Political Irony

It seems clear that only fanatics or people who are desperate for a job will work for Donald Trump.

Here is documentation that all four of the people in this comic are unhinged religious fanatics:

• Bill Barr — “The attorney general believes the Christian hegemony is essential to American democracy, and wants to leverage state power to uphold it” and “William Barr’s speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics.”
• Steve Bannon — “Steve Bannon’s Would-Be Coalition of Christian Traditionalists.” Speaking at a conference at the Vatican, Bannon talked about “waging a holy war against Islam.”
• Jim Heath (FEC) — “Head Of Federal Election Commission Is Religious Zealot – Claims Election Is ‘Spiritual War’“
• Amy Coney Barrett — “belongs to a tight-knit charismatic Christian community whose conservative views alarm some liberals” and “Amy Coney Barrett signed newspaper ad that called Roe v Wade ‘barbaric’” (it also called the abortion rights decision a “raw exercise of judicial power”).

Yet another killer ad from the Lincoln Project, featuring Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.

UPDATE: Extra bonus Lincoln Project ad, based on last night’s shit-storm of a debate. Trump interrupted Biden, saying “Don’t ever use the word ‘smart” with me.” Well, ok.

I’ve waded through the entire (very long) NY Times article about Trump’s taxes, but I have to say that Heather Cox Richardson has a much better summary of it.

Here’s one paragraph from it:

This, of course, means that Trump is a huge national security risk. He owes money—to whom we don’t know—and he does not have it to pay his debts. It is no wonder that a bipartisan group of nearly 500 national security officials, past and present, last week endorsed Biden for president. According to Defense News, the list included “five former secretaries of the Navy, two former Army secretaries, four former Air Force secretaries, two retired governors, and 106 ambassadors.” Retired General Paul Selva, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the first two and a half years of Trump’s term, signed the letter.

A little over a week ago I read about a new Covid-19 test that can provide good results in as little as 15 minutes. It is also less expensive because it does not require being sent to a lab, although it does require someone with training to administer (it is not expected that people can test themselves). Even better, the cost of the test is estimated to be around $5.

That by itself is good news. I had a test done two months ago, and it took 15 days to get a result back, and I had to self-quarantine that whole time. But there is an even bigger reason why this is good news.

United Airlines already announced that they will offer this test on flights from San Francisco to Hawaii. The benefit will be that the State of Hawaii will let passengers skip the two-week quarantine when they arrive, if they pass the test. The downside is that if the test says you have Covid-19, you won’t be allowed to fly at all. And if this works well on their flights to Hawaii, they plan to offer a similar deal to international destinations.

But it didn’t surprise me that United really screwed up everything else about this test. First, they will be charging $250 to give you a test that costs $5 or so. Even worse, taking the test will not be mandatory, so every flight will contain both people who have been tested (and passed) and people who have not been tested at all.

If they want the public to feel safe flying, they need to make this test mandatory at least on select flights. After all, even Dr. Anthony Fauci said he would not fly because it is too dangerous. If airlines want to jumpstart travel, they need to make flying safe. If they want other countries to allow planes from America to land on their soil, they need evidence that planes don’t have any people with Covid-19 on them.

It would be even better if it is airports that do the testing instead of airlines so you don’t get sick standing in line for security or jostling for your luggage.

And this doesn’t apply just to flying. Canada has closed its land borders to Americans, which has severely damaged their tourism industry. But they could set things up so that you could get tested at the border and allowed to enter if you pass.

Or even flee to Canada if Trump wins steals a second term.

UPDATE: Readers seem to be concerned about the accuracy of this test. Compared to the PCR test (considered the “gold standard”), the new test is 97.1% accurate for positive results (the diagnosis is that you do have Covid-19) and 98.5% accurate for negative results (you’re clean). Remember that no test is completely accurate, and that any reasonably accurate test, if administered widely, will significantly limit the spread of the disease, which is the main goal. So this is considered to be a very good test, and the fact that you get your results back in minutes will more than make up for the slightly lower accuracy. And of course if you get a positive result, it is common practice to then administer the PCR test for verification.

Here are parts of last night’s post from Heather Cox Richardson. You should read the whole thing. This is important news that is being overshadowed by the fight over nominating and confirming a replacement for RBG.

Today Americans were roiled by an article in The Atlantic, detailing the method by which the Trump campaign is planning to steal the 2020 election. The article was slated for The Atlantic’s November issue, but the editor decided to release it early because of its importance.

The article’s author, Barton Gellman, explains that Trump will not accept losing the 2020 election. If he cannot win it, he plans to steal it. We already know he is trying to suppress voting and his hand-picked Postmaster General is working to hinder the delivery of mail-in ballots. Now Trump’s teams are recruiting 50,000 volunteers in 15 states to challenge voters at polling places; this will, of course, intimidate Democrats and likely keep them from showing up.

But if those plans don’t manage to depress the Democratic vote enough to let him declare victory, he intends to insist on calling a winner in the election on November 3. His legal teams will challenge later mail-in ballots, which tend to swing Democratic, on the grounds that they are fraudulent, and they will try to silence local election officials by attacking them as agents of antifa or George Soros. The president and his team will continue to insist that the Democrats are refusing to honor the results of the election.

Gellman warns that the Trump team is already exploring a way to work around the vote counts in battleground states. Rather than appointing Democratic electors chosen by voters, a state legislature could conclude that the vote was tainted and appoint a Republican slate instead. A Trump legal advisor who spoke to Trump explained they would insist they were protecting the will of the people from those who were trying to rig an election. “The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ” the adviser explained. The election would then go to Congress, where there would be two sets of electoral votes to fight over… and things would devolve from there.

They would likely end up at the Supreme Court, to which Trump this morning said he was in a hurry to confirm a new justice so there would be a solid majority to rule in his favor on the election results. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices, and I think the system’s going to go very quickly,” he said. “Having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.”

Amidst the flurry of concern over The Atlantic piece, a reporter this afternoon asked Trump if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.” He went on to say: “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer frankly, there’ll be a continuation.”

Trump is proposing that we should “get rid of the ballots”. This is the end of democracy.

Veteran journalist Dan Rather wrote […] “This is a moment of reckoning unlike any I have seen in my lifetime…. What Donald Trump said today are the words of a dictator. To telegraph that he would consider becoming the first president in American history not to accept the peaceful transfer of power is not a throw-away line. It’s not a joke. He doesn’t joke. And it is not prospective. The words are already seeding a threat of violence and illegitimacy into our electoral process.”

Two polls were just released from top-tier firms showing Joe Biden with a 10-point lead over Donald Trump. Destroying democracy is Trump’s only chance to stay in power after this election. It is imperative that this not happen. It is up to us to make sure this does not happen.

The widespread, peaceful protests against racism give me hope that people will not tolerate an election being stolen.