to reporters after participating in a Thanksgiving teleconference with members of the United States Military, at the White House.

He said he would leave the White House when the time came, after the electoral college votes for President-elect Joe Biden. 

“Certainly I will, and you know that,” he said when asked directly about what he will do. It wasn’t quite a concession of defeat but it was the closest to that for a president who had not explicitly said he was going to leave on Jan. 20. Making it clear that his statement didn’t represent a massive change in tone though, Trump immediately continued to say he would keep doubting the results of the election with baseless claims of voter fraud. “I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20th of January, a lot of things. Massive fraud has been found,” he insisted without providing evidence.

Trump said he would leave the White House after he repeatedly danced around the question of whether he would concede to Biden once the electoral college votes. “It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud,” Trump said without evidence. Pressed on the issue, Trump said that if the electoral college votes for Biden “they made a mistake, because this election was a fraud” and repeatedly said that the United States was “like a third world country.” 

There are of course several massive lies in these two paragraphs, and they are ignore only because Trump has shown himself to be a massive, rotten, comical liar all throughout his term who isn't even smart enough to call wolf -- he just half-barks and then staggers down to the village seemingly drunk.

But repeatedly saying the United States is "like a third world country?"

Are the 70+M people who voted for him going to accept that? Or will they just fall down in obedience to whatever their godlike idiot says?

Has Trump ever even been in a third world country? (Which now, by the way, are called developing countries.)

Which? These are the ones he calls "shithole countries," right?  

Are his voters going to stand for that, for being told they live in a shithole country?

Of course they will. Because they have no self-pride -- look at all they have accepted the last four years. Clearly there isn't anything they won't swallow for Trump's fascism, for thinking they are part of his us versus them.

As for the rest of us, we are only too glad to ignore this ignorant, derelict, cretin made impotent and are counting the days until he fades from view. He won't be back in 2024. Even the deplorables will eventually realize they're glad to see him gone, and will soon be on to the next wanna-be fascist.

Hospitals Reaching Limits

As hard as it is to believe....

NYT: US Hospitals Running Out of Beds for Patients

WaPo: In nine states, over 1 in 1,000 people have died of coronavirus-linked causes

NYT: Too few specialists to operate ventilators

We've blown through the line of support.
~90,000 covid patients in the hospital.
Not just beds. Not enough nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists and healthcare professionals to cope.
To provide care.@COVID19Tracking pic.twitter.com/pK0p8JLwbo

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) November 28, 2020

Diego Maradona's Captivating Warm Up

Here's Diego Maradona, who died Wednesday, warming up before a match in 1989, when his S.S.C. Napoli faced FC Bayern Munich in Munich as the stadium's loudspeakers played the song Life is Life. He was so captivating the entire German football team stopped their warm up to watch him. Jürgen Klinsmann, who played in the game (though he got the location wrong,) said

There were 70,000 people in the stadium and Maradona went on the field. We’re on the other side of the field, warming up like Germans: seriously, focused. There's music playing, the song "Live is Life", and to the rhythm of the song Maradona started juggling the ball. So we stopped our warm-up. What's this guy doing? He's juggling off his shoulders. And we couldn't warm up anymore because we had to watch this guy.

Maradona looks like he was born to this song, doesn't it?

A Good Thing Might Be Happening

I think a very good thing is happening. Trump has conceded defeat. He isn't man enough to admit it but he has. He's lost -- he's a loser. As a psychopath who was immensely damaged by his daddy, he can't admit it, and millions of Americans have decided that they must follow this fascist psychopath where ever he goes. And they're going to Parler, a Twitter-like social media platform that allows lies and falsehoods in a way that Twitter does not. On Parler, they're free to spout whatever nonsense they like about how Trump was robbed and millions of votes were cast fraudulently and all the other lies that Trump's lawyers have claimed but can't come close to proving in court and (this is the hilarious part) don't even try. These crazies are now leaving Fox News -- because it is telling too much truth for them -- and moving to OANN (One America News Network) and Newsmax television, who are happy to repeat lies for the sake of views of extremists. OANN just got banned from monetizing on Youtube for pushing a scam cure for COVID. Liars gotta lie. Trump is sharing creepy tweets from Randy Quaid, one of the weirdest Hollywood exiles in recent decades who blew up his career by going on a strange crime spree fully of loopy behavior. Just the guy you want to show your attempt to steal the election is based on solid unimpeachable evidence. But Trump conceded yesterday when he told the snaky Emily Murphy to start the transition, only three weeks late in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century that Trump thinks can be cured by more golfing. The truth is obviously that Trump doesn't care one iota that 1,500 Americans a day are now dying of COVID, equivalent to 550,000 a year, appalling losses that in any war would be shocking and send the country quivering. And Trump could not care less and wants only to keep golfing. It's another big reason why he is an immense failure as president and will easily go down as the worse president in US history, a one-term impeached loser who never won the popular vote, never had an approval rating above 50 percent, whose administration was full of corruption, who, like all Republican presidents ran the economy into a hole, and whose America was reduced considerably on the world stage. Trump is a racist, science-hating, intellect-hating, incompetent manager who offered nothing but bluster during his term, a dirty man who had nothing positive to offer or look up to and who no one but the deplorables would vote for again in 2024, though it won't matter because Trump will be yesterday's toast by then and Republican will be on to their next fascist who won't be making the mistakes of their first fascist. Hopefully all Trump's McDonald's Big Macs will do him dirty and put him out of our misery. 

Anyway all these Trump wackos are leaving for Parler where they can safely play with each other ad infinitum, until one by one they lose interest in even that kind of crazy and it's only the droolers left. Then Parler and Rumble and whoever else can fold like all the priors and conservatives can pretend they're too angry to join the real world again. Is that enough to foment a real revolution? We'll see, esp come 2024 and a reprobate like Tom Cotton runs for president, who will be happy to vacuum up all those reprobates. 

Imagine Living in a Time....

Imagine living in a time when a raging pandemic has left almost 300,000 people dead, Neo-Nazis openly roam the streets, and the president just golfs all day, and thinking the incoming administration will lead to a decline. https://t.co/Gv2YK4wXyF

— Matt Baldwin 🏴‍☠️ (@thisbrokenwheel) November 25, 2020

OSU Robots

Yesterday I was on the campus of Oregon State University to take my sick cat to the small animal hospital there. (It looks like she has FIV.) The campus was empty due to the pandemic, and because all the restaurants and libraries in town were closed I did nothing but walk around some and sit in my car all day -- you can't even go into the hospital with your cat -- an assistant comes out to take you cat in, then the vet calls you to discuss the diagnosis, you make a few decisions, they call you a few hours later, etc -- then at the end of the day they bring your cat back out. 

Anyway as I was meandering around I twice saw these little robots driving around campus. They're about the size of a decent ice cooler with six wheels and a flag on them, completely autonomous, going about 1 m/s. They're delivering food orders around campus. OSU is one of ten campuses in the US where this is being prototyped, invented by the developers of Skype. Since the campus was empty they seemed rather lonely as they traveled around (it's nearly impossible not to anthropomorphize these things), and it would have been interesting to see them when the campus is full of students. (The robotic food delivery service just started about a month ago.) I imagine we're only going to be seeing more of all kinds of robots as the years go by, not just on college campuses but on tech campuses, then eventually on sidewalks and roads and highways (which of course Tesla is already gunning for) and we're simply going to have to accept it. These OSU robots were pretty cool and easy to accept, and I can imagine someday not so far away where robots will be delivering mail and pizzas and dry cleaning, then coming to our homes to do small repairs and medical procedures and trimming the toenails of the elderly. It will be a bit unnerving when they're right behind you on the interstate doing 70 mph, until humans quit driving altogether, and people will look back on today like we view horse-drawn carriages. I wish I could see it.

Biden's Effect on the Stock Market

The S&P 500 has gone up 7.7% since Biden was elected (as of this moment). [It's up 70% since Trump was elected.] So Biden's on pace for some spectacular returns 😁. Also see Paul Krugman, Making the Most of the Coming Biden Boom, NYT 11/19/20.

Simple Gesture Shames German COVID Denier

This is remarkable but remarkably simple. It's in German, but the caption makes it self-explanatory. Sophie Scholl was a famous Nazi resistance activist who was executed at the age of 21. You should read her story. (I had to reload the tweet a few times to get a translation to appear in the video itself. Here's the original link if that helps.)

As a young woman compares herself to Nazi resistance fighter Sophie Scholl at a 'Querdenker' (Covid-denier) rally in Hannover, the disgusted security guard quits on the spot. pic.twitter.com/k7QoTJw41d

— Mike Stuchbery 💀🍷 (@MikeStuchbery_) November 22, 2020

Pennsylvania Court Decision: Dismissed With Prejudice

Here's an excerpt from last night's court decision in Pennsylvania, where the Trump campaign filed to block the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results, alleging "that Republicans had been illegally disadvantaged because some counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots" [WaPo]. The federal judge didn't hold back in ruling against them, citing no evidence:

"Dismissed 'with prejudice' means that the case is dismissed permanently, it cannot be brought back to court, and the charges cannot be refiled. A case that is 'dismissed with prejudice' is completely and permanently over."

Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said they would appeal and expect the case to reach the Supreme Court. There's no guarantee SCOTUS would agree to hear the case. Maybe Hugo Chávez will show up in support of the plaintiffs. 

Arecibo Radio Telescope is Finished

 The Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico will be decommissioned (that is, repairs will no longer be attempted), due to overwhelming damage from, among other issues, cable problems that meant the repairs could not be done safely.

Denying the Coronavirus to the Very End

This is both incredibly sad and disturbing at the same time -- this nurse from South Dakota says some of her COVID-19 patients, even as they are dying, refuse to believe the coronavirus is the reason. What/who has instilled in them such a distrust of institutions, governments and science that they actually believe the virus is not real even to the end? I don't understand it at all. She also has a Twitter thread on this topic here.

A South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be... Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.” pic.twitter.com/tgUgP6znAT

— New Day (@NewDay) November 16, 2020

Excellent Interview with Yale MD Nicholas Christakis

I'm bringing this out of the comments -- thanks Layzej. It's an excellent interview with Yale MD Nicholas Christakis, who also directs their Human Nature Lab. He has a lot of smart and insightful things to say, especially about how what's happening now sociologically and psychologically are no different that what's happened in pandemics throughout history, and how the lies and deceit of Trump and his administration have made the situation much worse. As Layzej highlighted, Christakis says, “I don’t think willful denial will help us. If the plague is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, then lies and denial are its squires,” and that, “If people want to be lied to, they will vote for leaders who will lie to them.” He also has ideas about what lies ahead for the next two to three years....

 

Republicans Stopping At Nothing in Georgia

There is no end to Republican corruption, from the top down. It is a party deeply anathema to democracy, to proportional representation, to voting rights, to vote counting, and to the truth. It is -- there's no other way to put it -- currently seeking to destroy American democracy in order to stay in power. 

From the Washington Post: 

"Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), who he said questioned the validity of legally cast absentee ballots, in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state.

"In a wide-ranging interview about the election, Raffensperger expressed exasperation over a string of baseless allegations coming from Trump and his allies about the integrity of the Georgia results, including claims that Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of Georgia’s voting machines, is a “leftist” company with ties to Venezuela that engineered thousands of Trump votes to be left out of the count.

"The atmosphere has grown so contentious, Raffensperger said, that he and his wife, Tricia, have received death threats in recent days, including a text to him that read: “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.”

“Other than getting you angry, it’s also very disillusioning,” Raffensperger said of the threats, “particularly when it comes from people on my side of the aisle. Everyone that is working on this needs to elevate their speech. We need to be thoughtful and careful about what we say.” He said he reported the threats to state authorities.

"The pressure on Raffensperger, who has bucked his party in defending the state’s voting process, comes as Georgia is in the midst of a laborious hand recount of about 5 million ballots. President-elect Joe Biden has a 14,000-vote lead in the initial count.

"The normally mild-mannered Raffensperger saved his harshest language for Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), who is leading the president’s efforts in Georgia and whom Raffensperger called a “liar” and a “charlatan.”

"Collins has questioned Raffensperger’s handling of the vote and accused him of capitulating to Democrats by not backing allegations of voter fraud more strongly.

"Raffensperger has said that every accusation of fraud will be thoroughly investigated, but that there is currently no credible evidence that fraud occurred on a broad enough scale to affect the outcome of the election...."

Counties Biden Won Account for This Much GDP

Here's an interesting factoid, from the Daily Beast. The article's paywalled, but they offer this an an enticement:

When 306 Was a Landslide

306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic. https://t.co/ObYZDo8cBq

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 28, 2016

Vouching for the Election

At this point, those doubting the election are anti-democratic, at the least. It's pretty clear that they are interested in something other than the results of a free and fair election. What exactly they're after isn't clear. I'm not even sure they know.

Here, DHS=Department of Homeland Security

New statement on election security from DHS: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. ... There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) November 12, 2020

Next, CISA=Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

NEW: Using bold letters, CISA (which is part of DHS), says, "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

A full throated response to unverifiable allegations raised by the President and his allies about votes.

— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) November 12, 2020

State Recounts in the Last 50 Years

"There are only three statewide contests in the past half-century in which recounts changed the outcome."

These races were separated by 355, 261, and 215 votes.

Biden leads in PA by 54,029 votes and in WI by 20,546.https://t.co/cs9pxZQbV1

— Paul Graham (@paulg) November 12, 2020

Biden's leads are now Pennsylvania: 63,056 and Wisconsin: 20,540

Video of Trump's Incessant Whining About Elections

Via WaPo.

Trump Also Cried Massive Fraud After 2016 Election

David A Graham of The Atlantic recalls the last time Trump cried massive fraud, after the 2016 election, when his infantile ego couldn't handle the fact that he'd lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes. He convened a commission that found...nothing:

Despite having won the 2016 election, Trump insisted that he had been denied a victory in the popular vote by 3 million to 5 million unauthorized-immigrant voters. He did not provide any evidence for the claim, because there is none. As voting experts have noted for as long as the fraud claims have circulated, it is impossible to execute fraud on this scale....

Nonetheless, Trump announced in May 2017 that he’d convene a commission to study voter fraud. (This was the same week that the president fired FBI Director James Comey, welcomed Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador, disclosed sensitive intelligence to them, and threatened Comey with the release of fictitious tapes. Also, Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel.)

The titular head of the commission was Vice President Mike Pence, a sign of the importance it held for Trump, but its effective leader was Kris Kobach, a Republican who was then the Kansas secretary of state. Kobach has been one of the most relentless voices claiming voter fraud, and was considered for positions in the Trump administration but not chosen. Several of the other members of the commission were similarly zealous boosters of the voter-fraud claim; there were a couple of token Democrats, too.

Almost immediately, the commission ran into trouble. With no credible evidence of fraud in hand to start proving the conclusion that both Trump and Kobach had clearly already reached, it had to turn something up, fast. In June, Kobach sent a letter to states asking for all publicly available voter data, including names, addresses, voting history, party affiliation, felony convictions, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. (That is the information on which Kobach’s Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, a national database, runs.)

State officials and security experts, including many Republicans, reacted with horror. They said Kobach had offered no secure way to send the information, and in any case, there was no reason to believe that it would prove fraud. Besides, it would cost taxpayer money, could endanger privacy, and in some cases violated state law. “My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great State to launch from,” Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said of the commission and its requests. Election officials also complained that the commission was intimidating voters into canceling their own valid registrations.

These responses reflected an uncomfortable reality for Kobach: Though many Republican election officials support stricter voting laws, including such things as photo-identification requirements, they also take seriously that their job is to run elections smoothly and prevent fraud, and weren’t pleased about the implication that they were failing.

Without most of the data it had requested, and without any other evidence of fraud, the commission was stalled. In September, it held a meeting in New Hampshire to investigate Trump’s claim of fraud there, but Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s secretary of state and a commission member, rebutted the claim. By October, two of the group’s Democrats were complaining that they had been shut out of deliberations and meetings. One of them, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, sued to demand access to commission material, and won.

In January, the group was finally put out of its misery, without releasing any findings. The Trump administration said it would not hand materials over to Dunlap, because the commission no longer existed, but a judge disagreed, and in August 2018, Dunlap released the documents he’d obtained. They showed that in its months of work, the commission had uncovered no evidence of fraud.

Trump's Final Bid For Victory

Trump's Close Advisors Privately Giving In

WaPo, last night:

But even some of the president’s most publicly pugilistic aides, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and informal adviser Corey Lewandowski, have said privately that they are concerned about the lawsuits’ chances for success unless more evidence surfaces, according to people familiar with their views....

[a whole lot of nothing]

One Trump adviser said most of the legal actions did not amount to much, and he expected it to be over by Saturday or Sunday “unless something really changes and we find real evidence....”

Said one adviser of the president who speaks to him regularly: “He wants to sow discontent in the public that the election was illegitimate, so he can say he didn’t lose.”

In other words, Trump is purposely harming democracy, knowingly and seriously, because his childish ego can't admit he's a loser.

Trump's Done the Same Thing Before

When he lost the 2016 Iowa Republican caucus to Ted Cruz:

Trump has a serious mental disturbance.

David Frum Was Right

"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

-- David Frum, The Atlantic, January 18, 2018

Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush.

No Evidence of Voter Fraud

 NY Times:

The Times talked to officials in 49 of 50 states -- Texas election officials wouldn't talk to them, but officials from the largest county in Texas, Harris County, did.

PHILADELPHIA — Election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role in the outcome of the presidential race, amounting to a forceful rebuke of President Trump’s portrait of a fraudulent election....

Some states described small problems common to all elections, which they said they were addressing: a few instances of illegal or double voting, some technical glitches and some minor errors in math. Officials in all states are conducting their own review of the voting — a standard component of the certification process....

The office of the state’s [Pennsylvania's] top law enforcement official said that there was no evidence to support Mr. Giuliani’s claims, and that the election in the state was “fair and secure.”

“Many of the claims against the commonwealth have already been dismissed, and repeating these false attacks is reckless,” said Jacklin Rhoads, a spokeswoman for Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who is Pennsylvania’s attorney general. “No active lawsuit even alleges, and no evidence presented so far has shown, widespread problems.”

The Coup Attempt

 And that's what it is -- an attempted coup d'etat. Biden won handily, and by tens of thousands of votes in PA, AZ, GA, NV, WI, and MI, and there is no evidence of fraud whatsoever. Trump and Republicans are trying to manufacture fraud out of thin air, lying all the way, losing court case after court case. The Republican party is spineless and should be abolished. Mitch McConnell indicates he is fully on board with this attempt to subvert the voter's will. Secretary of State Pompeo made a smart ass comment that the transition he's preparing for it Trump's second term. DOJ's Bill Barr said he's officially investigating fraud -- it's so disgusting his chief lawyer in the Election Fraud division quit. The White House Press Secretary has accused the other side of fomenting fraud. The Texas Lieutenant Governor is offering a reward for evidence of fraud. Georgia senators Perdue and Loeffler called for the resignation of the state's secretary of state and presented no reasons or evidence whatsoever. What is going on?? It is a coordinated attempt to steal the election and give Trump a second term. Because he is such a twisted psychopath he cannot accept losing and being a loser. And most of the Republican party has decided that's just fine, let's help him steal the election.

He's lost every case and the fraud just isn't out there. They look like the Keystone
Cops running around, but they're very serious. It's a national embarrassment, as Biden said today. Not one of them care that they are damaging American democracy. That's the second-to-last thing on Trump's mind -- last is COVID, which is rampaging. 

If SCOTUS somehow gets involved and somehow, someway calls Trump the winner, the protests and riots of this past summer will look like children playing in a sandbox. I will join in marches myself. We have a fascist in the White House and a lunatic. He hasn't called for the Proud Boys yet; let's see if it comes to that. I feel like a fool for being thankful for such a small favor.

This Thing is Getting Unavoidable

And personally that worries me alot. NYT:

“An astonishing number — one in 441 Americans — have tested positive for the virus just in the last week” 

Meanwhile we have an infant in the White House who expects everyone to feel sorry for him. Utterly disgusting. He kills more every day.

Biden/Harris Diversity

 From Jennifer Rubin, a writer at the Washington Post:

Talk about a reflection of America. A Catholic president with a blended family, an African American and Asian American woman VP with a Jewish husband and a blended family. No wonder the MAGA's are freaked. THIS is the face and the soul of American.

— Jennifer 'Count Every Vote' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) November 7, 2020

Relief....

 My sister just texted that she cried tears of joy and relief.... (I'm pretty happy too.)

Biden's Landslide

It looks over now.

306 electoral votes is the same amount Trump received in 2016, when he called his election a "landslide."

Biden now leads in states worth 306 electoral votes. Here's how the map will probably finish pic.twitter.com/jsriBmroWb

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 6, 2020

Such a relief to be finished with this whiny, miserable, fascist, psychopathic monster, who will go down as the worst president in American history.

Trump is Too Disgraceful, Undemocratic to Continue to Lead the U.S.

With his appearance early Wednesday morning, and this tweet, Trump is acting as no American president ever has, as far as I know, and profoundly anti-democratic:

He's talking about votes made before or on Election Day, including members of the military -- over 250,000 members of the military voted by absentee ballot in 2016.

  

What president has ever called for vote counting to be stopped? What president, or even semi-intelligent person, thinks you can "claim" electoral votes??

“We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a Big Trump lead,” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

That's what despots do. It another reason why Trump absolutely has to go. 

Today Biden will probably get to 270 votes by winning Arizona and Nevada and win the stupid Electoral College. [Fox News called Arizona for Biden on Tuesday night, but so far no one else has, AFAIK.] But that leaves too much room for Trump to attempt a coup. So hopefully Biden gets to around 290 electoral votes by winning Pennsylvania and Georgia and he can tell (politely, of course -- Biden is always polite) Trump to shove it go pound sand.

Trump Already Trying to Pull Shit.....

Not even 10 pm Eastern Time, when Trump can't know anything, and already he's whining without any evidence:

We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020

Why is it so many Americans want a liar for President? That's the worst thing.

21.8% Of Vote Can Win Electoral College

"It’s mathematically possible to win the electoral college with less than 22 percent of the popular vote."

 -- Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post

Future

I think after the election is over, and after I write how Trump tries to steal the election and when he finally concedes (the bastard), it's time for me to really put this blog aside for at least awhile so I can fully focus on other things. My freelance career is flagging, for reasons not just because of a lack of attention, if that's what I want to keep doing, but still. I'm trying to write a book, with some success with the draft at least, about 1/3rd done since June (it's not about science, and I'm sure it won't sell anything at all, not even a few dozen copies, or get a publisher, but I have to try nonetheless). I'd like to move somewhere where I can afford to live, probably outside the US. 

I really do -- I do -- appreciate all of you who are here who read and comment, but I usually spend about 45-60 minutes a day and that's a fair bit of time that's getting more difficult to justify when it means I might be able to get some paying freelance articles out or some queries or, over weeks, a few dozen more pages of my book. Or maybe the next one, who knows. 

Blog views per month aren't going anywhere:

Yeah, you've heard this before. I don’t care. 

Blogs are over anyway.

Jason Isbell - 24 Frames

God Help Us

Trump talks about running again in 2024. Hopefully he'll be in prison by then.

He has said this in a non-joking way to people as well. The idea people had that a president with this tight a grip on his party so far would step off stage - even if he accepts a defeat - was never realistic https://t.co/3TE9Uh6S2W

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 3, 2020

How Trump Plans to Steal the Election

Trump has been vocal in the last few days about his strategy for stealing the election, which looks more and more like it will be an easy win for Biden. He will pretend that vote counting has always ended on the night of election day (it has not; that's just when network's call it), then send in hoards of lawyers to fight any other notion in the courts, and claim that attempts to count all votes after Nov. 3rd are a Democratic attempt to steal the election. He and his propagandist(s) have already said so.

“I think he’s trying to set-up a fraud... on his own supporters and the entire electoral system to justify actions that he's contemplating taking after the polls have closed,” John Bolton says on Pres. Trump possibly prematurely declaring victory before all ballots are counted. pic.twitter.com/uDE5Xd7Ede

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) November 2, 2020

Trump advisers said their best hope was if the president wins Ohio and Florida is too close to call early in the night, depriving Biden a swift victory and giving Trump the room to undermine the validity of uncounted mail-in ballots in the days after. https://t.co/IMVciQtWJC

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 1, 2020

Trump on the ongoing legal battles over counting ballots after Nov. 3: "Hopefully the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after November 3rd to count ballots, that won't be allowed by the various courts." pic.twitter.com/ckryTBuX0j

— The Recount (@therecount) October 28, 2020

Axios:

The latest: Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Trump denied that he would declare victory prematurely, before adding, "I think it's a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. I think it's a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over."

Finally, let's hear from Trump's professioal liar:

Trump adviser Jason Miller: "If you speak with many smart Dems, they believe that Trump will be ahead on election night ... and then [Dems will] try to steal it back after the election."

(Stephanopoulos does not challenge Miller that counting all ballots ≠ "stealing.") pic.twitter.com/FMApbmVlRa

— The Recount (@therecount) November 1, 2020

Trump Has Already Raised Upcoming Taxes

 From Economist (and Nobel Laureate) Joseph Steiglitz in Saturday's NY Times:

"The Trump administration has a dirty little secret: It’s not just planning to increase taxes on most Americans. The increase has already been signed, sealed and delivered, buried in the pages of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

"President Trump and his congressional allies hoodwinked us. The law they passed initially lowered taxes for most Americans, but it built in automatic, stepped tax increases every two years that begin in 2021 and that by 2027 would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019."

Read it all for specific numbers, like

"The current poverty line for a family of four is $26,200: People with incomes between $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among those scheduled to pay a higher average tax rate in 2021 than in years before the tax “cut” was passed. The C.B.O. and Joint Committee estimated that those with an income of $20,000 to $30,000 would owe an extra $365 next year — these are people who are struggling just to pay rent and put food on the table."

and

"At the same time, Trump has given his peers, people with annual incomes in excess of $1 million dollars, or the top 0.3 percent in the country, a huge gift: The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the average tax rate in 2019 for this group to be 2.3 percentage points lower than before the tax cut, saving the average taxpayer in this group over $64,000 — more than the average American family makes in a year."

Trump's Approval Rating Points to His Defeat

Henry Olsen in the Washington Post writes that (and I've read this elsewhere) "historically, presidents who run for reelection receive a share of the popular vote that is remarkably close to their final job approval rating."

The RealClearPolitics polling average has tracked Trump’s job approval throughout his presidency. He is the first president to have never received a 50 percent rating; indeed, he has never come close. Trump’s highest marks came this year between March 26 and April 2, when he topped 47 percent. As of Sunday morning, his job approval stood at 45 percent in the RealClearPolitics average. Given that there won’t be as much third-party voting this time around, that just won’t be good enough to win.

Here are some charts comparing Trump's approval ratings throughout his presidency to the first terms of each president going back to Jimmy Carter:

Trump's rating is below everyone who won a second term.

Later I'll post about how Trump is apparently planning to steal the election. 

Not Everyone in Texas is Corrupt, BUT....

Texas Supreme Court denies GOP-led petition seeking to invalidate 120,000 votes in Houston area - CNNPolitics

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/politics/harris-county-texas-drive-thru-voting/index.html

But the federal case, which I assume is still alive, has landed in front of who's said to be an extremely partisan conservative judge. Read this first paragraph of this paywalled story in Slate:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/texas-drive-through-voting-throw-out-ballots.html

Republicans clearly don't think they can win if all the votes are counted, and not just in Texas. So they need to put democracy in a headlock.