I haven’t been watching Stephen Colbert as much as I used to, as he seems to have lost some of his biting wit when he lost his live audience due to the pandemic. But last night’s monologue hit the ball out of the court. Colbert is angry, and he goes on a 15-minute rant that leaves you wanting more. Watch it.
My only comment is that Colbert didn’t point out that those so-called militia members were also out violating curfew, and the police gave them bottles of water and told them how much they appreciated them. The police chief afterward had the gall to say that the protesters wouldn’t have been shot (by one of the militia members) if they weren’t illegally out past curfew.
Something is definitely very wrong with the police in Kenosha Wisconsin.
The Hatch Act is a law from 1939, which prohibits federal employees from political campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime. That means not on government time, nor using government property. The POTUS and Vice President are explicitly exempted from the law, but no other federal employees are allowed to participate along with them.
Which brings us to the Republican National Convention (RNC), which is clearly violating the law. For example, the Trump campaign is using the White House and other government assets as campaign props, and Mike Pompeo gave a campaign speech while on a government-paid trip to Israel.
But White House chief of staff Mark Meadows dismissed all that by saying “Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares.” You know, maybe he is on to something. I think that we should start throwing away other laws that nobody cares about.
For example, nobody cares if people drive their cars over the speed limit. Get rid of that law right away! You may object and say that speeding is dangerous, so just change the law such that if you cause an accident by driving too fast, that would be a crime. But just speeding is a victimless crime, if it doesn’t hurt anyone. Right? I mean, even the police speed all the time. Nobody cares!
Or how about laws against jaywalking? People do it all the time, and nobody even notices. It is illegal to jaywalk even if the street is completely empty, but would you walk all the way to the next corner to cross an empty street? Of course not.
Or even better, get rid of the stupid laws against downloading music, videos, or games from the internet. Everybody does that anyway. Now that everything is digital, copyright is a silly idea.
If “nobody cares” is an excuse to break the law, then that shouldn’t be limited to just Republican presidential campaigns. After all, can you imagine the uproar if the Democrats did what Trump is doing? Sure you can, because you remember the uproar about Hillary Clinton using a private email server. It cost her the election. A total of 38 people were cited for violations of that. And absolutely nobody actually cared about it one bit. I’m sure only a few computer scientists even know what a private email server is.
Donald Trump recently said that if he gets reelected, he would terminate the payroll tax.
There’s just one tiny little problems. It is the payroll tax that funds both Social Security and Medicare.
Today, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration said that if the payroll tax is terminated and Trump doesn’t find another source of money to fund it, then Social Security benefits could stop by mid-2023. So all of that money that Americans have been putting into Social Security would just go bye-bye, and retirees would be screwed.
The Republican Party has announced that it will have no platform. The announcement looks like something Donald Trump would write. It is one page of bullet points (but without bullets). It tries to blame everything on the media and “the failed policies of the Obama-Biden administration” (so much for being a “positive” convention).
Bottom line: the RNC’s official platform is to “strongly” and “enthusiastically” support Donald Trump and everything he does.
The GOP is no longer a political party. Any pretense of actually governing is gone. The have no ideals or beliefs. They are now merely a cult of personality for Trump.
Republicans on Fox News are downplaying Biden’s speech, saying that any idiot can read a speech off a teleprompter.
I guess Donald Trump doesn’t qualify as even an idiot.
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump (who is a “senior advisor” in the administration) told NBC News that the president will be part of the GOP convention “every single night”. We’ll see how he does.
Lara Trump’s entire interview was interesting. She led with the Republican talking point about Biden reading from a teleprompter. She promised that the GOP convention would be “hopeful and inspirational, and positive”, … and then immediately started bashing the Democrats. The only positive thing she said was when she was praising Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, but polls show that Americans don’t believe that by a margin of 58.4 to 39.9 percent.
Joe Biden’s convention keynote speech impressed everyone, even pundits who oppose him. Yes, that even includes Fox News hosts. Chris Wallace said “it was an enormously effective speech”). Dana Perino was even more effusive, saying “[Biden] just hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth”. Even Laura Ingraham — one of Trump’s strongest supporters at Fox — told Trump Jr. “He did beat expectations, Don. I mean, people were expecting him to flub every line and have a senior moment,” which surprised the younger Trump enough he abruptly stopped smiling.
Watch the smile disappear from Jr’s face as Laura Ingraham says Joe Biden exceeded expectations. It almost looks like he’s about to cry pic.twitter.com/p3XVncSOYZ
Karl Rove, the architect of Dubya’s two election victories, said “it was a very good speech” and that he’d be worried if he were a GOP strategist working on this year’s presidential campaign. The speech even got positive reviews from the Drudge Report, who ran with the headline “Biden Barn Burner” saying “Joe wows critics” and linking to commentary that he “crushed expectations”.
I think it is safe to say that Donald Trump also knew it was a great speech, because it (almost) shut him up. For his only tweet, Trump stopped using ALL CAPS and posted while Biden was still speaking, which probably means he couldn’t bring himself to finish listening to it. Remember also that Trump typically accuses others of the very things which he himself is terribly guilty (this will be even more significant when you watch the short video at the end of this post).
In 47 years, Joe did none of the things of which he now speaks. He will never change, just words!
As another sign of his panic, Trump is now obsessing about next week’s Republican convention, which still doesn’t have much of a speaker’s list. Maybe he believes he should be the only speaker?
I wanted to share one thing that we discussed after the show was over. Both of us we were caught off guard by how emotionally attached we were last night to this candidacy. We had sort of expected to feel this reluctant, begrudging support for the Democratic nominee, to have been left in a tough spot between one normal bad choice and one existentially bad one. But that isn’t what happened. Joe Biden has me energized. And frankly, that he has both Charlie and I reflecting on whether maybe in the past we were just…in the wrong…
Trump does have a serious problem. Chris Wallace said “Remember Donald Trump has been talking for months about Joe Biden as mentally shot, a captive from the left.” But Wallace concluded “[Biden] blew a hole — a big hole in that characterization.” If Trump can’t demonize Biden as old and feeble, or a socialist puppet, what can he run on? The economy, which is now in the toilet with no chance of it recovering before the election? Even worse, if Trump loses the right-wing media, he will probably also lose his GOP enablers (who will then no longer fear him).
Due to the crippling of the Post Office, other blatant attempts of voter suppression, and (of course) the pandemic, voting has gotten more confusing and complicated. But the vote has never been more important.
Luckily, there is help. Two websites, vote.org and represent.us, provide state-by-state information on how to vote so that your vote will count, and how to vote safely.
Protect our democracy. Pass these two sites on to everyone you know.
Congresswoman Barbara Jordan‘s speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She was the first Black and the first woman to deliver a keynote address.
Coincidentally, she was my Congresswoman; I first saw her when she gave a talk at my high school. If she had not been stricken by debilitating illnesses, perhaps she would have gone on to be president, and I would have gladly worked my ass off to help elect her. At the very least, she would have made a fantastic Supreme Court justice.
The final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 election has been released. Even the public redacted version “confirms that Donald Trump and his campaign operatives solicited, welcomed and benefited from Russian assistance.”
“The report also details extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign operatives and people tied to the Kremlin.” And remember, this is the report from the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans.
One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself. Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to claim that the Russian investigation is a hoax. I think a more appropriate word would be treason.
We know that Trump will do anything — including giving valuable information to our enemies, commuting the sentences of his henchmen, and committing other illegal acts — to stay in power. This must end, and the guilty parties must be punished.
