Tag: Presidential Campaign

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.

I’ve Called This Out for a While

A study has shown that The Lincoln Project’s ads actually had a negative impact, something which I noted on my blog a month ago and at least 6 months ago on the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

As long as I’ve known of the Lincoln Project, I have maintained that it has two purposes:

  • Enriching its principals.
  • To embrace and extend the Neoliberal capture of the Democratic Party.

It comes as no surprise then that this enterprise actually had negative utility on the matter of delivering votes to the Democratic Party.  That was never its purpose:

At various junctures during the 2020 campaign an attack ad would pop online that had observers on Twitter buzzing about how devastating for Donald Trump it would be. Except, more often than not, the ads weren’t effective, at least not for the nominal point of the election: persuading on-the-fence voters to back Joe Biden.

That’s the conclusion the Democratic Party’s top super PAC reached after doing analytical research into a handful of spots that went viral on Twitter.

The PAC, Priorities USA, spent a good chunk of the cycle testing the effectiveness of ads, some 500 in all. And, along the way, they decided to conduct an experiment that could have potentially saved them tons of money. They took five ads produced by a fellow occupant in the Super PAC domain—the Lincoln Project—and attempted to measure their persuasiveness among persuadable swing state voters; i.e. the ability of an ad to move Trump voters towards Joe Biden. A control group saw no ad at all. Five different treatment groups, each made up of 683 respondents, saw one of the five ads. Afterwards they were asked the same post-treatment questions measuring the likelihood that they would vote and who they would vote for.

The idea wasn’t to be petty or adversarial towards the Lincoln Project, which drew both fans and detractors for the scorched-earth spots it ran imploring fellow Republicans to abandon Trump. It was, instead, to see if Twitter virality could be used as a substitute for actual ad testing, which took funds and time. If it turned out that what the Lincoln Project was doing was proving persuasive, the thinking went, then Priorities USA could use Twitter as a quasi-barometer for seeing how strong their own ads were.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case. According to Nick Ahamed, Priorities’ analytics director, the correlation of Twitter metrics—likes and retweets—and persuasion was -0.3, “meaning that the better the ad did on Twitter, the less it persuaded battleground state voters.” The most viral of the Lincoln Project’s ads—a spot called Bounty, which was RTed 116,000 times and liked more than 210,000 times—turned out to be the least persuasive of those Priorities tested.

The  Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) and the useful idiots at MSNBC who were so enamored of of these ad campaigns were suckers for a group of con men.

The lesson to be learned here is beware of Republicans bearing gifts.

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.

Trump and His Evil Minions™ Are Melting

They are melting like the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy threw water on her.

It’s a sight: 

Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer who is spearheading the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, held a bizarre news conference on Thursday that quickly devolved into chaos.

At one point, Giuliani’s hair dye could be seen running down his face. At another, the former New York City mayor quoted the comedy film “My Cousin Vinny” to support his arguments.

Much of the press conference consisted of Giuliani rehashing the same conspiracy theories the president has amplified: that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, that election machines were illegally tampered with, that ballots were secretly dumped, and that Democrats masterminded a vast election-rigging scheme to simultaneously win the White House and get destroyed in down-ballot and state legislative races.

………

At one point in the news conference, Giuliani did an impression of Joe Pesci’s character from “My Cousin Vinny” to back up the Trump campaign’s claim that Republican election observers were not allowed to properly watch the ballot counting.

Later in the presser, Giuliani’s hair dye started dripping down his face.

This is a metaphor for something, but I am not completely sure what.

Oh Lindsey………

Last week, I wrote about reports that Lindsey Graham was pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to throw out mail-in ballots from counties with large minority populations using signature matching as a pretext.

It appears that there was at least one other witness to this:

………

In an interview Monday with The Washington Post, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, accused the senator of trying to pressure him into tossing out legally cast ballots. And Tuesday, after Graham mistakenly told reporters he had spoken with secretaries of state in Arizona and Nevada, those officials rejected that assertion.

“I have not spoken to Senator Lindsey Graham or any other members of Congress regarding the 2020 election,” Barbara Cegavske, the Nevada secretary of state, said in a statement. Cegavske and Raffensperger are Republicans.

 ………

Old friends and colleagues issued warnings Tuesday that there is a line Graham cannot cross with state election officials.

“If all he’s trying to do is get information, people are entitled to do that. If he’s trying to influence the way they perform their duty, that becomes a bit problematic,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former state attorney general.

In Georgia, state officials showed additional irritation Tuesday with Graham’s intrusion into their world. Gabriel Sterling, a senior staffer in the secretary of state’s office, held a news conference to explain what he heard on the call between Raffensperger and Graham.

“What I heard were discussions of absentee ballots — if there were a percentage of signatures that weren’t truly matching, is there some point where we could go to court and throw out all the ballots,” Sterling said.

Such an action would have disenfranchised many legally cast ballots.

(emphasis mine)

This is not a good look for you, Mr. Graham.

 

Holy Dueling Narratives, Batman

Last week, I wrote about how the CEO of Pfizer may have timed their vaccine announcement to maximize his profit at prescheduled stock sales.

Today I discover that it wasn’t just Pfizer, it was Moderna and Novavax as well:

Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax: executives at several American laboratories developing COVID-19 vaccines have recently pocketed millions of dollars by selling shares in their companies—raising questions about the propriety of such a move in the midst of a national health crisis.

On the very day that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced preliminary data showing its vaccine was 90 percent effective against the coronavirus, its chief executive Albert Bourla sold shares worth $5.6 million.

There was nothing illegal about this, Pfizer said: the sale took place according to rules allowing company heads to sell shares under predetermined criteria, at a date or for a price set in advance, to avoid any suspicion of insider training.

Under the same rules, several Moderna officials have sold shares worth more than $100 million in recent months.

That company has not placed a single product on the market since its creation in 2010, but the federal government has committed to paying it up to $2.5 billion if its vaccine proves effective.

………

Accountable US, a nonpartisan taxpayers’ advocacy group, has calculated that from the start of the federally coordinated effort to develop vaccines on May 15 until August 31, officials at five made more than $145 million by selling shares.

Meanwhile, over at Moon of Alabama, we have an account of how Anthony Fauci, big Pharma, and the FDA conspired to f%$# Donald Trump’s reelection chances

Personally, I’m on the side of greedy pharma execs, because of Occam’s Razor, but I am a cynic:

………

During the summer Trump had been hopeful that a vaccine against the Covid-19 disease could be announced before the election. It would have been proof that his strategy to (not) fight the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had at least one success. The announcement of a vaccine was part of President Trump’s planned ‘October surprises’ to win the election.

Trump’s summer hope that a vaccine success could be announced during October was not unreasonable. Two important vaccines candidate, one from Pfizer with BioNTech and one from Moderna, had been successful tested in their first phases and were ready launch their large phase 3 trials.

In a phase 3 vaccine trial several ten thousand people are put into two groups. The people in one group receive the vaccine, the people in the other one a placebo. One then has to wait and see how many people will get the disease. At certain points a statistical team will look at those cases and check how many occurred in each group. The differences of the number of people in each group who catch the disease is a scale for the vaccines efficacy. For a known group size one can estimate in advance after how many disease cases determinations should be made to show statistical significance.

………

The time plan, on which Trump was certainly briefed, foresaw that the first interim analysis would likely occur in late September or early October.

However Pfizer did not publish any results when the first two interim analysis points were met. On November 9, after the election, Pfizer announced very positive results at the third interim analysis point:

As an aside, I read Moon of Alabama regularly, they regularly have top drawer commentary, particularly on the Middle East, and while they are sometimes contrarian for its own sake, Michael Kinsley disease, and it sometimes tends to be just a bit conspiratorial, they are well worth the read.

And the Election is Finally Called


Get over it

The have called the election for Joe Biden by all the major media organizations now.

Pennsylvania was called for Biden earlier today, giving him a total of 279 electoral college, though when Arizona and Georgia (!) finish counting, the total is likely be be 306.

A number of people have suggested that we give a few days for the Trump supporters to deal this emotionally.

F%$# that.

They are a bunch of f%$#ing snowflakes, and so I am to channel my inner Trump voter, and tell them to get the f%$# over it, and to get the f%$# over themselves.

I’m not going out and stomping on Cheetos® right now, though I did try to convince the family to go to the White House and start chanting, “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye.”

They wisely decided to take a nap instead.

They Should Have Used a Yellow Star

It looks like some MAGAts were tagging the streets in front of Biden Supporters’ houses in Roseville, California

This is a clear threat of future violence, and it is terrorism, just the same as if they burnt a cross on their front yard:

Residents of Roseville, Calif., have reported blue dots being spray-painted in front of homes with Biden-Harris campaign signs, local affiliate KCRA-TV reports.

Roseville resident Adam Quilici told the news outlet that he was making breakfast when a neighbor told him to look in front of his home. He said a blue dot was painted in the road in front of his house.

Other residents told the news outlet they believe the dots were painted between Saturday and Sunday.

“The houses that were targeted have Biden-Harris signs in front of them — every single one,” Quilici told KCRA-TV. “There aren’t any blue dots anywhere where there are not those signs present.”

Quilici called the police, according to the news outlet, and they told him that they believed him after making sure it had nothing to do with utilities.

“This is not just a smashed pumpkin on Halloween,” Quilici said. “This is like a message and I’m not really OK with it.”

People are doing things like this because they do not believe that there will be consequences for their actions.

The first step is to disabuse these folks of that assumption, and that means arrests and prosecutions.

To do anything else is to encourage violence and threats of violence.

Live/Drunk Blogging the Election

11:40pm:
Massachusetts approves right to repair legislation.

People do not want to be screwed by their car dealers, at least now without lube.

Good night all.

11:38pm:
I am going to leave you with a thought from P.C. Hodgell:

“That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.”

11:32pm:
I’m drunk, and tired, and I’m shutting down.

My final thought: America is broken, and Biden was running on a “Return to Normalcy,” and this is unsustainable.

11:24pm:
If we had nominated Bernie, we’d have already crossed the 270 threshold, but the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), needed to keep their gravy train rolling.

11:20pm:
Florida approves a $15/hr minimum wage, New Jersey approves recreatinal marijuana.

The initiatives that I am most interested in are right to repair in Massachusetts, and Uber’s attempt to re-institute gig-economy slavery in California.

11:17pm:
I think that I might be too drunk to blog, which is WAY less interesting than the Dead Kennedys album “Too Drunk to F%$#.”

11:13pm:
I need to note that I am NOT going to stay up beyond midnight, so we are probably not gboing to get a final result for this post.

You might want to check out the cat that went to the beach and hated the wind.

11:11pm:
McConnell didn’t just beat McGrath, he destroyed her, and the consultants got a cut of all that money set on fire.

11:03pm:
California, Oregon, and Washington went for Biden, but we knew that this would happen.

Switching to The Daily Show.

10:57pm:
Lindsay Graham (SC) looks to win reelection, but in Georgia, it looks like the Senate race is heading to a runoff.

10:41pm:
Arizona is definitely in play.  Interesting.

10:37pm:
McConnell won reelection against the hapless, and anti-ideological campaign of Amy McGrath, favored by the DNC, the DSCC, and the DNC, has failed because, as I have said, , “You can’t beat something with nothing, even if the something is awful.”

She lost to a f%$#ing box turtle.

10:35pm:
Remembering 2000, please God, let it not come down to Florida.

BTW, it looks like the highest turnout in decades.

10:34pm:
Most of the states out of the Pacific time zone have closed polled.

10:22pm:
Breaking for dinner.  Having some Romenesko Broccoli and cheese soup.

10:21pm:
Doug Jones loses in Alabama.  Not a surprise.  He’s not running against a pedophile this year.

10:18pm:
It looks like Florida is going to go for Trump.

Way to go Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

10:12pm:
I have a prediction:  That I will be seriously shicker (drunk) within the next 15 minutes.

10:09pm:
Arizona, which is always just one election away from turning Democratic Party, appears to remain one election away.

The consultants don’t care.  They get their vig win or lose.

10:04pm:
The BBC is strongly implying that Trump will pull this out.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) appears to have screwed the pooch once again.

The Iron Law of Institutions, which states that power WITHIN an organization is pursued at the expense of the power OF that organization, may once again end up f%$#ing us all.

10:02pm:
Crap.  It appears that they will be calling Florida for Trump soon.

I wonder how they will blame the progressives for this.

9:59pm:
I took a break to cuddle with Meatball, because I needed some Kitteh:

9:53pm:
For my Jewish friends, if you want to make Aliyah to Israel, you can go to this link.

If you are not Jewish, consider getting a circumcision.

9:47pm:
Democratic party stalwarts are sounding remarkably subdued, because this is NOT the blowout that they expected.

I’ve said this a number of times, “You can’t beat something with nothing, even if the something is awful.”

9:45pm:
Why can’t Comedy Central do coverage of the elections?  It would be so much more pleasant.

Switching to the Beeb.  (BBC)

9:43pm:
Turning off Taibbi and Halper, mostly they are looking for drinking points for their game.

9:36pm:
Checking the NY Times map, and it has:

  • Biden winning Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, DC, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
  • Trump winnign, North & South Dakota, Georgia, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louuisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina.

Ohio is in play in a number of reports.

I need to drink more.

9:31pm:
Crap, the awful Susan Collins looking good right now.  She is the epitome of everything that is wrong with politics.

9:27pm:
Live streaming Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper as well.

They seem bummed, and Virginia seems to be in play.

We are f%$#ed if that is true.

9:21pm:
Switching to MSNBC.

Rachel Maddow, as always is chipper, which I find grating as hell.  I have since she, at the behest of her corporate masters at MSNBC, tried to queer the California primary in 2016.

9:18pm:
Well, here we go.  I’ve poured myself a stiff rum and (flat) Coke, and I am ready to turn to the news.

I Am So Eager for This to Be over, and I So Dread Tomorrow

I am sure that I am not the only one.

I want this to end, but tomorrow will be pure hell.

Even if it is a Biden blowout, I will have to be watching the new coverage, which means that I will have to watch the pundits pontificate.

Well, I refuse to do this sober.

BTW, my prediction. (joking)


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

I Did Nazi That Coming


Politically motivated terrorism

A group of Trump supporters tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road in Texas

The use of Brownshirt is now appropriate, now matter what Godwin’s law says:

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign canceled a Friday event in Austin, Texas, after harassment from a pro-Trump contingent.

Texas has emerged as a battleground state in Tuesday’s presidential election, with polls showing the typically Republican stronghold now only marginally favoring President Donald Trump. The Biden campaign scheduled a Friday event in the state, in a bid to drum up last-minute support.

But when the Biden campaign bus drove to Austin, it was greeted by a blockade of pro-Trump demonstrators, leading to what one Texas House representative described as an escalation “well beyond safe limits.”

………

Historian Dr. Eric Cervini was driving to help with the Biden campaign stop when he filmed a line of pickup trucks along the highway, many of them flying Trump flags. The drivers were “waiting to ambush the Biden/Harris campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin,” Cervini tweeted.

“These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road,” he alleged. “They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car.”

………

Video from the highway shows trucks surrounding the bus, at one point colliding with an SUV.

Footage from a CBS affiliate in Austin shows Trump supporters with signs and bullhorns surrounding the bus when it parked, with one person screaming that Biden was a communist.

Rep. Sheryl Cole, a Democrat representing nearby Pflugerville in Texas’s House, announced that a Biden event in her city had been canceled due to the harassment.

………

The Biden campaign’s Texas communications director, Tariq Thowfeek, said holding the event would have placed Biden staffers and supporters at risk.

“Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas today instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” Thowfeek told The Daily Beat. [Yes, the Daily Beast misspelled their own name right here, I double checked.]

………

The Trump campaign—and often Trump himself—has encouraged in-person conflict around the polls. Trump used the first presidential debate to urge supporters to act as “poll watchers,” a call that sparked concerns of voter intimidation. His son, Donald Trump Jr., made an explicit call-out regarding the Biden campaign’s Texas outreach efforts.

………

On Saturday, the president himself relished in news of the MAGA contingent harassing Biden’s campaign bus, retweeting video of the incident along with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS!”

This does not bode well for the future of the republic.

Also, can we PLEASE give Texas back to Mexico?

Cervini’s tweet storm embedded after the break

 

 

.

There Is a Metaphor Here ……… and a Joke

Trump held a campaign rally in Nebraska, at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield, and because of a shortage of buses and traffic congestion his supporters were left on the tarmac in freezing weather for hours.

At least 5 of the MAGAts were hospitalized for exposure:

By the time President Trump finished speaking to thousands of supporters at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield on Tuesday night and jetted away on Air Force One, the temperature had plunged to nearly freezing.

But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear something was wrong.

The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold as police scrambled to help those most at risk get to warmth, and some were taken to hospitals.

………

By the end of the night, 30 people needed medical attention, Omaha police spokesman Michael Pecha said, though that was over the course of the event. Seven were taken to hospitals “with a variety of medical conditions.” It was not immediately clear how many of those were related to the lengthy wait.

………

After Trump’s speech, in which he promised that “we’re making that final turn” on the pandemic in a state where positivity rates exceed 20 percent, per the World-Herald, Trump flew away on Air Force One around 9 p.m. Attendees began lining up for buses to return to their cars.

By nearly 10:30 p.m., though, they were still waiting.

………

The crowds didn’t fully clear the rally site until after 12:30 a.m. — more than 3½ hours after Trump departed. A spokeswoman at one hospital network, CHI Health, told The Post that five people were treated “with minor complaints” at the nearby by Creighton University Medical Center. She declined to release additional information.

………

“Supporters of the President were brought in, but buses weren’t able to get back to transport people out. It’s freezing and snowy in Omaha tonight,” tweeted Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt (D). “He truly does not care about you.”

Seriously, you cannot make this sh%$ up.

Drunk Blogging the Debates

10:39pm:
Final analysis:  Biden did not lose, so he won.

Trump really didn’t make a case for himself though.

I am at no risk of alcohol poisoning at this juncture, so I call this personal win.

10:37pm:
The debate is over, thank God.

It was far less chaotic than I had anticipated.

10:35pm:
OK, I have learned that rum and coke is dangerous.

This may be the drunkest I have ever been in a debate.

10:32pm:
F%$# this, I need to watch cat videos.

10:30pm:
A quick note:  Biden just has to not lose.

He has managed not to lose so far.

10:29pm:
Trump is talking about the bird kills and massive carbon footprint of windmills.

This is a lie.

He goes back to claiming that Biden will ban fracking.  (False)

10:26pm:
Had to feed the cats some wet food to make sure that Destructo gets enough water in his diet.

I am so f%$#ing sh%$faced right now.

10:23pm:
Anthropogenic climate change comes up.

10:21pm:
Trump has a valid queation, “Why didn’t you  do anything you get anything done in the 8 years that you were VP?”  About crime.

This is a talking point of his, but it is accurate.

10:20:
Biden actually admits to his earlier crime bills were a mistake.

I am completely sh%$ faced.

10:18pm:
Biden, “This guy has a dog whistle as big as a fog horn.”

Heh.

10:16pm:
Moderator confronts Trump on his racist rhetoric.

Trump claims to be the least racist person in the room.  Only if David Duke is stuck with him in an elevator.

10:14pm:
Trump brings up a valid point:  Biden has over 40 years in politics, and over 8 years as VP, and these things were never addressed.

Don’t know whether this will stick.

Thank god for real-time spell checking.  Without it, this will be comepletely incpomprehensible.

10:12pm:
I am unequivocally drunk.

Biden correctly reminds people that Trump called for the innocent kids from the Central Park 5.

10:10pm:
Biden talks relatively honestly, but does not mention his role in shepherding Clinton’s horrible crime bill through the Senate.

Trump brings up the 1994 crime bill.  (True)  And claims that he has done more for the minority community than anyone since Lincoln (F%$#ing lie).

Trump talks up opportunity zones, which is money to rich white developers like ……… Donald Trump.

10:08pm:
Race in America.

Talking about “The Talk” that minorities have to give their kids a talk about how cops will just shoot you.

10:06pm:
The colloquy over immigration is just dueling liars.

Trump is horrible and cruel, and Obama, and by extension Biden, was horrible and cruel.

Trump talks about immigrant murders and rapists.  Take an drink.

10:04pm:
Trump makes the point that punitive immigration policies start with Obama.  The cages, etc.

That is actually true.  

Take a drink.

10:02pm:
Trump talks about the beautiful wall.

There is not enough alcohol in the world.

10:00pm:
$15.00/hr minimum wage.

Trump says, “Leave it up to the states,” just like segregationists said about civil rights.

Bullsh%$.

9:58pm:
Trump says that the stimulus is a bailout for blue cities and states, and handouts to illegal aliens.

When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on you side, pound the table.

9:56pm:
Trump accuses Nancy Pelosi of playing politics with stimulus.  Well, duh!

9:55pm:
Trump claims that Biden living in Scranton as a kid is a fraud.

I need to drink more.

9:52pm:
Trump says that Kamala Harris is more liberal than Bernie Sanders.

I am clearly not drinking ENOUGH.

9:50pm:
Biden notes that his plan adds a public option, and that he is opposed to single payer.

Bad move, let the ambiguity benefit your electoral prospects.  Single payer polls over 50% with Republicans.

9:49pm:
Trump claims that Biden will create a single payer system.

This is:

  • Not true.
  • A stupid thing to accuse Biden of, it’s like accusing Biden of supporting motherhood.

9:46pm:
Shifts to Amy Coney Barret and Obamacare.

Trump claims credit for eliminating the personal mandate, and that Obamacare sucks.  

He’s right that Obamacare sucks, but he has no plan, and if he did it would be worse.

9:45pm:
The moderator is losing control.  Will they cut the mic?

9:42pm:
The DPRK comes up.

Trump’s claims of his wonderful relationship with Kim are bullsh%$.

So is Bidens’s dick swinging on the DPRK, the standard Council on Foreign Relations crap.

Tweedle Dee, meet Tweedle Dumber.

9:38pm:
Trump: China, China, China!

9:34pm:
Biden talks about Trump’s secret China bank accounts and his refusing to release his tax returns.

Trump claims that he he prepaid his taxes (bullsh%$) and accuses Biden of corruption.  

More drinking.

9:32pm:
Biden talks about Trump’s formerly secret China accounts

9:30pm:
Trump brings up the Ukraine story.  Take two drinks.

9:28pm:
Pivots to national security, and now it’s all Russia and Iran and election meddling.

Screw that.  I want to know how we get out of forever wars, and how we stop the US from being a purveyor of misery and drone strikes.

 9:25pm:
Good question from the moderator.  She called out Trump for trash talking Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Trump responds with false praise for the doctor.

9:23pm:
Biden notes that Trump is responding by blaming blue states.

Trump responds to this by blaming blue states.

9:20pm:
Trump notes that there is soaring drug abuse, domestic violence, suicides, etc. during the pandemic.

Remind me, who is sitting in the oval office right now?

9:19pm:
I am watching on the BBC, because American talking heads make me ill.

Unfortunately, there is some sort of problem at the Beeb studios, with libs not matching the words.

It’s refreshingly surreal.

10:38pm:
It’s over. Jeebus.  I need a f%$#ing drink.

9:18pm:
Getting some cross-talk now drinking.

9:16pm:
Biden:  Paraphrases to, “What did he know, and when did he know it?”

I love it when someone uses a classic.

9:14pm:
Not much interruptions yet, so I’m just having a pleasant drink and an unpleasant watch.

9:13pm
Biden notes that Trump is spending his time claiming that it will go away, instead of dealing with the problems.

9:11pm:
Trump tries to deflect to China.

9:09pm:
Shorter version Joe Biden response on Covid-19, “This guy has no clue, and is lying, and the US is in worse shape than the rest of Europe.

9:07pm:
Donald Trump is asked about what he will/has done on Covid-19.  Claims that everything is good, and that he is immune.

I think that he is arguing that he is Superman.  Take a drink.

9:04pm:
Introduction with notes that the microphones will be off for person B when person A is asked a question.

Vote Early and Often

The whole family voted today.

We got absentee ballots and then drove to Hannah Moore park to drop them off.

I voted for Biden, though the I was very tempted to vote for the Bread and Roses Party candidate, they are socialists on the ballot only in non-swing states like Maryland, but in the end, my family’s arguments prevailed.

I wanted to stop at the marijuana dispensary down the street after voting though.

It took about 15 minutes, and we caught it on video: