Election Fever Friday Reads

Posted: October 16, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | 16 Comments

Ladies of the Night Otto Dix

Good Day Sky Dancers!

Well, the usual crazy election season is even crazier than usual.  Republicans are panicking and trying as quickly as possible to shove an unacceptable candidate on to the court while screaming Biden wants to pack the courts! at the top of their lungs. Trump exited an official townhall debate with Joe Biden on ABC only to be given an hour to himself on NBC/MSNBC.  Joe’s fundraising is a monster machine while Trump can’t even afford a few TV ads.  Every day is a new fresh hell!!

I’m mostly staying in bed with the blankets over my head.  

Peter Nicholls–writing for The Atlantic—says Trump is Scared and lashing out.

He seemed as if he might be delirious. He blasted out bewildering tweets in all caps. Sick and infectious, he circled the perimeter of the hospital in an armored SUV, waving to supporters. He demanded the arrest of his opponents.

After doctors treated Donald Trump with a steroid last week, following his COVID-19 diagnosis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other Trump critics, and national-security experts questioned whether the drug had warped his judgment. “Roid rage” started trending on Twitter. His condition revived talk about invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. A Stanford University law professor who had taken the same drug tweeted that she couldn’t be “president of my cat” when under its influence.

Those suspicions miss the point: Trump is belligerent when sick, just as he’s hostile when well. He sees plots when he’s dosed with dexamethasone and conspiracies when he’s gulping Diet Coke behind the Resolute desk. Days have passed since he apparently stopped taking the drug, and he sounds every bit as unmoored.

What’s been driving him in the final stretch of the campaign isn’t a medication that messes with his mood. It’s dread, people who’ve worked with him throughout the years told me. There are less than three weeks to go in a campaign that appears to be heading the wrong way. “He’s down and he’s likely to lose,” a former White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk more freely, told me. “This is fear.”

It’s hard to gauge whether Trump’s thinking was impaired. One measure that doctors use to spot changes in a patient’s behavior is deviations from the baseline. But Trump’s ordinary conduct is, “let’s say, charitably, unusual,” Robert Wachter, the chairman of the department of medicine at UC San Francisco, told me. Or, in the nonclinical and wholly unscientific assessment of the ex–White House official: “There’s no way to put lipstick on this pig. The guy is nuts.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner “Portrait of Erna” 1915

Jonathan Swan of Axios writes that “Trump’s advisers brace for loss, point fingers”.  Wow, wouldn’t you like to have to look for a job expecting Donald Trump to have to give you a reference.

Three senior Trump advisers who recently talked to campaign manager Bill Stepien walked away believing he thinks they will lose.

The big picture: The Trump campaign is filled with internal blaming and pre-spinning of a potential loss, accelerating a dire mood that’s driven by a daily barrage of bleak headlines, campaign and White House officials tell me.

  • “A lot of this is the president himself,” one adviser said. “You can’t heal a patient who doesn’t want to take the diagnosis.”

Behind the scenes: In weekly pep talks, Stepien tells staff members why they shouldn’t pay attention to the perennially horrible public polls — and how they can “win the week” and the campaign.

  • But in other private conversations, described by multiple sources, Stepien can seem darkly pessimistic. He likens the campaign to an airplane flying through turbulence, saying: “It’s our job to safely land the plane.”
  • Three sources who have heard Stepien use variations of the airplane analogy say they sensed he was deeply, perhaps irretrievably pessimistic about the state of the race.
  • “It’s not a great feeling when you get the sense the campaign manager doesn’t deep down think we’re going to win,” one campaign source said.

Stepien pushed back strongly on that, telling me on Friday morning: “With each day closer to November 3, our campaign data presents a clear pathway to 270 for the President that provides me more confidence than ever in President Trump’s re-election.”

  • “Our campaign knows how President Trump was elected in 2016 and more importantly, we know exactly how he’s going to do it again,” Stepien added.

Why it matters: Trump can still win. But make no mistake: Even his most loyal supporters, including those paid to believe, keep telling us he’s toast — and could bring Republican control of the Senate down with him.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Sitting Lady

There is some indication that Mitch McConnell expects to lose the Senate but is plotting to regain it in 2022.  It appears that he doesn’t want to do anything regarding COVID 19 because he believes any stimulus would help a Biden economy.  He’s really just an evil ass isn’t he? This is an Op Ed from Market Watch by Rex Nutting: “By saying no to more stimulus, Mitch McConnell is already trying to make Joe Biden’s life miserable”.

Blame Donald Trump all you want for Washington’s failure to deliver more relief and stimulus to the battered economy. But the failure is not his, not entirely. If Senate Leader Mitch McConnell had wanted to do it, it would have been done.

McConnell has gotten everything he wanted out of Trump’s presidency: A big tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, a judiciary packed with young conservatives.

The Republican senator from Kentucky may be the most powerful person in Washington. His strength doesn’t rely on subservience to Trump, but on his skill in orchestrating the most autocratic institution in the land. He’s a master, and he plans on being there for a while longer. At 78, he’s running for re-election to another six-year term.

Although both men have occasionally mentioned further stimulus, neither Trump nor McConnell wanted another stimulus bill urgently enough to get it done. The “greatest deal maker” in history never engaged with the Democrats, and McConnell seemed happy to let the effort fail.

Now they are talking about piecemeal proposals that may bail out a few industries, but nothing substantive that would boost the economy, move the needle on the stock market SPX, 0.49% DJIA, 0.82%, or help the people who are struggling to pay the rent or buy food.

At first glance, McConnell’s indifference to further economic assistance is a puzzle. McConnell was fully onboard with economic stimulus and relief in March and April, when a bipartisan group of lawmakers and administration officials crafted a series of measures that flooded the economy with timely and targeted aid.

It wasn’t perfect, but it got results.

The government assistance approved in March and April kept millions of households, thousands of business, and the U.S. economy in general afloat for much of the summer, before most of the provisions expired. You’d think that another shot of adrenaline before the election could have sealed a Republican victory in November by making the economy a big plus instead of a question mark.

…

Why did Mitch say no?

Some will point to ideology. McConnell didn’t want to give that much cash to states poorly run by Democratic governors and mayors, they say. Or maybe Mitch is honestly worried about the national debt.

But I think it was McConnell’s pragmatism and knack for political calculus that made the difference between the cooperation of the spring and the gridlock of the summer and fall. He knows that no legislation enacted now can save the election for the Republicans.

He still wants to win, of course, but he needs a Plan B just in case. McConnell can see the blue wave coming, and he’s already angling to make Joe Biden’s life miserable, just as he did with Joe’s buddy, Barack Obama.

We need to get rid of McConnell as much as we need to get rid of Trump.  Well, at least he has to deal with bad ratings today.

Chew out this you ugly Orange Snot Blob!

Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump appeared in directly competing town halls on Thursday night, after the President dropped out of the second debate.

Trump’s hourlong appearance on NBC, which drew criticism across the industry and even an angry letter from top talent and showrunners who work with NBCU, appears to be trailing Biden’s 90-minute session with ABC in the ratings, at least according to early numbers.

Biden drew 12.7 million total viewers on the Disney-owned network, while Trump drew 10.4 million in the same 9-10 p.m. time slot on NBC. Across the entire runtime, the Biden town hall averaged 12.3 million viewers. In terms of the fast national 18-49 demographic, Biden is comfortably on top with a 2.6 rating to Trump’s 1.7.

Plus, the First Day of Early Voting is happening here in New Orleans and we seem to be no different than the rest of the country.  This is from our Mayor LaToya Cantrell:

I was bugging the Denver part of my family to get their ballots mailed in since of any of us, they have the likelihood of a vote that really matters.  The Denver Post reports this: “Early voter turnout in Colorado increases a “bonkers” 2,400% from 2016. Democrats returning ballots at highest rate so far”  Youngest Son in Law seems to like the mail in ballots.  The kids and sister in Washington State do too.  Me, I’m going to be headed down the Avenue to the old Fire Station on Election Day as usual.

More than 300,000 Colorado voters have returned ballots for the Nov. 3 election as of 11:30 Wednesday night — a staggering display of enthusiasm in a state that sends all voters a ballot by mail.

When that latest figure was tabulated by the Secretary of State’s Office, Colorado was 20 days out from the election. Twenty days out from the 2016 election — when Colorado also had universal mail-in voting — 12,141 people had cast ballots, said a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Jena Griswold. That’s a 2,377% increase in early turnout this year as compared with 2016, when overall voter turnout far exceeded the national average.

“It’s great for democracy to see so many Coloradans making their voices heard,” Griswold told The Denver Post. “Even with ballots still being mailed this week to registered voters, turnout is 24 times higher than at this point in 2016.”

Politicos in Colorado are floored by these numbers, which Democratic political consultant Craig Hughes described as “bonkers.”

I’m assuming all our Sky Dancers have similar plans to save our Republic.

George Grosz
The Poet Max Herrmann-Neisse
1927

So, one more thing just to Drive Donald bonkers.  This is Forbes.  You know, the ones with the billionaires’ list?  It seems Donald does have billions in debt.  “Donald Trump Has At Least $1 Billion In Debt, More Than Twice The Amount He Suggested.” This is from Dan Alexander.

No aspect of Donald Trump’s business has been the subject of more speculation than his debt load. Lots of people believe the president owes $400 million, especially after Trump seemed to agree with that figure on national television Thursday night. In reality, however, he owes more than $1 billion. 

The loans are spread out over more than a dozen different assets—hotels, buildings, mansions and golf courses. Most are listed on the financial disclosure report Trump files annually with the federal government. Two, which add up to an estimated $447 million, are not.

A list of what he own and what he owes and to whom is shown on the link.

And today’s best and most creative Trumpist excuse of the day comes from Kudlow whose probably already been at the bottle.

So, I’m going to go back and hide under the blankets with a cup of nice black coffee and a cat or 2 plus a dog.

What’s on you reading and blogging list today?

 

Furious Friday Reads: Delta and Don

Posted: October 9, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , | 28 Comments

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Waxing and waning by Otto Dix

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

I woke up to the most oddly colored sky today as Hurricane Delta spins away in the Gulf of Mexico. Jim Cantore has been spotted in Beaux Bridge and that’s way west of here. We’ll get some bad weather when it rolls closer to us but right now we’ve just got this breeze and a yellowish tinged cloud cover.

So the crazy go nuts at the White House is getting crazier, more gone, and nuttier.  We all knew these last few months of the Trumpist regime would be unlike anything we could imagine.  Harvard Historian Heather Cox Richardson keeps an active blog on her thoughts on history. On Thursday, she posted this:

On October 8, 2020, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, appears to be melting down. Over the course of the day, he has called for the imprisonment of his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as well as his own predecessor, President Barack Obama, and called Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris a “monster” and a “communist.”
 
This morning, he announced that he would not take part in the planned October 15 town hall debate if it were turned into an on-line event. But then, after Biden said he was willing to postpone the debate so Trump could take part, said he would participate in another debate on October 22.
 
He released a video addressed to seniors, who are leaving him in droves, calling them “my favorite people in the world,” and speculated that he could continue to hold rallies as early as this weekend, before his quarantine period is over. He called into the Fox News Channel twice, ranting. Of his bout with coronavirus, he said: “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young.”
 
He is erratic enough that tomorrow, the House will begin to consider a bill seeking to enforce the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, designed to provide an exit ramp for a president who is experiencing physical or mental impairments that make him unable to lead the nation. The bill, advanced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, will not pass, but it will keep focus on what seems to be the president’s precarious mental state.
Vice President Mike Pence, who was supposed to go to Indiana to vote tomorrow, after campaigning in Arizona, has cancelled his scheduled events and is headed back to Washington, D. C.
 
Everything emerging from the White House today is murky and confused, but there is one event that is crystal clear: the FBI announced today it has stopped a terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and put her “on trial” for treason. Six men have been charged in the plot, and are now facing life in prison if convicted. Another seven have been charged with planning to storm the state capitol building and start a civil war. They face up to 20 years in prison.
 
This afternoon, Whitmer called out Trump for refusing to denounce such domestic terrorists. At last week’s debate with Biden, Trump told the white supremacist neo-fascist Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by.” In April, after Whitmer shut down the state to combat coronavirus, Trump tweeted: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and at least three of the thirteen men now charged were among those who entered the state’s senate chamber with guns on April 30 to protest Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders.
 
Tonight, rather than express sympathy with Whitmer or denounce the terrorists, Trump attacked Whitmer on Twitter. Attorney General William Barr, who has been out of the public eye since last the coronavirus super spreader event at the White House Rose Garden in honor of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee to take the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, has not commented.
 
 
s-l1000

Widow by Otto Dix


It’s so bad that Nancy Pelosi is bringing up the 25th Amendment as a way to discuss his overall mental, emotional, and physical health.  She has no power to remove him this way but it starts a conversation.

Since Monday he has blown up negotiations for additional federal coronavirus relief by tweet and spread false claims comparing the virus to the flu.

He also attacked his some of his closest Cabinet allies during a Fox News interview for not pursuing groundless accusations of criminality by Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday openly addressed an issue that even White House aides are said to be speculating about: Has the president’s judgment been affected by his illness and the medication he is taking to treat it? And is it so bad that he is unable to fulfill his duties?

Pelosi in her remarks to reporters Thursday went on to hint that lawmakers in the House might create a commission that would allow Congress to intervene and create a body to remove the president from office under the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution.

The 25th Amendment was ratified by Congress in 1967 to ensure conditions for a smooth transfer of power if the president becomes incapacitated. It was a response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Section 4 of the amendment is most relevant to current circumstances, with a clause allowing for the removal of presidents from office against their will if they are unable to fulfill their duties.

Under the section, the decision to remove a president unable to do the job can be made by “the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide.”

With the US presidential election only weeks away, the prospect of adamantly loyal Vice President Mike Pence cooperating is remote. Likewise any of Trump’s Cabinet.

And if they were to do so, the removal would require a supermajority in both houses of Congress to remain in force if challenged by Trump.

But that leaves open the possibility of Congress by law creating another body to try to achieve the same goal.

Newborn Baby on Hands by Otto Dix

Harvard Historian Heather Richardson Cox runs a blog on her Facebook page and frequently gives lectures and blogs on a variety of history things.  Yesterday, she went over on Trump.

October 8, 2020 (Thursday)

I’m going to be brief tonight, folks, but here are the main stories I’m watching:

On October 8, 2020, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, appears to be melting down. Over the course of the day, he has called for the imprisonment of his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as well as his own predecessor, President Barack Obama, and called Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris a “monster” and a “communist.”

This morning, he announced that he would not take part in the planned October 15 town hall debate if it were turned into an on-line event. But then, after Biden said he was willing to postpone the debate so Trump could take part, said he would participate in another debate on October 22.
He released a video addressed to seniors, who are leaving him in droves, calling them “my favorite people in the world,” and speculated that he could continue to hold rallies as early as this weekend, before his quarantine period is over. He called into the Fox News Channel twice, ranting. Of his bout with coronavirus, he said: “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young.”

He is erratic enough that tomorrow, the House will begin to consider a bill seeking to enforce the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, designed to provide an exit ramp for a president who is experiencing physical or mental impairments that make him unable to lead the nation. The bill, advanced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, will not pass, but it will keep focus on what seems to be the president’s precarious mental state.

Vice President Mike Pence, who was supposed to go to Indiana to vote tomorrow, after campaigning in Arizona, has cancelled his scheduled events and is headed back to Washington, D. C.

Everything emerging from the White House today is murky and confused, but there is one event that is crystal clear: the FBI announced today it has stopped a terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and put her “on trial” for treason. Six men have been charged in the plot, and are now facing life in prison if convicted. Another seven have been charged with planning to storm the state capitol building and start a civil war. They face up to 20 years in prison.

This afternoon, Whitmer called out Trump for refusing to denounce such domestic terrorists. At last week’s debate with Biden, Trump told the white supremacist neo-fascist Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by.” In April, after Whitmer shut down the state to combat coronavirus, Trump tweeted: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and at least three of the thirteen men now charged were among those who entered the state’s senate chamber with guns on April 30 to protest Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders.

Tonight, rather than express sympathy with Whitmer or denounce the terrorists, Trump attacked Whitmer on Twitter. Attorney General William Barr, who has been out of the public eye since last the coronavirus super spreader event at the White House Rose Garden in honor of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee to take the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, has not commented.

There’s even more crazy things from this morning.

From the New York Times:

Trump Lashes Out at His Aides With Calls to Indict Political Rivals  —  The pressure on his top administration officials to take action came as President Trump bristled at the restraints of his illness.

From Oliver Darcy  at CNN:

Coughing Trump tells Hannity he’s healthy and ready to hold rallies  —   Recuperating from the coronavirus and plunging in the polls, President Trump is retreating to his safe spaces: Twitter, Fox, and rallies.  —  On Thursday Trump started and ended his day on Fox.

the-nun

Nun by Otto Dix

And then there’s the entire craziness of a group of young, white male, right wing extremists going after the Michigan governor. This terrorist cell of incels and your basic white male grievance gone violent is just about as Trumpy as you can get.  NBC reports they are likely tied to the so-called “boogaloo” movement.

Several of the six men charged in federal court Thursday with a conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have histories of anti-government organizing, as well as interest in countering what they saw as an “uprising” against President Donald Trump, according to their online profiles and comments.

In addition, several of the seven men facing separate state terrorism charges for their activity with a group called the Wolverine Watchmen also posted pro-Trump and anti-government content.

The men have not yet appeared in court or entered pleas.

A senior federal law enforcement official said federal agents found that the group of seven tied to the Wolverine Watchmen believes in the “boogaloo” movement, which is largely dedicated to eradicating the government and killing law enforcement officers. Their social media profiles showed connections to a wide variety of known anti-government groups.

Around the country, self-described members of the boogaloo movement have committed acts of violence and killed police officers in recent months, often in attempts to ignite what they believe will be a second civil war. Authorities said a California man accused of killing a police officer and a federal agent in June scrawled the word “Boog” in blood on the hood of a car during a standoff with police. Federal agents arrested two other members of the boogaloo movement whom they accused of offering to work with the terrorist group Hamas last month.

Still Life with Widow’s Veil by Otto Dix

According to the Detroit Free Press the real intent of this militia that called themselves the “Wolverine Watchmen” was to start a civil war.  The name alone is a disturbing mix of two comic book realities.  Let’s be real though.  These armed “militias” are really just armed terrorists. We always make special names up when it comes to white men being super bad.  They’re not misunderstood.  They’re not lone wolves.  They are armed, dangerous TERRORISTS.

The Wolverine Watchmen militia group didn’t just plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but they were on a mission to attack the state Capitol and target police officers at their homes as part of a broader mission to instigate a civil war,  authorities said Thursday in announcing felony charges against 13 militia members accused in a sensational case of domestic terrorism.

Attorney General Dana Nessel referred to the accused as “extremists” who are hoping to recruit new members “by seizing on a moment of civil unrest” to wreak havoc on the country. She identified the militia group as the Wolverine Watchmen, whose members are accused of, among other things, conducting surveillance outside Whitmer’s vacation residence, using code language and encrypted messages to throw off police and planting a bomb under a bridge to divert law enforcement.

“There has been a disturbing increase in anti-government rhetoric and the re-emergence of groups that embrace extremist ideologies,”  Nessel said at a press conference Thursday. “This is more than just political disagreement or passionate advocacy, some of these groups’ mission is simply to create chaos and inflict harm upon others.”

I continue to wonder why the remaining jerks in the Republican Party don’t ever say anything about this.  Trump will be on Tucker Carlson tonight and that is bound to be an even worse display of idiocy and insanity than we’ve seen this week.

Frau Doctor by Otton Dix

Here’s what we missed besides normalcy and sanity.  The Atlantic‘s writer Edward Issac Dovere  interviews Hillary Clinton. “Hillary Clinton Says She Was Right All Along. The biggest factors she blames for her loss—disinformation, Vladimir Putin, and America’s deep political divide—will still be problems even if Trump loses, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee warns.”

In many ways, Clinton feels vindicated by how the Trump presidency has played out, and by what Americans have learned about him over the past four years—including the recent revelation that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017. That “was even worse than I thought it was,” she said. But being right is a small solace. She was sitting in her home in New York, speaking with me over Zoom for a conversation you can hear in full on the latest episode of The Ticket. Chappaqua is not Washington, D.C. She’s not in the middle of the reelection campaign she’d like to be running right now. She pointed out more than once that she won the popular vote in 2016, even if she didn’t win the Electoral College, and she mentioned former FBI Director James Comey’s letter in the final week of the race seeming to reopen the investigation into her (and then Comey’s announcement that nothing had come of it). And to those who wish she would just go away? She thinks they feel a bit guilty, she told me: They don’t want to admit that she was right about Trump.

What she’s hoping for over the next four years: Biden wins and gets rid of Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris helps reset some of the American political expectations for women, and Mark Zuckerberg—whom she compared to the sorcerer’s apprentice, losing control of his creation in a way that has done grave damage around the world—ends up facing new restrictions. She’s also hoping that she can step back from politics a bit more.

You can listen to their conversation at the link above.  I’m not sure why I went over to Otto Dix’s dark side.  I almost used some of his World  War 1 etchings which are mostly every one as skeletons but that was like way too dark.  But, maybe it’s just the lighting that the weather has brought to my desk.  He’s got more styles than Picasso and was just about as prolific!

So, I’m going to trying to get stuff battened down around here before the winds start up around supper time.  I’m also going to go eat my favorite comfort food which is my grandmother’s recipe for mac and cheese. Please, please take care!  Let us know you’re okay.  Thank you for all the Donations!  We’ll be able to keep the doors open another year!!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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.

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