Sunday, November 29, 2020

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:

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 TimesThe Rotting of the Republican Mind.

Friday, November 27, 2020

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

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?

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

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....

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.

Sunday, November 22, 2020

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.)

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. 

Thursday, November 19, 2020

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.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

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.

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....
 

Monday, November 16, 2020

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...."

Sunday, November 15, 2020

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:

Saturday, November 14, 2020

Friday, November 13, 2020

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


Next, CISA=Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

State Recounts in the Last 50 Years


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