THE PARTY OF LINCOLN WOULDN'T PRESERVE THE UNION

The Daily Beast has a report on efforts by liberal groups to game out possible responses to a disputed election. Most of the scenarios involve outright attempts by President Trump to steal an election he's legitimately lost, but the planners also consider what they might do if, once again, Trump wins the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

... the Transition Integrity Project noted that there would be immense pressure on Biden to fight it out if, for the third time in 20 years, the Democratic candidate won the popular vote but didn’t take office. In a simulation they ran, Team Biden “encouraged Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington, and collectively known as ‘Cascadia,’ to secede from the Union” unless structural reforms were made. In exchange for Trump getting the presidency, for instance, Republicans would need to agree to abolish the Electoral College, give Puerto Rico and D.C. statehood, and divide California into five states for better Senate representation.

Whether or not you agree that liberal groups should fight the results under these circumstances -- I'd reluctantly say that an Electoral College win is a win, and some groups involved in this project agree -- why would anyone believe that Republicans would take this deal?

Do we think it's the 1860s and the Republican Party cares about preserving the Union? Republicans have made clear for at least forty years that they don't believe Democrats are Americans. They'd be happy to let these states go.

The most obvious reason is that the Senate would immediately be down six Democratic senators -- and the House, which is now Democratic by a 232-198 margin (there's also one Libertarian in the House, Justin Amash, along with four vacancies), would lose 56 Democrats and only 11 Republicans, leaving the GOP with a 187-176 advantage.

But wouldn't Republicans want to preserve the economic might of the Pacific Coast states? Microsoft? Apple? Amazon? The film industry? California alone provides nearly 15% of U.S. GDP.

Well, where's the evidence that Republicans care about the health of the U.S. economy? Republicans hamstrung the recovery from the Great Recession during Barack Obama's presidency. They seem not to care whether there's another round of coronavirus relief. They support finding the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional and depriving millions of Americans of health insurance. They care about the economic health of the wealthy, not the country.

Republican politicians would be happy to see the West Coast go, and their voters, who've been told that California is an unlivable hellhole for years, and are now hearing the same message about Portland, would be delighted by coastal secession. If Democrats want to take a tough negotiating stance in the event of a muddied election result, they'll have to do better than this.

RELIABLE SOURCES!

Breitbart is working hard to discredit Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic story about President Trump's disrespect for the military. Here's one story:

Former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Zach Fuentes denied to Breitbart News The Atlantic’s account of President Donald Trump’s comments about troops in Europe.

Fuentes unequivocally denied The Atlantic’s report last week, a huge blow to the establishment media narrative. Fuentes personally briefed President Trump on the weather situation that led to the trip being canceled. He is also a close personal confidante of former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

“You can put me on record denying that I spoke with The Atlantic,” Fuentes told Breitbart News on Monday. “I don’t know who the sources are. I did not hear POTUS call anyone losers when I told him about the weather. Honestly, do you think General Kelly would have stood by and let ANYONE call fallen Marines losers?”

Of course I think General Kelly would have stood by and let Trump say that. He's a military man who respects the chain of command -- too much in this case. Trump was the commander in chief. Kelly absolutely would have stood by.

If the name Zach Fuentes seems familiar to you, you might be recalling this story:

A former White House aide won a $3 million federal contract to supply respirator masks to Navajo Nation hospitals in New Mexico and Arizona 11 days after he created a company to sell personal protective equipment in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Zach Fuentes, President Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, secured the deal with the Indian Health Service with limited competitive bidding and no prior federal contracting experience.

The IHS told ProPublica it has found that 247,000 of the masks delivered by Fuentes’ company — at a cost of roughly $800,000 — may be unsuitable for medical use. An additional 130,400, worth about $422,000, are not the type specified in the procurement data, the agency said.

What’s more, the masks Fuentes agreed to provide — Chinese-made KN95s — have come under intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators amid concerns that they offered inadequate protection.

This deal is now being investigated by the House of Representatives.

Previously, Fuentes tried to game the military retirement system.

After weeks of discussions about his future, Zachary D. Fuentes, the 36-year-old deputy White House chief of staff, had a plan.

Mr. Fuentes told colleagues that after his mentor, John F. Kelly, left his job as chief of staff at the end of the year, he would “hide out” at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, for six months, remaining on the payroll in a nebulous role. Then, in July, when he had completed 15 years of service in the Coast Guard, Mr. Fuentes — an active-duty officer — would take advantage of an early retirement program.

The program, referred to as temporary early retirement authority, had lapsed for Coast Guard officials at the end of the 2018 fiscal year, and, according to people briefed on the discussions, Department of Homeland Security officials began pressing Congress in November to reinstate it. Administration officials said they had been told that Mr. Fuentes discussed the program with officials at the Department of Homeland Security, and after reporters raised questions with lawmakers of both parties, a provision to reinstate it was abruptly pulled from a House bill on Wednesday.

So Fuentes seems like a man of excellent character. Who else has Breitbart heard from?

U.S. Ambassador to France and Monaco Jamie McCourt told Breitbart News exclusively on Monday that the Atlantic story about President Donald Trump allegedly bashing troops is untrue.

Ambassador McCourt was there the day President Trump’s team called off the trip to the cemetery at Belleau Wood because of inclement weather....

“Needless to say, I never spoke to the Atlantic, and I can’t imagine who would,” McCourt told Breitbart News. “In my presence, POTUS has NEVER denigrated any member of the U.S. military or anyone in service to our country. And he certainly did not that day, either. Let me add, he was devastated to not be able to go to the cemetery at Belleau Wood. In fact, the next day, he attended and spoke at the ceremony in Suresnes in the pouring rain.”

That would be this Jamie McCourt:

There was a familiar name for Los Angeles Dodgers fans among a group of several U.S. ambassadors that reportedly sold their stocks while President Donald Trump publicly downplayed the threat of the coronavirus pandemic. It was not a welcome one.

CNBC reports that the group includes current France ambassador Jamie McCourt, whose divorce from husband Frank McCourt while they owned the Dodgers created a public spectacle rarely seen from MLB owners.

The group reportedly sold stocks worth millions of dollars in January and February while the coronavirus threat loomed, but had not reached the full-blown pandemic stage. Other politicians, including Atlanta Dream owner [and Republican senator] Kelly Loeffler, have previously landed in hot water for similar transactions.

Jamie McCourt's time with the Dodgers was not a happy one.

It’s not often see you a major North American sports team file for bankruptcy in the age of monstrous revenues, but that is the level of mess the McCourt divorce created for [Major League Baseball].

After buying the team alongside Frank McCourt in 2004, Jamie McCourt became president of the Dodgers in 2005. Among the most infamous moves under their leadership: paying a Russian “scientist and healer” six figures to watch Dodgers games and channel positive thoughts for the team. Yes, really.

More:

Frank ... and Jamie [McCourt] were using the team as a personal piggy bank, funding a lavish lifestyle — they owned multiple extraordinarily expensive homes, including two next door to one another — and giving their children what appeared to be do-nothing jobs, all paid for with Dodgers revenues. More seriously, they were accused of using the Dodgers’ team charities as a means of enriching themselves and their friends, with very little apparent evidence that they were, in fact, engaging in substantive philanthropy. That led to a grand jury investigation by the State of California which resulted in the McCourts being required to give back substantial sums....

In ... 2009 ... the most expensive divorce in California history began with Frank accusing Jamie of having an affair with her personal driver — a Dodgers employee — and Jamie countering by seeking to set aside a post-nuptial agreement that named Frank the team’s sole owner....

Meanwhile, the Dodgers were on shaky financial footing. The debt service on the loans McCourt used to buy the team was high, as was team payroll. Attendance, while strong compared to the rest of the league, was low by Dodgers standards. And, as noted, a vast amount of money was being siphoned off from the team to fund the McCourts’ lifestyle and, increasingly, legal fees. As a result, the team could not meet payroll.... Commissioner Bud Selig ... appointed a league representative to oversee the day-to-day operations of the team....

As the months wore on, ... [Jamie] became amenable to settlement, taking $131 million from Frank to end the matter entirely....

Then something fun happened: two weeks after Jamie settled, Frank sold the Dodgers for $2.15 billion.... Frank was out from under his pile of debt and, somehow, had made more than a billion bucks in sheer profit despite the fact that he was, arguably, the most financially irresponsible owner in baseball history. Jamie, after years of claiming to be the real brains and authority behind the team and its rightful owner, turned on a dime and claimed that she had been financially unsophisticated, taken advantage of by her husband, and hopelessly misled about the state of the Dodgers....

Jamie McCourt has managed to do OK on her $131 million. She bought a winery in Napa Valley. The former securities lawyer and MBA holder also hit the lecture circuit for a while, talking about how she was a babe in the financial woods, ignorant of finances, taken advantage of by her husband and claiming that all she wants to do is to help prevent that from happening to other women.... this champion of women’s empowerment went on to chair noted feminist Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign in California, where he got just over 31% of the state’s vote, which was the worst a major party candidate has done there since 1924. Jamie was rewarded for those efforts by being named Ambassador to Monaco, proving that Frank is not the only McCourt who was adept at failing upwards.

Another witness of excellent character! Surely we ought to believe these fine, upstanding citizens!

THE INTERNATIONAL ANTI-BIDEN CONSPIRACY TO FIND AN INTERNATIONAL PRO-BIDEN CONSPIRACY

The hot new trend in right-wing commentary is to argue that expressions of concern about Donald Trump stealing the election add up to an effort to start a "color revolution" in the United States, similar to rebellions that have arisen in former Soviet bloc nations. The belief on the right is that the uprisings in former Russian satellites were ginned up by a sinister cabal of left-leaning globalists; right-wingers argue that when we say it might require force to remove Trump from office if he's legitimitely defeated, we're saying it because we want to use force. In August, Michael Brendan Dougherty argued this for National Review, and now we have Miranda Devine of the New York Post making a similar assertion, under the headline "Antifa Riots May Be Part of Democrat Power Grab."

Whether or not all rioters are Democrat voters, they increasingly are associated with Biden’s campaign in the minds of voters who fear violence is coming to their suburb.

This rolling campaign of anti-police street violence is killing Biden’s bid for the presidency — just look at private polling in crucial swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where law and order has become a decisive issue.

(We can't "look at private polling," Miranda, because, y'know, it's private. If you have access to some numbers that The Liberal Media Won't Talk About, given that you're a journalist and all, why don't you share them? Of course, she doesn't.)

So why don’t Democrat leaders do more to condemn the violence and call for calm?

To understand their inaction, you need to step back and see street violence as one element of a coordinated “playbook” to dislodge President Trump, regardless of the outcome of the election.

This is the thesis of political theorist Dr. Darren Beattie, a former Duke University professor and White House official.

The playbook is straight from the strategies the US government has deployed in so-called “Color Revolutions” in Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine or Belarus, to remove “authoritarian” leaders deemed to be hostile to American interests.

In a series of articles at Revolver.news, Beattie lays out a compelling comparison between Deep State efforts to remove President Trump and techniques used by the State Department, covert agencies and allied NGOs to influence, or overturn, elections in foreign countries.

BLM-Antifa’s “mostly peaceful protests” are America’s version of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, where civil unrest was fomented on the streets to oust a Kremlin-backed authoritarian.

In an interview, Beattie noted “strong parallels” between “color revolutions” overseas and the “sustained coordinated coup against Trump” — from the Russia collusion hoax to his impeachment over Ukraine.

“The very same regime change professionals ... assigned to overthrow ‘authoritarians’ in Eastern Europe are the ones running this operation against Trump. It is the same playbook run by the same people.”

The Color Revolution playbook starts by creating the narrative of an authoritarian, illegitimate leader. Then you foment unrest on the streets, aimed at provoking an authoritarian crackdown which can be used to mobilize further unrest.

You undermine people’s faith in the election process, setting up a contested outcome which turns into street fighting.

At the same time, you wage relentless “lawfare” to contest ballots. Ultimately the military may be called upon to dislodge the incumbent.

One of the biggest conspiracy theories on the right -- it's almost at a QAnon level of looniness -- is that left-wing radicals (and self-styled anarchists who just like to break stuff) are working hand in glove with the party of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Pete Buttigieg, Chris Dodd, Ed Rendell, and so on. We have enough trouble getting Bernie Bros to say that Trump is worse than Biden. We've lost two presidential elections this century because lefties thought it was extremely cool not to vote Democratic. Do these right-wingers seriously believe that Biden/Harris operatives are coordinating strategy with the Black Bloc?

They do, or at least their audience does.

Meanwhile, who are the folks who believe in ths Conspiracy So Vast?

Miranda Devine, the author of this piece, came to New York, like many writers for the Murdoch press, from Australia, where she really made a name for herself.

In 2002, Devine opined in the Sydney Morning Herald that the racial element of the Sydney gang rapes had been "airbrushed" out of the media coverage of the events. She stated that the victims alleged that prosecutors had intentionally "censored" their official statements to remove any mention of racially sensitive material.... Devine has also been accused by the Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald of promoting the white genocide conspiracy theory and described as pivotal in popularising the concept within Australian politics.... Referring to white South African refugees as "oppressed white, Christian, industrious, rugby and cricket-playing Commonwealth cousins", she has claimed they would "integrate seamlessly" with European Australians.

And her source, Darren Beattie? He left a White House speechwriting job when it was leaned that he'd delivered an address to a white nationalist conference, then was hired as a speechwriting consultant by Congressman Matt Gaetz, who then improperly sent $28,000 to a limited liability company linked to Beattie, in violation of House ethics rules. But it's Beattie's racism that stands out.

Beattie maintains an active presence on Twitter, where he frequently amplifies 21-year old commentator Nick Fuentes and other leading voices of the White nationalist America First/groyper movement....

Fuentes and his ‘America First’ program ... is notorious for thinly-veiled warnings of ‘White genocide’ and demographic replacement, virulent racism and antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and other staples of White nationalist ideology. Fuentes, for his part, has called Beattie “brilliant”, “honorable” and “a solid guy”....

Beattie, much like the America First movement, tends to signal core White nationalist claims that white people in the U.S. are being ‘replaced’ by conspiratorial elites, while strategically downplaying an explicit embrace of White identity politics.

At times, however, the mask slips. “If white people are targeted as a group,” Beattie claimed on June 23, “they must learn to defend themselves as a group.” ...

Beattie has excoriated protesters as “bio-defectives”, citing the theory of Bio-Leninism, a supremacist doctrine, developed by the racist neoreactionary movement, which asserts that biologically inferior social groups use progressive movements to self-organize into a societal elite, usurping power from groups that would otherwise constitute their natural superiors. The theorist behind Bio-Leninism, known as Spandrell, believes these bio-superiors to be White, Christian and male, stating in 2018 that “if Progressivism were to fail,” the social groups Beattie called bio-defectives would “be back picking cotton, or barefoot in the kitchen, or freezing in the shtetl.” Echoing theories of elite domination of Whites, Beattie retweeted far-right investor Adam Townsend’s claim on July 15 that with diversity and inclusion initiatives in industries like tech, “elites want to strip Whites of their economic, political and social capital, as they are the only opposing force that can displace them.” ...

To advance conspiracies of an elite Left takeover, Beattie samples from the tropes of white nationalist antisemitism, a surprising fact given that Beattie is himself Jewish. “When America takes a knee,” he said on June 7, “Soros takes a bow” ...

These are the folks who think we have a massive conspiracy in the works. I think they're projecting a mirror image of their own fantasies of white counterrevolution.


(Hat tip: Paul Canning.)

WOULD TRUMP GET VACCINATED?

This is understandable:

Skepticism about getting a coronavirus vaccine has grown since earlier this summer, and most voters say if a vaccine were made available this year, their first thought would be that it was rushed through without enough testing.

Just 21% of voters nationwide now say they would get a vaccine as soon as possible if one became available at no cost, down from 32% in late July. Most would consider it but would wait to see what happens to others before getting one.

It won't surprise you that, according to this CBS/YouGov poll, Republicans -- you know, the party whose voters think the pandemic is a hoax and vaccines are a Bill Gates/George Soros plot to inject a microchip into everyone -- will be more pleased than Democrats if there's a vaccine this year.



But this seems quite sensible:

When a vaccine is developed, 75% of voters think the next president, whoever it is, should publicly take the vaccine to help show the public it is safe. Here we see agreement along partisan lines: Majorities of Republicans (65%), Democrats (84%) and independents (76%) all think the next president should do this.

If he's president, will Donald Trump do this?

He'll certainly hype a vaccine if it's released prior to the election -- but I don't think he'll get it himself. (He shouldn't, because a vaccine released before the election won't be trustworthy.) If it's after the election and he's been reelected, he'll probably want to take all the credit for the vaccine's existence, whether or not he deserves any credit at all (we don't know where a new vaccine will come from or whether it will be funded by the United States), but I'm not sure he'll get it himself. I'm sure he won't get the vaccine if it's from China. But I suspect he might not want to be seen publicly getting it even if it's was developed with U.S. funding and he's boasting about it, for the same reason he doesn't want to wear a mask in public: He probably believes that receiving a vaccine on camera makes him look weak and like an ordinary mortal, rather than like the superior being with superior genes he believes he is.

And if he's lost the election and a vaccine emerges, not only will he not get it, but he and much of the right-wing media will seek to discredit the vaccine, its makers, and the pharmaceutical industry in general. Trump will proclaim that the virus didn't emerge until after the election because scientists were a conspiracy to defeat him. The right-wing media will agree.

By contrast, win or lose, I'm sure Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their spouses will proudly to get the vaccine on camera once it's declared safe and effective by U.S. and overseas scientists and governments, as will, I imagine, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Carters, and probably George W. and Laura Bush. (I'm not developing a soft spot for the Bushes, but I think they'll do the right thing in this case.) All of them, I imagine, will hesitate if a vaccine is rushed out before the election -- Kamala Harris has already declared that she's a skeptic.

Asked by CNN's Dana Bash in a clip released Saturday whether she would get a vaccine that was approved and distributed before the election, Harris replied, "Well, I think that's going to be an issue for all of us."

"I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about," she continued in the clip from an exclusive interview airing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" at 9 a.m. ET. "I will not take his word for it."

But I'm sure she'll get a widely approved vaccine, and she'll be happy to do so on camera. Trump won't, for many reasons, foremost among them his ridiculous vanity.

IF YOU'RE GONNA LIE, LIE WITH GUSTO, I GUESS

After all these years of lying, Donald Trump has it down to a conditioned reflex: Whenever he's caught having to respond to an embarrassing news story, he not only insists that the opposite of the truth is the truth, he frames his version of reality as a precedent-shattering superlative:

The Atlantic specifically reported that Trump didn't want to attend a ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 because he was concerned that the rain would dishevel his hair....

Trump insisted Thursday evening that the Secret Service had prevented him from attending the ceremony.

"I was ready to go to a ceremony. I had two of them, one the following day, it was pouring and I went to that. The reason it couldn't fly because it was raining about as hard as I've ever seen, and on top of that it was very, very foggy and the helicopter was unable to fly," he said.

Trump said "it was raining about as hard as I've ever seen"?

Really?





(A contemporary news report described the precipitation as "the lightest of drizzles.")

Trump fans apparently fall for this every time. It moves the Overton window in their gullible brains: If he said it was raining as hard as he'd ever seen, the rain must have been awful! Maybe it wasn't really the worst he'd ever seen, but it must have been really bad!

And for good measure, he tosses in an easily disproven lie, because why not?

Trump said he then "called home, I spoke to my wife and I said, 'I hate this. I came here to go to that ceremony.' And to the one that was the following day, which I did go to. I said I feel terribly. And that was the end of it."

As CNN has reported, first lady Melania Trump was on the same trip and was scheduled to visit the cemetery with the President. She was not in the US.

Yup -- it's right there on the White House website.

First Lady Melania Trump traveled with her husband to Paris, France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Armistice that ended World War I....

On Saturday, Mrs. Trump traveled to the Élysée Palace....

Due to inclement weather, the First Lady and President were unable to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in Belleau, France. The cemetery contains the graves of 2,289 American heroes....

But if CNN says so, it must be fake news, right?

In an August poll conducted by YouGov, 78% of Trump supporters said that he's "honest and trustworthy." Also, 88% of them said he "says what he believes," while only 8% said he "says what he thinks people want to hear."

When Trump is insulting blacks, women, Democrats, urbanites, and the media, I think he does say what he believes. But whether he's venting his bigotries and resentments or lying to try to protect his reputation and make himself not seem like a loathsome human being, he's saying what he thinks people want to hear -- at least he's saying what he thinks his people want to hear. That's always vitally important to him.

OSAMA BIN LADEN'S NIECE IS A TRUMP-LOVING FAN OF QANON, PRISON PLANET, AND GENERAL FLYNN

Jon Levine, the mysterious journalist who writes multiple stories for the New York Post, but only on Saturdays, and who last week published a credulity-straining interview with a self-proclaimed Democratic mail-in voter fraud operative (anonymous, naturally), is back with a celebrity interview of sorts:

Another 9/11-style attack may be just around the corner if Joe Biden is elected president, warns Noor bin Ladin, the niece of Sept. 11 terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

“ISIS proliferated under the Obama/Biden administration, leading to them coming to Europe. Trump has shown he protects America and us by extension from foreign threats by obliterating terrorists at the root and before they get a chance to strike,” bin Ladin, 33, told The Post in her first-ever interview.

(That really sounds like conversational English, doesn't it?)

Bin Ladin (whose branch of the family has always spelled their name differently than her infamous uncle) lives in Switzerland but said she considers herself “an American at heart.” A full size US flag hung in her childhood room at age 12 and her dream vacation is an RV trip across America.

The stunning, Swiss-born bin Ladin says she is all in for Trump in 2020, calling the election the most important in a generation.

“I have been a supporter of President Trump since he announced he was running in the early days in 2015. I have watched from afar and I admire this man’s resolve,” she said. “He must be reelected ... It’s vital for the future of not only America, but western civilization as a whole.”

We're told that Ms. Bin Ladin, who lives in Switzerland and has a Swiss mother, "regularly wears a 'Make America Great Again' hat (and occasionally a Trump bedtime onesie)" and that she is "a keen and meticulous consumer of conservative media and advocate of their most hot-button causes."

... she can offer lengthy monologues railing against Spygate, tech censorship of conservative voices, mandatory mask-wearing, The New York Times discredited 1619 project, and even Andrew Cuomo’s controversial executive order requiring nursing homes to accept seniors with COVID-19.

Her favorite television show is Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and she’s chummy with Laura Loomer.

What's wrong with this woman? She's Swiss and Saudi. She lives in Europe. Why would she be so immersed in American wingnut culture? Does she not have a life?

What Levine doesn't tell us is that Bin Ladin, to judge from the "Resources" page on her website, is a QAnon fan -- note the links to www.qmap.pub and www.onq.martingeddes.com/, a pro-Q document by a man named Martin Geddes, near the end of a list of some of the worst D-list right-wing sites.



The splash page of her site advertises "My letter to America," which, we discover when we click on the link, is "Coming soon." (Maybe it's still being translated from the Russian.)

Her Twitter feed says she joined Twitter in 2010, but the earliest tweets are from 2019. She posted a "must-watch" documentary on the intellectual dark Web, praised Jordan Peterson, and quote-tweeted Paul Joseph Watson of Alex's Jones's Prison Planet. She disappeared from Twitter in November 2019, then returned in April of this year, quote-tweeting Paul Joseph Watson again, attacking the World Health Organization, praising a book by Pizzagater Mike Cernovich, urging people to see the COVID conspiracy film Plandemic, denouncing "Obamagate," and ... um ...

Woke up today in Switzerland to the best tweet. Standing with @GenFlynn @SidneyPowell1 🙏🇺🇸 #ExonerateGenFlynn https://t.co/Iq4bzWqWU5

— Noor Bin Ladin (@NoorBinLadin) April 25, 2020

Today marks a turning point in our history, greater than most of us can comprehend at this time. But looking back, @GenFlynn and @SidneyPowell1 ‘s win will be etched as the event where we shifted back to a system rooted in righteousness. May the good and just prevail always.

— Noor Bin Ladin (@NoorBinLadin) May 7, 2020

Also:

POTUS is cleaning house.
Deep State going down.
Trust the plan. https://t.co/qRxlXHNdmF

— Noor Bin Ladin (@NoorBinLadin) July 2, 2020

Maybe this is genuine and spontaneous. Or maybe someone believed it would be beneficial to the Cause to offer some inducement or other to Osama's niece to persuade her to put her name on these ideas. Why? I don't know. I try really hard to understand the way these people think, but in this case I'm afraid I've reached my limit.

JUST DO YOUR DAMN JOBS

David Brooks writes:

On the evening of Nov. 3, Americans settle nervously in front of their screens to await elections results. In the early hours Donald Trump seems to be having an excellent night. Counting the votes cast at polling places, Trump is winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Those states don’t even begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, yet Trump quickly declares victory. So do many other Republican candidates. The media complains that it’s premature, but Trumpworld is ecstatic.

Democrats know that as many as 40 percent of the ballots are mail-in and still being counted, and those votes are likely to be overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, but they can’t control the emotions of that night. It’s a gut punch.

Why? Why should what's happening be a gut punch? Why should it be perceived that Donald Trump is having an excellent night?

It shouldn't be if the political press does its job -- not in an extraordinary way, but in the way it regularly operates just after polls close.

It isn't just Brooks who's predicting a shock to the system as the returns are counted -- many pundits who are much smarter than Brooks are saying the same thing.

But we all know that Democratic votes will lag Republican votes. The media just has to tell us what's happening, more or less the same way it always does.

What happens on TV on election nights? On MSNBC, to take one example, Steve Kornacki stands at a digital map and discusses not just the current vote totals but the nature of the votes that haven't been counted. In a pre-COVID election, he'd tell us that the untallied votes come from precincts or counties that are stronger for one party than another. He'd give us a sense of what it would take for the candidate who's trailing to make up the deficit. And up to a point in every contest he'd say: This is why we can't call the race yet.

Every broadcast network and cable news channel has someone doing the same thing. The New York Times and other online news sources that assess the state of the race as votes are tallied provide similar analysis.

The only difference this year is that there'll be more uncounted votes. But we know already that they'll be disproportionately Democratic, and wer should at least know which parts of the various states they're from. In all likelihood, most of them will be from Democratic strongholds.

So no matter what Trump is saying, the people reporting on the vote count just have to hold firm, the way they do in a non-COVID election when they don't have enough ballots counted and assessments of key precincts to call a race. So when Trump beats his chest and makes a premature declaration of victory, they just have to treat it as empty bluster that isn't based on fact. (Over the past four years, the press has actually become fairly good at that with regard to Trump.)

In states with close races, midnight on Election Night will be the equivalent of twenty minutes after the polls close in a normal election -- way too early for a call. The press just has to say that, and keep saying that, and keep telling the public what percentage of votes have yet to be counted, and emphasize that they are legitimate votes.

CNN, MSNBC, and the three broadcast networks ought to be handle this. Hell, even Fox News ought to be able to pull it off -- remember that Fox called Ohio for Barack Obama in 2012 over the strenuous on-air objections of Karl Rove, who was then escorted to the back room where Fox's number-crunching nerds were making an honest and correct assessment of the Ohio vote.

That's what we need once the polls close: a rejection of Trump's fairy tale in favor of the facts about the provisional nature of the Election Night tally. We need the media to just keep calling the race the way it's always called other races, but with a somewhat different set of late-arriving votes. And we need the press to hold firm on telling us what the reality is.

Is that too much to ask?

LASER-FOCUSED ON THE ISSUES THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CARE MOST ABOUT

We're living through a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a racial justice crisis, not to mention a climate crisis and an inequality crisis, but -- in addition to "HairStyleGhazi" -- this is what Republicans want you to focus on:

Two House GOP leaders have officially called on Attorney General William Barr to determine whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke federal law when she ripped up President Trump's State of the Union speech earlier this year.

Republican Policy Committee Chairman Gary Palmer, R-Ala., and Republican Study Committee Chairman Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote a letter to Barr on Tuesday asking he deliver a definitive answer on whether "Pelosi committed a criminal act by destroying an official copy of the State of the Union speech delivered to her" by Trump....

The GOP lawmakers believe Pelosi could have violated 18 U.S.C. § 2071 which deals with the mutilation of official federal records and sets a criminal penalty of destroying documents of up to three years in prison.

We know the answer: She didn't break the law, as PolitiFact explained immediately after the speech, in response to professional troll Charlie Kirk's assertion that this was a criminal act.

... when we asked a number of legal experts about what Kirk said, we found that their answer was unanimous: Kirk’s claim is wrong....

The statute in question ... sets a penalty for anyone who "conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys" any government record "filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States."

The statute also says that any person with "custody" of a government record cannot "willfully and unlawfully" conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify or destroy it.

"The point of the statute is to prevent people from destroying records in official repositories like the National Archives or in courts," said Georgetown Law professor Victoria Nourse.

Pelosi is in the clear, experts said, because her copy of Trump’s speech wasn’t a government record.

The State of the Union text was never "filed or deposited" with her, nor did she have "custody" of it in the legal sense....

"Her copy of the State of the Union address is not a government record or government property at all," said Douglas Cox, professor of law at the City of New York University School of Law and an expert in the laws governing the preservation of government records. "It is personal property."

... presidential records ... have been considered government property since the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and are supposed to be stored with the National Archives for safekeeping.

"The State of the Union is a presidential record, which must go to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act," Nourse said "(Pelosi) did not mutilate the record that is filed with the Archives."

And President Trump actually does violate the Presidential Records Act -- or at least he tries to, as Politico reported in 2018.

Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.

But White House aides realized early on that they were unable to stop Trump from ripping up paper after he was done with it and throwing it in the trash or on the floor, according to people familiar with the practice. Instead, they chose to clean it up for him, in order to make sure that the president wasn’t violating the law.

Staffers had the fragments of paper collected from the Oval Office as well as the private residence and send it over to records management across the street from the White House for [records management analyst Solomon] Lartey and his colleagues to reassemble.

“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” Lartey recalled in an interview. “You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.” The restored papers would then be sent to the National Archives to be properly filed away....

“I had a letter from [Senator Chuck] Schumer — he tore it up,” he said. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”

Lartey did not work alone. He said his entire department was dedicated to the task of taping paper back together in the opening months of the Trump administration.

Which might explain this, also from 2018:

The former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman claims in her forthcoming memoir that she once saw President Donald Trump eating a piece of paper in the Oval Office....

In the book, "Unhinged," Manigault Newman said she saw Trump chewing up a piece of paper given to him by his former lawyer Michael Cohen, The Post said.

"I saw him put a note in his mouth," Manigault Newman wrote, according to the newspaper. "Since Trump was ever the germaphobe, I was shocked he appeared to be chewing and swallowing the paper. It must have been something very, very sensitive."

The Pelosi accusation is preposterous, but I worry that this or something similar will be taken very seriously by the Trump/Barr Justice Department if Trump gets a second term. Apart from getting his face on Mount Rushmore and finding a way to become president for life, I expect Trump to devote his non-golfing, non-tweeting, non-TV-watching hours to vengeance against his enemies. I fully expect him to try to put Barack Obama in jail, as well as many of the people who worked on the Russia investigation. Why not Pelosi as well?

ARREST THE PRESIDENT

I guess some of us needed to have this explained, but in case you were wondering, yes, it's illegal to vote twice in North Carolina.

North Carolina's election board on Thursday was compelled to remind residents that voting twice is a felony, after President Trump suggested that voters should vote once by mail and again in person on Election Day.

... "Attempting to vote twice in an election or soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law," Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a statement.

... Trump made the suggestion during a visit to the key battleground state of North Carolina on Wednesday, saying voters should cast their ballots twice to test the mail-in system.

Attempting to vote twice or soliciting someone to do so is illegal. The law states:

§ 163-275. Certain acts declared felonies.
Any person who shall, in connection with any primary, general or special election held in this State, do any of the acts or things declared in this section to be unlawful, shall be guilty of a Class I felony. It shall be unlawful:

... (7) For any person with intent to commit a fraud to register or vote at more than one precinct or more than one time, or to induce another to do so, in the same primary or election, or to vote illegally at any primary or election.

So Trump is guilty of a felony.

He should be arrested and charged for this. If not, he should be impeached and removed from office. This impeachment wouldn't have an elaborate cast of characters or timeline. It wouldn't require a sophisticated understanding of geopolitics in the post-Cold War era. The man urged double voting. Double voting is illegal. Case closed.

It won't happen, but we should at least be talking about the fact that this is a criminal act and an impeachment-worthy offense.

IF TRUMP IS RETURNED TO OFFICE, IS SECESSION THE ONLY SOLUTION?

We should be able to beat President Trump in November. Joe Biden's lead may be down somewhat from its midsummer peak, but it's solid and enduring, and if it holds, it's large enough to enough to all but ensure an Electoral College victory -- if there's a fair election.

But the president is doing everything he can to gum up the works. He's putting stress on an already challenged electoral system by urging his voters to vote twice, illegally, in order to demonstate that the process is rigged. His loathsome attorney general, the worst person in American government apart from Trump and Mitch McConnell, responded to this last night by saying he didn't know whether double voting is illegal and insisting that vote by mail will inevitably lead to fraud.

So what happens if Trump wins again? I think the only limits on his power will be the limits of his own whims. He's already moving to defund cities that personally offend him.

President Trump is ordering the federal government to begin the process of defunding New York City and three other cities where officials allowed “lawless” protests and cut police budgets amid rising violent crime....

New York City, Washington, DC, Seattle and Portland are initial targets....

“My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump says in the memo, which twice mentions New York Mayor Bill de Blasio by name....

Federal agencies must detail “all Federal funds provided to Seattle, Portland, New York City, Washington, D.C.” Also, within 14 days Attorney General Bill Barr must develop a list of “anarchist jurisdictions” that “permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures” to restore order. The memo does not require Barr to include the four cities, possibly for legal reasons.

Will the courts block this? Who the hell knows?

An effort by Mr. Trump to curtail funding to so-called sanctuary cities was challenged in court, but a federal appeals court ruled this year that the administration was within its rights to withhold some funds, although three other appeals courts have ruled that the administration did not have the authority.

If I'm paying taxes and my city isn't getting some of the money back in federal aid appropriated by Congress, then I don't want my tax dollars to go to D.C. anymore. But how will that happen? It can't happen unless the mayor or governors orders every employer in New York to stop withholding federal taxes from employees' paychecks.

This is just a small taste of what life under Trump will be like if he manages to cheat his way to reelection. He has no agenda except vengeance.

What can we do? We can try to tie him up in courts that, at least at the federal level, will be increasingly presided over by his hacks. That won't work.

I think there'll be serious secession talk if there's a Trump second term. It's hard to know where the physical lines will be drawn, because it's mostly urban areas dotted throughout the country that are disgusted by Trump -- for the most part, it's not particular regions or states.

But maybe the Northeast and the Pacific Coast will need to consider leaving America. I don't know how else we're going to survive, because Trump will want to crush us. I don't know what other recourse we have.

WHO WANTS TO TELL HIS SURVIVORS?

On Monday, I told you about the new right-wing talking point on the coronavirus: Because the CDC says that all but 9,000 Americans who've died from it had one or more other contributing conditions, or comorbities, the right now insists that only 9,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 altogether. Over the weekend, President Trump retweeted a QAnon supporter's now-deleted tweet to that effect, and Senator Joni Ernst told an Iowa newspaper reporter recently that she finds the idea intriguing: “They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly covid-19. ... I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.”

Now, what does this look like in real life? Here's how it looks:

A Minnesota biker who attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally has died of covid-19 — the first fatality from the virus traced to the 10-day event that drew more than 400,000 to South Dakota.

The man was in his 60s, had underlying conditions and was hospitalized in intensive care after returning from the rally, said Kris Ehresmann, infectious-disease director at the Minnesota Department of Health. The case is among at least 260 cases in 11 states tied directly to the event, according to a survey of health departments by The Washington Post.

... Sturgis was unique in drawing people from across the nation to one small town, where they crowded into bars, restaurants, tattoo shops and other businesses, many without masks.

So here's a man who was in his sixties. He had health conditions -- as a lot of people in their sixties do. Maybe he had coronary disease, or asthma, or diabetes, or some combination.

But he was living his life. He was healthy enough to hop on a motorcycle and party in Sturgis. The rally took place from August 7 to August 16. Less than a month ago, this man was healthy enough to attend it.

And now he's dead.

But according to the new right-wing dogma, this man didn't die of COVID-19 at all. He died because he had death coming to him, what with all those comorbidities.

Who wants to tell the people closest to him -- his family, his biker friends -- that COVID didn't kill him? Who wants to tell them that he'd probably be dead anyway?

Would you like to do the honors, Senator Ernst?

Or you, Mr. President?

DEMOCRACY CAN'T SURVIVE IF ONE PARTY'S VOTERS THINK THE OTHER PARTY'S VOTERS SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO VOTE

The Washington Post's Philip Bump reports:

Research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences articulates the link between what author Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University describes as “ethnic antagonism” and views that run contrary to core democratic principles.

Bartels’s research involved asking respondents whether they agreed with each of four statements:

* “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it."

* “A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.”

* “Strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done."

* “It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.”

Most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agreed with the first statement, that it might be necessary to use force to save the “traditional American way of life.” Nearly three-quarters agreed that election results should be treated with skepticism, given the numbed of “handouts” people receive. Respondents were significantly more likely to say they agreed with the other two statements than that they disagreed.

As Bartels notes, this is about racism.

In an email to The Washington Post, Bartels described anti-democratic sentiment in the Republican Party as “grounded” in this sort of skepticism about or hostility to non-White Americans.

“Even in analyses including elaborate measures of partisan attitudes, views of President Trump, economic conservatism, cultural conservatism, and political cynicism," he wrote, “ethnic antagonism stands out remarkably clearly as the most powerful factor associated with willingness to resort to force in pursuit of political ends and support for ‘patriotic Americans’ taking the law into their own hands and ‘strong leaders’ bending rules.”

But this is also about democracy. Of the four statements, the one endorsed by the most Republican-leaning respondents is the one arguing that elections can't be trusted.



And now we're about to have an election in which a large number of votes will be cast by mail, with Democrats far more likely to choose the mail option than Republicans. Yesterday, Axios reported:

A top Democratic data and analytics firm told "Axios on HBO" it's highly likely that President Trump will appear to have won — potentially in a landslide — on election night, even if he ultimately loses when all the votes are counted....

That is what this group, Hawkfish, which is funded by Michael Bloomberg and also does work for the Democratic National Committee and pro-Biden Super PACs, is warning is a very real, if not foreordained, outcome....

Under one of the group's modeling scenarios, Trump could hold a projected lead of 408-130 electoral votes on election night, if only 15% of the vote by mail (VBM) ballots had been counted.

Once 75% of mail ballots were counted, perhaps four days later, the lead could flip to Biden's favor.

This particular modeling scenario portrays Biden as ultimately winning a massive victory, 334-204.

To which John Hinderaker of Power Line responds:

THE DEMOCRATS EXPLAIN THEIR VOTER FRAUD PLANS

I expect that President Trump will be re-elected in November. The Democrats apparently expect that as well. At least, the Democratic Party web site Axios does. Thus, Axios is warning the party’s faithful that President Trump is likely to win–apparently–on November 3. But never fear: weeks remain in which the Democrats can harvest fake ballots!

... Democrats are not that much more afraid of the mild COVID virus than Republicans. Rather, fake Democratic ballots are far more likely to come in by mail, mysteriously mailed in by persons to whom they may or may not have been addressed–millions of those people being dead, moved away, or ineligible to vote. The “vote by junk mail” regime established in a number of states by the Democrats opens the door to voter fraud to an unprecedented degree. Which was, of course, the idea.

... Most people would say the salient point is that on election night, the Democrats know exactly how many ballots they need to fabricate to “win” a particular state–much like the “ballot harvesting” campaign that they carried out in California in 2018.

Maybe this is about race, but it's not just about race. Hinderaker is based in Minnesota, which has a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, and has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1976. Minnesota is 68% white, 12% black, 7% Hispanic.

When Hinderaker's own neighbors -- many of them white -- vote Democratic again, this time by mail, he'll declare the votes fraudulent, as will Donald Trump and much of the Republican Party and right-wing commentariat. This time they'll say the votes are fraudulent because they were sent by mail. But when they lack that excuse, they say there's massive in-person voter fraud, or they say, like the respondents in the Vanderbilt survey, that if you give "free stuff" to voters, their votes aren't legitimate.

The fact is, Republicans don't believe Democrats are Americans, and as a result they don't believe our votes are ever legitimate. Maybe it's because they see the Democratic Party as the party of black and Hispanic people. I think it's because they regard the Democratic Party as the home of many groups they hate -- not just blacks and Hispanics but Hollywood celebrities, college professors, mainstream media journalists, and dirty-fucking-hippie white people who riot and don't work for a living.

I don't know how we're the party of both elitists and layabouts, although the time-honored populist worlview is that rich (((rootless cosmopolitans))) are using jazz-loving Negroes to dilute the pure blood of the white race. I guess this is the modern, semi-polite version of that.

As a result, the vast majority of Republicans regard all our votes as illegitimate, even the ones cast by those of us who look just like them. Democracy can't survive when one party's voters don't think the other party's supporters deserve the right to vote.

****

ALSO:

Rigged Election? https://t.co/LK0gp40luC

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 2, 2020