SuprstitionAintthWay
SuprstitionAintthWay's JournalTo whisper that much evil into your Mad King's ear
...you have to stand very close for a lot of your workday.
If he's infected you're just fucked.
These WH reports are going to be like the medical updates out of Stalin's, Franco's, & Mao's govts,
...so let's all be careful and remember to treat every one of them that way.
That's a very sad situation, for the United States to be in.
But that's the dirty bed the Trump White House has made for itself, and for us.
Will Only The Party That Controls The Senate Get Its SCOTUS Nominees Confirmed From Now On?
We HAVE TO win the Senate Nov. 3.
HAVE TO.
Because if we don't, does anyone really believe that in 2021-2022 Mitch McConnell will allow his "greatest" legacy, a 6-3 conservative SCOTUS majority, to be shifted back to 5-4 if, say, Clarence Thomas dies?
He will not. McConnell knows now that merrickgarlanding works.
He knows that it can work INDEFINITELY.
In 2016 when everyone expected Hillary to be the next president, Republicans were already talking about stonewalling against any and all of her Supreme Court appointees throughout her entire presidency.
Once Joe Biden is president, a conservative SCOTUS seat could come open February 2021 and if McConnell is still majority leader he WILL merrickgarland Biden's nominee for two straight years. He will refuse to act for four years if he can hold control of the Senate in the 2022 midterms, too.
I strongly suspect McConnell wouldn't even allow Biden to fill a seat vacated by another liberal justice either, regardless of when it occurs in a Biden 1st term. I believe McConnell would merrickgarland that seat, too. McConnell would relish having a 6-2 Supreme Court. He'd very likely refuse to act on that Democratic nominee, too, and hope that, say, a Nikki Haley will be able to defeat Kamala Harris in 2024.
I call this undermining of the Constitution through this outrageous abuse of Senate power "McConnellism," and suspected it was a new era we were already in in 2016.
September 2020's sad events have only increased my fear that this already is the situation, that it already is our new national reality. That NO Republican Senate is going to confirm ANY Democratic president's SCOTUS nominee ever again.
If we win the White House but fail to win the Senate in November, and this proves to be the case, of course it will force all future Democratic senate majority leaders to respond in kind, and merrickgarland ALL SCOTUS nominees made by all Republican presidents.
McConnellism, if it's what we've already been debased into, is another huge step down the path of the intentional corruption and sabotage of American government by the 21st Century Republican Party.
So, again:
We MUST win the Senate back this year.
Damaging the Democrat with smears, combined with suppressing the vote
...is HOW Republicans have competed for office for decades now. 90% of their game is behind the scenes, off and out of sight of the playing field, where no rules apply in their version of competition for office.
They know they can no longer win elections without, and have no qualms about, lying and cheating. So smearing the Democrat and disenfranchising or creating obstacles to his or her voters getting to the polls IS their "campaign."
It was only a few months ago a young gay man reported he'd been offered money to lie and claim Pete Buttigieg sexually molested him.
I'm especially struck by Reade's recent head-spinning reversals on two world-prominent male politicians. In the same short timeframe (1) she switched from touting Biden for his qualities and his work advocating for women, to, as soon as he is about to become the Democratic nominee, suddenly attempting to bring him down with an accusation of sexual assault; and (2) she switched from also idolizing Putin, ALSO for his (supposed, in Putin's case) wonderful treatment and advancement of women in Russia, while she cooed over his "intoxicating" manliness, to suddenly she's retracted all that, tried to wipe it off the internet, and now claims she was just mistaken about Putin.
My predisposition is to believe women claiming to have been sexually assaulted unless there are serious warning signs something is amiss. I've seen a lot of serious warning signs something is amiss here. This is not someone on the basis of whose current word I am willing to make any kind of an important decision.
But she definitely is someone who our 2020 Republirussian opponents would eagerly support.
I don't think it takes all that much intelligence and planning to want to harm people...
...and then to do so when you come across and recognize some ways to, however that happens.
The impulse to lash out often begins unconsciously, just a feeling of a desire to retaliate. Instinct. A stronger instinct the meaner, more narcissistic and more sociopathic you are.
A rat trapped in a corner doesn't have a high IQ and planning skills, and doesn't need them to come at you.
Trump continually stumbles across things in govt he had zero idea existed. It just happens as part of being in the Oval Office. People bring him things, he immediately sees them as hammers to hurt others with.
He'd never known Inspectors General existed until one gave the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to Congress, and another concluded the Mueller investigation was initiated legally and not politically. Now he passionately hates IGs. Someone informed them he has some power over them, so immediately he starts knocking them down left and right.
He has power over federally stockpiled ventilators and PPE? Who knew? He didn't know that! Immediately his mind goes to how can I hurt Whitmer and Inslee and Cuomo as publicly and humiliatingly as possible, make them submit to me, praise and beg me, with this power?
People want to vote by mail? You need mail service for that. And look! Someone just brought me a bill that if I don't sign, the Postal Service will probably collapse!
What Dr. Garnter describes in general terms as prospects for this fall, I really don't think requires much in the way of intelligence or ability.
Edited to add:
On the other hand I agree that Trump has not been purposely killing 10s of 1000s of Americans with his inept, self-absorbed covid "response" in Feb, March, and April. Well, a few Washington, Calif, Michigan, and NY citizens and frontline medical people's deaths, yes, those were intentional. Those deaths were to punish those electorates for having Democratic governors, to try to make their governors out to be failing, to present himself as the states' savior instead, and to try to compel the governors themselves to knuckle under to him... to bring them to heel.
But on a wider scale, so far, no. It serves Trump not at all for so many Americans to die. Just the opposite. So yes the large amount of needless death America is suffering has just been an unintended side-effect of his acting wholly in his own self-interest.
That's Trump circa January - April 2020, though. What Dr. Garnter was speaking about is Trump when he's actively being ousted from the presidency this fall.
The background on these fake-religious bleach-as-a-Miracle Cure Florida hucksters
...woud definitely tick a lot of boxes for Trump.
He needs a miracle cure for his prospects in November. This Sacramental bleach promises to cure everything that's ailing him. (Extra bonus, it's a cure for cancer, too. He might get his Nobel Prize after all.)
There are 3 Republican conspiracy theory wingnuts pushing the bleach-drinking scheme.
Ar least one of them was a major birtherism blowhard when Trump was.
It's a swing state church/company selling the bleach "Sacrament."
How perfect, how beautiful, Trump must have thought in his tiny little brain, if HE personally could be The Hero who brings a Miracle Cure to the world's attention and to the rescue of the economy... AND a Republican-owned Florida company/faux church gets to make billions of dollars at the same time!
Everything about this particular bit of insanity is like it was made for him.
He couldn't stop himself from instantly jumping on board.
Spartacus has enough sword-and-sandals about it that if there had been a...
...Best Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Action or Horror Picture category, it could have been squeezed in that as "Action."
Imperfectly, granted; it truly is a drama -- yes, a classic one.
But the Globes does this, plays a bit with its assignments to categories in order to spread the wealth around better in its "Best" films categories. Using even just my suggested divisions the Academy probably could have awarded both The Apartment and Spartacus "Best" picture trophies.
"Best Pictures" are rarely the best pictures.
The Academy just does its own thing. The winners now usually are about some social issue (and if not a social issue, then they're about the movie industry itself). The last one of these winning Best Pic that I thought might actually have been the year's best was Spotlight, about the Boston Globe uncovering large numbers of pedophile priests. A really excellent movie.
But the notion of ONE Best Picture is absurd anyway.
I've never understood why they refuse to break it out more like the Golden Globes do. IMO there should be at least 3 "bests" beyond Documentary, Foreign Language, Short, Animated, and just "Picture." "Picture" should be at least 3:
Best Drama
Best Comedy or Musical
Best Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Action or Horror film
There's always been a need for categories for movies like Planet Of The Apes (1969?), Alien (1979), Aliens (1986?), Pulp Fiction (1994?), Mulholland Drive (2000?), The Dark Knight (2008), Moon, or horror/suspense like It Follows, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Babadook or The Witch to win a picture category, and not just costumes, set, or special effects. But they don't, because dramas dominate the Oscar's Best Picture, and it's almost unheard of for Best Picture to be within reach of films like these regardless of how good they are. Well, unless it's based on Tolkien, or by Guillermo del Toro. But even The Wizard of Oz, a musical fantasy, didn't win Best Picture.
As for Shape Of Water, I got around to it only a couple of months ago myself. I've found most of del Toro's films, which are fantastical allegories about outsiders and alienation, and often social injustices too, to be over-rated by the critics. And this, for me, was no exception.
As for this year's winner, I'm happy for a foreign film to win, and enjoyed that director's The Host some time back. But I saw Parasite, and I appreciated the themes, but wasn't blown away by that, either.
In Georgia any day now they're gonna get to (hot damn!) shoot "hordes" of u-know-whats!
Republican Congressional Candidate
Touts AR-15s To Fight
'Looting Hordes From Atlanta'
Denies any racial implications
Lois Beckett @loisbeckett
Tue 7 Apr 2020 20.30 EDT The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/07/paul-broun-ar15-gun-coronavirus-campaign-video-atlanta-looting-hordes
Why do Americans need AR-15 rifles during a global pandemic? To shoot “looting hordes from Atlanta”.
That’s the campaign message from a former Republican congressman from Georgia, Paul Broun, who is now running for Congress again.
Broun’s campaign is based in Gainesville, Georgia, a city about an hour outside of Atlanta, the state capital, which is majority-black.
Gainesville is in Hall county, Georgia, which is majority white, although nearly half of the residents of the city of Gainesville itself are Latino, according to census estimates.
In a new campaign video, Broun promises to give away an AR-15 rifle “to one lucky person who signs up for email updates” from his campaign website.
"In uncertain times like these, the right to defend yourself and your property and your family could not be more important,” Broun says in a campaign video, in which the 73-year-old is filmed striding through the grass and shooting a rifle.
“Whether it’s looting hordes from Atlanta, or a tyrannical government from Washington, there are few better liberty machines than an AR-15.”
Broun was dismissive of the idea that his rhetoric might concern black Georgia residents, or that this kind of rhetoric might increase the risk of innocent black Americans getting shot while in majority-white neighborhoods.
Americans have responded to the coronavirus epidemic with a record-breaking number of gun purchases. More than 3.7m total firearm background checks were conducted through the FBI’s background check system in March, with nearly 1.2m checks conducted in the week of 16 March alone.
Going public, probably purposefully, yes. But to vastly different purposes.
Capt. Crozier's selfless purpose:
To try to save his crew from the covid-19 outbreak spreading fast on his cramped ship of 4,500.
Something, btw, Teddy Roosevelt himself did, the same way but much more insubordinately, in 1898 when his troops in Cuba were needlessly dying of yellow fever and malaria and the Secretary of War turned a deaf ear to his plea for their evacuation back home.
[ EDIT:
The deets on the fascinating historical 1898 -> 2020 parallels:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213236642
The saying in this case is very true. History doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme. ]
Acting SecNav Modly's craven, self-interested purposes:
To try to get some of the nation's heat off himself;
To try to maybe get a tiny bit of his ruined reputation back;
To excoriate the free press and to try to intimidate anybody else on the USS TR who might believe in the First Amendment;
To make a big show for Donald Trump, to score some more of the kind of brown-nose points he knows work so well with the petty, stupid Manchild-in-Chief and hopefully extend his own toadying career.
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