Inchingly, step by step, legal flop after legal flop, we grow closer to recovering an America we can be proud of once again. An America that at least tries to live up to it’s own ideals rather than wallow in the gutter of vitriol and racial grievance, backbiting and ratfucking that has engulfed that last 4 years.
We’ve been in a gutter, one crafted by the psychopath who barely managed to squeak out a win with the help of Russia’s GRU and the Hillary letter which was actually written by right-wing bogeyman Peter Strzok. [Yeah, right that guy was biased for Hillary Clinton. Seriously? ]
And being a lowlife scumbag he’s been totally petulant and petty about losing both the popular vote and the electoral college. He’s refused to concede and his GSA head — who knew this was the job of the GSA head? — has refused to facilitate Biden’s transition.
Until yesterday, nearly 3 weeks after the election.
Frankly Trump can go spit, this is out of his hands. It’s out of his control. The wheels of government turning, and their pushing him out. At last.
This isn’t to say that his bellyaching, whining and generally making up bogus bullshit about mail-in voters and voter in majority black districts hasn’t kicked up a dust storm. His supporters are fucking livid. Also deeply deluded by years of exposure to the right-wing brainwashing machine.
Georgia’s Trump supporters are not giving up. On Saturday, scores massed outside the statehouse in Atlanta, a small sea of mostly men in red MAGA hats hoisting signs hurling accusations against Joe Biden and wearing campaign tee-shirts saying “STOP the STEAL.”
It barely mattered that Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had certified Biden’s unexpected nearly 13,000-vote victory one day before. Also irrelevant was Georgia’s unprecedented manual hand count of presidential votes on 5 million paper ballots, which was more than any 2020 swing state has done since Election Day to verify its votes.
Instead, Trump supporters in Georgia, like many across the country, are not just embracing a growing catalog of vote-counting conspiracy theories as the president pressures state officials to reject the popular vote and select him, via Electoral College slates, for another term. Among Trump’s ranks are activists who witnessed the latest vote-counting steps as credentialed GOP observers and have studied these steps via social media and online forums. These activists appear to be coalescing into a new right-facing election reform movement, much like left-leaning activists launched a progressive “election integrity” movement after the fraught presidential elections in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
[..]
The pair, like many Trump supporters watching Georgia’s audit, said they were citizens who cared about democracy and honest elections. But instead of appreciating that Georgia’s first-ever hand count of millions of paper ballots had found and fixed mistakes that added more than 1,000 votes to Trump’s total, they were increasingly incensed by the fine print in the election process they witnessed. Their discovery that election administration was under-resourced, complex, opaque and at times, mistake-prone, only affirmed their belief that the process had conspired to defeat Trump. Election officials across Georgia might have been counting every ballot, however that exercise and the overall process lacked the tools to convince a slice of the public that was critical and cynical.
So great, we have a huge and frankly growing portion of the electorate who will continue to push voter suppression measures under the thin guise of “election integrity.” They sadly, think, they’re the “good guys” and frankly there’s no one more desperate and dangerous than a “true believer.”
By the way, the Dominion Voting Systems had truly skewed the vote, the hand recount would have cured that problem and they ultimately only found 1,000 additional votes for Trump. So um, not so much of a technical glitch. Or sabotage. Or Hugo Chavez. Or something.
We have a lot of heavily lifting ahead of us. We have to get the Covid response straightened the hell out and bring down our infection, hospitalization and death rates from record astronomical levels. We have to straighten out our environmental response, straighten out our economy, straighten out our relationship with rest of the civilized world. We have to clean up much of the damage Trump has done, some of which we won’t be able to do. Right now he’s trying to sell of parts of the Artic Refuge to Oil developers, shut down the treaty that allowed us to send surveillance flights over Russia and then destroy the planes, as well as weird and strange last-minute appointments to Pentagon, Census Board and Justice Dept.
I think this portends ill tidings.
Trump is up to some last minute sabotage bullshit.
But we’ll get through it. Biden has been putting together an solid experienced team in his cabinet including for Senator/Secretary of State John Kerry. We may even get Merrick Garland as Attorney General. Now, that’s a fine how-do-ya-do.
Now that the GSA has finally opened the flood gates to start the transition, I think the Biden is going to find rampant incompetence, indifference and corruption under just about every rock.
I know that Biden has said he'd like to avoid “divisive investigations”….but
buWASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn't want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and members of his administration.
Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations.
I understand that point, but it’s the wrong call. He had it more right when he said he wouldn’t interfere with his AG’s independent decisions.
Joe Biden says that he believes prosecuting a former president would be a "very unusual thing and probably not very ... good for democracy," but he would not stand in the way of a future Justice Department pursuing criminal charges against President Trump after he leaves office.
The comments from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee came during a virtual interview Tuesday with members from the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
"Look, the Justice Department is not the president's private law firm. The attorney general is not the president's private lawyer. I will not interfere with the Justice Department's judgment of whether or not they think they should pursue the prosecution of anyone that they think has violated the law," Biden told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
He had this right originally. Whether Trump or other heads of departments and White House members like Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump for violating the Hatch Act shouldn’t be up to him. It should be up to the professionals in the DOJ. I believe their should be investigations and prosecutions, but not done for political reasons. Biden should be totally hands-off.
It has to happen because nothing like what we just went through should ever be allowed again. Trump’s administration showed us where all the cracks in the system reside. He exploited every loophole, every weakness. We need to examine what happened and go back over all of it with a staple gun and spackle. We need to close the holes, seal the loopholes.
Or else, sometime in the future, all this fracking shit could happen again.
And again.
Here are the current events for the past week:
November 17th—
- Biden’s campaign manager will become his deputy chief of staff. Biden is reportedly reluctant to pursue Trump investigations. [Leave it up to your AG. There are open obstruction cases that can be looked at. Also bribery.] BIden taps his campaign staff for WH Counsel and senior positions. Pentagon Officials may ignore Trump and provide Biden with a briefing.
- Atlas urges people to spend the holiday with older relatives, because they may die soon. [Because you spent the fracking holiday with them!!] Stanford University draws a line with Atlas whose views are “inconsistent” with their values
- Rubio joins GOP Senators who say that Biden is “President-Elect.” [Well that’s five, only 40 or so more to go.]
- Trump new anti-Election lawyer admits that lawsuits “Will not work.” [No, really? You're kidding.]
- Giuliani: Losing election lawsuits is part of our plan to get to the SCOTUS.
- Not a single state has validated Trump’s claims of election fraud.
- Ex-Secret Service Agents consider how to drag Trump from the White House if he refuses to leave.
- Anti-Masker tells black woman that masks are “worse than Slavery in the 1800s.” [What the fuck is wrong with these people?]
- Ivanka Trump’s former best friend reveals a shocking example of her anti-Muslim bigotry. In the middle of dinner, she glanced at [her arabic] necklace and said, ‘How does your Jewish boyfriend feel when you are having sex and that necklace hits him the face? How can you wear that thing? It just screams, terrorist,'”.
- Rudy jumps into Trump’s Off the Rails Pennsylvania lawsuit hours before the hearing. [He hasn’t been in a courtroom since 1992.]
- Apparently there was a massive shouting and F-U match in the WH between Trump’s regular lawyers and Rudy. Rudy won.
- Then he requested $20k per day for his retainer. [Except his bar membership has expired, so he can’t charge people to represent the in court.]
- He goes to the hearing and it’s a howler of conspiracy nonsense. “If we don’t stop Dems from stealing the vote now, we never will.” “Poll workers are the mafia.”
- He claims that it’s a equal protection violation for Dem Counties to have allowed voters to cure their mail-in ballots when they made mistakes “just like Bush v Gore”. [They just stopped counting where they were, which means that Biden would win.]
- He also claims that 1.4 Million votes should be discounted because GOP poll watchers “weren’t close enough” and that the entire Pennsylvania result should be thrown out and given to Trump.
- He doesn’t know what “Strict Scrutiny” or “rational basis” means.
- He admits, under questioning by the Judge, that he’s not alleging “Fraud.” [Then why the fuck are you here?]
- 87-year old Chuck Grassley tests positive for Covid-19 hours after learning he was exposed. He also attended a meeting with Mitch McConnell one day previously.
- Something is wrong with the polling when Trump is involved. [His people won’t talk to pollsters, so their true numbers remain hidden.]
- HHS Whistleblower Rick Bright argues for Trump coordinating the Covid response with Biden: “Lives are at stake here.”
- Trump’s Fed Nominee Judy Shelton is rejected by the Senate.
- McConnell inches closer to giving up on Trump’s delusional election charade.
- Yet another Judge rules that Chad Wolf doesn’t have the authority as an “Acting” Head of DHS to modify DACA rules, but they keep trying a feat of “Quantum bureaucracy” anyway.
- Trump will be bunkering down at the WH instead of going to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving. Trump’s campaign app tracked the location and contacts list of their users as well as other intrusive features. He fires — again, this time via tweet — the DHS Cybersecurity Official, Chris Krebs, who had been regularly debunking his election fraud conspiracies. Then he took credit for the success fighting of foreign attacks on our election systems that Krebs implemented.
- Nevada’s SecState denies talking to Lindsay Graham about election fraud. Also Graham may have violated Federal Law with his election meddling.
- Don Jr. appears to concede that his father was defeated by Biden.
- Georgia SecState reveals that 24,000 Trump absentee Trump voters from the primary didn’t show up for the General, if they had Trump would have won by 10,000 but they were suppressed by his BS rhetoric about mail-in voting. It’s also revealed that the Trump campaign started pressuring him to endorse Trump long before the election.
- US Medical group demands Trump share Covid-19 data with Biden.
- Michigan Republicans in Wayne County brag about blocking certification for the Detroit election. Legal experts slam the “insane” effort as “lawlessness.” Civil rights activists discover a trove of Islamophobia, Racism and conspiracy theories among the social media posts of Republican canvasser William Hartmann. Eventually the two GOP canvassers back down as the voices of outrage are raised and Michigan’s vote is certified; “The truth won.”
- Texas AG Ken Paxton who is leading the suit to end Obamacare is under Federal investigation for bribery.
- Fox Host Brian Kilmeade calls on Trump to work with Biden on the transition: “It’s in the country’s best interest.”
- Task Force Doctors warn that we may have 2,000 Covid deaths per day by Christmas.
- WH assures that Nation will hear from Trump “at the right time.” [Thanks for the warning.]
- Kayleigh McEnany casually suggests that Trump will serve another four years.
- Pennsylvania Attorney General slams Rudy Giuliani’s election fraud shenanigans: “It’s sad to watch.”
November 19th—
- Public health officials call for “destructive” Scott Atlas to be fired.
- Former Lindsay Graham staffer Nicholas Connors says that he’s become the worst Trump sycophant in the GOP. Graham shrugs off potential ethics probe; “I’m just going to keep being me.” [That’s what we’re afraid of.] He says he “doesn’t know what makes the Georgia SoS Tick.”
- Trump, still lying, tweets “I won the election” in response to the NYTimes, when he called the paper “bad for America.” [So which is it?]
- Former WH Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney questions Giuliani’s election challenges: “This isn’t a TV program.” [But it is an unreality show.] Mulvaney jabs at Giuliani’s legal chops: “Not using the most well noted election lawyers.”
- Trump campaign pays for a partial recount in Wisconsin. It’s in the counties with the largest black populations, of course. His lawyers sign a document agreeing there was no evidence of fraud in a Pennsylvania county. Then they refile their Pennsylvania suit citing laws from Florida. [Aww face palm!] Trump apparently reached out to the Michigan canvassers who tried to block the vote from Detroit. New delays with the census could derail Trump's attempts to rig it. Trump invites GOP leaders from MI to the WH to discuss trying to block Biden from receiving electors. Trump’s lawyers including Giuliani — with hair dye dripping down his face — holds an increasingly wacked-out Press conference full of fraud conspiracy theories.
- Nurse suspended after spreading Covid conspiracy theories and calling the vaccine “genocide.”
- Pro-Trump Coronavirus truthers try to invade a Utah hospital overrun with Covid patients.
- US regulators clear the 737 MAX to fly again.
- Taliban praises the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan as McConnel warns of a “humiliating departure.”
- Yet another “Dead” Biden voter is found alive in Georgia.
- Republican Senators personally congratulate Kamala Harris as VP-elect, but still deny that Biden won.
- Kayleigh McEnany calls efforts to slow the spread of the virus “Orwellian” as US hits records on infections, hospitalizations and deaths. [I don’t think she knows what that word means.]
- Woman finally confronts man whose been spewing racist rants in her hallway for years.
- Federal Judge in Pennsylvania has had enough of Giuliani and cancels a scheduled evidentiary hearing. [No need for an evidence hearing on a case that Rudy admits is “not fraud.”]
- 19 DC lawmakers have tested positive for Covid in the last week.
- Biden plans to announce his cabinet picks before hearings to ward off GOP stonewalling. He may choose Karine Jean-Pierre, the first black woman, ever as his press secretary. He says that Trump stalling the transition will put deployment of Covid vaccine back for weeks, perhaps months. [You think he cares?] Biden team conflicted on whether to keep Dr. Birx on the Covid-19 panel. He tries to circumvent the transition roadblock by meeting with congressional staffers to get up to speed. Biden: Give me access to the Covid-19 vaccine data.[Just call the companies on your own directly.]
- New York City closes schools as Covid cases spike.
- Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) after Trump fires Cybersecurity Official Chris Krebs : “I don’t know what’s normal anymore.”
- Covid Testing Czar Adm. Giroir warns that the country is in an “absolutely dangerous situation.” [No, you don't say?]
- Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich blows his lid over Trump stalling the transition: “My blood is boiling.”
- Georgia GOP Sen. Perdue made profit from defense stocks while passing laws to benefit those companies. [Really, Congress shouldn’t be able to own stocks.]
- Ex-Trump aide flops when asked to name a successful Trump election lawsuit.
- US passes 250,000 Covid-19 deaths. The Trump camp doesn’t respond to the milestone.
- Romney warns of “Severe” consequences of Lame Duck Trump lashing out.
- CDC Cancels Thanksgiving: Advises against Holiday travel.
- Health experts demand the GSA head stop blocking Biden’s transition.
- Former DNI Ric Grenell is wailing on twitter about the Nevada vote being “stolen.”
- Former Cybersecurity Chief Chris Kreb says Giuliani press event was “most dangerous TV in US History.”
- House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) says that the census bureau is refusing to brief the House.
- California Gov Newsome issues a one-month Covid curfew.
- Ivanka Trump is facing two fraud investigations in NY State which her Daddy can’t pardon away.
November 20th—
- Trump camp is outraged that the Georgia recount… counted the votes, and again Biden won. Trump continues to downplay Covid-19 deaths as they reach a quarter million. CNN reports that his campaign to reject the vote count comes from his desire for revenge over the Russia probe. [Yeah, but he was fucking guilty there thanks to Roger Stone.]
- Ivanka goes on Fox an Friends to whine about her fraud investigations: “These politicians are ruthless” [Actually, they're prosecutors.]
- Giuliani makes “throat slashing” motion while complaining about “very bad” Democrats. His son, Andrew Giuliani who is a WH staffer, reveals that he has contracted Covid-19.
- House Dems demand briefing on Trump appointees refusal to allow Biden transition access.
- Romney rebukes Trump's attempt to overturn will of Michigan voters.
- Normal Shinkle, one of the Michigan GOP State canvassers, calls for a delay in certifying the vote.
- Rick Scott becomes 6th member of Congress to test positive for Covid-19.
- Fox News Geraldo Rivera says Trump should get a “consolation prize” of having a namesake vaccine.
- Retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander won't call Biden “President-elect” but does call for the transition to begin.
- Biden is reportedly considering Merrick Garland for Attorney General.
- During her first press conference in 50 days and after whining that Trump was "undermined and delegitimized” since 2016 by the Russia investigation, and being asked asked “When are you going to admit you lost?” McEnany snaps at CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins and ends press conference after just 5 questions: “I don’t call on activists.” [Yeah, but McEnany used to work for CNN too, so um, yeah.]
- Trump economic advisor Stephen Moore says it’s “time to wave the white flag on 2020 election.”
- 14 men charged in plot to kidnap Gov Whitmer had plans to televise the execution of government officials. [So, just like al Qaeda.]
- Texas Trump supporters say their ready to take up arms as soon as he gives the order.
- Donnie Deustche suggests Trump had a nervous breakdown after his election loss.
- Trump-loving Ohio state Rep. Diane Grendell spins wild conspiracies to justify tampering with Covid-19 stats.
- Ex-GOP Minnesota state Rep. Nick Zerwas who blew off Covid rules catches the disease.
- White woman follows a black man around her neighborhood : “I’ve never seen your kind here before.”
- IT manager at NC State revealed as Proud Boy who doxed thousands of left-wing activists.
- Mnuchin is slammed for his Biden “Snub” — which could sabotage the economic recovery.
- Distraught Trump supporters tell Rush Limbaugh: “I will die for my President.” [Frankly, go ahead.]
- Michigan state Rep who will meet with Trump sings a hymn when asked about the trip.
- WH says that meeting with Michigan Reps. is “not an advocacy meeting.”[What is it then?]
- Don Jr. catches Covid-19
- My Pillow guy Mike Lindell helps Kyle Rittenhouse get out on $2 Million bail.
November 21st --
November 22nd —
- Michigan GOPer and House Speaker Lee Chatfield who met with Trump explains that a constitutional crisis could give him the win despite to total vote count.
- GOP canvasser signals that he will not vote to certify the Michigan ballots.
- Loeffler quarantines after testing positive for Covid-19, which takes her off the campaign trail.
- Biden team signals POTUS-elect will push forward with his cabinet picks next week.
- Chris Christie blasts the Trump legal team: “National embarrassment.”
- Vaccine Czar Adm Giroir predicts herd immunity by May. Fauci thinks not.
- A few more Hill GOPers start to admit reality including Pat Toomey, Liz Chaney, Fred Upton, John Cornyn, and Kevin Cramer,
- Congressman who oversea GSA’s Emily Murphy bashes her for denying transition: “She’s a Trump loyalist.”
- Dominion Voting Systems CEO destroys Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s ridiculous election fraud conspiracy theories which somehow involves Dominion Voting Systems, “Election Insurance”, Hugo Chavez, Brian Kemp, the CIA and George Soros.
- Giuliani files an appeal to his humiliating loss in the Pennsylvania election lawsuit. Then he announces that Sidney Powell is no longer on his legal team, by pretending she was never on it. Powell gets mocked for being fired because she was too crazy for Giuliani.
- Republican Lisa Murkowski tells Trump to “stand down" and let the transition go forward. [You coulda said “stand back and stand by.”]
November 23rd —
November 24th —