Trump’s forward-listing posture—illustrated by nearly every political cartoonist—was initially attributed to the high-heeled elevator shoes readily observed in photographs. But his torso leans so markedly off-center that it suggests the possibility of a neurological problem rather than vanity. In medical terms the Bent Spine Syndrome is called camptocormia, first documented in the 17th century by Francisco de Zurbaran, a Spanish painter. The mean age of onset is 65 years (Trump is 74).
Rolling Stone: 
While the letter’s signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case” and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin’s hand at work.
Lazy Caturday Reads: Winter Is Coming
Posted: October 24, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020 presidential election, coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, superspreader rallies, Trump rallies 14 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
M.C. Escher woodcut, 1931
The coronavirus pandemic is getting worse as colder weather and the holidays approach. Here in Massachusetts, we are seeing more new cases every day, after months of holding steady against the virus. In many states, cases and deaths are rising at an even more alarming pace.
Meanwhile, Trump happily makes things even worse with his daily superspreader rallies. If we can’t get rid of this horrible man, he is going to kill millions of Americans and reduce our country to rubble.
I just finished reading a fascinating book about Trump’s rallies, Liar’s Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies, by Carl Hoffman. It’s sort of a sociological/anthropological investigation into the phenomenon. I want to quote a paragraph from the last chapter:
…what was occurring at Trump’s rallies showed Trump’s narcissism and his urgent need to rule, which ultimately differed little from any other autocrat who’d risen to power. He had to win, had to have complete loyalty. He had no choice but to kill everyone else and survive over a battlefield of the dead and all of those sycophants on the stage [Republican political leaders] were letting him. They had submitted and kept on submitting, and if nothing got in his way, he would keep winning, winning, winning, until the whole system, the whole structure of American law and culture and politics was his to wield, his to control. It couldn’t be any other way. There was no other option. Trump didn’t believe in moral goodness or a higher God or the Constitution or democracy. If he wasn’t kept in check, Trump would destroy American because he couldn’t stop himself.
Hoffman argues that the rise of Trump is proof once and for all that “American exceptionalism” is a myth. We are just as vulnerable to authoritarian takeover as any other country. We have just 10 days left to stop Trump. But even if he loses the election, he will still have until January 20 to damage our government and aid and abet the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans from a virus that he chose not to deal with. I don’t know what is going to happen; I only hope we can begin stop him with our votes on November 3.
The Latest on the Pandemic:
The Washington Post: America hits highest daily number of coronavirus cases since pandemic began.
The New York Times: Covid in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count.
Jankel Adler, woman and two cats
At least 925 new coronavirus deaths and 85,085 new cases were reported in the United States on Oct. 23. Over the past week, there have been an average of 64,257 cases per day, an increase of 34 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
As of Saturday morning, more than 8,540,300 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 223,900 have died, according to a New York Times database.
Case numbers in the United States are rising rapidly as states in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains struggle to control major outbreaks, and as new hotspots emerge elsewhere in the country.
The national trajectory is only worsening. Wisconsin has opened a field hospital. North Dakota, which not long ago had relatively few cases, now has the most per capita in the country. And across the rural West, states like Alaska, Wyoming and Montana that had long escaped the worst of the pandemic have seen case numbers soar to alarming new records.
Deaths, though still well below their peak spring levels, averaged around 700 per day by mid October, far more than were reported in early July.
There’s lots of good information and maps at the NYT link.
Reuters: U.S. faces half a million COVID-19 deaths by end-February, study finds.
More than a half million people in the United States could die from COVID-19 by the end of February, but around 130,000 of those lives could be saved if everybody were to wear masks, according to estimates from a modelling study on Friday.
The estimates by researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed that with few effective COVID-19 treatment options and no vaccines yet available, the United States faces “a continued COVID-19 public health challenge through the winter.”
“We are heading into a very substantial fall/winter surge,” said IHME Director Chris Murray, who co-led the research.
He said the projections, as well as currently rising infection rates and deaths, showed there is no basis to “the idea that the pandemic is going away,” adding: “We do not believe that is true.”
Odysseus and Calypso, Max-Beckmann, 1943
USA Today: Trump’s campaign made stops nationwide. Coronavirus cases surged in his wake in at least five places.
The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.
Together, those counties saw 1,500 more new cases in the two weeks following Trump’s rallies than the two weeks before – 9,647 cases, up from 8,069.
Although there’s no way to determine definitively if cases originated at Trump’s rallies, public health experts say the gatherings fly in the face of all recommendations to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
USA TODAY reviewed coronavirus case counts in the counties where Trump attended rallies starting from mid-August through mid-October. The news organization examined the rate of increase in virus cases for the two weeks before and after campaign events. For rallies occurring within the past two weeks, not enough time has passed to draw conclusions.
Public health officials additionally have linked 16 cases, including two hospitalizations, with the rally in Beltrami County, Minnesota, and one case with the rally in Marathon County, Wisconsin. Outside of the counties identified by USA TODAY with a greater case increase after rallies, officials identified four cases linked to Trump rallies.
Presidential Campaign Reads:
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: The electoral map is very weird right now.
Foggy Friday Reads
Posted: October 23, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, Afternoon Reads | Tags: Covid-19, the grim reaper 17 Comments
Danse Macabre 1918 by Rob W Harrison, 2017
Good Day Sky Dancers!
It’s the second time this week I’ve awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of fog horns on the Mississippi River. The sun has yet to burn off the thick clouds. The big ships blare their horns as they make their way from the wharfs of New Orleans down to the mouth of the river and out into the Gulf. It’s a somewhat haunting and ominous sound as they continually fade only to be followed by another one up river starting the loud blare all over again.
This is totally great for the upcoming Halloween festivities which are supposedly still on despite the country’s uptick in COVID-19 Pandemic cases and deaths. But wow, it sounds like something ominously tolling for the Covid Dead and foreshadowing the upcoming election. Further up the Mississippi, the state of Missouri has hospitals that are turning away ambulances at their emergency rooms. Up the mighty Missouri river–which I spent most of my life living near until now– Kansas City, MO has overwhelmed their care facilities.
Some medical facilities in Kansas City, Mo., have turned away ambulances due to an influx of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.
Metro hospitals and emergency departments reported Wednesday night high enough volumes of patients that facilities temporarily stopped accepting ambulances, a leading physician at St. Luke’s Health System told The Kansas City Star.
Marc Larsen, operations director of St. Luke’s COVID-19 Response Team, said the influx in cases affected eight facilities Wednesday evening. The official did not specify the names of the other facilities.
“We’re bursting at the seams in the metropolitan area, and really across the state and the region,” said Larsen, who is also an emergency physician.
Two of the facilities belong to the St. Luke’s system, a hospital spokesperson said.
St. Luke’s Health System admitted more than 100 COVID-19 patients Tuesday, setting record numbers since the start of the pandemic. On Thursday, the system still averaged 90 virus patients across St. Luke’s facilities.
Danse Macabre 1918 (redo), RW Harrison, drawing, 2017
Anecdotally, my friend Michelle went to have lunch with a nurse friend of hers and, while she was waiting at the Touro hospital here in New Orleans, a nurse at the ER said they are seeing more patients now than they were even in the beginning. So, much for rushing to get those bars back open!
Looking strictly at the data, there’s this from NBC: “Coronavirus case increase sets new U.S. record, rising to over 77K in one day ”
But, according to Trumperz, we’ve rounded the corner. I’m not sure which corner he means but these drawings kind’ve express my thoughts on that.
So, I didn’t live blog the debate last night since I went across the street to my neighbor’s house with a shepherd’s pie and a bottle of chardonnay to watch with her. We two ladies who are mostly cooped up in our houses have been neighbors for almost 20 years although her job used to take her all over the world and she’d lease it out in the interim to others.
We both wondered if Trump had been sedated since he seemed unusually calmer than his full blown Roid Rage performance last time. Maybe, a few calmer folks than Rudy or Chris Christie prevailed in Debate prep. Republicans are saying that his presentation was so almost normal that he won the debate. I guess we really are in the post-truth and venomous age of enraged white men because a calm presentation of lies and personal slurs is not my idea of an actual debate.
We’re going to repeat this on election day with the hope of ringing out the old and craven administration.
Unknown Title, Joan Miro, 1918
Mike Allen from Axios had this to say this morning: “Trump-Biden venom on display during final debate”. So how is this for equivocation and bothersiderisms that we’ve come to hate so much?
Joe Biden twice referred to President Trump as “this guy,” and Trump called the former vice president’s family “like a vacuum cleaner” for foreign money.
Why it matters: The personal venom — during Thursday’s final presidential debate, in Nashville — was a reminder that even during a more normal debate, nothing this year is normal.
- A prime example: “Oh, God,” Biden said during an exchange on race.
Foreshadowing the crises he’d face if elected, Biden said America is “about to go into a dark winter” because of the coronavirus:
- “220,000 Americans dead. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: … Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”
- Trump responded that he expects a vaccine “within a matter of weeks”: “I don’t think we’re going to have a dark winter, at all. … We have to open our country.”
An exchange that captures the two in a nutshell:
- Biden: “It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family. And your family’s hurting badly. … [Middle-class families are] sitting at the kitchen table this morning deciding: ‘Well, we can’t get new tires — they’re bald — because we have to wait another month or so.'”
- Trump: “That’s a typical political statement. Let’s get off this China thing, and then he looks [in mocking tone]: ‘The family around the table,’ everything. Just a typical politician when I see that. I’m not a typical politician. That’s why I got elected.”
Japan’s 1918 Pandemic Prevention Posters
Trumperz is obviously projecting about the China thing which is always his political strategy it seems. You accuse the other guy of doing what you’re doing. Grade school playgrounds have better shout outs than this.
Most polls today show that Biden won the debate. This is from CNN’s polling director Jennifer Agiesta: “CNN Poll: Biden wins final presidential debate”.
Joe Biden did a better job in the final debate on Thursday, according to a CNN Instant Poll of debate watchers. Overall, 53% of voters who watched the debate said that Biden won the matchup, while 39% said that President Donald Trump did.
Viewers once again said that Biden’s criticisms of Trump were largely fair (73% said they were fair, 26% unfair), and they split over whether Trump’s attacks on Biden were fair (50% said yes, 49% no).That’s a more positive outcome for Trump. In a CNN Instant Poll after the first presidential debate, just 28% said they thought the President had won the debate, and 67% called his criticism of Biden unfair.All told, though, the debate did not do much to move impressions of either candidate. Favorable views of Biden before the debate stood at 55%, and they held steady at 56% in post-debate interviews. Likewise, Trump’s numbers held steady, with 42% saying they had a favorable view of the President in interviews conducted before Thursday’s debate and 41% saying the same afterward.More debate watchers, though, said Trump’s performance raised concerns about how he would handle the presidency (55%) than did Biden’s (41%).
And while we’re on the subject of looking like death, what is with the Grim Reaper’s hands and bandages?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s hands have become the unlikely subject of wild speculation on social media as people obsess over how badly bruised they look this week, but Kentucky’s longtime senator isn’t saying much about it.
A photograph taken earlier this week showed McConnell’s noticeably discolored hands, which had a couple of small bandages on them. A little bruising around his mouth also was noticeable during a public appearance.
People theorized online that the reason for the apparent bruises could be that he has COVID-19, is taking blood thinners or has some other health issue. Snopes, the well-known fact-checking website, even put out a post confirming the photograph of the senator’s hands is real.
In light of all the rampant conjecture on the internet, a few reporters in Washington, D.C., asked McConnell about it Thursday, according to dispatches from the Capitol Hill press pool.
Bresnahan said he was feeling OK. “Good for you,” McConnell replied.
“But I’m serious, is there anything going on we should know about?” Bresnahan followed up.
“Of course not,” McConnell said.
Another journalist asked about the bruising, too, and McConnell said there were no concerns. He did not respond when asked if he was being treated by a doctor.
During a debate in Lexington on Oct. 12, McConnell had no discernible bruising on his hands, according to photographs from the event.
This isn’t the first time the senator has dismissed questions about his personal health.
Earlier this month, after President Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah both confirmed they had contracted COVID-19, McConnell refused to say whether he had recently been tested for the virus.
Egon Schiele, Portrait of the dying Edith Schiele, 1918,
Mask Up Ya’ll! This is a pandemic data chart about the efficacy of masks.
Despite the clear opposition to masks within the Trump White House and among its allies, Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly support their use as a public health measure and say they wear them whenever they’re in public.
Still, there are significant differences in mask-use rates at the state level. And data from Carnegie Mellon’s CovidCast, an academic project tracking real-time coronavirus statistics, yields a particularly vivid illustration of how mask usage influences the prevalence of covid-19 symptoms in a given area.
There’s a really interesting graphic there about the frequency of mask wearing per state and the infection rates that you should check out.
Meanwhile, back in Grim Reaper Territory:
We do have confirmation today that Alaska Senator Lisa Murskowski will vote no on the SCOTUS nomination Of Donald. This is from Newsweek.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski signaled on Thursday that she will vote against confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court next week.
The Alaska lawmaker, who met with the conservative nominee earlier this week, would join the likes of Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the only other Republican who plans to vote against the Trump nominee on Monday. Barrett’s nomination was advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday by unanimous consent after Democrats boycotted the vote.
“I’ve shared for a while that I didn’t think we should be taking this up until after the election, and I haven’t changed,” Murkowski said, according to a congressional pool report.
Maine’s Susan Collins indicated on Oct. 16th that she did not support the nomination.
So, that’s some of the grim news today.
What’s on you reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: October 22, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020 presidential election, 60 Minutes, circular gait, coronavirus pandemic, dementia, Donald Trump, forward leaning posture, Joe Biden, Lesley Stahl, neurology, Richard E. Cytowic MD, Second 2020 presidential debate, slurred speech 27 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Tonight Trump and Biden will meet in the second and final debate before the November 3rd election. I plan to watch, at least for a little while, in case Trump spontaneously combusts or strokes out in a rage over his mike being muted. The New York Times has the basics on how to watch:
The second and final debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes place on Thursday from 9 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern. Here are some of the many ways you can watch it:
— The Times will livestream the debate, and our reporters will provide commentary and analysis.
— The debate will be televised on channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, Fox News and MSNBC.
— Many news outlets, including ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox News and C-SPAN, will stream the debate on YouTube.
A debate preview from the AP: Face to face: Trump and Biden to meet for final debate.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, are set to square off in their final debate Thursday, one of the last high-profile opportunities for the trailing incumbent to change the trajectory of an increasingly contentious campaign.
Worried about losing the White House, some advisers are urging Trump to trade his aggressive demeanor from the first debate for a lower-key style that puts Biden more squarely in the spotlight. But it’s unclear whether the president will listen….
Trump on Tuesday called on Attorney General William Barr to immediately launch an investigation into unverified claims about Biden and his son Hunter, effectively demanding that the Justice Department muddy his political opponent and abandon its historic resistance to getting involved in elections.
The president has promoted an unconfirmed New York Post report published last week that cites an email in which an official from Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked Hunter Biden, who served on the company’s board, for arranging for him to meet Joe Biden during a 2015 visit to Washington. The Biden campaign has rejected Trump’s assertion of wrongdoing and noted that Biden’s schedule did not show a meeting with the Burisma official.
Trump’s attacks on the Biden family have been relentless, including his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, which led to Trump’s impeachment. It’s part of a determined, yet so-far-unsuccessful effort to drive up his opponent’s negatives, as he did with Hillary Clinton four years ago….
While Biden will defend his own record and his son, aides have said, he hopes to focus on making the case that Trump is unfit for office and let the nation down during a confluence of crises.
As the article notes, Biden has spent the past few days preparing for the debate; Trump has been holding superspreader rallies and raging at Lesley Stahl after she apparently asked him some tough questions in an interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes.
It must have been really awful for Trump, because he cut the interview short and didn’t return for a scheduled “walk and talk” with Stahl and VP Pence. Right after the interview ended, Trump began attacking Stahl on Twitter. Forbes: Trump Attacks ‘60 Minutes’ Host Lesley Stahl After Reportedly Cutting Interview Short.
Trump tweeted a video of Stahl not wearing a mask while interacting with several people, writing, “Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes not wearing a mask in the White House after her interview with me. Much more to come.”
Trump then threatened to post the interview in advance of its airing so that “everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about,” adding, “Everyone should compare this terrible Electoral Intrusion with the recent interviews of Sleepy Joe Biden!”
Sources familiar with the interview told Forbes the video was taken after the interview with the CBS team, who had all been tested, and that Stahl had a mask on leading into the interview….
The incident comes as Trump and his allies have become increasingly critical of the questioning he receives from the press, with Trump accusing NBC’s Savannah Guthrie of “going totally crazy” in response to her tough line of questioning during a town hall last week.
This morning Trump tweeted:
I cant wait to hear those “magnificently brilliant” responses.
60 Minutes released short clips from the Biden and Trump interviews this morning.
At The Washington Post, Greg Sargent tries to explain Trump’s inexplicable behavior: Why Trump’s endgame is to rage at Lesley Stahl.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: October 20, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bill Barr, CNN, coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump, Edward Hopper, Hunter Biden, Ivanka Trump, Jeffrey Toobin, Joe Biden, Michael Steele, never Trump Republicans, Russian disinformation, Stephanie Kane, Stony blonde, The New Yorker 21 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Couple near poplars, Edward Hopper, 1906
A few days ago, I came across an article about Edward Hopper’s paintings of a “stony blonde” woman at Crime Reads. I’m going to use some of the paintings mentioned in the article to illustrate this post. Here’s the article: How Edward Hopper’s Stony Blonde Became A Noir Icon. On The Femme Fatale Who Flipped the Script, by Stephanie Kane.
Best known for his disengaged customers at a neon-lit diner counter and his flapper staring into a coffee cup in a lonely automat at night, Hopper depicted social isolation before a pandemic made it a way of life. It’s no surprise that the famously reclusive artist binged on movies when he was creatively blocked, read pulp fiction, and had a lasting impact on film noir. He even influenced Alfred Hitchcock: the house in Psycho is modeled on a Hopper painting.
Hopper apparently had issues with women, and only connected with three of them, one of whom was his wife and fellow artist Jo Nivison. You can read Jo and the other two women in the article. Here are the paintings selected by Kane to illustrate her points:
The blonde first appears in Hopper’s 1906 watercolor, Couple near Poplars, as a petite Gibson girl with a gawky swain. Hair upswept, with a pinafore over her corseted waist, she faces into the wind with her arms tightly crossed and lips grimly set. Forty years later she’s the girl on the porch in 1947’s Summer Evening, provocatively dressed in a pink bandeau and high-cut shorts, staring sullenly down as her date leans in imploringly. In 1932’s Room in New York, she’s the wife in the evening dress at the piano, idly touching a key while her husband ignores her for his newspaper. Her hand on the keyboard is poised to come crashing down.
Automat, 1927
When she is alone, the blonde tells another story. In 1927’s Automat, she’s a flapper slumped over a coffee cup in a neon-lit cafeteria. If she’s contemplating her next move, it takes her four years. In 1931’s Hotel Room, she sits at the edge of a bed in a chemise, shoes kicked off and bags on the floor, bent over a train schedule in her lap. Preparing to make a run for it, like that collie in the grass.
In 1957’s Western Motel, she flips the script.
Blonde hair pulled back, in a striking red dress, she sits upright at the foot of a neatly made bed. The picture window behind her frames what could be a Western movie set: blue sky, mountains, and an Aztec green Buick sedan with a bull’s-eye chrome bombsite on the hood, raring to go. Tagged and packed, her bags stand at the door. A pair of blue men’s boxer shorts is draped on a chair. She’s leaving without him. And after 50 years, she finally looks straight at the viewer.
Here, as she faces us for the very first time, Hopper’s blonde’s arc ends. In walking out of Western Motel and into the world, this femme fatale chooses life over love or death.
Can you tell I’m not in the mood for politics today? I’m so sick and tired of Donald Trump that I just want to escape from the world for the next two weeks. Of course I can’t really do that, because another part of me is completely obsessed with knowing what is happening in the lead-up to the election.
Hotel Room, 1931
Yesterday we did get a distraction when the news broke that Jeffrey Toobin was caught masturbating during a Zoom call with his New Yorker colleagues. Vice: New Yorker Suspends Jeffrey Toobin for Masturbating on Zoom Call.
The New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin for masturbating on a Zoom video chat between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio last week. Toobin says he did not realize his video was on.
“I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera. I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers,” Toobin told Motherboard.
“I believed I was not visible on Zoom. I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video,” he added.
Sure Jeffrey.
Two people who were on the call told VICE separately that the call was an election simulation featuring many of the New Yorker’s biggest stars: Jane Mayer was playing establishment Republicans; Evan Osnos was Joe Biden, Jelani Cobb was establishment Democrats, Masha Gessen played Donald Trump, Andrew Marantz was the far right, Sue Halpern was left wing democrats, Dexter Filkins was the military, and Jeffrey Toobin playing the courts. There were also a handful of other producers on the call from the New Yorker and WNYC.
Room in New York, 1932
Both people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, noted that it was unclear how much each person saw, but both said that they saw Toobin jerking off. The two sources described a juncture in the election simulation when there was a strategy session, and the Democrats and Republicans went into their respective break out rooms for about 10 minutes. At this point, they said, it seemed like Toobin was on a second video call. The sources said that when the groups returned from their break out rooms, Toobin lowered the camera. The people on the call said they could see Toobin touching his penis. Toobin then left the call. Moments later, he called back in, seemingly unaware of what his colleagues had been able to see, and the simulation continued.
The New Yorker says they are “investigating,” and CNN has given Toobin some time off to deal with his “personal issue.” It seems to me that Toobin should just be fired, but he’s a powerful white man, so . . . slap on the wrist I guess.
Apparently, Toobin has a history of sexual misconduct. Read about it in this 2010 New York Daily News piece: CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin made ‘shockingly sexual’ proposition to well-known media figure, she claims.
In today’s news, Trump continues to flog the Hunter Biden non-story. He went on Fox News this morning to rant about it. Raw Story: Trump publicly demands Bill Barr appoint special counsel to investigate Joe Biden in off-the-rails Fox News interview.
In a wide-ranging and off-the-rails Fox News interview President Donald Trump is demanding Attorney General Bill Barr appoint a special counsel to investigate his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, over Russian disinformation spread by his personal attorney and a conservative media outlet owned by his friend.
Summer Evening, 1947
Trump told “Fox & Friends” Barr has “got to act” against the former vice president and his son Hunter Biden, insisting the Attorney General give credence to the disinformation before Election Day.
“We’ve go to get the Attorney General to act, and he’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election,” Trump demanded, before declaring, “we’re going to win the election.”
But more than 50 former intelligence officials say the Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation. Natasha Bertrand at Politico:
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The letter, signed on Monday, centers around a batch of documents released by the New York Post last week that purport to tie the Democratic nominee to his son Hunter’s business dealings. Under the banner headline “Biden Secret E-mails,” the Post reported it was given a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said he got it from a Mac shop owner in Delaware who also alerted the FBI.
Western Motel, 1957
“If we are right,” they added, “this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
Nick Shapiro, a former top aide under CIA director John Brennan, provided POLITICO with the letter on Monday. He noted that “the IC leaders who have signed this letter worked for the past four presidents, including Trump. The real power here however is the number of former, working-level IC officers who want the American people to know that once again the Russians are interfering.”
Read more at Politico.
Anyway Trump’s kids are blatantly profiting from their dad’s corrupt presidency. Biden should bring that up in the debate on Thursday night.
Joan Venocchi at The Boston Globe: Enough about Hunter Biden. What about Ivanka Trump?
Trump’s strategy is clear. His own children are brazenly trading on the Trump family name to advance the Trump Organization’s business interests. Changing the subject to “What about Hunter Biden?” becomes a way to project the corruption spotlight onto the Bidens and away from the Trumps. Plus, if the final weeks of the campaign are all about Hunter Biden, that allows Trump to distract from what are the real issues: Trump’s failed leadership, especially regarding the coronavirus pandemic; Trump’s ongoing commitment to dividing the country by race and political ideology, rather than trying to unite it; and Trump’s utter lack of character, integrity, and honesty….
At least Joe Biden acknowledges it was a mistake for his son to join the Burisma board and is pledging that no family members will have any involvement with any foreign government if he’s elected president. Trump, meanwhile, calls the Bidens “an organized crime family,” yet takes no responsibility for the conflicts of interest corrupting his own presidency.
“Can you imagine if my kids did what this guy Hunter has done,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Florida. “Ivanka! Oh my beautiful, my wonderful Ivanka. She’s a good kid. Can you imagine? “
We can do more than imagine. According to Forbes, the Chinese government has granted 41 trademarks to companies linked to Trump’s daughter. And “the trademarks she applied for after her father became president reportedly got approved roughly 40 percent faster than those she requested before her father’s victory in the 2016 election,” Forbes reported.
Read the whole thing at the Globe.
Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele has endorsed Joe Biden. He explains at NBC News: I’m a Republican voting for Joe Biden over Trump. Because I’m an American first.
So here we are, faced with the re-election of President Donald Trump and the prospect of a nation still struggling against Covid-19, reeling from the ravages of a flattened economy and in pain from civil unrest and our genuine concern for how we treat one another.
Rather than binding up the nation’s wounds, Trump exacerbates division. Rather than standing up to the world’s dictators, Trump cravenly seeks the favor of thugs. Rather than fostering free enterprise, Trump embraces economic principles not only outdated in Lincoln’s time, but made even worse today by a leader who lost close to a billion dollars in a single year running a casino. Rather than seeking to build on the legacy of the Republican Party’s founders, of which Trump is surely ignorant, Trump has posited a single purpose for the GOP — the celebration of him.
New York Movie, 1939
Consequently, America has watched as the Republican Party stopped pursuing its animating principles of freedom and opportunity. It has given up its voice on things that mattered and instead bent the arc of the party towards the baser motives of one man, who is neither a Republican nor a conservative.
Read the rest at the link. I don’t agree with most of it, I’m glad Steele came out publicly. More and more never Trump Republicans are announcing that they will vote for Biden, and we need all the help we can get.
More stories to check out:
The New York Times: Voters Prefer Biden Over Trump on Almost All Major Issues, Poll Shows.
Financial Times: US voters turn against Donal d Trump’s economic policies.
Axios: Axios-Ipsos poll: Trump’s sickness makes him harder to trust.
Brian Karem at The Bulwark: The Donald Trump Show Must Go On. The madness continues on the campaign trail.
The Daily Beast: Even Parts of Trumpworld Are Like: Rudy, WTF Are You Doing?
The New York Times: U.S. Diplomats and Spies Battle Trump Administration Over Suspected Attacks.
Julia Ioffe at GQ: The Mystery of the Immaculate Concussion.
Margaret Sullivan at The Washington Post: What Kristen Welker can learn from Savannah Guthrie about dealing with Trump.
Raw Story: Just two weeks before the election, Justice Department sues Google in biggest antitrust case in decades.
Have a nice Thursday everyone, and please check in with us in the comments if you have the time and inclination.
Monday Reads! Vote Him OUT!
Posted: October 19, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads 19 Comments
Pierre Edouard Baranowski, 1918 – Amedeo Modigliani
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Tis the season to be Voting! And we all really, really, really need to do that and take as many people with us as possible!
I can hardly turn on the TV any more.
Here’s all I want to say from The Rolling Stone: via The Hill: “Rolling Stone endorses Biden, calls Trump ‘categorically unfit to be president'”. How can such a strongly worded statement be such an understatement? But that’s been our upside down country for the past nearly 4 years.
Rolling Stone magazine is endorsing Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president, saying in a piece on Monday that the U.S. has lived “under a man categorically unfit to be president” for the last four years.
“Fortunately for America,” the magazine said at the top of its endorsement of the former vice president, “Joe Biden is Donald Trump’s opposite in nearly every category: The Democratic presidential nominee evinces competence, compassion, steadiness, integrity, and restraint.”
“Perhaps most important in this moment, Biden holds a profound respect for the institutions of American democracy, as well as a deep knowledge about how our government — and our system of checks and balances — is meant to work; he aspires to lead the nation as its president, not its dictator,” the magazine continued. “The 2020 election, then, offers the nation a chance to reboot and rebuild from the racist, authoritarian, know-nothing wreckage wrought by the 45th president.”
Trump’s only plan for America is one that keeps him in office and in the position of not being held accountable for anything including the massive grifting.
Amedeo Modigliani – Christina
So, what kind of things are going on right now?
Well, first, Trump is trying all kinds of ways to make Dr. Fauci look bad and to convince us all the virus is no big deal. This is from CBS’ 60 Minutes as reported by Jonathan LaPook: “Fauci admits administration has restricted his media appearances, says he’s not surprised Trump got COVID”.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been a voice of logic and stability since the pandemic began. And right now, he’s worried we’re heading in the wrong direction. Worldwide the number of new cases is surging at an alarming rate, as seen in this map by Johns Hopkins University. This week, Russia reported a record number of infections, and cases are spiking in the UK, France, and Italy.
Dr. Anthony Fauci: When you have a million deaths and over 30 million infections globally, you can not say that we’re on the road to essentially getting out of this. So quite frankly, I don’t know where we are. It’s impossible to say.
What Dr. Fauci knows for sure is, here in the United States, infections are beginning to rise as the weather gets colder and people congregate indoors. Over the last two weeks, new cases have gone up in at least 38 states.
Dr. Jon LaPook: How bad would things have to get for you to advocate a national lockdown?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: They’d have to get really, really bad. First of all, the country is fatigued with restrictions. So we wanna use public health measures not to get in the way of opening the economy, but to being a safe gateway to opening the economy. So instead of having an opposition, open up the economy, get jobs back, or shut down. No. Put “shut down” away and say, “We’re gonna use public health measures to help us safely get to where we wanna go.”
Those measures were not in place last month in the rose garden when President Trump announced the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Were you surprised that President Trump got sick?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Absolutely not. I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask. When I saw that on TV, I said, “Oh my goodness. Nothing good can come outta that, that’s gotta be a problem.” And then sure enough, it turned out to be a superspreader event.
The good Doctor intends to vote in person on election day and says it can be done safely. Read or watch the entire interview at the link.
Yes. Please vote.
The AP went in search of the not so elusive Burbie women in Michigan and low and behold they found more than a few women of color! Wow! Some one tell the Russian Potted Plant occupying the Oval Office! Claire Galofaro reports: ‘Our house is on fire’: Suburban women lead a Trump revolt . However, the lede feature is a suburban white woman so there’s still that. (sigh). But it’s Michigan and that’s an important state.
For many of those women, the past four years have meant frustration, anger and activism — a political awakening that powered women’s marches, the #MeToo movement and the victories of record numbers of female candidates in 2018. That energy has helped create the widest gender gap — the political divide between men and women — in recent history. And it has started to show up in early voting as women are casting their ballots earlier than men. In Michigan, women have cast nearly 56% of the early vote so far, and 68% of those were Democrats, according to the voting data firm L2.
That could mean trouble for Trump, not just in Oakland County but also in suburban battlegrounds outside Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Phoenix.
Trump has tried to appeal to “the suburban housewives of America,” as he called them. Embracing fear and deploying dog whistles, he has argued that Black Lives Matter protesters will bring crime, low-income housing will ruin property values, suburbs will be abolished. Campaigning in Pennsylvania last week, he begged: “Suburban women, will you please like me?”
There’s no sign all this is working. Some recent polls show Biden winning support from about 60% of suburban women. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 52%, according to an estimate by the Pew Research Center.
Talk to women across suburban Michigan, and you’ll find ample confirmation: the lifelong Republican who says her party has been commandeered by cowards. The Black executive who fears for the safety of her sons. The Democrat who voted for Trump in 2016 but now describes him as “a terrible person.”
Together, they create a powerful political force.
All I can say is whatever it takes to get that Monster out of the White House.
This NYT Times Op-ED asks a question we can only hope isn’t rhetorical. “Has Trump Drawn the Water for a ‘Republican Blood Bath’? And if he has, what should Biden do with his first term?” It’s a conversation between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens.
Gail: Speaking of the competition between Trump and Biden, what did you think of those town hall pseudo debates?
Bret: I think they’re a public service. Biden continues to dispel the myth that he no longer has a brain. And Trump continues to dispel the myth that he’s ever had a heart. The more voters are reminded of these two facts between now and the election, the likelier we are to send Trump into permanent exile in Mar-a-Lago or wherever else he goes from here.
Gail: Well thanks to great reporting from our Times colleagues, we are able to hope that the first place he goes from here is bankruptcy.
Bret: From Here to Bankruptcy? Wasn’t that a film with Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift?
Gail: If it was a new version, we’d have to watch the scene where Trump goes to the beach and embraces Melania (or Stormy? Or someone in between?) in the waves. Definitely don’t want to go there.
Bret: In the meantime, it looks like Amy Coney Barrett is heading toward confirmation, and some progressives are advocating all manner of retaliation against Republicans for pushing the nomination through: ending the Senate filibuster for legislation, packing the Supreme Court, even pushing for statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
All this assumes Democrats win back the Senate and the White House. If they do, is any of that warranted or wise?
Gail: None of those would be on the top of my priority list, but I can understand why they’re coming up. The way the Republicans have handled court appointments is shocking, including their decision to break all the precedents they set during the Obama administration and ram Barrett through just days before the election.
Bret: Well, I wouldn’t object to any president’s right to nominate a justice at any point in his presidency if Mitch McConnell hadn’t held up Merrick Garland’s nomination to replace Antonin Scalia on transparently bogus grounds. But the hypocrisy rankles and reeks. If Senate Republicans had integrity — ha! — they would have held themselves to their own standard and held the nomination until after January.
Frans Hellens, 1919 – Amedeo Modigliani –
Trump’s constant trips to the Courts appear to be paying off for everyone but Trump Policy. This is from WAPO. “Federal judge strikes down Trump plan to slash food stamps for 700,000 unemployed Americans” as reported by Spencer Hsu.
A federal judge on Sunday formally struck down a Trump administration attempt to end food stamp benefits for nearly 700,000 unemployed people, blocking as “arbitrary and capricious” the first of three such planned measures to restrict the federal food safety net.
“In a scathing 67-page opinion, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of D.C. condemned the Agriculture Department for failing to justify or even address the impact of the sweeping change on states, saying its shortcomings had been placed in stark relief amid the pandemic, during which unemployment has quadrupled and rosters of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have grown by more than 17 percent, with more than 6 million new enrollees.
The rule “at issue in this litigation radically and abruptly alters decades of regulatory practice, leaving States scrambling and exponentially increasing food insecurity for tens of thousands of Americans,” Howell wrote, adding that the Agriculture Department “has been icily silent about how many [adults] would have been denied SNAP benefits had the changes sought . . . been in effect while the pandemic rapidly spread across the country.” The judge concluded that the department’s “utter failure to address the issue renders the agency action arbitrary and capricious.”
Howell temporarily enjoined the proposal on March 13, the same day President Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency. Congress then waived the requirement for the duration of the emergency as part of economic relief legislation, and the Trump administration suspended its planned April implementation date.
However, the Agriculture Department appealed the judge’s earlier order, and absent court intervention the rule would have taken full effect at the end of the state of emergency. Spokesmen for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also going to SCOTUS is the Trump Wall debacle and his “remain in Mexico policy (via Reuters) “U.S. Supreme Court to review legality of Trump’s ‘remain in Mexico’ asylum policy”.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide the legality of one of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies that has forced tens of thousands of migrants along the southern border to wait in Mexico, rather than entering the United States, while their asylum claims are processed.
The justices will hear a Trump administration appeal of a 2019 lower court ruling that found that the policy likely violated federal immigration law. The “remain in Mexico” policy remains in effect because the Supreme Court in March put the lower court’s decision to block it on hold while the legal battle continues.
The Republican president has said the policy, which took effect in January 2019, has reduced the flow of migrants from Central America into the United States. Restricting both illegal and legal immigration has been a central theme of Trump’s presidency. He has sought to reduce asylum claims through a series of policy and rule changes.
Immigration advocacy groups and 11 individual asylum seekers who fled violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were returned to Mexico after entering the United States filed suit to challenge the legality of the policy.
Portrait of Jeanne Herbuterne – Amedeo Modigliani
Further information on this can be found at WAPO: “Supreme Court to review Trump’s border wall funding and ‘remain-in-Mexico’ program”.
The Trump administration had asked the court to intervene in both because of decisions against it in lower courts.
Also in both cases, the justices have previously allowed the administration to proceed with its plans while the merits of the issues were litigated.
In July, the court rejected a last-ditch effort from environmentalists to stop the ongoing construction of parts of the border wall. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in late June that the administration’s use for the wall of funds intended for the Defense Department was unlawful.
By the time the court hears the case, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, say the Trump administration will have used all of the money.
But the administration told the court it was important for it to weigh in to correct the decision that the president did not have the authority to redirect military funds to pay for border wall construction.
Trump, who ran for office in 2016 promising that Mexico would pay for the border wall, has obtained more than $15 billion in federal funds for his signature project, including $5 billion provided by Congress through conventional appropriations. The president has tapped into Pentagon accounts for the remaining $10 billion, including the $2.5 billion transfer last year that the 9th Circuit said was unlawful.
In 2019, the Supreme Court in an emergency order allowed the administration to proceed with the transfers and contracts for construction, even though House Democrats, affected states and environmental groups said that violated the will of Congress, which withheld the funds from the administration.
So, if you’re like me and getting very tired, wistful, and full of wishing you will never hear anything negative about dull moments again, just join us and vote! VOTE! VOTE!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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