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Friday Morning Open Thread: Shanah Tovah!

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Regardless of our religious affiliation, or lack thereof, I think we’re all pretty well ready for this year to be over.

Re-upped from my late-night post:


Washington Post explainer here.

Readership capture:

Process reminder:


Final paragraphs:

… In a contingent election, House members have to choose among the three people with the most electoral votes. Each state delegation gets one vote, and 26 votes are required to win. In the Senate, the choice is between the top two electoral vote-getters and each senator gets a vote, with 51 votes required to win.

What if that fails and the House hasn’t elected a president by Inauguration Day? Then the 20th Amendment takes over. It says the vice president-elect acts as president until a president is picked. And if there’s no vice president selected by Inauguration Day?

Well, then the Presidential Succession Act applies.

It says that the speaker of the House of Representatives, the Senate president or a Cabinet officer, in that order, would act as president until there’s a president or vice president.

Things might well change by that date, but if you’ve ever dreamcast the phrase ‘President Nancy Pelosi’…

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Late Night ‘Good News, If We Can Hold It’ Open Thread

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Per the Washington Post, “Federal judge temporarily blocks USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns, election”:

A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy are “involved in a politically motivated attack” on the agency that could disrupt the 2020 election.

Stanley A. Bastian, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, said policies put in place under DeJoy “likely will slow down delivery of ballots” this fall, creating a “substantial possibility that many voters will be disenfranchised and the states may not be able to effectively, timely, accurately determine election outcomes.”…

In a written order released Thursday night, Bastian laid out more than a page of specific prohibitions on the Postal Service until a final judgment is reached in the case — restrictions that could broadly affect the agency’s services. He connected the USPS policies to Trump’s broadsides against mail voting, saying the actions amount to “voter disenfranchisement.”…

The suit, filed by Washington and 13 other states, sought a broad injunction prohibiting the Postal Service from implementing operational changes, distribution center closures and removal of mail-sorting machines, among other changes, absent an opinion by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

In his decision, Bastian largely granted that request, ordering the Postal Service to reverse any instructions for mail carriers to leave mail behind at postal facilities, to stop requiring trucks to leave at set times regardless of whether the mail is ready and to allow return trips to distribution centers to ensure “timely delivery.”

The USPS must also treat all election mail according to first-class delivery standards and replace or restore the equipment required to do that. Any request to “reconnect or replace any decommissioned or removed sorting machine(s)” must be directed through the court for approval, unless the USPS has already approved it…

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Deep State Coffee Girl

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Breaking from The Post:

President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic showed a “flat out disregard for human life” because his “main concern was the economy and his reelection,” according to a senior adviser on the White House coronavirus task force who left the White House in August.

Olivia Troye, who worked as homeland security, counterterrorism and coronavirus adviser to Vice President Pence for two years, said that the administration’s response cost lives and that she will vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden this fall because of her experience in the Trump White House.

“The president’s rhetoric and his own attacks against people in his administration trying to do the work, as well as the promulgation of false narratives and incorrect information of the virus have made this ongoing response a failure,” she said in an interview.

This is someone who was on the coronavirus task force just weeks ago. The White House is trying to dismiss her as a deep state coffee girl, but it sounds like she has the goods, including details about how Trump interfered with scientists who were trying to manage the pandemic and his inexcusable politicization of mask-wearing:

Trump rarely attended task force meetings and was briefed only on top-level discussions by Pence or the government’s public health officials. When Trump attended one meeting, Troye said, he spoke for 45 minutes about how poorly he was being treated by certain personalities on Fox News.

“He spent more time about who was going to call Fox and yell at them to set them straight than he did on the virus,” she said.

Troye is urging other Trump administration officials to speak out: “It took longer than it should have for every single one of us. All of us, myself included, should have spoken out sooner.”

Here’s hoping some of the courageous generals will profit from the deep state coffee girl’s example, step the fuck up already and spill all the goddamned tea.

 

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Good news for Roseanne

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Roseanne Barr is a racist crackpot, but she hasn’t disgraced the Barr name like this guy:

The “lockdowns are the worst thing since slavery” statement is stunningly stupid and offensive, so it’s getting media play. But Barr’s other comments were equally alarming, IMO. He’s rightly accused of having a monarchical view of executive power, but it’s more expansive than I realized. He sees Donald Trump as a king, but he also views himself as the Hand of the King (Joffrey — it checks out). Via CNN:

In the speech, Barr questioned any criticism he’s received for “interfering” in cases. The attorney general has ultimate authority, he said.

“These people are agents of the attorney general. As I say, FBI agents, whose agent do you think you are?” Barr asked on Tuesday, adding that career lawyers, too, might be influenced by politics.

“And I say, ‘What exactly am I interfering with?’ When you boil it right down, it’s the will of the most junior member of the organization who has some idea he wants to do something. What makes that sacrosanct?”

Okay, I’m not a lawyer, but I think the sacrosanct thing in this scenario is supposed to be the law? I miss the old days, when political operative John Roberts felt compelled to claim he’d be a mere umpire calling balls and strikes. I mean, it was all bullshit to a certain extent and always has been. But it’s preferable to have public officials who are at least constrained by the need to maintain a pretense of impartiality.

“They do not have the political legitimacy to be the public face for tough decisions and they lack the political buy-in necessary to publicly defend those decisions,” Barr also said.

The speech comes after Barr has been escalating alarmist and politicized rhetoric in a series of interviews, and advocating against Democrats in the election.

“In short, the attorney general, senior DOJ officials, and US attorneys are indeed political. But they are political in a good and necessary sense,” he said.

Ironically, Barr made these remarks at a Constitution Day event.

So quaint, the notion that the Attorney General of the United States represents the United States in legal matters. Remember when DC insiders vouched for Barr as a institutionalist with a fancy pedigree who wouldn’t go wilding on Trump’s behalf? They owe us an apology. We’d have been better off keeping the sweaty, bullet-headed hot tub salesman.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: The Democrats Are Grown-Ups

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McEnany, on the other hand, is the Caligula’s Horse of this administration. Of course she can’t perform the functions of the job title; she’s been installed to remind the press, just by her presence, exactly how badly the Oval Office Occupant(s) regard them.

Speaking of which… Business/economics writer for the NYTimes:


(This does nothing to change my conviction that too many modern ‘economists’ are basically hierophants of an abtruse cult, paid to explain calamities and predict the future by examining the entrails of failed businesses and murdered consumers.)

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Late Night Open Thread: Just Tithing Their God-King

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The ‘Democrat’ (not Democratic) is a signifier, of course: They don’t want to risk being mistaken for actual Democrats, but they do want to pretend that their animosity towards Biden has a basis beyond DEM MAN BAD.

… Democrat Voters Against Joe Biden is a project of an existing nonprofit advocacy group called Americans for Responsible Government, meaning it can engage in limited politicking and is not required to disclose its donors. Curiously, though it is not explicitly political, the group’s online donation page includes disclaimer language required only of registered political committees advising donors that they can only donate $2,800 per election. No such donation limits exist for nonprofits.

DVAJB set up a website in July and began running Facebook ads this month attacking Biden. The former vice president’s “mental state is slipping and we can’t let him become the most powerful man on Earth,” one of the ads declares…

Crossover partisan appeal, or the appearance of it, is an asset that presidential campaigns and their supporters frequently seek. And DVAJB’s formation comes as a pro-Biden counterpart, Republican Voters Against Trump, gathers and publishes its own video testimonials of GOP voters who say they won’t back the president’s re-election bid. DVAJB appears to have been created as an explicit answer to that group. Language on its website is copied nearly verbatim from the RVAT website, with some minor stylistic changes and Biden’s name switched out for Trump’s…

In Trumpworld, parasitism is the sincerest form of flattery.

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One Good Thing About Trump

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I was watching some clips of Trump’s disastrous town hall from last night earlier today, and just a little bit ago I watched Michael Cohen talking about Trump on Joy Reid’s show. While Cohen was talking, I wondered if he had actually changed as a person and felt regret, and I believe in redemption and am willing to accept maybe he has in fact changed. And that’s when it hit me- that’s one really nice thing about Trump.

I will never have to have sympathy for or change my mind about him or give him the benefit of doubt. Ever. He’s never going to change. He can’t. His frontal lobe is so shot from decades of meth abuse, dementia, and his personality is so warped from his narcissism and general sociopathy that Donald Trump will never change. Should he lose the election, and even more stuff comes out and his bank records and taxes are revealed and all the misdeeds brought to light, even as he is being perp walked to jail, he will not show contrition or even attempt to change. He can’t, and he won’t.

He’ll blame everyone else and just keep trying to foment a civil war until we have him in a Hannibal Lector mask locked in restraints somewhere in a basement.

So that’s something positive about Trump.

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