Monday Crazy Go Nuts Reads

Posted: October 5, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , | 45 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

We Americans have had some really crazy few days even with the last 4ish years being one crazy day after another.

Today, we wonder exactly what Covid-19 hospital protocol allows a patient to ride around the block in a hermetically sealed SUV exposing every person around him in the process. Any idea?

I continually worry about the secret service and all of the workers at the White House. You know, the folks that have worked there forever to keep the place clean, the folks fed, and the garden manicured?

This New York Times article kind of sums that answer up: “The president made a surprise outing from his hospital bed in an effort to show his improvement, but the murky and shifting narrative of his illness was rewritten again with grim new details.” This is written by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman.

 President Trump sought to dispel any perception of weakness on Sunday with a surprise and seemingly risky outing from his hospital bed to greet supporters even as his doctors once again rewrote the official narrative of his illness by acknowledging two alarming episodes they had previously not disclosed.

The doctors said that Mr. Trump’s blood oxygen level dropped twice in the two days after he was diagnosed with the coronavirus, requiring medical intervention, and that he had been put on steroids, suggesting his condition might be more serious than initially described. But they insisted that his situation had improved enough since then that he could be released from the hospital as early as Monday.

The acknowledgment of the episodes raised new questions about the credibility of the information provided about the commander in chief of a superpower as he is hospitalized with a disease that has killed more than 209,000 people in the United States. With the president determined not to concede weakness and facing an election in just 30 days, officials acknowledged providing rosy assessments to satisfy their prickly patient.

Determined to reassert himself on the political stage on his third day in the hospital, Mr. Trump made an unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the early evening, climbing into his armored Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building. Wearing a suit jacket and face mask but no tie, Mr. Trump waved at the crowd through a closed window as his motorcade slowly cruised by before returning him to the hospital.

Alexej Von Jawlensky

So, this is all very quite odd.

Andrew Joseph of Stat writes this: “‘There’s a disconnect’: Outside medical experts question the upbeat portrayal of president’s condition”. Supposedly, Trump has gotten a steroid that’s only given to patients in need of oxygen or ventilation. So, it rather implies he might still be on oxygen and we’re not being told about it’

The main concern: Trump started receiving the steroid dexamethasone, which is recommended only for hospitalized Covid-19 patients who are on ventilators or require oxygen. Trump’s medical team said Sunday they planned to continue giving him dexamethasone even as they touted that Trump was not on supplemental oxygen at that point and not having difficulty breathing.“I think today’s news means he’s sicker than I thought he was on Friday and Saturday,” said Nahid Bhadelia, the medical director of Boston Medical Center’s Special Pathogens Unit.

Outside experts also raised other reasons for skepticism.

For one, Trump has experienced at least two drops in his oxygen levels, his doctors confirmed Sunday. One, on Friday, led to doctors giving the president oxygen at the White House. During the Sunday briefing, the president’s lead physician, Sean Conley, said Trump’s oxygen levels had dropped again Saturday but he wasn’t clear whether oxygen had been provided again. It was that second episode that led the team to start him on dexamethasone, the doctors said. To the outside experts, two periods of low oxygen levels indicated this wasn’t a mild illness.

Multiple Secret Service agents are criticizing President Trump’s brief appearance in an SUV outside Walter Reed Medical Center Sunday evening, accusing the president of putting his protective detail in unnecessary danger.

He’s not even pretending to care now,” an agent who requested anonymity told The Washington Post.

“That should never have happened,” another unidentified agent, who works in both the presidential and first family detail, told CNN. “The frustration with how we’re treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We’re not disposable.”Agents are authorized to decline requests that would place the president at risk, but not those that would put themselves at risk.

This comes from The Hill link above and was written by Zack Budryk

So, given that Republicans seem ready to jump off the cliff with the Orange Dumpsterfire I find this Politco story perplexing: “Republicans gripped by dread as multiple crises swirl. The presidency, control of the Senate and even a quick confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett are all in doubt less than a month from the election.” Evidently quite a few of them are now concerned about their elections. We just got this breaking news too. Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania will NOT run for re-election in 2022.

Trump’s Republican critics have long argued that he was a virus infecting their party that would eventually destroy it. Trump skeptics-turned-supporters, which could describe most Washington Republicans, made a different calculation: If the worst elements of Trump could be contained, then Republicans could keep a Democrat out of the White House, lock in a majority on the Supreme Court and protect their redoubt in the Senate. Even before Trump’s diagnosis, the cost of the deal with Trump was starting to look high. But the path to pushing through Barrett and retaining the Senate and even White House was hardly insurmountable.

That an actual virus has now infected Trump, his wife, his campaign manager, the head of the Republican National Committee, several advisers, and three senators — many of them at a celebration of Barrett’s nomination — thus throwing all three of the GOP’s 2020 goals into chaos, is a plot twist that would be rejected by any writer as just a little too on the nose.

“Trump has done more to derail the Barrett nomination than any Democrat,” said one dejected former senior White House official. “They are screwing themselves, that’s for sure.”

Republicans around the Trumpsterfire who have tested positive for COVID-19 include former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Hope Hicks, Russian Sparrow Melania Trump, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former senior advisor Kellyanne Conway . So far, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller among those who tested negative for the virus

Trump’s fast track of Barrett might be on the slowed down track according to WAPO: “Positive tests for senators raise doubts about fast-track confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court choice”. Thoughts and prayers to those Senators and stay in bed place for as long as you’re told too! This was penned by Seung Min Kim.

From the start, Senate Republican leaders have known their ambitious timeline to get Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett confirmed before Election Day offered little room for error.

But that tightly crafted schedule has now been thrown into uncertainty with the coronavirus diagnoses of at least two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the fear that other senators could test positive in the coming days. A handful of other GOP senators, on and off the committee, are also isolating as a precaution after being exposed to infected colleagues.

Sensing an opportunity to delay, Democrats are cranking up their push to postpone the Oct. 12 confirmation hearings, citing the safety of members, aides and Barrett herself — waging a public pressure campaign because they have no powers on their own to stop the proceedings.

In a statement to The Washington Post on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) demanded that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) require all members of the Judiciary Committee to be tested before participating in Barrett’s confirmation hearing. Democrats have also insisted that remote participation, even for senators, is inadequate for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

“Moving forward with the committee process when three senators have recently tested positive for covid-19 is irresponsible and dangerous, but doing so without requiring all members to be tested before a hearing in accordance with CDC best practices would be intentionally reckless,” Schumer said in the statement to The Post. “If Chairman Graham doesn’t require testing, it may make some wonder if he just doesn’t want to know the results.”

Lets just hope he does everything possible to sandbag that Graham operation. It might be more succesful though given Lindsey’s election problems.

So that’s it for me today! Just a couple of things. Please be patient with us as we learn how to use this crazy block editor from Word Press. It would cost us $283 odd dollars just to keep it as an add on supported for two years so definitely not worth that. Also, it’s time this week to help us with our annual fee to Word Press for what they do provide us now. It’s about $8 a month for the premium which is renewed for us on the 18th.

Be safe! Check in and tell us what’s up with you. And, what’s on your reading and blogging list today!

Thursday Reads: Dumpster Fire Debate Aftermath

Posted: October 1, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 34 Comments

Central Avenue, by Philip Guston

Good Morning!!

The paintings and drawings in this post are by Philip Guston, a painter who shocked the art world in the late 1960s by abandoning his abstract expressionism and turning to cartoonish representations of KKK-like figures that to him reflected the culture of America under Richard Nixon. These works also reflected his childhood memories of scenes of the Klan marching openly in Los Angeles, where his Jewish family lived.

Four major museums have decided to call off a retrospective of Guston’s work for fear of negative reactions to the racial justice content of the paintings. From The New York Times:

In an open letter published Wednesday in The Brooklyn Rail, nearly 100 artists, curators, dealers and writers forcefully condemned the decision last week by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and three other major museums to pull the plug on the largest retrospective in 15 years of one of America’s most influential postwar painters.

The show, after years of preparation, will be delayed until 2024. The stated reason is to let the institutions rethink their presentation of Guston’s later figurative paintings, which feature men in hoods reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan members, and which, a National Gallery spokesperson said, risked being “misinterpreted” today.

Philip Guston – Dawn, 1970 (oil on canvas)

In the open letter, the artists, “shocked and disappointed,” accuse the museums — the National Gallery, Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — both of betraying Guston’s art and of patronizing the public they are supposed to serve.

The postponement, they write, is an admission of the museums’ “longstanding failure to have educated, integrated, and prepared themselves to meet the challenge of the renewed pressure for racial justice that has developed over the past five years.” They demand that the Guston exhibition take place as scheduled, and that the museums “do the necessary work to present this art in all its depth and complexity.”

Surely these paintings are as relevant in the Trump years as they were in Nixon’s America. Postponing the exhibition until 2024 guarantees that public discussions of their import won’t happen until after Trump’s second term if he is reelected. This reminds me of the many efforts to ban Mark Twain’s profoundly anti-racist novel Huckleberry Finn because of Twain’s use of the N-word.

Read more at Art News: Controversial Philip Guston Show Postponement Met with Shock and Anger from Art Community. See also this statement (and more art works) from Guston’s daughter Musa Mayor: Philip Guston: The Danger is in Looking Away.

Now on to today’s news. Trump’s dumpster fire of a debate performance on Tuesday night is still drawing reactions.

The New York Times Editorial Board: A Debate That Can’t Be Ignored. Americans need to face the man who is their president.

President Trump’s was a national disgrace. His refusal to condemn white supremacists, or to pledge that he will accept the results of the election, betrayed the people who entrusted him with the highest office in the land. Every American has a responsibility to look and listen and take the full measure of the man. Ignorance can no longer be a tenable excuse. Conservatives in pursuit of long-cherished policy goals can no longer avoid the reality that Mr. Trump is vandalizing the principles and integrity of our democracy.

Philip Guston The Line, 1978

It’s a tired frame, but consider how Americans would judge a foreign election where the incumbent president scorned the democratic process as a fraud and called on an armed, violent, white supremacist group to “stand by” to engage with his political rivals.

The debate was excruciating to watch for anyone who loves this country, because of the mirror it held up to the United States in 2020: a nation unmoored from whatever was left of its civil political traditions, awash in conspiratorial disinformation, incapable of agreeing on what is true and what are lies, paralyzed by the horror of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and beholden to a political system that doesn’t reflect the majority of the country.

The debate featured one politician trying his best to do his job, trying to bring some normalcy to America’s battered public square, and one politician who seemed incapable of self-control — petulant, self-centered, rageful.

Read the rest at the NYT.

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic: The Most Illuminating Moment of the Debate. Donald Trump sees everything—even his own children—as a reflection of himself.

Shortly after Donald and Ivana Trump’s son was born, however, the future president had an unusual concern for a parent: What if this kid grows up and embarasses me?

“What should we name him?” Donald asked, according to Ivana’s memoir, Raising Trump. When Ivana suggested Donald Jr., the real-estate heir responded, “What if he is a loser?”

That anecdote helps explain one of the more memorable exchanges in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, as well as Trump’s approach to governance. The president’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden, sought to criticize Trump’s remarks about U.S. service members being “losers,” as first reported by The Atlantic. In doing so, Biden brought up his late son, Beau, who died of a brain tumor after earning a Bronze Star in the Army National Guard.

Philip Guston, Drawing for Conspirators, 1930

“My son was in Iraq and spent a year there,” Biden said to Trump, raising his voice. “He got the Bronze Star. He got a medal. He was not a loser. He was a patriot. And the people left behind there were heroes.”

In an attempt to neutralize the attack, Trump changed the subject—to Biden’s other son, Hunter. “Hunter got thrown out of the military; he was thrown out, dishonorably discharged for cocaine use,” he spat out.

To a person who feared sharing his name with his son at the moment of his birth, because the child might turn out to be a “loser,” that attack must have seemed devastating. But normal parents don’t stop loving their children because they do bad things. They love them anyway. That’s what being a parent is.

Biden responded by reaffirming his love for his surviving son. “My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem,” Biden responded. “He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.” [….]

More than any other moment of the debate, Trump’s response to Biden’s invocation of his dead son—attempting to make him ashamed of his surviving one—threw the dispositions of the two men into sharp relief. I wondered how Hunter must have felt to see his father speak of his pride in his brother, only for his own name to be brandished as a weapon to inflict shame on his father. And I thought about Biden’s response, which was to reaffirm his pride in Hunter, the troubled son living in the indelible shadow of a departed war hero. In the midst of being attacked by a president trying to wield his own family against him, Biden’s instinct was to reassure Hunter that he is also loved, that nothing could make his father see him as a loser.

Read more at The Atlantic.

At The Washington Post, Eric Garcia wrote about his own struggle with addiction and how Trump’s words will affect other recovering people: Trump’s attack on Hunter Biden will only increase the stigma of addiction.

As saccharine as it sounds, the president of the United States is also the president of screw-ups, addicts and hopefuls like me and Hunter Biden. But Trump’s comments made clear that he believes that an addict’s actions can be used against our families to attack their character.

Philip Guston – Courtroom, 1970 (oil on canvas)

That will make us less willing to talk about our problems and get the help we need. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says explicitly that stigma can make people with substance abuse disorders less willing to seek treatment. And that makes sense. If your addiction is going to be used against you, why try to get better?

Hunter Biden’s problems with alcohol, drugs and women have been well-documented. (News reports show that, contrary to what Trump said Tuesday, Hunter was not dishonorably discharged from the Navy Reserve when he tested positive for cocaine in 2014.) Those demons were enough of an issue that when the former vice president began running last year, the New Yorker published a piece asking whether they would “jeopardize his father’s campaign.” That story ran a few days before I finally hit bottom myself.

I don’t know Hunter Biden, but I do know that worrying that your own actions could hurt the people you love is one of the things that tears an addict up inside.

I hope you’ll read the rest.

The debate also raised fears about Trump stealing the election, by suppressing votes, encouraging white supremacist violence, and using the courts.

The Daily Beast: Trump’s Crew of Far-Right Vigilante Poll Watchers Is Coming.

The truck-revving, banner-waving, loudspeaker-blaring pro-Trump rally took place, conveniently, on Sept. 19, the first Saturday of early voting in the swing state of Virginia, in a parking lot where voters in Democratic-leaning Fairfax County were lined up to cast their ballots. Some Trump supporters drove circles around the voters while others—many without face masks—mingled with the line, chanting and waving flags.

“We had a couple poll observers there that had to actually escort voters in because we saw people that would get to the edge of the parking lot, and see this giant group of Trumpers yelling and screaming,” Jack Kiraly, executive director of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, told The Daily Beast, adding that the scene reminded him of the volunteers who escort people past anti-abortion protesters outside women’s health clinics.

Philip Guston, 1930 or 31

So during Tuesday night’s remarkably unhinged presidential debate, when President Donald Trump urged his supporters to take unsanctioned actions at polling places, Kiraly was reminded of what Fairfax County voters had witnessed earlier this month.

During the debate, Trump appeared to tell the far-right paramilitary group the Proud Boys to “stand by” and urged fans to “go into the polls and watch very carefully” for voter fraud, an exceedingly rare phenomenon Trump has crafted into a cornerstone of his political identity. For close observers of the far right, as well as officials like Kiraly, the remarks amounted to the latest warning that an embattled president might use his supporters to impede fair elections, or to cast the results of those elections in doubt.

If the prospect of election-related violence was already looming over the first presidential contest since Trump effectively welcomed the paramilitary far-right into the Republican Party, the debate made the alarm bells ring even louder.

David Sanger at The New York Times: Tuesday’s Debate Made Clear the Gravest Threat to the Election: The President Himself.

President Trump’s angry insistence in the last minutes of Tuesday’s debate that there was no way the presidential election could be conducted without fraud amounted to an extraordinary declaration by a sitting American president that he would try to throw any outcome into the courts, Congress or the streets if he was not re-elected….

Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to say he would abide by the result, and his disinformation campaign about the integrity of the American electoral system, went beyond anything President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could have imagined. All Mr. Putin has to do now is amplify the president’s message, which he has already begun to do….

The president began the debate with a declaration that balloting already underway was “a fraud and a shame” and proof of “a rigged election.”

Philip Guston – By the Window, 1969 (oil on canvas)

It quickly became apparent that Mr. Trump was doing more than simply trying to discredit the mail-in ballots that are being used to ensure voters are not disenfranchised by a pandemic — the same way of voting that five states have used for years with minimal fraud.

He followed it by encouraging his supporters to “go into the polls” and “watch very carefully,” which seemed to be code words for a campaign of voter intimidation, aimed at those who brave the coronavirus risks of voting in person.

And Mr. Trump’s declaration that the Supreme Court would have to “look at the ballots” and that “we might not know for months because these ballots are going to be all over” seemed to suggest that he would try to place the election in the hands of a court where he has been rushing to cement a conservative majority with his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

And if he cannot win there, he has already raised the possibility of using the argument of a fraudulent election to throw the decision to the House of Representatives, where he believes he has an edge because every state delegation gets one vote in resolving an election with no clear winner. At least for now, 26 of those delegations have a majority of Republican representatives.

And of course Trump’s final backstop could be to trigger mass violence by his white supremacist supporters.

I’m running out of space, but I’ll post more links in the comment thread. Have a nice Thursday, and please check in with us if you have the time and inclination. We love to hear from you!

Tuesday Reads: Double Trouble for Trump

Posted: September 29, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Good Morning!!

The New York Times has published the second installment in its ongoing series on Trump’s taxes. But first, a recap of the revelations from the first blockbuster story and reactions from other sources.

Just Security has a good breakdown of the main revelations from the the first NYT article: Ten Quick Takeaways from the New York Times’ Bombshell Article on Trump’s Tax Returns. This is takeaway 2:

Trump appears to be an absolutely terrible businessman. This is a man who netted $606 million over nineteen years (from 2000 to 2018) through The Apprentice, licensing and endorsements, and investments and businesses run by others, and yet has created enormous financial peril for himself by buying prestige business properties for high prices, and then pouring cash into them without thereby generating positive net returns. Even with the cash infusions, his personally run businesses have continued to lose a great deal of money (even leaving aside depreciation deductions that might or might not be accompanied by actual declines in economic value). One therefore suspects that he is simply funding the negative cash flow, not creating new value that might pay off in the future. (Even the enhanced revenues at some U.S. properties from their being used by lobbyists have failed to eliminate the pattern of losing a great deal.)

Meanwhile, perhaps to fund the ongoing cash infusions, he has been taking out loans and making one-time asset sales that imply a danger of simply running out of money soon if there is no turnaround. The $421 million in personal liability debts that the Times says are due soon add to the impression of an approaching risk of financial breakdown. However, beyond just the financial peril that he may be facing, the pattern looks like one of recklessly and improvidently burning through one’s cash for as long as it lasts, rather than of investing prudently to create future value.

Adam Davidson of The New Yorker posted an interesting Twitter thread yesterday:

https://twitter.com/adamdavidson/status/1310556455674802176?s=20

https://twitter.com/adamdavidson/status/1310557474374778881?s=20

Davidson concludes: “Until we know who, we don’t know who this man owes and what they know about him.”

This is from Andrew Weissmann, one of the top prosecutors on the Robert Mueller team:

From The Washington Post: Trump’s debts and foreign deals pose security risks, former intelligence officials say.

ecurity teams at U.S. spy agencies are constantly scouring employee records for signs of potential compromise: daunting levels of debt, troubling overseas entanglements, hidden streams of income, and a penchant for secrecy or deceit to avoid exposure.

President Trump would check nearly every box of this risk profile based on revelations in the New York Times from his long-secret tax records that former intelligence officials and security experts said raise profound questions about whether he should be trusted to safeguard U.S. secrets and interests.

The records show that Trump has continued to make money off foreign investments and projects while in office; that foreign officials have spent lavishly at his Washington hotel and other properties; and that despite this revenue he is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt with massive payments coming due.

“From a national security perspective, that’s just an outrageous vulnerability,” said Larry Pfeiffer, who previously served as chief of staff at the CIA. Pfeiffer, who now serves as director of the Hayden Center for Intelligence at George Mason University, said that if he had faced even a fraction of Trump’s financial burden, “there is no question my clearances would be pulled.”

The disclosures show that Trump’s position is more precarious than he has led the public to believe, and he faces the need for a substantial infusion of cash in the coming years to avert potential financial crisis.

As a result, officials and experts said that Trump has made himself vulnerable to manipulation by foreign governments aware of his predicament, and put himself in a position in which his financial interests and the nation’s priorities could be in conflict.

Moving on, here’s today’s New York Times dispatch: How Reality-TV Fame Handed Trump a $427 Million Lifeline, by Mike McIntire, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig

From the back seat of a stretch limousine heading to meet the first contestants for his new TV show “The Apprentice,” Donald J. Trump bragged that he was a billionaire who had overcome financial hardship.

“I used my brain, I used my negotiating skills and I worked it all out,” he told viewers. “Now, my company is bigger than it ever was and stronger than it ever was.”

It was all a hoax.

Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Mr. Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year. The red ink spilled from everywhere, even as American television audiences saw him as a savvy business mogul with the Midas touch…

But while the story of “The Apprentice” is by now well known, the president’s tax returns reveal another grand twist that has never been truly told — how the popularity of that fictional alter ego rescued him, providing a financial lifeline to reinvent himself yet again. And then how, in an echo of the boom-and-bust cycle that has defined his business career, he led himself toward the financial shoals he must navigate today.

Mr. Trump’s genius, it turned out, wasn’t running a company. It was making himself famous — Trump-scale famous — and monetizing that fame.

The show’s big ratings meant that everyone wanted a piece of the Trump brand, and he grabbed at the opportunity to rent it out. There was $500,000 to pitch Double Stuf Oreos, another half-million to sell Domino’s Pizza and $850,000 to push laundry detergent.

There were seven-figure licensing deals with hotel builders, some with murky backgrounds, in former Soviet republics and other developing countries. And there were schemes that exploited misplaced trust in the TV version of Mr. Trump, who, off camera, peddled worthless get-rich-quick nostrums like “Donald Trump Way to Wealth” seminars that promised initiation into “the secrets and strategies that have made Donald Trump a billionaire.”

Just as, years before, the money Mr. Trump secretly received from his father allowed him to assemble a wobbly collection of Atlantic City casinos and other disparate enterprises that then collapsed around him, the new influx of cash helped finance a buying spree that saw him snap up golf resorts, a business not known for easy profits. Indeed, the tax records show that his golf properties have been hemorrhaging millions of dollars for years.

Read the whole long, detailed article at the NYT.

I doubt if Trump’s base supporters read The Atlantic, but maybe they’ll get wind of this on Facebook or Twitter. McCay Coppins writes: Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters. Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.

One day in 2015, Donald Trump beckoned Michael Cohen, his longtime confidant and personal attorney, into his office. Trump was brandishing a printout of an article about an Atlanta-based megachurch pastor trying to raise $60 million from his flock to buy a private jet. Trump knew the preacher personally—Creflo Dollar had been among a group of evangelical figures who visited him in 2011 while he was first exploring a presidential bid. During the meeting, Trump had reverently bowed his head in prayer while the pastors laid hands on him. Now he was gleefully reciting the impious details of Dollar’s quest for a Gulfstream G650.

Trump seemed delighted by the “scam,” Cohen recalled to me, and eager to highlight that the pastor was “full of shit.”

“They’re all hustlers,” Trump said.

The president’s alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. “My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith,” he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year. It’s a message his campaign will seek to amplify in the coming weeks as Republicans work to confirm Amy Coney Barrett—a devout, conservative Catholic—to the Supreme Court.

But in private, many of Trump’s comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they’ve heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base.

As world-wide coronavirus deaths pass 1,000,000, with more than 205,000 in the U.S., another source of political support for Trump appears to be weakening. Politico: ‘He just lies’: Florida’s senior voters suddenly are in play.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida seniors, long an unflinching bloc of reliable GOP votes, are suddenly in play as President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus has his reelection campaign on the defensive.

The pandemic and anxiety about possible cuts to entitlement programs have eroded the GOP’s once-solid advantage with the battleground state’s retirees, recent polls show, a demographic Republicans have won by double digits in recent presidential races.

“I really got sick of him when he did not wear a mask, and he took the control totally away from the governors. It was a very bad situation,” said Joy Solomon, a 65-year-old from Boca Raton who voted for Trump in 2016 largely because that’s who her husband supported, but who has now turned against the president. “I want this place to come back to some sense of normalcy.”

“He just lies about everything,” she said.

Retirees have long flocked to Florida’s warm climate and white sandy beaches, where they’ve gained outsized political sway in the nation’s largest swing state. In the 2012 presidential election, voters 65 and older comprised 26 percent of all votes, a number that jumped to 30 percent in 2016.

Now recent polls show Trump’s comfortable cushion with Florida seniors eroding in a state where campaigns are won on the thinnest of margins.

Read about the latest polls at the link.

With all this happening, you have to wonder how Trump can face participating in a debate with Joe Biden tonight, but that is what he’s scheduled to do tonight at 9PM. I expect he’ll be even crazier than ever–lashing out in all directions. I hope Biden can handle it. Here’s some info on tonight’s political cage match from Vanity Fair: How to Watch the First Presidential Debate Between Trump and Biden.

On Tuesday night, for the first time this election cycle, President Donald Trump and his challenger, former vice president Joe Biden, will come face-to-face to tackle a wide range of issues during the first presidential debate of 2020. Based on just the last few days alone—during which Trump suggested Biden take a drug test before the debate and the New York Times released bombshell reporting on Trump’s federal income tax returns—viewers should expect fireworks between the septuagenarians. Here’s what to know about the first presidential debate, including where to watch or stream, who will moderate, and what the candidates will actually debate….

For those interested in seeing Trump versus Biden, it will be almost impossible to miss Tuesday night’s debate. The event will broadcast live on all the major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), as well as cable news channels such as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. The debate also airs via CSPAN, which will provide a live-stream on YouTube for the proceedings as well.

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace will be the moderator.

I plan to watch. How about you? If you’re watching tonight, please stop by and share your reactions. In the meantime, I hope you’ll check in here during the day and let us know how you’re doing and what you’re reading and hearing.

Monday Reads: Trump’s Disastrous Records as a President, a Citizen, and a Business Owner

Posted: September 28, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: , , , | 20 Comments

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tightrope Walk, 1908-10 Neue Galerie New York

Good Day Sky Dancers!

By now it is abundantly clear that the Trumpist Regime makes the Nixon years look like a peaceful and crimefree cakewalk and the Hoover years a time of great economic growth.  We’ve got lots of news today to both cry about and reveal as good news.   The Sunlight is shining!

Lindsay Graham may be about to be replaced. He’s been drug down by Trump and this rush to appoint a SCOTUS justice during a national election.  We’ve finally got Trump’s taxes and they are everything we thought they’d be.  He’s basically been broke a very long time and is living off credit from countries that are the true shitholes because they are your basic thugocracies. Today, it’s being argued he’s a definite threat to US National Security because he’s just about as broke as you can get and desperate to keep his false front.  His tax revelations may also put Ivanka in the slammer.

How’s that for a little bit of karma?  I’m going to truly enjoy delineating each and every one of the portraits of the disaster that is the Trumpist Businesses and Regime.  Yes, it’s a an all out circus!  Come join in the fun!

Otto Dix, Zirkus (Circus), 1922

Let’s start with the New York Times‘ reveal with its tales of tax fraud and business busts of the last 15 years.  This is a good summary by David Leonhardt.   “18 Revelations From a Trove of Trump Tax Records.  Times reporters have obtained decades of tax information the president has hidden from public view. Here are some of the key findings.”

Among the key findings of The Times’s investigation:

  • Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750.

  • He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.

  • Many of his signature businesses, including his golf courses, report losing large amounts of money — losses that have helped him to lower his taxes.

  • The financial pressure on him is increasing as hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he personally guaranteed are soon coming due.

  • Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.

  • Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.

  • As president, he has received more money from foreign sources and U.S. interest groups than previously known. The records do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.

George Grosz, The Rabble Rouser, 1928.

From Timothy O’Brien at Bloomberg News: “Trump’s Taxes Show He’s a National Security Threat. What trade-offs would a president with this level of indebtedness be willing to make to save face?”  My guess is mister O’Brien is happy as a clam to finally get his eyes on all of these.

Due to his indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat – a threat that will only escalate if he’s re-elected. The tax returns also show the extent to which Trump has repeatedly betrayed the interests of many of the average Americans who elected him and remain his most loyal supporters.

I have some history with Trump and his taxes. Trump sued me for libel in 2006 for a biography I wrote, “TrumpNation,” claiming the book misrepresented his track record as a businessman and lowballed the size of his fortune. He lost the suit in 2011. During the litigation, Trump resisted releasing his tax returns and other financial records. My lawyers got the returns, and while I can’t disclose specifics of what I saw, I imagine that Trump has always refused to release them because they would reveal how robust his businesses and finances actually are and shine a light on some of his foreign sources of income. The Times has now solved that problem for us.

According to the Times, Trump has about $421 million in debts which he has personally guaranteed and which are coming due over the next several years. This is consistent with earlier reporting about how much debt he carries, a chunk of which could be gleaned from the personal financial disclosures he is required to file with the federal government. But Trump’s overall indebtedness is greater than the Times tally, I believe.

Russ Choma reported in Mother Jones last summer that Trump’s debts were nearly $500 million and would come due in relatively short order, pressuring the president’s finances. But Trump’s debts are even bigger than that, and he’s worked hard to keep them hidden for decades. Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes, has been covering Trump’s business interests since 2016 and has a new book out about the president’s financial conflicts of interest, “White House Inc.” Alexander, in a helpful tally he shared Sunday evening, estimates Trump’s total indebtedness to be about $1.1 billion. Now that’s more like it.

La Malady d’Amour 1916, George Grosz

From Jason Easley:  “Ivanka Trump Could Be Going Down Thanks To Her Dad’s Tax Fraud”.

The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.

Ms. Trump had been an executive officer of the Trump companies that received profits from and paid the consulting fees for both projects — meaning she appears to have been treated as a consultant on the same hotel deals that she helped manage as part of her job at her father’s business.

Fake consulting deals with members of a company that is also managing the same project are a big red flag to the IRS. Trump hid income by listing his own daughter a consultant on projects that she was managing. In other words, Ivanka Trump and her father were cheating the United States government, and the American people to hide income and avoid paying taxes.

Ernest Ludwig Kirchner, Couple in a Room, 1912

This is from Forbes and I must say that Lindsey and his sullen little face fit right in with our art today!

New polls released Sunday show Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reelection bid deeply threatened by Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison as the former gears up for what promises to be a brutal partisan battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

KEY FACTS
    • In an internal poll of 608 likely South Carolina voters conducted by Harvard University fellow Cornell Belcher for the Harrison campaign, Graham trails Harrison by 2 points, 43% to 45%.
    • Meanwhile, a CBS news/YouGov poll of likely voters has Graham leading by 1 point, with 45% to Harrison’s 44%.
    • Both Graham and President Trump have shown signs of unique weakness in the Palmetto State, which typically elects Republicans by double digit margins; Graham led by 1 point in a Morning Consult poll released last week, while Trump led by 6.
    • Driving Harrison’s lead in the internal poll is a poor approval rating for Graham, with 55% of voters saying they disapprove of the job he is doing and 58% saying it’s time to elect someone new, compared to 32% who say Graham deserves re-election.

 

 

 

So, we’re not quite done yet!

Otto Dix
Marseille, 1922

This is by far something that might get through to a few undecides from USA Today: “Trump wants to run on his record. We hope he does. It’s been a disaster for America. Trump’s historically, mind-bogglingly bad record is on the ballot. He has destroyed lives and livelihoods, weakened America and risked our democracy. ‘This is an op ed from David Rothkopf and Bernard L. Schwartz.

At some point during the debates, perhaps more than once, Donald Trump will say yet again that he has accomplished more in his first term than any prior president. Despite his penchant for lying, it is hard to deny that among all our presidents, his record does stand out — just not in the way he wants you to think it does.

Trump has presided over the worst U.S. public health catastrophe in more than a century. His leadership failures during that crisis — from lying to suppressing data to promoting quack cures to endangering his own supporters in mass gatherings without masks or social distancing — have led to nearly 205,000 COVID deaths. That’s many more per capita than other developed nations, in some cases more than double their toll.

Trump’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic helped produce the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression — including an unemployment rate of  nearly 15% in April. Some estimates suggest that over 40 million Americans lost their jobs as a result of the crisis. Only a fraction of those jobs have returned. Some will never return.

Economists predict that the unemployment rate through the end of the year, even with recent improvement, could average about 10%, roughly the same as during the worst of the Great Recession a decade ago. In fact, as a recent advertisement for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has made clear, Trump has the worst job creation record of any president in our modern history.

The gross domestic product contraction of 31.7% in the second quarter of this year, on an annualized basis, is by far the largest recorded in U.S. history. According to economists tracked by Bloomberg, the annualized growth rate under Trump’s first four years under a reasonable projection for the remainder of his term is likely to be 0.6%. That’s the worst since Herbert Hoover, about a quarter of the growth level under Barack Obama, and just about a seventh the average growth rate during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office.

As a result of the crisis, today 1 in 5 mothers of children under 12 reported that their children were not getting enough to eat.

“Man in the Zoo”  George Grosz, 1927
Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 40 in 1966 and featured in Issue 107 in 2004.

When we we’re growing up we were told to eat because there were starving children elsewhere who had no food.  Which countries now tell their children about the starving children in the United States?  The children separated from the parents and placed in cages?  The children whose education has been forever changed by having to be pulled from school for a long period of time then more than ceremoniously dumped back in to get sick or bring that illness home with them?

So, here’s the big NYT article with the Tax Forms Analysis in case you didn’t read it last night when it hit us all square in the face. “The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.”

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

I can only wonder how these square up with his internal records that should be on their way to the Southern District of New York unless Bill Barr can continue to block them and is willing to put his own freedom in jeopardy.  You can read more of that at BiPartisan Report “Trump Family Terrified After Southern District Of New York Strikes Again”.

A recent court ruling regarding Trump’s financial records and an investigation by the Southern District of New York into alleged tax and bank fraud determined that a criminal lawsuit can be brought against a sitting U.S. president no matter how busy he claims to be. For Trump rape accuser and author E. Jean Carroll, that decision may have an impact in her case against Trump for defamation.

 

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, The Street, 1913

This is from Greg Sargent and the link in the tweet.

Now that the New York Times has broken the explosive news that Donald Trump paid a scant $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 — and that Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 out of the 15 preceding years — it provides an occasion to reconsider one of the biggest scams Trump has been perpetrating on the American people for years now.

I’m not talking about the scam that Trump was a good businessman, or that a good businessman will be a good managerial president, though both have long been central to Trump’s game, and this new exposé leaves that game in ruins.

Rather, I’m talking about a scam that’s more fundamental to the Trumpist mystique. It’s the idea that someone with extensive inside experience in milking a system rigged to enrich elites like him is uniquely positioned to either (in the more charitable telling) un-rig that system for the benefit of all or (in the less charitable one) unlock its spoils for supporters who place him in a position of power to do so.

The Times exposé strips the sheen off Trump’s image-making like so much imitation gold leaf. We learn that Trump evaded income taxes for many years largely through his epic financial losses. While Trump scooped in hundreds of millions of dollars off “The Apprentice,” he dumped those profits into a series of big-league money losers that he owned and ran himself.

All of this shows that Trump is simply “pouring more money into many businesses than he is taking out,” the Times observes, which “exposes the “hollowness” behind the “self-made-billionaire image.”

We know Trump is basically a carnival barker.  He’s not a billionaire. He was never self-made.  He has no business acumen.  He can only think of how to scam people by bringing them into the big top to see the freaks and greedos he surrounds himself with. This includes an assorted oddball group of christianist conmen.   How many of them will eventually go down for their crimes?  Will we ever seen the hardcore Trump believers leave the death cult alive?

Stay tuned as we start to fight to keep the Handmaiden’s Tale off the Supreme Court.  Welcome to the Christoban Caberet!  Where it’s all for sale as long as you make them feel superior to every one else!

And so I have to ask again, what is on your reading and blogging list today?

But, this also. How do you feel? Are we going to make it through this? We care about you! Please take care of yourselves and check in with us!

 

 

There’s only two types of people in the world
The ones that entertain, and the ones that observe
Well baby I’m a put-on-a-show kinda girl
Don’t like the backseat, gotta be first
I’m like the ringleader
I call the shots (call the shots)
I’m like a firecracker
I make it hot
When I put on a show

I feel the adrenaline moving through my veins
Spotlight on me and I’m ready to break
I’m like a performer, the dance floor is my stage
Better be ready, hope that you feel the same

All eyes on me in the center of the ring
Just like a circus
When I crack that whip, everybody gon’ trip
Just like a circus
Don’t stand there watching me, follow me
Show me what you can do
Everybody let go, we can make a dance floor
Just like a circus

There’s only two types of guys out there
Ones that can hang with me, and ones that are scared
So baby I hope that you came prepared
I run a tight ship so, beware
I’m like the ringleader
I call the shots (call the shots)
I’m like a firecracker
I make it hot
When I put on a show

I feel the adrenaline moving through my veins
Spotlight on me and I’m ready to break
I’m like a performer, the dance floor is my stage
Better be ready, hope that ya feel the same

All eyes on me in the center of the ring
Just like a circus
When I crack that whip, everybody gon’ trip
Just like a circus
Don’t stand there watching me, follow me
Show me what you can do
Everybody let go, we can make a dance floor
Just like a circus

Lazy Caturday Reads: We Survived Another Wild Week in Trump World

Posted: September 26, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning!

We’ve reached the end of another wild week in Trump World. The 2020 election is only 38 days away; on Tuesday Biden will meet Trump in the first presidential debate; and we’re still in the first wave of an out-of-control pandemic and the resulting economic meltdown. Today Trump nominates a woman to the Supreme Court who will vote to end the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade.  On top of all that, the fake “president” suggests he won’t accept the results of the election if he loses, and he’s counting on the election being decided the newly far right SCOTUS. That’s where we are right now.

Last night at his super-spreader rally in Virginia, Trump doubled down on his promise to disrupt the election. Raw Story: Trump tells supporters he won’t be ‘stupid’ enough for peaceful transition of power if he loses.

President Donald Trump continued to spread debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election during a Friday night campaign rally in Virginia.

Trump argued that it was impossible for him to lose the election, thus concluding he would be “stupid” to hand over power peacefully should he lose.

“We not gonna lose this, except if they cheat,” Trump falsely claimed about the 2020 campaign, where he trails Joe Biden in national and battleground polling.

“That’s the only way we’re gonna lose is if there’s, uh, mischief,” he argued. “And it will have to be on a big scale.”

“And we do want a very friendly transition, but we don’t want to be cheated and be stupid and say, ‘oh, let’s transit — we’ll go and we’ll do a transition’ and we know that there were thousands and thousands of ballots that made the difference through cheating,” he said, repeating the debunked conspiracy theories.

“We’re not going to stand for it,” he vowed. “We’re not going to stand for it.”

Yesterday at The Washington Post, Dana Millbank brought out the Hitler comparisons: This is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning.

By Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

With his repeated refusals this week to accept the peaceful transfer of power — the bedrock principle that has sustained American democracy for 228 years — President Trump has put the United States, in some ways, where Germany was in 1933, when Adolf Hitler used the suspicious burning of the German parliament to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state.

Overwrought, you say? Then ask Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a top authority on Nazism and Stalinism. “The Reichstag has been on a slow burn since June,” he told me. “The language Trump uses to talk about Black Lives Matter and the protests is very similar to the language Hitler used — that there’s some vague left-wing conspiracy based in the cities that is destroying the country.”

Trump, as he has done before, has made the villain a minority group. He has sought, once again, to fabricate emergencies to justify greater powers for himself. He has proposed postponing elections. He has refused to commit to honoring the results of the election. And now, he proposes to embrace violence if he doesn’t win.

“It’s important not to talk about this as just an election,” Snyder said. “It’s an election surrounded by the authoritarian language of a coup d’etat. The opposition has to win the election and it has to win the aftermath of the election.”

If not? There won’t be another “normal” election for some time, he said. But that doesn’t have to happen, and Snyder is optimistic it won’t. To avoid it, we voters must turn out in overwhelming numbers to deal Trump a lopsided defeat. The military must hold to its oath. Homeland Security police must not serve as Trump’s brownshirts. And we citizens must take to the streets, peacefully but indefinitely, until the will of the people prevails.

“It’s going to be messy,” Snyder said. “He seems pretty sure he won’t win the election, he doesn’t want to leave office,” and he appears to Snyder to have “an authoritarian’s instinct” that he must stay in power or go to prison.

There’s more at the link.

My Father, by Marc Chagall

Trump has announced that he will nominate Amy Coney Barrett to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The New York Times: To Conservatives, Barrett Has ‘Perfect Combination’ of Attributes for Supreme Court.

…Judge Barrett…would be the sitting justice with the least courtroom experience, but one viewed as a home run by conservative Christians and anti-abortion activists.

“She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group….

Liberal groups have been sounding the alarm over Judge Barrett for two years because of concerns over how she might rule on abortion and the Affordable Care Act.

“Amy Coney Barrett meets Donald Trump’s two main litmus tests: She has made clear she would invalidate the A.C.A. and take health care away from millions of people and undermine a woman’s reproductive freedom,” said Nan Aron, the president of Alliance for Justice, a liberal group.

Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast: Kiss Your Rights Goodbye When Amy Coney Barrett Joins SCOTUS.

Like Judge Garland, who was denied even a hearing, Judge Barrett is unquestionably qualified. She has written numerous scholarly articles on a wide variety of legal and philosophical issues, and unlike some recent Trump nominees, appears to have a spotless ethical record.

But Barrett is also an arch-conservative who has espoused troubling views about the intersection of her personal beliefs with her role as a judge, and who will fundamentally alter the American legal landscape on a number of issues.

Obviously, abortion is the highest-profile of these, and it’s easy to see why every major anti-abortion organization in America hailed Barrett when she was appointed to the Seventh Circuit. She has criticized Roe v. Wade as “judicial fiat” and an “erroneous decision.”

By Paul Gauguin

And at a Notre Dame Law School event 2013, she asked, rhetorically, “Would it be better to have this battle in the state legislatures and Congress rather than the Supreme Court?”

That, of course, is intrinsically an anti-choice position. We don’t ask whether it would be better or worse for a state to violate constitutional rights–for Mississippi to outlaw Islam, for example, or Vermont to ban the Republican party. If a constitutional right is at issue–as the Supreme Court held in Roe–then the whole point of judicial review is that it doesn’t matter if it would be “better” for legislatures to fight it out.

Barrett has made similar remarks about same-sex marriage and is a guaranteed vote against Obamacare. On Monday, Dakinikat discussed Barrett’s extreme religious beliefs. From the Daily Beast article:

On its own, none of that matters since Barrett’s religious beliefs should have no bearing on her fitness as a Supreme Court justice.

However, Barrett has made several troubling statements regarding how religious belief impacts the roles of lawyers and judges. Most famously, she said in 2006 that a legal career should be “a means to an end,” namely “building the Kingdom of God.” Now, despite much liberal hand-wringing over this comment, it, alone, is not so problematic. It may simply mean to build a more just and equitable world, as the Bible requires. Indeed, Justice Ginsburg herself had Biblical injunctions to pursue justice on her chamber walls.

But when Barrett’s “means to an end” statement is placed in the context of other statements she has made, it raises questions. For example, in her first law review article, published in 1998, Barrett wrote that “Catholic judges (if they are faithful to the teaching of their church) are morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty.”

That is an unusual position, suggesting that a judge cannot discharge her public duty if she has a personal religious belief regarding it. Ironically, if that principle is applied to all cases in which the Catholic Church has stated moral positions, it might require Justice Barrett to recuse herself from cases regarding abortion and homosexuality, as well as the death penalty.

By Franz Marc

On next Tuesday’s debate, The Washington Post’s Sean Sullivan and Josh Dawsey anticipate vicious Trump attacks: Trump readies a debate onslaught — and Biden allies worry.

President Trump is gearing up to launch blistering personal attacks on Joe Biden and his family in the first presidential debate on Tuesday, while Biden is bracing for an onslaught and worried allies are warning the Democratic nominee not to lose his temper and lash out, according to people with knowledge of the strategies in both camps.

Trump has told associates he wants to talk specifically about his opponent’s son Hunter Biden and mused that the debates are when “people will finally realize Biden is just not there,” according to one adviser. The president is so eager to lay into his rival that he has called aides to test out various attacks, focusing on broadsides that cast Biden as a longtime Washington insider with a limited record of accomplishment, said another adviser, who like many interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe private talks.

Biden and his advisers are anticipating a venomous barrage, according to a person with knowledge of their thinking, and they are preparing to counter with an affirmative case for a Biden presidency. The Democrat wants to stay focused on how he would address the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s economic problems, which he blames Trump for worsening.

The prospect of a cage match between a president for whom no subject is off-limits and a challenger who can be openly emotional is making some Biden advisers nervous. They see a fine line between Biden’s passion and empathy, which can appeal to voters, and the raw anger that sometimes gets him in trouble and could undercut his pitch as a calming alternative to a president who thrives on chaos.

“When you go at his family, he becomes hotter than hell, which is part of the thing I worry about,” said John Morgan, a Florida trial lawyer and major Biden donor. “I think what Biden has to be careful about is not letting his Irish temper blow when that happens.”

Would it really be so awful for Biden to give Trump a tongue-lashing? I’m not so sure.

Girl with Rabbit, Paula Modersohn-Becker

Philippe Reines writes, also at The Washington Post: I played Trump in Clinton’s debate prep. Here’s what Biden can expect.

Donald Trump is a very bad debater. Donald Trump is very difficult to debate.

These two seemingly contradictory statements are equally true. He’s a dangerous opponent. In 2016, it was because he had nothing to lose. Now, it’s because he has everything to lose.

I would know. In the last cycle, I had a unique assignment: playing Trump’s stand-in during Hillary Clinton’s mock debates. Before donning the ill-fitting suit I had tailored, my preparation included studying the 11 Republican primary debates in which Trump participated, watching each three times: once start to finish; then only exchanges involving Trump; and finally only Trump, standing at a lectern in my living room with the sound off to focus entirely on his gestures and body language.

Mimicking his appearance, gesticulations and histrionics aside, my overall approach meant zeroing in on the four topics that obsessed Trump: immigration, Obamacare, trade and “the swamp.” When he was on offense, his attacks on (and nicknames for) Clinton were honed and simple by the time the debates began in September. But he rarely, if ever, defended himself. No matter the attack against him — and there were some doozies — he dispensed with them quickly. And in the GOP primary debates, his answers involved three parts: I am great; you are terrible; and a nonsensical digression that often changed the subject entirely.

Four years later, Trump is not different, but the circumstances are. The Trump we see at the first presidential debate in Cleveland on Tuesday may be even harder to debate than last time, because whatever ability he possessed to engage has been subsumed by a constant need to launch into tirades over grievances. (“I sort of prepare every day by just doing what I’m doing,” he told “Fox and Friends” about his pre-debate regimen.) He exists in a double bubble — isolated in the Oval Office, consuming and regurgitating nothing but friendly right-wing media and Twitter bile. And he’s desperate: The debate presents the first big chance to shake up a race he’s losing, but he doesn’t seem to have a plan to turn things around other than to hope for Joe Biden to collapse.

Read Reines’ suggestions for Biden at the link.

Finally, at The New York Times, Hannah Beech reports that the world pities the USA: ‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S.

by Suzanne Valadon

BANGKOK — Myanmar is a poor country struggling with open ethnic warfare and a coronavirus outbreak that could overload its broken hospitals. That hasn’t stopped its politicians from commiserating with a country they think has lost its way.

“I feel sorry for Americans,” said U Myint Oo, a member of parliament in Myanmar. “But we can’t help the U.S. because we are a very small country.”

The same sentiment prevails in Canada, one of the most developed countries. Two out of three Canadians live within about 60 miles of the American border.

“Personally, it’s like watching the decline of the Roman Empire,” said Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, an industrial city on the border with Michigan, where locals used to venture for lunch.

Amid the pandemic and in the run-up to the presidential election, much of the world is watching the United States with a mix of shock, chagrin and, most of all, bafflement.

Click the link to read the rest.

That’s it for me. What’s happening from your point of view? I hope you all have a great weekend, and please check in at Sky Dancing blog if you have a moment free.

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