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I personally stopped the public option…

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You are here: Home / Archives for Betty Cracker

Florida woman, boxer wrangler and football hooligan currently deep-fat frying something in a humid swamp somewhere.

Betty Cracker has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2012.

Attn: Suburban Housewives of America!

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The internal polling must show Trump getting clobbered in the suburbs because he keeps returning to this unhelpful point like a concussed garden snail trying to gain entry to a salt shaker. Actual tweets today from the President of the United States:*

Attn: Suburban Housewives of America

* Images subject to defacing via electronic graffiti — thanks, Microsoft Paint!

The HUD mandate Trump suspended in 2018 and rescinded last week has jack and shit to do with building public housing projects next door to suburban developments. Rescinding the mandate “continues the status quo in which some communities are strengthened by taxpayer-supported programs and amenities while other neighborhoods are starved and deprived of opportunities,” as Lisa Rice, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, put it in a comment to NBC News several months ago.

It’s the same naked zero-sum race-baiting lies Trump engaged in as a candidate in 2016, half-dressed in official policy language. He tweet-screamed something similar at “Suburban Housewives of America” last week. But it’s possible the people who would be most receptive to such a message haven’t got a goddamn clue what the “AFFH Rule” is. I think the message was more effective in the Original Wallace.

Open thread.

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No AF1 Ride for YOU!

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Louie Gohmert, the Jim Hoft of the US House of Representatives, has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Politico:

Rep. Louie Gohmert — a Texas Republican who has been walking around the Capitol without a mask — has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to multiple sources.

Gohmert was scheduled to fly to Texas on Wednesday morning with President Donald Trump and tested positive in a pre-screen at the White House. The eighth-term Republican told CNN last month that he was not wearing a mask because he was being tested regularly for the coronavirus.

“[I]f I get it,” he told CNN in June, “you’ll never see me without a mask.”

Comments like that solidify the representative’s iron grip on the Dumbest Man in Congress title, despite spirited competition from offensive dullards like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz.

I didn’t watch the Barr hearing yesterday, but wasn’t Gohmert doing his usual nasally shouty thing throughout? Anyone who was in a 15-foot radius of that goober better get themselves tested pronto.

Open thread.

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100 Days (Open Thread)

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Maybe basements are good. I wouldn’t know, having lived most of my life in a place where, if you dig a hole, it immediately fills up with water, so very few basements. But in addition to the largely media-created narrative that Biden is benefiting from a “stay in the basement” strategy, a similar approach may be benefiting Democrats not named Biden, according to an article in The Post.

Republican incumbents like Susan Collins, Thom Tillis and Joni Ernst are begging opponents to debate them in hopes of a game-changing gaffe by less experienced candidates. Democrats are saying, “Nah, I’m good.”

“Democrats continue to meet with and hear from voters across their states, and they didn’t need a manufactured debate over debates from desperate incumbents to do it,” said Lauren Passalacqua, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The “basement” narrative is mostly bullshit. Biden and other Democratic challengers are less visible in traditional campaign settings right now because we’re in the midst of a raging pandemic, and that’s the responsible way to behave, as circumstances recently forced even Trump to acknowledge. Trump is the incumbent president and an idiot, and the incumbent senators are his enablers, so of course their higher profiles aren’t helping. That’s how being stupid in public works.

As for the Democratic candidates, their policies are out there for anyone who wants to compare them to their opponents’ proposals and records. Anyone curious about how Democrats stack up rhetorically against a Republican opponent can easily find the material for that analysis — that goes for Biden vs. Trump and the Democratic candidates for the senate and their opponents too.

What’s not on offer this year (at least so far) are the usual building blocks for lazy political narratives — campaign-friendly meet-and-greets at hog fries and corn fritter fests that might yield “campaign tracker” soundbites that can be spun up into mini-scandals at the senate level.

At the presidential level, the conventions and debates (if the latter happen) will provide some of that fodder, but from the GOP perspective, much time has been lost. Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic cost lives, jobs, national dignity — and political opportunities. Each time the sun sets on a day without an event that shakes up the race is another day Trump marinates in loser juice.

That’s an argument in favor of a basement strategy, whether it’s conscious or wholly imposed by external circumstances. This is such a weird time too, for everyone. I’m not convinced regular people (as opposed to political junkies) will pay attention in great numbers even when there are events to cover and this telescoping dystopia of a summer finally ends.

I could be wrong, but my feeling is a lot about this race is baked in already. As a nation, we’re sick. We’re tired. We’re humiliated. We’re ready for this endless shit-show to be over.

We’re also in countdown mode: 6 days until Biden is expected to announce a running mate (or will begin to be hounded in earnest about that decision) and 100 days until Election Day. Early voting starts in September in my state. Predictions?

I suck at prognostication, but my guess is Biden-Harris defeat Trump-Pence (EC: 349 to 187), the Dems take the Senate and make modest gains in the House. We just have to make it through today and the next 99 days. (Then there’s the perilous transition period, but let’s jump off that bridge if/when we get there…)

Open thread.

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Thump-Thump, Whomp-Whomp (Open Thread)

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There’s a story in today’s Tampa Bay Times about how Trump’s decision to pull the plug on the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville under-bused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis:

It was a chance for the 41-year-old Republican to snag a top billing during Trump’s final coronation and test the waters for a potential run at the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. In an interview last month, Republican Party Chairman Joe Gruters said he expected the convention would “put Gov. DeSantis in the spotlight and add fuel to his efforts to make a national name for himself.”

But Trump’s sudden announcement Thursday not only dashed those plans, but raised doubts about DeSantis’ own response to the coronavirus. On the same day DeSantis contended Florida’s outbreak was showing signs of slowing down, Trump argued it was too dangerous to hold a convention there…

The reversal came just seven weeks after DeSantis convinced Trump’s campaign to move the GOP’s biggest quadrennial event from Charlotte to Jacksonville amid a pandemic. Florida could fly in and put up thousands of delegates, fete Trump in style and keep attendees safe from a fast-spreading disease, DeSantis said in June. And they could do it without all those pesky safety restrictions that North Carolina’s Gov. Roy Cooper would have required in Charlotte. On top of that, the governor boldly predicted a $100 million economic windfall for Jacksonville.

No debut on the national stage for DeSantis. No windfall for Jacksonville — in fact, donors and local officials were left holding the bag for the canceled event.

I happened to be watching CNN when Trump announced that the convention was a no-go. I usually lunge for the remote when the Great Rotten Pumpkin looms onto the screen and wait for the Sarah Cooper version. But this time I listened, unsurprised yet stupefied by the clownish, self-congratulatory way Trump drove the clown bus over DeSantis and assorted others:

This afternoon, my political team came to me and laid out our plans for the convention in Jacksonville, Florida. It’s a place I love and I love that state. The drawings look absolutely beautiful. I never thought we could have something look so good so fast with everything going on. And everything was going well. A tremendous list of speakers, thousands of people wanting to be there, and I mean, in some cases desperately be there. They wanted to attend. People making travel arrangements all over the country. They wanted to be there. The pageantry, the signs, the excitement were really, really top of the line.

But I looked at my team and I said, “The timing for this event is not right. It’s just not right with what’s happened recently, the flare up in Florida, to have a big convention. It’s not the right time.” It’s really something that, for me, I have to protect the American… really something that for me, I have to protect the American people. That’s what I’ve always done. That’s what I always will do. That’s what I’m about.

They said, “Sir, we can make this work very easily. We have great enthusiasm, incredible enthusiasm.” Even the polls say about the most enthusiasm they’ve seen. We can do this safely and we can do it responsibly. I said, there’s nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe, whether that’s from the China virus or the radical left mob that you see in Portland… People elected me to help and to protect. So I told my team it’s time to cancel the Jacksonville, Florida, component of the GOP Convention.

It’s easy to imagine what REALLY happened. Perhaps it fell to a flunky like Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel, Jared or not-Parscale to tell Trump that:

  • The coronavirus is spiraling out of control in Florida
  • 62% of Floridians in a recent poll said they don’t want the super-spreader event held here as our hospitals fill up
  • The local Republican sheriff said last week “we can’t pull it off” due to lack of funds, poor planning and a scarcity of law enforcement personnel.

Trump probably threw a screaming hissy fit about “the pageantry” and the thousands “desperately wanting to be there” and the ratings bonanza, blah blah blah. But then someone like Kellyanne or Ivanka pitched the cancellation as an opportunity to showcase his role as America’s protector against the virus and the radical left mob. So he waddled out and said what he said. Thump-thump.

It’s a humiliating disaster for Trump, and it’s a seismic shit-storm for DeSantis too. One RNC official described it as “a multimillion dollar debacle and think of where that money could have gone,” i.e., testing, tracking and tracing. Whomp-whomp.

Open thread.

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Media Culpa (Open Thread)

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This is so rare I feel compelled to call attention to it: a media figure, Joe Nocera, admitted he was wrong to heap praise on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for containing the coronavirus outbreak in Florida:

A little after 11 a.m. each weekday, I receive an email alert from the Miami Herald. It contains the latest Covid-19 numbers for Florida. And every day, I wince a little when I see them.

Florida is now the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. Since July 10, the number of new positive cases has averaged more than 10,000 a day. As of Wednesday, the total number of cases was nearly 380,000 according to the state’s health department. The positivity rate — the percentage of those tested who turn out to be infected — is well above 18%. Hospitals in Miami-Dade County are approaching capacity. “The residents here are terrified and I’m terrified,” Donna Shalala, Miami’s Democratic congresswoman, said over the weekend. She called for Governor Ron DeSantis to impose a lockdown.

And who claimed that Florida was doing a good job containing the pandemic? Oh, right. It was me.

It’s personal for Nocera now — he’s living in Boca Raton, having moved there from New York for his son’s sports camp, thinking that he and his family would escape the plague. Oops.

Nocera’s theory is that the governors who reopened too early made that decision in part by looking at death rates rather than the R-naught, a mistake Nocera owned up to as well. (R0 is currently 1.42 in FL, according to Nocera.) He says that despite the spread, death rates in the Sunbelt states are lower than they were in the Northeast for reasons we still don’t fully understand. I think that’s probably true; there’s a lot we don’t know about COVID-19.

But if commenters on an almost top-10K blog could access enough information from experts to figure out that the R0 was a key to containing the spread way back in March, there’s just no excuse for anyone in a decision-making role, including Trump and DeSantis, for not knowing that. The thing is, they did know it, but they decided to gamble with our lives anyway. Here’s hoping the virus kills both their political careers.

Open thread.

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Clown Car Pile-Up Open Thread

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The people in charging of planning the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville are so incompetent that the local Republican sheriff is warning that “we can’t pull it off” — seriously.

The sheriff of Jacksonville, Fla., said he can’t provide security for the Republican National Convention because of a lack of clear plans, adequate funding and enough law enforcement officers.

“As we’re talking today, we are still not close to having some kind of plan that we can work with that makes me comfortable that we’re going to keep that event and the community safe,” Duval County Sheriff Mike Williams told POLITICO…

Williams said the event, scheduled for Aug. 24-27, was announced in June, giving his agency little time to plan and prepare. The Republican National Committee has not yet nailed down which convention events will be at which venues, making it more challenging. And a pledged $50 million grant has been paired [sic] back to $33 million and, Williams said, there are strings attached that make letting [sic again? FFS, Politico!] contracts too difficult.

“We do need law enforcement officers and we’ve gotten commitments, but not to the level that we thought we needed. And a lot of that is people having virus concerns from their communities, and I understand that,” Williams said.

“But there’s a lot of things that need to happen: an event schedule nailed down, and being able to sign contracts and spend money so that we can prepare for this event. And none of that has happened yet,” he said. “So here we are inside of 40 days, and I haven’t really pulled the trigger on anything RNC-related when it comes to finances or contracts and so, you know, only related to security, mind you, nothing, nothing related to any of this.”

Jesus, what a fucking clown show. I’d bet a substantial sum the venue details haven’t been ironed out because the Trump/RNC people are trying to shake down the locals. It’s possible they’ll have to cancel the whole thing.

Speaking of clown shows, Trump is going to resume his daily 5 PM ET coronavirus briefings, starting tomorrow. That’s great news for three people, in no particular order: Joe Biden, Sarah Cooper and Joy Reid, none of whom will ever lack for material now.

“I think it’s a great way to get information out to the public,” Trump said, adding they would likely resume on Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET — the same time he typically briefed in the spring.

“We had a good slot. A lot of people were watching,” Trump said, using television ratings lingo to describe the sessions: “We had record numbers watching,” he said. “In the history of cable television there’s never been anything like it.”

True — there’s never been anything like it. Also speaking of clowns, these motherfuckers:

Speaking of mocking clowns, this video was shared in comments, I’m told, but I think it deserves the front page treatment because it’s hilarious:

All the emails are really that bad. I receive Trump campaign come-ons on one of my burner accounts, and y’all wouldn’t believe how hard they’re trying to sell me a Trump-Pence welcome mat. Or maybe you would. Anyhoo. Open thread.

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