Tag: Elections

Yeah, About that

This strangest thing about this moment is almost every Dem is acting as if Obama’s first term was a horrible failure but no one wants to explicitly say that. https://t.co/CuyrgEN6XT

— Jon Walker (@JonWalkerDC) February 2, 2021

So, let’s do a rundown of the 2009-10 Obama years and what happened:

  • Democratic Governors, from 29 to 16.
  • Control of state legislatures, and redistricting, from 59% to 31%. (over 1000 state leg seats)
  • Double digit losses in the Senate.
  • Over 5 dozen loses in the House.

Why would even the most psychopathic Democrat, or Jim Manchin (but I repeat myself) want even a small piece of such a disaster?

The answer is that they don’t which indicates that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) might actually have a small learning curve.

I never believed that I would be able to write that in a non-ironic way.

Homophobic When It Suits Them

I am referring, of course, to the Massachusetts Democratic Party, which unleashed an orgy of gay bashing innuendo when Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse challenged Richard Neal (D-CIGNA) in the primary.

UMASS, which is very much a part of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in Massachusetts has bent over backwards to avoid embarrassment, but you cannot put lipstick on a pig:

A recently released report by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has added new evidence of the state Democratic Party’s involvement in the public attack on Alex Morse just ahead of his primary against Rep. Richard Neal. It also found that Morse, formerly an adjunct professor at the school, did not violate university policies, yet the report still delved deeply into Morse’s private dating life with other adults.

In early August, just a few weeks prior to the election against Neal, chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, a number of college students made vague accusations of impropriety against Morse, the youngest and first openly gay mayor of Holyoke.

The involvement of state party officials, who coordinated with the Massachusetts College Democrats to accuse Morse of sexual impropriety, was first revealed by The Intercept and later confirmed by an internal review by the Massachusetts Democratic Party. The new report, however, includes emails and text messages indicating that party attorney Jim Roosevelt took a more active role in the dissemination of the smear than previously known. It also reveals that party leaders were more involved in walking students through media and legal strategies than they had previously admitted. In an interview with The Intercept, Roosevelt denied the allegations; Mass Dems Executive Director Veronica Martinez implied in an email that the new report exonerated party leadership.

………

Investigators made a detailed exploration into the psychology of the students who ultimately launched the attack on Morse, saying that a key figure in the scandal did not find his interactions online with Morse remotely problematic until other students convinced him in hindsight that they were. A second student also told investigators that he considered his interactions platonic and innocent but that they took on a different connotation when put in the context of rumors being spread by other students.

The report’s authors included trivial information they had collected. “Witness Three reports that he was later told by other students that Morse gave him a ‘look’ when he entered the [October] event (indicating romantic or sexual interest). Witness Three did not observe anything of that nature,” the report found fit to inform the public.

Matt Walsh, a member of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee and a board member of the Bay State Stonewall Democrats, said the exoneration of Morse is welcomed, but that in his view, the manner in which the report was written lingered on salacious details and sensationalized the mayor’s private life.

“I expected an official investigative report by a state university to be an objective assessment of facts, not a tabloid-style gossip piece,” said Walsh. “I’m glad UMass cleared Morse of wrongdoing, but they could have done so without legitimizing homophobic tropes that paint gay men as ‘creepy’ for engaging in consensual relationships.”

………

The Intercept’s previous reporting revealed that some students had planned to entrap and expose Morse in order to do political damage to the mayor and secure themselves internships with Neal. Neal has denied any involvement in the scheme. Campaign spokesperson Peter Panos told The Intercept in an email that the latest report makes the congressman’s innocence clear.

“This report confirms what Chairman Neal has always said, that he and his staff had nothing to do with these allegations,” said Panos. “We commend the University for their thorough investigation into the facts.”

The report doesn’t conclude anything either way on Neal’s involvement, but does note that there is no evidence of it.

………

The report makes clear that at least some of the allegations against Morse that later went public were rumor-driven group think, as is often the case in a college setting.

………

Those concerns extended beyond the school’s group. Student A, a student at UMass, said a friend of hers had had sexual contact with Morse and later felt uncomfortable because of the “power dynamic.” Witness One described her to investigators as “especially adamant that the group needed to go public with what they knew.”

Student A wanted to take the statement to Twitter in July and went so far as to work with Witness One to draft a statement to post to the site, though she ultimately declined to do so.

According to The Intercept’s previous reporting, the report produced for the Mass Dems by attorney Cheryl Jacques, and the emails and text messages reproduced in the new UMass report, the leadership of the UMass College Democrats and the College Democrats of Massachusetts took their allegations against Morse to the state party. College Democrats of Massachusetts President Hayley Fleming reached out to Massachusetts Democrats Chair Gus Bickford and Executive Director Veronica Martinez for guidance as the group prepared to bar Morse from future meetings.

………

Evidence in the new UMass report implicates Roosevelt in the writing of a letter for the College Democrats to send out to chapters. As one student said in a text on July 29 to other members of the CDMA executive board, Roosevelt advised the students through Bickford and Martinez that “if we want to move forward on leaking it to the press, someone would contact BLANK and tell him (on the record but unattributable so that their name doesn’t get published) that the CDMA eboard voted on this and sent it to the CM.” The full message exchange is attached to the report.

It’s clear that the Neal campaign knew that people who wanted jobs with him were engaging in vicious gay baiting, and would have been impossible for Nancy Pelosi not to know this as well when she pulled out all the stops to support the corrupt Ways and Means Chairman, but I guess those big dollar campaign donations from bad people don’t grow on trees.

Nostra Dumbass

The Onion, from 2000: 

Serbia Deploys Peacekeeping Forces To U.S.

11/15/00 3:00PM


BELGRADE–Serbian president Vojislav Kostunica deployed more than 30,000 peacekeeping troops to the U.S. Monday, pledging full support to the troubled North American nation as it struggles to establish democracy.

“We must do all we can to support free elections in America and allow democracy to gain a foothold there,” Kostunica said. “The U.S. is a major player in the Western Hemisphere and its continued stability is vital to Serbian interests in that region.”

Kostunica urged Al Gore, the U.S. opposition-party leader who is refusing to recognize the nation’s Nov. 7 election results, to “let the democratic process take its course.”

………

Though Kostunica has pledged to work with U.S. leaders, he did not rule out the possibility of economic sanctions if the crisis is not resolved soon.

 Note the highlighted date.

The Onion has been predicting the future for 32 years now.

So Warnock and Ossoff Have Won

Giving the Democrats control of the US Senate.

I’m with Howie Klein on this, “If Ossoff & Warnock Win, The Dems Better Deliver For Working People Or It’s Curtains For The Party.”

The reason that the Democrats lost the House, and the Senate, a dozen or so governorships,  over 1000 state reps, etc. during Obama’s time as President, and the reason that his anointed successor lost to an inverted traffic cone in 2016, and the reason that they under-performed in 2020, is that when given power, they did nothing but suck up to the traditional power centers.

Biden’s promise that, “Nothing will fundamentally change,” is a recipe for disaster, and fascism.

It’s Runoff Election Night in Georgia

Right now, the Republicans are up by about 2% but the folks at the New York Times are calling a slight advantage the the Democrats, because Atlanta is coming in late, and the mail in ballots largely come from Democratic leaning counties.

Of note, Warnock is out-performing Ossoff on the Democratic side by about 1%, despite the fact that Ossoff spent a lot more money, and the fact that Warnock is a Black man running in Georgia.

But Ossoff still is under-performing Warnock despite having raised and spent more money.

Ossoff has run the most expensive House AND the most expensive Senate race in history, but has failed to deliver.

Still, the consultants get their vigorish, so even if he comes up short again, he’ll still be the golden boy, because he pays the bills of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

I do hope that they both win though, if just to own Mitch McConnell.

Today in Self Immolation

Right wing attorney Cleta Mitchell, who sat in on Donald Trump’s now infamous call to the Georgia Secretary of State, offering advice/self incrimination, has been fired by the white shoe law firm that hired her.

It’s reported as a resignation, but it’s a firing:

Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who advised President Trump during his Saturday phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state in an effort to overturn the election, resigned on Tuesday as a partner in the Washington office of the law firm Foley & Lardner.

Mitchell’s resignation came after the law firm on Monday issued a statement saying it was “concerned by” her role in the call. The firm noted that as a matter of policy, its attorneys do not represent “any parties seeking to contest the results of the election.”

The Washington Post on Sunday published audio and a transcript of the hour-long call in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the election results. During the call, Mitchell complained that she had not been given access to certain information from Raffensperger’s office, and Trump relied on her to an extraordinary degree during the call.

I cannot say that I am in any upset at Trump dead-enders losing their jobs.

I’m sure that Amazon is hiring. 

Karma, neh?

Yeah, This Is a Big F%$#Ing Deal

It appears that over the past few days, Donald Trump called the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, and threatened him in an attempt to get him to manufacture 11,780 votes so that he could claim to have won the state.

It’s a bit late to impeach the bastard, but if this is not criminal, it should be:

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”

This guy can’t be allowed to just walk away from this.

We’ve already over one hundred Congressmen and a dozen Senators signing onto this.

It’s a cancer on the Republic.

Definitely Getting a Pardon

It turns out that Jared Kushner skimmed campaign funds which went to insiders.

I rather expect to see Trump pardon him, and Ivanka, and Don, Jr., and Eric, on his way out of the door.

In fact, my guess is that Melania and Baron will be the only ones not getting pardons:

President Donald Trump’s most powerful advisor, Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president’s family members and spent almost half of the campaign’s $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider.

The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump’s top advisors and family members, while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.

When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign Chief Financial Officer Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations about the shell company.

………

The shell company — incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corp. and American Made Media Consultants LLC — allowed Trump’s campaign to skirt federally mandated disclosures. The tactic could attract scrutiny from federal election regulators.

Campaign-finance records showed Trump’s reelection effort and its affiliated committee with the Republican National Committee spent more than $600 million through American Made Consultants since its formation.

………

From January 2019 through the middle of November, the Trump campaign and an affiliated political committee together spent $617 million through American Made Media Consultants.

It was almost half of everything they spent in the failed effort to reelect Trump, according to an Insider review of Federal Election Commission records and analysis provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. 

………

Campaign-law experts have long accused the Trump team of using a corporate pass-through to hide payments.

………

If the federal government suspects a “knowing and willful” violation of election law has occurred, the Department of Justice has the power to open a criminal investigation into a political actor.

While such investigations are relatively uncommon, several former Justice Department and FEC officials previously told Insider that Justice Department officials may already be discreetly investigating Trump’s reelection activity.

Some of Trump’s campaign leaders even seemed stumped by the AMMC arrangement. Generally, they knew that AMMC was being used to buy pro-Trump TV, radio, and digital advertising and pay for other media.

But they couldn’t discern precisely how much each AMMC vendor was keeping for itself.

The person familiar with AMMC said the rates its vendors charged the Trump campaign were often cheaper than what an outside political firm would have demanded. Using the shell company also allowed Parscale to keep Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle [As an interesting aside, Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, and got fired from Fox for sexual harassment] — the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. — on his payroll, the person familiar said.

………

Nothing was done without Jared’s approval,” the former Trump campaign advisor said. “What [Trump campaign manager Stephen] Stepien doesn’t know is because Jared doesn’t want him to know.”

Something clearly corrupt was going on here, but Trump cheating his investors/campaign/contractors/wives/etc is pretty much par for the course.

That being said, I would expect an investigation, which is why I also expect a very broadly worded pardon before January 20.

Portly Performer’s Polyphonic Production Proceeds*

The Electoral Collage has made it official

Biden is officially President Elect.

This does not mean that the rat-f%$#ery has ended.

I expect shenanigans from Trump and his  Evil Minions™ to fight this until January 20, when the US Marshals Service drags him out.  (They are responsible for evictions in the District).

Not out of the woods yet.

*The fat lady has sung.

The Problem with the Democratic Party Establishment (There Is No Democratic Party Establishment)

A good post mortem of how the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) made it impossible for Sara Gideon to beat Susan Collins.

Basically, it comes down to the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) selecting an uninspiring candidate, and then flooding the zone with so much money in negative ads, mailers, etc. that Gideon still has $14 million in campaign funds left over, (over $10 unspent for every man, woman, and child in Maine) that any she might have beyond the, “Collins is a Republican,” message was obscured.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) needs to be dismantled root and branch:

Democrat Sara Gideon’s bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins was doomed the day after she announced she was running.

Gideon, a state legislator from Freeport who was then Maine’s Speaker of the House, formally announced her candidacy on Monday, June 24, 2019. The next day, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a powerful political organization controlled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top members of the party establishment, announced it was backing her campaign.

At the time, the DSCC’s endorsement was perceived as a huge boost for Gideon. It would ensure her campaign would be well funded and guided by the brightest political minds in the business.

In retrospect, it was the kiss of death — a guarantee her campaign would be ugly, uninspiring, obscenely expensive, and out of touch with local concerns. Despite spending nearly $60 million, twice as much as Collins’ campaign did, Gideon lost by over 8 percentage points, more than 70,000 votes, in a state where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over 74,000.

………

Incessant negative advertising by outside groups helped make this race the most expensive in Maine’s history. It also made a mockery of Gideon’s oft-repeated pledge to “limit the influence of big money in politics.” Republicans were quick to call the DSCC’s endorsement proof that Gideon was a puppet of Beltway powerbrokers, and her two Democratic primary challengers were equally critical. “The DC elite is trying to tell Mainers who our candidate should be,” Betsy Sweet, one of those challengers, tweeted that summer.

But, crucially, the DSCC’s endorsement also limited the impact of Gideon’s positive messages, the campaign promises she made to improve the lives of everyday Mainers.

………

In the aftermath of Election Day, some top Democrats sought to blame progressives for the party’s poor showing in Senate and House races, but the DSCC’s record speaks for itself. Of the 18 Senate candidates endorsed by the committee, only four were victorious last month (two contenders, both in Georgia, failed to win on Nov. 3 but qualified for runoff elections next month).

As the campaign gained speed, the pandemic and the national uprising against police brutality gave Gideon two big opportunities to break from the moderate pack and distinguish herself from Collins, who denied that “systemic racism” is a “problem” in Maine, and whose Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a fraud-riddled failure. But Gideon’s position on racial justice was limited to training-manual adjustments like banning chokeholds and racial profiling, as well as further study of the problems that have plagued Black Americans since Reconstruction. Her credibility to criticize the PPP was compromised by the million or more dollars her husband’s law firm got from the program. And Republican critics took to social media daily to point out that, as far as anyone could tell, the House Speaker was doing practically nothing to help Mainers crushed by COVID-19.

While her constituents worried about keeping their jobs and homes, Gideon’s campaign bombarded them with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ads, including pleas for them to give her money. The fundraising juggernaut engineered by her highly paid political consultants badgered Mainers for more cash till the bitter end.

………

Lisa Savage, a longtime Green Party activist and educator who ran as an independent in this ranked-choice Senate race and finished third, said a member of her team calculated how much each candidate spent per vote received. Savage spent $4.69 per vote, Collins about $65, and Gideon over $200.

………

“The model this cycle — and the model I am certain we’ll see repeated as Chuck Schumer continues on as Minority Leader — is that the party chooses a candidate they expect to bring in money, a candidate who will go along with corporate interests that fund the legions of Democratic campaign professionals that keep the machine running,” [Bre] Kidman [One of Gideon’s primary opponents] continued. “Mainers could smell the disingenuousness a mile away and, frankly, I don’t think the top-dollar, out-of-state consultants who worked on the campaign did anything at all to mask it.”

Gideon “didn’t have a single Maine person on her [communications] team,” said Savage. “Not one. They just don’t understand Maine.”

A review of the Gideon campaign’s finance filings reveals page after page of big payments to out-of-state consulting firms and media companies. DSCC executive director Mindy Myers personally received over $100,000 from Gideon’s campaign for consulting services. Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic ad agency that also worked for Biden this year, was paid over $8 million. Aisle 518 Strategies, a D.C. digital fundraising outfit, raked in over $6 million.

This is not political consulting, this is looting.


………

A key race for a Maine Senate seat this year illustrates how Gideon’s result may have been different had she run a less toxic and more responsive campaign. Democrat Chloe Maxmin, a progressive state lawmaker from the midcoast town of Nobleboro, challenged Republican Dana Dow, then the Minority Leader of the Maine Senate, and won. Maxmin ran a “100% positive” campaign “grounded in community values, not Party or ideology,” her website declared.

Maxmin and her local team created all their ads and adjusted content based on voter feedback. They knocked on over 13,000 doors in her rural, Republican-leaning district. The voters they encountered had no interest in the type of who-took-money-from-who sniping that characterized the U.S. Senate race. “The things I hear from people are, ‘We want good jobs here, we want to live in a rural place and make a good living,’” Maxmin said. “‘We want to know our children will have the same opportunity.’”

The goal of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is not to win elections, it is to profit from Democratic Party campaigns.

They are parasites.

Motherf%$#ing Tweet of the Motherf%$#ing Day

Rep. Pascrell writes to Pelosi and Lofgren asking them to look into not seating the 126 amici in the new Congress, invoking Reconstruction era constitutional “safeguards to cleanse from our government ranks any traitors and others that would destroy the union.” pic.twitter.com/WR0lJEMepK

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) December 11, 2020

I don’t know if Pascrell will be running for reelection in 2022, he is 83 years old after all, but I’m pretty sure that if he is, any primary is unlikely.

Given that Pascrell got more than 80% in the primary, and over 70% in the general, I’m inclined to believe that the only way that he’s leaving the district is feet first.

Then again, they said the same thing about Bill Crowler, and AOC took him down, and he is pretty conservative for a Democrat.

Today, however, I’m just amazed.

Full letter after the break as a PDF.

Original link.

Terrorism as a Feature, not a Bug

In discussions with Republican lawmakers, there is a telling quote, where the Republican leader of the state senate unequivocally states that she and her family are at risk of violence if she does not support Trump’s claims of vote fraud

We need to deal aggressively with the problem of stochastic terrorism.

This is far more corrosive to American society than anything that Osama bin Laden could have ever dreamed of:

Last week, allies of President Trump accused Republican leaders in Pennsylvania of being “cowards” and “liars” and of letting America down.

Mr. Trump himself called top Republicans in the General Assembly in his crusade to twist the arms of officials in several states and reverse an election he lost. The Pennsylvania lawmakers told the president they had no power to convene a special session to address his grievances.

But they also rewarded his efforts: On Friday, the State House speaker and majority leader joined hard-right colleagues — whom they had earlier resisted — and called on Congress to reject Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 81,000-vote victory in Pennsylvania.

………

Kim Ward, the Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania Senate, said the president had called her to declare there was fraud in the voting. But she said she had not been shown the letter to Congress, which was pulled together hastily, before its release.

Asked if she would have signed it, she indicated that the Republican base expected party leaders to back up Mr. Trump’s claims — or to face its wrath.

“If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’” she said about signing the letter, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”

It is clear that there is a large undercurrent of right-wing terrorism in US society, and it is equally clear that law enforcement has been completely penetrated by these folks. 

Dealing with this is going to be like peeling an onion, you have to do it layer by layer, and there will be lots of tears.

My Family Just Got Tickets to the Defend The Majority Rally Featuring Vice President Mike Pence in Augusta Georgia

We aren’t going, so if someone wants to download the PDF and go in our place, you can download the PDF here.

You can also get a ticket at Evenbrite for yourself. It’s free. 

My suggestion is that if you go, you wear a K-Pop T-shirt, and when Mike Pence walks onto stage, start chanting, “How’d you launder the Saudi kickback money, Vice President Pence.”

Toxic Wokeness

The recent mayoral elections in Portland Oregon are a classic example of toxic wokeness

The short version is that the corporateist cop-fluffer mayor won reelection, because of a write in campaign (Teressa Raiford) which pulled exclusively from the progressive candidate who advanced past the runoff.

I have come to the conclusion that this sort of dysfunction is being openly (look at Raiford’s press coverage) and surreptitiously supported by people who live comfortable lives and don’t want to give up anything:  (College professors, pundits, right-wingers, and the rest of the Professional Managerial Class)

So you might recall that over the summer we here in Portland were In Flames!!!

The antifa hordes were rampaging through our streets, the dead were rising from their graves, dogs and cats were living together, and only the Thin Blue Line of Portland Police Bureau was holding us back from being – even though we were, mind you, the President hissown self said so! – an “anarchist jurisdiction”.

But…remember back in June?

When I asked you whether we would face the brutally obvious reality that “policing” in the United States f%$#s with and kills poor and dark and mentally disturbed people at a ridiculously inflated rate? What we would do if no amount of “reform” had changed or would change that? What we would do now, after decades of useless wanking had left us with a Police Bureau that is a sort of Proud Boys Local #432 only all with blue clothing?

………

And I answered my own question with:

“I know for a fact that Portland Police Bureau has been the home for wannabe Klansmen and Nazis for decades…I knew perfectly well (that this) was so baked into PPB that the only way to “do something” would be to do a Saddam’s Army on the whole outfit – just fire 99% of the sonsofbitches, burn the bastard to the ground, and start over?

Will we do anything about those problems now?

Don’t make me laugh. You know better and so do I. We’ll throw clubs and gas and “non-lethal” rounds at whoever makes a fuss. Christ on a crutch, we can’t even do anything semi-intelligent about a f%$#ing Plague, you think we’re going to do anything sane about this, the miserable way we’ve treated our poor and our former slaves and current subjects, and everyone else who can’t play the “get out of jail free” card?

Nope. I got nothin’ for you on that.”

And, as surely as the sun still rises, we – we here in “anarchist jurisdiction” Portland did…

Nothing.

Instead we re-elected the empty-suit-cop-fluffing incumbent mayor instead of his lefty challenger who promised to take the f%$#ing cops by the stacking swivel. A large part of that was because us commies, once again, managed to form up the circular firing squad – another local activist, Tessa Raiford, ran a very organized write-in campaign that siphoned off about 13 percent of the vote, all from the Left – and shot ourselves dead square in the ass because it was in a race that the OTHER lefty candidate, Iannarone, lost 40 to 46 percent.

Do the math.

F%$#. We’re our own worst goddamn enemies.

(%$# mine

No, we are not our own worst enemies.

The powers that be have been paying trolls for years,* and sometimes, when they find useful idiots, like Teressa Raiford, they don’t even need to pay.

It can be both monetarily and emotionally profitable, because useful idiots get laudatory press coverage, and donations from avatars of the status quo.

*Hillary paid people to troll online and to pretend to be Bernie Bros in 2016, (also here) Obama advisor Cass Sunstein advocated for government trolls, Lauren “Uncle Meat” Bandler on Netslaves, for example, and that is just citing my sh%$ty little blog.

Today in Evil

Memos have been released showing that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis actively deceived the public about the spread of Covid for political gain.

We already knew that he was a miserable excuse for a human being, but now we have proof:

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced, a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation has found.

DeSantis, who owes his job to early support from President Donald Trump, imposed an approach in line with the views of the president and his powerful base of supporters. The administration suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation, dismissed public health professionals, and promoted the views of scientific dissenters who supported the governor’s approach to the disease.

The DeSantis administration’s approach to managing COVID-19 information carries costs. It supports a climate in which people proudly disdain masks, engage in dangerous group activities that could spread the disease, and brush aside information that conflicts with their political views. With partygoers packing Florida bars and holiday travelers filling hotels and guest rooms, the state faces a few difficult months before the possible relief of vaccines.

These findings are based on interviews with more than 50 people, including scientists, doctors, political leaders, employees of the state health department, and other state officials, as well as more than 4,000 pages of documents:

  • The Florida Department of Health’s county-level spokespeople were ordered in September to stop issuing public statements about COVID-19 until after the Nov. 3 election.
  • The DeSantis administration refused to reveal details about the first suspected cases in Florida, then denied the virus was spreading from person to person — despite mounting evidence that it was.
  • State officials withheld information about infections in schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes, relenting only under pressure or legal action from family members, advocacy groups and journalists.
  • The DeSantis administration brushed aside scientists and doctors who advocated conventional approaches to fighting the virus, preferring scientists on the fringes who backed the governor’s positions.
  • The governor’s spokesman regularly takes to Twitter to spread misinformation about the disease, including the false claim that COVID was less deadly than the flu.
  • The governor highlighted statistics that would paint the rosiest picture possible and attempted to cast doubt on the validity of Florida’s rising death toll.

“The governor is a smart, educated guy,” said Thomas Unnasch, co-director of the Center for Global Health and Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “But he also is a politically savvy guy. He is encouraging people who are of the opinion that the virus is not as severe and profound as others say it is and putting politics before science.”

………

Don’t issue news releases or write social media posts about COVID, they were told, according to three health department county spokespeople who asked not to be identified. Instead, talk about flu shots, hearing-loss screenings — anything but the virus.

“It is all part of the top-down control of messaging from the governor’s office,” said a senior official in the health department.

The order came from Alberto Moscoso, communications director for the state health department. It’s unclear who told Moscoso to issue the order. He left the department on Nov. 6 and declined comment for this report.

This is ineluctably evil. 

In a just world, he’d be facing impeachment right now, but we are talking about Florida.

Again?

It looks there will be new elections in Israel for the 4th time in as 2 years

This is a mark of the bitter decisiveness of Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) politics as well as the inability of the opposition to offer the electorate a positive reason to vote for them. (Sound familiar?)

Israel faced the prospect of political chaos once again Wednesday when lawmakers approved a preliminary measure that would dissolve the turbulent coalition government, putting the country on a path to its fourth election in two years.

The vote of 61 to 54 to advance the proposal marked another escalation of a political crisis that has left the country with only a caretaker government for more than a year and a largely dysfunctional unity coalition during the mounting coronavirus pandemic and accompanying economic collapse.

………

But the push to topple the coalition got a major boost when Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White party that shares power with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, announced he would support ending the government.

Gantz, who battled Netanyahu to inconclusive results over three previous elections, agreed to join his rival in a coalition government in April as coronavirus cases were beginning to spiral. He became both the defense minister and an “alternate” prime minister scheduled to rotate into the top job in autumn 2021.

But after seven tumultuous months, he effectively declared the power-sharing effort sharing a failure, accusing Netanyahu of bad-faith political maneuvers meant to prolong his grip on power.

This is not a surprise.

In addition to being outrageously evil, Netanyahu is outrageously crooked, and he knows that when leaves his post as PM, he will be in the dock, and in jail shortly after that.

My advice to the opposition is to actually have a platform beyond, “Netanhahu bad,” because you need to offer voters a reason to vote FOR you beyond the fact that the other guy is a corrupt evil SOB.

Tweet of the Day

Ordered to pay Pennsylvania’s legal expenses. Jesus Christ.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) November 27, 2020

Honestly, if the poster did not have the alias, “Richard M. Nixon”, I might never have noticed the tweet.

I will note that in addition to the complaint being dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the Trump campaign cannot refile, they have also have been ordered to pay court costs.

It’s a f%$#ing clown show.

Maybe, I Should Be Phone Banking for the Republicans in Georgia

Trump supporters are threatening to boycott the Senate election runoffs in Georgia because the Governor and the Secretary of state are not swallowing Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud.

Don’t Throw Me into That Briar Patch!!!

I would gladly, and repeatedly make obnoxious phone calls to Republicans explaining that Trump has lost, and that they need to get over it, and vote for Kelly “Covid Positive” Loeffler and David Perdue.

I think that I could depress votes all on my own.

Certainly, it will be a more cost effective course of action than anything that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will be doing down there, which will spend money like water, and take their cut of the media buy:

President Donald Trump supporters protesting the outcome of the 2020 election have a new and surprising opponent: the Republican Party.

A viral video of protesters, as well as posts on social media platform Parler, indicate that Trump supporters are looking to boycott the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff elections.

A video, shared on Twitter on Saturday, shows a protester speaking into a mic criticizing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who are both Republicans. The protester calls them “traitors.”

Seemingly reacting to certification from Georgia election officials that President-elect Joe Biden had indeed won the Peach State following an election recount, the protesters disavowed the GOP.

My mother was accused of raising a “Russian child” when I was age 6, so I think that rat-f%$#ing an election is something well within my wheel house.

What’s In the Mail Today?

You will not believe what we got in the mail on Wednesday. 

Yes, we got a notice from the US Postal Service to make sure to vote early if we plan to vote by mail.

TWO WEEKS AFTER THE ELECTION.

I know that the Post Office performs many essential services, try getting a your medications through email, for one, and I am loath to make all the standard jokes, but seriously ……… What is up with this?

I guess I should feel grateful about this, because how often do I get to look for and then watch a video of guy in a bear suit rocking out about mail delivery.