NEW – Corey Lewandowski, Trump adviser who's been working on efforts to bring lawsuits alleging illegal election activity in specific states, tested positive for COVID yesterday per a person briefed. Lewandowski had been in Philly for days and believes he contracted it there.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 12, 2020
Some Trump campaign managers have been arrested for crimes.
Some have caught COVID-19, even as they peddled misinfo.
Only one has done both.
We stan a true s***lord king. pic.twitter.com/O0z0zZNRFP
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) November 12, 2020
The poor hard-working Secret Service bastids, though — them I feel sorry for:
NEW: More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel by @CarolLeonnig @jdawsey1 https://t.co/r1edchtGH2
— Matea Gold (@mateagold) November 13, 2020
As I understand it, epidemiologists have identified the genetic ‘fingerprint’ of the specific viral strain causing the WH superspreader event(s), but they haven’t been able to do proper contract tracing because the Oval Office Occupant’s minions are claiming ‘right to privacy’. Which, of course, doesn’t mean such contract tracing won’t happen retroactively, just that it won’t happen in time to protect the hapless individuals exposed to those ‘lucky’ Repubs…
NEWS – 2 new White House coronavirus infections, including the WH political director, Brian Jack https://t.co/Z20cqVJ2TB
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 11, 2020
It appears we have our second WH super spreader event now https://t.co/iqPkXYqomv
— Sam Stein (@samstein) November 11, 2020
Alaska congressman who ridiculed coronavirus now says he has COVID-19 https://t.co/Fxkwackvh3 pic.twitter.com/FfHM1iePiA
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 13, 2020
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
Fuck, these people are stupid. And evil. I’m so glad they’re going to be gone soon
I found it real interesting which world leaders/prominent foreign politicians congratulated Biden for winning and who only congratulated him for “running a good campaign” (Polish president), that the election was “wasn’t over yet”, and that Trump had “staying power” (Le Pen and that Italian guy)
Like, GTFO of here with that bullshit guys. You don’t understand American politics and you don’t understand American elections. Trump lost.
BTW, has Pooty Poot congratulated Biden yet? I hope he got all he wanted out of Trump because he’s probably going to be in for a world of hurt in a few months. Moron.
Queens Lurker
Did you stay for dinner?
No, just desserts.
Kent
Sooner or later some GOP bigwig other than Herman Cain is going to croak from this. Don Young is closing in on 90.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
If a god existed, McConnell would die from COVID
AnotherBruce
@Kent: That photo upstairs, was that the anti Abbey Road photo?
Mike J
Thought i read that jarvanka’s kids got kicked out of school because they didn’t want superspreaders exposing all the other kids.
Anne Laurie
And if, Murphy forbid, Rep. Young dies… his fellow Repubs will explain ‘Well, 90-year-olds die all the time, what did you expect?’
AnotherBruce
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): It looks like God has another plan for purple hand man.
Gretchen
My former congressman Kevin Yoder is with Young in the picture. He’s out, replaced by Sharice Davids. She was just re-elected.
NotMax
Do kind of find it kind of amusing that the oldest member of the House is named Young.
:)
Emma from FL
Is it terrible when I read these news and all I want to do is laugh?
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
Saw this article on Post Alley:
Why the Polls were Wrong: We’re Exhausted by Change
Basically, the GOP smear of Democrats as evil socialists worked. That the BLM protests may have actually hurt us a bit. What do all of you think of this take?
AnotherBruce
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): I lost the tweet, He apparently had been whining about Trump. And yes, he was stupid. He of all people should know that everything Trump touches. Dies.
Emma from FL
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): They were on the right track — racism — then they went into excuses. Fear of change my arse. Straight up racism, misogyny, and xenophobia.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Emma from FL:
I agree. I just thought it was interesting because it pointed out that the “socialist” BS worked apparently. So did the “law and order” stuff. We believed the BLM protests never moved any voters based on the polling, which turned out to be wrong. I suppose I find that fact disturbing
That 71+ million people could watch video of George Floyd be choked to death by a police officer, all of the other examples of police behaving horribly, etc and pull the lever for Trump. I don’t get it. And I despise them for it
Kent
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): And Clarence Thomas
gwangung
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): If you accept race as a cause, then you ignore the racists.
Because I can’t change who I am to fight the bigots. It’s the wrong argument to make.
Bring in non-voters. Get them to outnumber the bastards.
Kent
Honestly, they are going to smear 24/7 regardless of what progressives do. The BLM movement had little to do with Congress or national policy. Fox will just create lies out of thin air no matter what anyway. They’d have created something new out of thin air like Green New Deal to demonize and talk about how progressives want to take away your cars and force everyone to ride on covid- and crime-infested buses. They’d have found some progressive somewhere talking about banning the private car and would have been off and running for a month of campaign coverage about how Joe and Kamala want to confiscate your car.
I don’t honestly thing the massive daytime BLM protests had much negativity. What did was the endless fucking bullshit in Portland. Which stopped being about BLM and just became about attacking the police. Every night, just gearing up for battle against the cops. It achieved bumfuck nothing but alienated a lot of people against the cause with all the endless breaking windows, graffiti and that sort of thing. Progressive protestors need to learn better how to detach themselves from the element that just wants to break shit. Probably the best thing would be to limit protests to daytime with kids and stuff. It’s always the night stuff that seems to get violent.
Pete Downunder
Here in Queensland, Australia (where the weather is beautiful one day, perfect the next) there have been no community cases of Covid for weeks (we have the occasional case in hotel quarantine from overseas visitors such as there are) and it looks like he whole country will be pretty much back to normal before Christmas.
This coming Wednesday there will be a big rugby match (kind of an All-Star game) in Brisbane and like 50,000 may attend. No social distancing there.
Mrs Downunder and I went to the theatre for the first time in months, and while there were some Covid safe procedures and the audience spread out it was almost normal.
We look with horror at what’s happening in the US and Europe and assume we won’t be able to visit till a vaccine is well distributed and proven effective.
At least Dolt45 is on the way out. I hope he doesn’t do too much damage between now and 20 Jan.
Stay well everyone.
NotMax
@Kent
This, in spades. Midnight basketball! Death panels!
M. Bouffant
Is “contract” tracing something new?
Winston
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
hough the percentage of Americans who identify with evangelical Protestant denominations has ticked downward, the absolute number of evangelicals appears to be rising as the overall U.S. population grows. In 2014, there were roughly 62.2 million evangelical Protestant adults, up from about 59.8 million in 2007.Mar 1, 2018
5 facts about U.S. evangelical Protestants – Pew Research …
http://www.pewresearch.org › fact-tank › 2018/03/01 › 5-facts-.
the absolute number of evangelicals appears to be rising as the overall U.S. population grows. In 2014, there were roughly 62.2 million evangelical Protestant adults, up from about 59.8 million in 2007.Mar 1, 2018
I don’t know how this is going to look for source, but Dana Millbrook had a piece in WAPO today that suggested White Evangelicals voted 90% for DonDotard and coupled with the rest of white supremacists, that is where he got all the votes.
I wonder if we just offer Evangelicals the State of Alabama they could just exercise there liberty, move there and we could all live happily ever after. (Okay, Mississippi too)
Edmund Dantes
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): it’s “economic anxiety” all over again. People don’t want to admit it. But there are a lot of racists and I am okay with racists so long as I get my tax cuts.
it’s an excuse. That is all.
Winston
@Pete Downunder: Yeah. It’s getting more and more difficult to justify leaving my cave for any reason. Todays number of new cases at 183,000+ is just mind boggling
hotshoe
@Emma from FL:
no, laughter is good for the soul.
TS (the original)
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
I think I’m not vaguely interested in reading anything that attacks “black lives matter”. Democrats won this election because of non white voters.
frosty
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): I’m with Emma @14. I think they chased their own tails a little bit on this one. People don’t think that way. My take is it was Republicans who didn’t like what Trump was doing, voted to change the President, stayed R down ballot.
Simple as that.
Winston
@TS (the original): And white voters who believe in justice and equality. “I’m not black but there are times I wish I could say I’m not white.” Frank Zappa
Omnes Omnibus
@Emma from FL: They hate being laughed at. Bullies, fake tough guys, narcissists – they all hate it. Their power comes from fear. Laughter helps to dispel the fear. If one person laughs, another one can, and so on until no one fears them at all. Laugh away.
gwangung
@Winston: In other words, fuck the racists.
I’m good with that.
The strategy is to outvote the bigots.
cain
@Anne Laurie:
Which is why we need to have Rand Paul to be infected again and then understand the full potential of how COVID can fuck you up.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@TS (the original):
I’d agree with that. I think we won GA partly because of Stacy Abrams’ tireless organising in that state
cain
We need to offer the non-whites/black folks there an escape hatch – let it be an all white land where evangelical politicians fleece the rubes throughout time.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Winston:
Interesting
@Kent:
Fair. If it wasn’t one thing it would be another
@gwangung:
@Edmund Dantes:
Y’know now that I think about it, it does sound like “economic anxiety” just repackaged
Redshift
As multiple responses on Twitter pointed out, this is dogwhistle for “I got it from those dirty Blacks, not from the superspreader event among the nice white people at the White House.”
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Redshift:
These assholes never quit for one second, do they?
Winston
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): I was raised in an evangelical church (my father, in fact was the preacher) I don’t think his faith would have been so much, if he hadn’t been able to make a living at it.
The differences between different denominations was things like foot washing or not during communion, and non violence or not. But the common thread was white supremacy and hypocrisy.
So when I was 18 and my girl friend was 16 and pregnant there were conversations about abortion and adoption and so forth and I said fuck it. We’re getting married and raising a family and we did that for 49 years and never attended or thought we needed to, a church service in all that time.
cain
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
They won’t because there is a grift operation on the line.
Winston
@Winston: A few years passed, my father got caught banging the organist, my mother divorced him, and neither of them attended church ever again and we all got along great, after that.
Sm*t Cl*de
@Winston:
Evangelicals want everyone else to be miserable as well. If you’re not forced to follow their rules, they have failed. It’s part of the definition of ‘evangelising’.
Winston
@Winston: Moral of the story is evangelicals are such hypocrites that their children will abandon them over time and republicans will just disappear, like a miracle, imo.
smike
@Winston:
At first I thought that story should be presented as an ironic parable, but then I realized that’s a tv series you got there.
Eljai
@smike: I was just thinking the same thing. And I would watch it!
JCJ
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
Racism. Then the author realized that in order to get a paycheck more words were needed. Simply boil it down that Donnie and the Repubs did not like the Black Man in the White House and are still pissed. The Onion had a great report in 2012 – after Obama was re-elected they did a story that stated the leading R candidate for 2016 was a White Hot Ball of Rage. Amazingly accurate.
Winston
@smike: The episode where my father the preacher found out I got my girlfriend pregnant and decided to beat me up would be a great irony given the non violence he preached.
Starfish
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): The discussions on “law and order” are a major racist parts of the campaign. All the xenophobic anti-immigrant stuff is another major racist part of the campaign. People here seem very resistant to the idea that the law and order stuff is racebaiting garbage and very much want to give it legitimacy. A lot of people here were ready to turn on Black people as soon as they thought they lost.
Starfish
@Winston: This is also a garbage take. A lot of people in Mississippi and Alabama are Black folks being disenfranchised, and you are over here trying to give their states to the racists.
Yutsano
@Starfish:
[CITATION NEEDED]
Sorry, but if you’re going to throw an accusation like that you better back that shit up.
opiejeanne
@Winston: Holy shit!
Good for you for departing that toxic atmosphere.
Winston
@Starfish: I agree. Maybe Idaho would be better. Or Utaho.
opiejeanne
@Yutsano: Thanks. I was going to ask who they meant, because I haven’t seen anything like that.
Winston
@Starfish: Sorry. It was sarcastic and metaphoric. Maybe better to split Texas into two states. The last thing in the world I would want to do is to disenfranchise anyone.
Starfish
@Yutsano: It may be that it has been mostly Goku doing the BLM lost those seats complaining since the election, but it has been a lot. The behavior has been very visible here.
Geminid
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): I don’t think the hundreds of thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters hurt us. What did hurt us were the few thousands of anarchists and right wing accelerationists who used the protests as an opportunity for arson and other mayhem.
Delk
Grassley and DiFi are the same age as Young. 87
Winston
@Geminid: This is not brought up often enough. Tomorrow is going to be a shitfest if BLM and ANTIFACISTS in uniform show up in Washington. If they want to be effective they should show up in MAGA hats and burn it down. It’s an ambush for the left.
Sab
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): Your congressman thinks “defund the police” hurt us. That is NOT the same thing as Black Lives Matter, and your author conflates the two.
Geminid
@Geminid: I don’t think the violence was a major factor in the election, but it may have made it a little closer, and could have pushed some tight house races the wrong way. But the people committing the violence were not Democrats, and functionally were working for trump. And a lot of them were white out-of-towners, “mayhem tourists.”
Starfish
@Geminid: A lot of the violence was rightwing violence framed in scaremongering about Black Lives Matter until it was proven otherwise. How much money did rightwingers raise for the kid in Wisconsin who was driven there by his mother with his very large gun? Why is his mother getting interviews instead of getting criminal charges? A lot of property destruction was also rightwingers traveling to cities trying to start race wars while building narratives about the dangers of cities.
Winston
@Starfish: He wasn’t driven there by his mother, but his 18 year old neighbor buddy, who bought the gun for him, and drove him home storing the gun in his trunk of his car at his fathers house near there. Who has now been charged as an accessory to murder. You can google, right?
Geminid
@Starfish: the people committing violence included right wing accelerationists, like the man who assassinated a cop in Oakland, and some who showed up at a Richmond, Va. protest that ended with a Richmond City truck being torched. They and the anarchists were playing into trump’s hands. trump knew this, and did his best to bait them.
Winston
@Starfish: So are you starfish saver over on DU? If so I really like your posts.
WereBear
Seems to me that when all the heinousness of the Trump Adminstration, which is simply Republicanism with the quiet parts out loud, broke out like a rupturing abscess into the body politic, our side ran one way and their side ran in the other direction.
The events of 2020 are a polarizing influence like we have not experienced since the 1960’s. (Which the Republicans and their Southern Baptist-type enablers are still freaked out by…) And, as some of our commenters have been emphasizing, we saw the usual cheating by the Republicans: and we still won.
Nothing “hurt” us except the usual suspects clinging to any unearned privilege and the promise of tax cuts. They are Authoritarian Followers. Cruelty and unfairness is their thing and we have to wrest it away from them.
Starfish
@Winston: No. Apparently there are a lot of Starfishes now.
I just named myself after a Sponge Bob character to remind myself that anyone who would argue politics with a cartoon is silly. This would in theory prevent me from getting into flame wars with anyone.
People here are fairly chill and don’t get into it too often though.
Starfish
@Winston: Wow. I did not realize that. I guess I followed social media too closely and actual news insufficiently closely. His mom seemed pretty chill about having no clue where her teen was at midnight.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-kyle-rittenhouse-mother-kenosha-20201110-ikckkevit5epzjydc52szyog34-story.html
Geminid
Changing the subject: I’ve seen people projecting Pete Buttegieg as White House Press Secretary. They want to see him parrying and countering reporters’ questions with his rapier-like wit. My fantasy Press Secretary is Patriots coach Bill Belichek. I’d love to see him up there taking reporters’ questions, and giving surly, monosyllabic responses, like he does after football games. I’d get TV service to see that!
Geminid
@WereBear:I know trump voters who are not Authoritarian Followers, and whose thing isn’t cruelty. They are misguided. But I tend to be less judgemental about voters than many. The politicians who misled them are another story.
satby
I hope not. He’s a policy wonk, and would be best in a position that would play to that. Yeah, he’s a great communicator, and that would help the public connect with how good government policy affects their lives positively, not just negatively as the Republicans constantly claim.
Geminid
@satby: I don’t want to see Buttegieg as press secretary either and was just describing why I thought some people do. He does have outstanding communication skills, and could employ them well as U.N. Ambassador, both in public and in private. Although there other heavy hitters who may also be in line for that job. If not the U.N., Buttegieg might be a good ambassador to Germany. They are a key ally of the U.S., and trump did a lot of damage to our relationship that needs repair.
Booger
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): I live in a rural area a little over an hour or so from D.C. Lily white, huge income disparity, average age is ‘teetering on the edge of the grave,’ marinated in Fox News and Rush. BLM actually scare the living shit out of these people, as does Antifa and socialism. Which seems odd, as many of them remember an actual fight against fascists, and without socialism them and their farms would be ruined.
But bring your sparrow and curtain rod over here and share my fire.
Geminid
@Booger: I’ll bring my curtain rod and a couple marshmallows, and we can talk about Randolph Scott movies!
evodevo
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): If my co-workers and neighbors, both MAGAt and uninformed, are any indication, it was endemic racism…they just assume that because the victim was black he was at fault, and the white cop was “doing his duty” and the death was an unfortunate (or fortunate in the view of the most racist of them) outcome. It doesn’t affect THEM, so they don’t care, and they blame the unrest on “thugs”. Just like in the civil rights days, there won’t be an attitude change till it’s imposed from above. They won’t change voluntarily…
trnc
If he does exist, it’s pretty clear everything Luke, Matthew, etc wrote about him being pure good was fanfic.
trnc
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): I think some of the smears of socialism still worked. I think the BLM protests drew more attention to racism, especially in copland, and that may have helped boost turnout. However, I think that “Defund The Police” is a self inflicted wound. Too many people thought that it literally meant leaving their communities without any law enforcement, and why wouldn’t they think that? There’s not a lot of wiggle room around the word “defund,” so it had to be explained that it really meant either tearing down corrupt departments and building back from scratch or shifting resources to mental health and other preventative measures. If you’re explaining, you’re losing to begin with, but on top of that, I rarely saw it explained so I had to actively seek out explanations. Most people aren’t going to do that.
I understand that some people think the word Reform is too weak and never accomplished anything, but those people are way more plugged into the movement. Most people see reform as a tool for making change without sounding particularly threatening, so you use the word “reform” for the general public and save the more complex explanation of what you expect for the candidates’ team.
It’s also time for every single one of our candidates and associated spokespeople to start asking the media why it is that they are always asked to check their positions with republican voters, but republican candidates are never asked to listen to democrats.
IANAPC (political consultant), and likely never will be.
trnc
@satby: Yup. Buttegieg could be placed in a policy position AND be sent out for tv interviews.
Geminid
@trnc: And Indiana Senator Mike Braun runs for reelection in 2024. I wouldn’t want to see Pete Buttigieg run a forlorn hope campaign just so I get to watch him debate Braun. But it is impossible to know what the political climate will be in Indiana by then. Most likely not much more favorable to a Democrat than now, but not certainly. The Indiana Republican party may tear itself down like the one in Virginia has. Buttegieg is more than a hyper articulate communicator; he also shows a fairly shrewd political sense, and can judge his chances better than most, certainly better than I can. And Braun is a real dufus.
SFAW
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
As I have been saying for years, if a just God existed, he would take out McConnell with a lightning bolt. Along with the rest of the Partei of Traitors. And a bunch of their supporters/enablers.
Bookeater (formerly JosieJ)
@Geminid: And if he doesn’t already speak German, he could always read a book about it and be fluent in a couple of weeks!
I kid; it’d take him at least a month.
Citizen Alan
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): I’m not picky. I honestly don’t care what the treasonous fucker dies from so long as it’s soon.
SFAW
@Bookeater (formerly JosieJ):
Had me fooled — I thought you were talking about Jared, until I went to the comment to which you replied. Glad I was worng.
Citizen Alan
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
Only indirectly. I think BLM hurt us only in the sense that the media deliberately misrepresented what took place during the protests by (a) blowing the violence and vandalism out of proportion and (b) willfully ignoring the extent to which any violence was actually the result of outside agitators both on the right (Proud Boys et al with the support of racist cops) and the left (the Black Bloc — seriously, has any group in history ever done as much damage to the causes they claim to support than the fucking Black Bloc?).
Citizen Alan
@Winston:
I started to get angry at that, but then I thought “If you’ll provide financial support for refugees like me, I’d be okay with it.” More seriously (well not seriously, but anyway), wasn’t there an actual attempt at one point to persuade Evangelicals to move to South Carolina and then secede?
Citizen Alan
@TS (the original): Agreed. I don’t think BLM per se hurt us, but “Defund the Police” might have at the margins. Honestly, it’s such a fucking stupid slogan that I’m certain a Republican came up with it and then spread it through Green or DSA people who are secretly on the GOP payroll.
Citizen Alan
@JCJ:
That was the masthead on my old Facebook page from 2012 to 2016. I took it down after Shitgibbon was elected because of the guilty suspicion that I had caused him to win by mocking the Gods of Irony.
Jinchi
I think it’s BS.
Every election we get this nonsense blaming left wingers for Democratic losses. Over the last several cycles they’ve blamed Obamacare, gay marriage, gun control and social justice for “losing the election.” Now they blame “Black Lives Matter” and the Green New Deal. It never occurs to the people making these arguments that these issues draw voters as well. Joe won the election with massive turnout in places like Atlanta and Philadelphia. He would have lost if Democrats had been telling urban protesters to sit down and stay quiet.
We ran Joe Frik’n Biden for president on a centrist agenda focused specifically on defeating Donald Trump.
And it worked. Why are people complaining? If the GOP can convince voters that Joe is an evil socialist then BLM, AOC, Bernie and the entire Green party aren’t going to make things any worse.
J R in WV
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
Goku, you keep changing your ‘nym just a little bit, which takes you OUT of the pie filter again.
Which means I have to add yet another iteration of Goku.
So sad! You aren’t supposed to do that, it’s so much like having sock puppets… ;~(
J R in WV
@Kent:
I want to fix this sentence fragment to read:
neldob
Also to refer to Don the Con as a populist is a bit rich. A right-wing populist, a fascist, an oligarch, an autocrat or wanna be dictator are more apt. I do think the socialist stick did affect some voters, but if media facing people hadn’t been so leary of calling the bunghole an anti-democratic lying fascist it might have balanced out.