[johnu]

An inside look at the utter incompetence and virus deniers in the Manchurian President's Trump Virus response.

The inside story of how Trump’s denial, mismanagement and magical thinking led to the pandemic’s dark winter

Quote

Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat and a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, later revealed his identity and, in an interview with The Washington Post, described a group of smart and earnest volunteers who were, at best, out of their depth and, at worst, asked to do things they felt uncomfortable doing.

Kennedy said that Brad Smith, the director of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and a friend of Kushner, asked him and another volunteer to make a coronavirus model for 2020 that specifically projected a low casualty count. When Kennedy noted that he had no training in epidemiology and had never modeled a virus before, he recalled, Smith told him that it was just like making a financial model. The other models made by the health experts, Smith explained, were “too catastrophic.”

“‘They think 250,000 people could die and I want this model to show that fewer than 100,000 people will die in the worst-case scenario,’ ” Kennedy said Smith told him. “He gave us the numbers he wanted it to say.”

Obviously 250,000 dying was an absolutely ridiculous and made up number since we are at 320,000 with another 100,000 projected before the Grifter in Chief leaves office.

[shyams]

This is a satirical video made by one of the Dutch programmes (this one was first played a few days after the elections)

https://youtu.be/PnsP1zhpNxE


The same team had made the video below four years ago (after Trump assumed office). I recall it had gone viral four years ago.

https://youtu.be/3k_E8huQR8I



PS: Both videos are in English.

[y66]

Can Antonio Mugica stem the tide of slime?

Ben Smith at NYT said:

https://www.nytimes....896ed87b2d9c72a

Antonio Mugica was in Boca Raton when an American presidential election really melted down in 2000, and he watched with shocked fascination as local government officials argued over hanging chads and butterfly ballots.

It was so bad, so incompetent, that Mr. Mugica, a young Venezuelan software engineer, decided to shift the focus of his digital security company, Smartmatic, which had been working for banks. It would offer its services to what would obviously be a growth industry: electronic voting machines. He began building a global company that ultimately provided voting machinery and software for elections from Brazil to Belgium and his native Venezuela. He even acquired an American company, then called Sequoia.

Last month, Mr. Mugica initially took it in stride when his company’s name started popping up in grief-addled Trump supporters’ wild conspiracy theories about the election.

“Of course I was surprised, but at the same time, it was pretty clear that these people were trying to discredit the election and they were throwing out 25 conspiracy theories in parallel,” he told me in an interview last week from Barbados, where his company has an office. “I thought it was so absurd that it was not going to have legs.”

But by Nov. 14, he knew he had a problem. That’s when Rudy Giuliani, serving as the president’s lawyer, suggested that one voting company, Dominion Voting Systems, had a sinister connection to vote counts in “Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and other states.” Mr. Giuliani declared on Twitter that the company “was a front for SMARTMATIC, who was really doing the computing. Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?”

Soon his company, and a competitor, Dominion — which sells its services to about 1,900 of the county governments that administer elections across America — were at the center of Mr. Giuliani’s and Sidney Powell’s theories, and on the tongues of commentators on Fox News and its farther-right rivals, Newsmax and One America News.

“Sidney Powell is out there saying that states like Texas, they turned away from Dominion machines, because really there’s only one reason why you buy a Dominion machine and you buy this Smartmatic software, so you can easily change votes,” the Newsmax host Chris Salcedo said in one typical mash-up on Nov. 18. Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business reported on Nov. 15 that “one source says that the key point to understand is that the Smartmatic system has a backdoor.”

Here’s the thing: Smartmatic wasn’t even used in the contested states. The company, now a major global player with over 300 employees, pulled out of the United States in 2007 after a controversy over its founders’ Venezuelan roots, and its only involvement this November was with a contract to help Los Angeles County run its election.

In an era of brazen political lies, Mr. Mugica has emerged as an unlikely figure with the power to put the genie back in the bottle. Last week, his lawyer sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name — and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. He has, legal experts say, an unusually strong case. And his new lawyer is J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, at least $177 million, for a beef producer whose “lean finely textured beef” was described by ABC News as “pink slime.”

Now, Mr. Connolly’s target is a kind of red slime, the stream of preposterous lies coming from the White House and Republican officials around the country.

“We’ve gotten to this point where there’s so much falsity that is being spread on certain platforms, and you may need an occasion where you send a message, and that’s what punitive damages can do in a case like this,” Mr. Connolly said.In an era of brazen political lies, Mr. Mugica has emerged as an unlikely figure with the power to put the genie back in the bottle. Last week, his lawyer sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name — and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. He has, legal experts say, an unusually strong case. And his new lawyer is J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, at least $177 million, for a beef producer whose “lean finely textured beef” was described by ABC News as “pink slime.”

Now, Mr. Connolly’s target is a kind of red slime, the stream of preposterous lies coming from the White House and Republican officials around the country.

“We’ve gotten to this point where there’s so much falsity that is being spread on certain platforms, and you may need an occasion where you send a message, and that’s what punitive damages can do in a case like this,” Mr. Connolly said.

Mr. Mugica isn’t the only potential plaintiff. Dominion Voting Systems has hired another high-powered libel lawyer, Tom Clare, who has threatened legal action against Ms. Powell and the Trump campaign. Mr. Clare said in an emailed statement that “we are moving forward on the basis that she will not retract those false statements and that it will be necessary for Dominion to take aggressive legal action, both against Ms. Powell and the many others who have enabled and amplified her campaign of defamation by spreading damaging falsehoods about Dominion.”

These are legal threats any company, even a giant like Fox Corporation, would take seriously. And they could be fatal to the dream of a new “Trump TV,” a giant new media company in the president’s image, and perhaps contributing to his bottom line. Newsmax and OAN would each like to become that, and are both burning money to steal ratings from Fox, executives from both companies have acknowledged. They will need to raise significantly more money, or to sell quickly to investors, to build a Fox-style multibillion-dollar empire. But outstanding litigation with the potential of an enormous verdict will be enough to scare away most buyers.

And so Newsmax and OAN appear likely to face the same fate as so many of President Trump’s sycophants, who have watched him lie with impunity and imitated him — only to find that he’s the only one who can really get away with it. Mr. Trump benefits from presidential immunity, but also he has an experienced fabulist’s sense of where the legal red lines are, something his allies often lack. Three of his close aides were convicted of lying, and Michael Cohen served more than a year in prison. (Trump pardoned Michael Flynn and commuted the sentence of Roger Stone.)

OAN and Newsmax have been avidly hyping Mr. Trump’s bogus election claims. OAN has even been trying to get to Newsmax’s right, by continuing to reject Joe Biden’s status as president-elect. But their own roles in propagating that lie could destroy their businesses if Mr. Mugica sues.

The letters written by lawyers for Smartmatic and Dominion are “extremely powerful,” said Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s most prominent First Amendment lawyers, in an email to The New York Times. “The repeated accusations against both companies are plainly defamatory and surely have done enormous reputational and financial harm to both.”

Mr. Abrams noted that “truth is always a defense” and that, failing that, the networks may defend themselves by saying they didn’t know the charges were false, while Ms. Powell may say she was simply describing legal filings.

“It is far too early to predict how the cases, if commenced, will end,” he said. “But it is not too early to say that they would be highly dangerous to those sued.”

[y66]

Peter Nicholas at The Atlantic said:

People who work for President Donald Trump typically meet one of two fates. They fail to show the unthinking loyalty he demands and get fired. Or, maybe worse, they don’t get fired—they endure the tantrums and turmoil and survive another day, binding themselves even closer to perhaps history’s most divisive president.

Anyone who went to work for Trump inside or outside the government surely knew the terms of the bargain. They’d be answering to an untested and impulsive president. They weren’t getting Dwight Eisenhower as a boss—they were getting Dwight Schrute.

Was it worth it? I asked nine seasoned officials, credentialed lawyers, flameouts, worker bees, operatives—some who voted for Trump twice, some who absorbed his harshest attacks. They all insisted that it was.

Plenty of Republicans refused to work for Trump. Those who signed up found various ways to justify their choices. A powerful mythology surrounds the presidency. Many see the Oval Office as the place where wars are won and economies rescued, making a job offer from the duly elected president an irresistible tug.

“The vast majority of people who worked in the White House were decent people who were doing the best they could to serve the nation,” John Kelly, the second and longest-serving of Trump’s four White House chiefs of staff, told me. “They’ve unfortunately paid quite a price for that in reputation and future employment. They don’t deserve that. They deserve better than that, because they kept the train from careening off the tracks.

“The climate—the work environment—is always set by the boss,” added Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who left as his rapport with Trump deteriorated. “And people, generally speaking, endured it as long as they could. Until they couldn’t.”

Many of the people I spoke with drew a distinction when describing their work: It wasn’t the man they were serving, but the nation. (Trump often conflates the two, equating his interests with America’s). “I believed then and now I worked for the country,” Ty Cobb, who served as the chief White House lawyer handling the response to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, told me. “I didn’t really have any difficulty with that. People’s reactions were frequently hostile when they found out what I was doing. How hypocritical is it to think that the Democrats deserve the best people and Republicans don’t? I have served both. It’s the same country.”

Others argued that boycotting the Trump administration would have exposed the country to more harm. Even John Bolton isn’t sorry he took the job. Bolton—who was ousted last year as national security adviser, quickly became a target of Trump’s, and is now among the president’s most outspoken critics—saw himself as a bulwark against an untutored president. “He wasn’t prepared when he went in, and on January 20, he’ll be barely more prepared than when he started,” Bolton told me. Working on important national-security issues under Trump “really has added significance” because of the dangers the president posed. “That’s not to say that there’s a record of achievement—more a record of damage control. But that just highlights the reason to do it.”

From the start, motivations for joining Team Trump were complex. Public service may have been part of it, along with getting a platform to advance pet issues, such as the installation of conservative judges. But the job also has undeniable cachet. “There’s an allure to being part of the White House and working close to the president—even when that president is someone as despicable as Donald Trump,” Andrew McCabe, a former senior FBI official who took part in the bureau’s Russia investigation and was repeatedly disparaged by Trump, told me.

No one apart from Trump’s blood relatives could depend on his loyalty. Brad Parscale, the digital director for Trump’s 2016 campaign who was elevated to campaign manager for 2020, was part of Trump’s inner circle and became something of a celebrity in his own right. (At a rally in Minneapolis last year, I watched him wade through the crowd chatting with appreciative supporters, a campaign-staff entourage in tow.) But in July, Trump abruptly demoted him as Joe Biden built a strong lead in the polls. Two months later, Parscale, citing “overwhelming stress,” announced that he was leaving the campaign following a confrontation with police outside his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home.

A person familiar with Parscale’s views told me that the campaign “took a toll on every aspect” of his life, and some of his own family members refused to talk to him because of his work on Trump’s behalf. He had thought that Trump was loyal to him too, but came away believing that the president had “hurt him,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. Still, “half of America” feels it was “a great thing” that Trump became president in the first place, and Parscale helped make that happen. That’s justification enough for Parscale, who’s convinced the job was worth it, the person told me.

Like Parscale, Alan Dershowitz weathered a biting social backlash. The Harvard law professor emeritus, who spoke on the president’s behalf during his impeachment trial, has represented unpopular figures in the past—O. J. Simpson among them. Nothing compares to the fallout from defending Trump.

After Trump was acquitted, the 82-year-old got a letter from someone he knew telling him that the person could “no longer share society with you,” Dershowitz told me. An agent told his daughter, an actor, that she should change her last name if she hoped to get more roles. Dinner invitations have dried up—though that might actually be a blessing. “It’s so easy for me to socially isolate [during the pandemic] because no one wants to talk to me because I defended Trump in front of the Senate,” he said. “I lost 10 pounds on what I call the ‘Trump diet’ because no one invites me to dinner.”

So was it worth it? I asked. It was, he said. And in any case, “isn’t it better that he was thrown out of office by a vote for the people than by 100 senators?” Dershowitz said. “Isn’t that better for the country?”

https://www.theatlan...3MDUwMTE4MTk0S0

[y66]

David Leonhardt at NYT said:

For many Americans, the coronavirus recession has done almost no damage to their finances. They still have their jobs, and their expenses have gone down while they’ve been stuck mostly at home. Their homes have not lost value, unlike during the financial crisis of 2007-9. If they are fortunate enough to own stocks, their portfolio is probably worth more than a year ago.

Of course, millions of other Americans are struggling mightily. Nine million fewer people are employed than a year ago. Others are coping with big medical bills. Many small businesses have closed or may soon. State and local governments are planning deep cuts.

The $900 billion stimulus bill that Congress passed last night will provide a lot of help to the economy. But many economists believe that it also has major flaws. Among them: It isn’t especially targeted at the parts of the economy that need help.

A central part of the stimulus are one-time checks that the government will mail to people. Any household with income below $150,000 will likely receive at least $1,200. Families with children will receive more.

Much of that money will go to Americans who are doing just fine and who will save the money they receive, which in turn will do nothing to keep struggling businesses afloat or keep workers employed. Already, the personal savings rate had risen to about 14 percent this fall, from 8 percent at the start of the year.

At the same time, the bill provides only 11 weeks of expanded unemployment insurance. “That’s not enough to bridge us to when a vaccine is widely distributed,” Ernie Tedeschi, a former Treasury Department economist, wrote yesterday. In all, the bill spends less on the expanded jobless benefits than on the stimulus checks.

An even bigger issue is the lack of help for state and local governments. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, insisted on excluding such aid, saying it would be a bailout for fiscally irresponsible states. Many economists disagree and point to the pandemic’s toll on state budgets.

“Economists are especially concerned that the final deal stripped out new funding for state and local governments, which is likely to lead to more job cuts and higher taxes in parts of the country,” The Washington Post’s Heather Long wrote. Larry Johnson, a county commissioner in the Atlanta area, said, “Congress leaving out local aid is like the Grinch that stole Christmas.”

And Tracy Gordon of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center told Bloomberg CityLab, “I’m incredulous that they’re not providing state and local aid.” Among the likely areas for the cuts that state and local government will have to make: public transportation, police and fire departments, schools and health care programs.

The bottom line: The stimulus plan seems big enough to keep the economy from falling into a new recession early next year. But a different plan could have prevented more economic hardship than this one will.

More on the bill:

• It includes a ban on surprise medical bills from doctors who people didn’t realize were outside their insurance networks. “The legislation overcame strong pushback from doctor and hospital groups, which worried new rules would cut into their profits,” The Times’s Sarah Kliff says.
  
• The bill also includes funding for two new Smithsonian museums, one focusing on Latino-Americans and one on women.
  
• David Roberts, author of the Volts newsletter, says journalists have underplayed the fact that Democrats favored a bigger bill that would have helped the economy more while Republicans insisted on a smaller one.
  
• Omar Wasow of Princeton University says it “seems likely” that President Trump would have won re-election if he had agreed to the $2.2 trillion bill Nancy Pelosi was pushing this fall.

[Winstonm]

I think I know how to get Trump supporters to wear masks - we tell them the new strain of virus is so contagious that the CDC is recommending full body covering, so a robe with a hood that covers the entire head except for two holes for eyes is suggested. You know, weekend wear.

[y66]

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg said:

I really didn’t want to write about outgoing President Donald Trump again this month, but he’s still the president, and his behavior is increasingly … I don’t know the right word, really. Unsettling? Dangerous? Disturbing? All of the above?

Whatever the description, his efforts to undermine democracy and somehow overturn the lawfully conducted election have continued and become more desperate. As the Washington Post puts it: “Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits,” including unfortunately several members of the House, to somehow make the impossible happen.

There’s no reason to fear that Trump will actually succeed. He can issue all the bogus executive orders he wants to confiscate voting machines in states he didn’t win, but honest election administrators and elected officials in those states (Democrats and Republicans) won’t follow those illegal orders. Nor will the courts take Trump’s side. The even more outlandish talk about declaring martial law and somehow holding new “elections”? Again, presidents simply don’t have the authority to do it. And any attempt to ignore the law and do it anyway won’t work when Republican officials aren’t close to being unified behind it. Even previously loyal Attorney General Bill Barr shot down some of Trump’s other (also unlawful) demands on Monday.

As far as attempts to throw out the regularly chosen electors when Congress meets in a joint session on Jan. 6 to record their votes? The House, with its Democratic majority, certainly won’t do that. And Senate Majority Whip John Thune made it clear that even if Republicans retain their majority they have no interest in such a scheme: “I think the thing they got to remember is, it’s not going anywhere. I mean in the Senate, it would go down like a shot dog.” And a congressional challenge to the electors, while utterly without merit and undemocratic, is still less nutty than some of the other things Trump’s team is considering.

That Trump will not succeed, however, doesn’t make his talk and actions harmless. Each time he breaks another guardrail, he makes it that much easier for the next would-be autocrat to do the same. Each time he acts as if it’s perfectly normal that election results should turn on raw political power, rather than on what the voters say, he makes it more likely that future elected officials will attempt to do just that. Each time he lies about fictional voter fraud — and he still hasn’t come close to producing evidence for even small irregularities in the election — he not only convinces his strongest supporters that the election was stolen, but he degrades everyone’s faith in all election returns.

The question is what can be done about this. The answer, alas, is not much. I’ve previously argued that President-elect Joe Biden is correct to downplay Trump’s nonsense, and I still think that’s true. Nor is there much for House Democrats to do. Sure, they could return to Washington and hold hearings, but what is there really to say? They could impeach Trump a second time, a fate he richly deserves. But unless Republicans in the Senate were on board, there wouldn’t be much of a point to that either.

Those Senate Republicans are the ones who could put a stop to it all. They could threaten to remove Trump if he persists. (Yes, there’s not enough time for the House to do a regular impeachment process and for the Senate to hold a full trial, but neither are required by the constitution — if the votes were there, both chambers could get it done in a week.) Such a threat might be enough to ensure they wouldn’t actually have to go through with it. Or they could follow up on what Thune said Monday and make a more public condemnation of the president. Even if that didn’t stop him, it might reduce the damage.

But it’s also not likely to happen, since attacking Trump would risk their own popularity and future re-elections. (Trump is already attacking Senator Mitch McConnell for accepting the election results weeks after they were clear.) It also would put their majority at immediate risk, given that Trump could react by urging his supporters to stay home in the upcoming Georgia runoff elections. But we should be clear: Outside of the people actively plotting with the president, it’s Republican senators who bear the most responsibility for constantly enabling him when they could’ve reined him in. It’s a sorry record.

29 DAYS 02 HOURS 18 MINUTES

[y66]

Nicholas Fandos, Luke Broadwater and Emily Cochrane at NYT said:

A week before Thanksgiving, a small group of moderate senators gathered in the spacious living room of Senator Lisa Murkowski’s home on Capitol Hill to embark on what they considered an urgent assignment.

They were there — eating Tuscan takeout as they sat socially distanced, with the windows open to let the cold air circulate as a coronavirus precaution — to talk about how to get the Senate, polarized and paralyzed on nearly every issue, working again.

They were also determined to find a way to deliver a more immediate kind of relief, brainstorming how to break a monthslong partisan stalemate over providing a new round of federal aid to millions of Americans and businesses buckling under the economic weight of the coronavirus pandemic.

The stimulus deal they began discussing that evening ultimately showed that both were possible. In hatching the compromise, the centrists provided a backbone for the $900 billion relief measure that Congress approved late Monday. Perhaps just as important, they delivered a template for the kind of bipartisan deal-making that will be crucial to getting Congress to function again in the Biden era, when tiny majorities in both chambers will force the parties to find their way to the center to accomplish any major initiative.

“I think divided government can be an opportunity,” said Ms. Murkowski, an Alaska Republican. “How we take that up, how we choose to use it, is up to us.”

With President Trump almost entirely absent from the talks, it took quiet prodding from President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., a month of frenzied negotiating by the moderates — on Zoom calls, in parking lots and over late-night sessions on Capitol Hill fueled by pizza and moonshine — intense bargaining by party leaders and several near-misses with a government shutdown to produce the final product. Two dozen lawmakers and aides described the legislative drive.

That November night at Ms. Murkowski’s house, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah and a former management consultant, had arrived ready with a proposal outlined on his iPad. But it was Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, whose presence at the gathering raised some eyebrows among the Republicans, who chimed in with the suggestion that set the tone.

Forget about a sweeping stimulus initiative, Mr. Durbin said. What we need here is a limited, emergency plan to get the country through March.

... more

[A month later, Rs and Ds] ultimately struck an agreement shortly before midnight, after haggling on the floor and in Mr. Schumer’s suite. It took another 18 hours before Mr. McConnell could walk onto the Senate floor and announce the deal.

By then, the moderates who kicked off the process had been relegated to the sidelines, left to wait and see if the stimulus effort could beat the odds. Several nights earlier, in a large Senate conference room, Mr. Manchin had opened a bottle of his West Virginia moonshine, which he likes to call “farm fuel,” to toast whatever was to come.

“It took the enamel off my teeth,” Mr. Durbin said. “But it tasted pretty good.”

[PassedOut]

Dana Milbank fills us in on the new senator from Alabama: Trump’s final hope rests with Tommy Tuberville. Sad!

Quote

President-unelect Trump has studied every play in the Coups-for-Dummies playbook: court challenges, pressure on Republican officials to overturn the election, even a half-baked plan for martial law from pardoned convict Michael Flynn. But no luck.

Now, Trump’s final hope rests with Tommy Tuberville.

This is like finding out your death-row appeal will be argued by Sidney Powell.

Tuberville — or “Tubs,” from his college football coaching days — is the Republican senator-elect from Alabama, and he’s proposing to object to the election results in the Senate on Jan. 6. Trump exulted: “Great senator.”

Problem is, Tubs, if he were a Democrat, is what Trump might call a “low-IQ individual.” In their wisdom, the voters of Alabama chose to replace Democrat Doug Jones, who prosecuted the Birmingham church bombing, with a man who recently announced his discovery that there are “three branches of government,” namely, “the House, the Senate and the executive.”

In an interview with the Alabama Daily News, he also offered the insight that World War II was not, as many suppose, a conflict against Nazism. “My dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of socialism,” he said.

He further informed the newspaper that “in 2000 Al Gore was president, United States, president-elect, for 30 days.” (Actual number of days Gore spent as president-elect: zero.)

For obvious reasons, Tubs avoided debates and interviews during the campaign. Even so, he imparted some extraordinary wisdom.

On climate change: “There’s one person that changes the climate in this country and that’s God,” he told Alabama’s Daily Mountain Eagle.

On the opioid epidemic: “It’s not just opioids now, it’s heroin …”

On health care: “We don’t have the answer until we go back to open up being a capitalistic health-care system where we have more than one insurance company.” (There are 952 health insurers in the United States.)

Yep, no wonder Trump thinks he'll be a "great senator;" Tubs talks just like Trump. With Tubs calling the plays, Trump will be back on top in no time.

[kenberg]

PassedOut, on 2020-December-22, 09:20, said:

Dana Milbank fills us in on the new senator from Alabama: Trump’s final hope rests with Tommy Tuberville. Sad!


Yep, no wonder Trump thinks he'll be a "great senator;" Tubs talks just like Trump. With Tubs calling the plays, Trump will be back on top in no time.

There are times when it is impossible to find the right words.

I have previously mentioned that when my high school teacher suggested that I write a paper on Freud I said "Who's Freud?" But I was 17, I was interested on cars, physics and girls i some order, and dinner discussions at home were about fishing. And, for that matter, I knew the three branches of government.

I am so ready, so so so ready, for Donald Trump, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and now Tubs, this latest entry in the idiocy sweepstakes, to be history. 29 more days, is that right? It will be a long wait.

Otherwise put: Goodnight sweet prince. Now get the **** out of here.

[Winstonm]

Turns out there was election fraud - by a Republican!

Quote

A Pennsylvania man is facing up to 19 years in prison after prosecutors say he admitted to illegally casting a ballot in the general election for President Donald Trump as his dead mother and also registering his dead mother-in-law to vote with the intent to do the same.

[Winstonm]

Youi know you have reached an alternate universe when the crazies begin to eat their children:

Quote

Newsmax in particular is sweating bullets, which is how you get the following exhibition from Dr. Sebastian Gorka, PhD, whose doctor status seems to get less scrutiny than Jill Biden's. He hosted Mike Lindell, better known as the MyPillow Guy and, in these precincts, as a true icon of Donald Trump's televised unreality. This is an incredible moment, as the MyPillow Guy prepares to launch himself into some indecipherable gobbledygook about how Dominion is a front for the COMMUNIST CHINESE only for Dr. Sebastian Gorka, PhD, to cut him off. Why would the good doctor put a stop to the generation of such primo rage content—unless, perhaps, his producers are in his ear?

Fear and loathing about Dominion lawsuits, maybe?

[shyams]

Nicholas Fandos, Luke Broadwater and Emily Cochrane at NYT said:

...

It's interesting that the "leaders" from both sides get so much prominence in the NY Times article while there's a mere passing reference to Sen Josh Hawley & Sen Bernie Sanders. I wonder if the $600 cheques would have made it into the final text if Hawley hadn't threatened to block everything and force all legislators to work over Christmas.

[johnu]

y66, on 2020-December-22, 08:42, said:

29 DAYS 02 HOURS 18 MINUTES

Or, in Manchurian President measurements, another 100,000+ Trump Virus deaths in the US.

[johnu]

Winstonm, on 2020-December-22, 12:34, said:

Turns out there was election fraud - by a Republican!

The only "organized" voting fraud case in the past couple of years has been by Republicans.

North Carolina GOP Operative Faces New Felony Charges That Allege Ballot Fraud

[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2020-December-22, 15:02, said:

Or, in Manchurian President measurements, another 100,000+ Trump Virus deaths in the US.

Or in Trump-years, about 203

[Chas_P]

Merry Christmas guys. Or Hanukkah. Or Ramadan. Or Kwanzaa. Or whatever pushes your hot button. May your holidays be filled with love of family and your fellow man. We survived four years of Jimmy Carter, eight years of Barack Obama, four years of Donald Trump; we are all Americans and I'm confident we can survive four years of Joe Biden. Best wishes.

[Zelandakh]

Sadly well over 11 million Americans did not survive 4 years of Donald Trump. The death rate is the worst it has been for at least 30 years and, at the rate he is killing American citizens, most likely considerably longer.

[johnu]

Chas_NoHonor_NoDignity_NoIntegrity, on 2020-December-22, 18:55, said:

-- Ultra right fringe bullsh*t barely masquerading as season greatings deleted --

[y66]

David Leonhardt at NYT said:

Americans under the age of 40 vote at relatively low rates. They also lean left politically. The same is true of Latinos and Asian-Americans.

This combination has helped feed a widespread belief that an increase in voter turnout would benefit Democrats. People ranging from Bernie Sanders to President Trump have made that claim. So have I: “The country’s real silent majority prefers Democrats,” I wrote in 2017.

I now think that’s at least partly wrong, and I want to explain today.

First, a little background: A decade ago, the journalist Dave Weigel — now a Washington Post reporter — introduced a concept he called pundit accountability. The idea was that journalists make a lot of analytical judgments and that we should occasionally revisit them to acknowledge what we got right and wrong. Doing so is a sign of respect to readers and can make us better at our jobs going forward.

Over the years, several journalists have picked up on Weigel’s idea, especially around the end of the year. I’m doing so with today’s newsletter.

I’ll start with the more pleasant side of accountability. In hindsight, I feel good about pieces explaining why Trump was unlikely to win re-election, why Democrats should hope Joe Biden would run for president and why the U.S. would struggle to contain the coronavirus.

I feel less good about largely writing off Biden after he lost New Hampshire and Iowa and about treating the 2020 polls credulously. The common thread: Politics is less predictable than we journalists sometimes imagine. I’ll try to do a better job of remembering that.

That idea also helps to explain the misperceptions on voter turnout. In 2020, turnout soared, yet Democrats did worse than expected. Yes, they defeated Trump, but they failed to retake the Senate (for now) and lost ground in the House and in state legislatures.

How could this be, when the big demographic groups with low voter turnout — Millennials, Latinos and Asian-Americans — lean left?

Because the infrequent voters in these groups are less liberal than the frequent voters. “Latino nonvoters, for example, seem to have a higher opinion of Trump than Latino voters,” Yanna Krupnikov, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, told me. Over all, nonvoters split roughly evenly between Democratic leaners and Republican ones, a recent Knight Foundation study found.

Once you think it through, the pattern makes some sense. It involves social class.

People who don’t vote (or who didn’t until 2020) are more likely to be working class — that is, not to have college degrees — than reliable voters, Knight concluded. And working-class Americans are more conservative on several big issues, including abortion, guns and immigration. They’re also less trusting of institutions and elites.

The fact that turnout surged this year and Democrats didn’t do as well as expected is yet another example of the party’s struggles with working-class voters, and not just working-class whites. Whether Democrats can figure out how to do better may be the biggest looming question about American politics.

https://messaging-cu...896ed87b2d9c72a

Figure out how to do better with working-class voters? Good idea. Maybe start by defunding some of their message consultants.