Friday, July 31, 2020

White House Update: When is the Election?

-- It will be held on the first Tuesday of November, just as the Constitution stipulates, just as it has been through world wars and depressions and pandemics in the past two hundred and almost-fifty years of the history of our Republic.

Trump's worries are not about mail ballots, as even the Republicans know.


Now if you like your conspiracy theories cooked well done and seasoned heavily to restrict third-party voting, Ted Millar at Liberal America has the recipe'.  My favorite -- there are several there -- is the Twelfth Amendment Stew, extra pickles.

In their Newsweek piece, “How Trump Could Lose the Election–and Still Remain President,” CNBC founder Tom Rogers and former Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO) explain:

“This is how it happens, Biden wins. I don’t just mean the popular vote, he wins the key swing states, he wins the electoral college. President Trump says there’s been Chinese interference in the election. He’s been talking about Biden’s soft on China—China wanted Biden to win so he says a national emergency; the Chinese have intervened in the election.”

This is particularly ironic considering Trump’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, documents in his new book that Trump, during trade negotiations with China, pushed Chinese President Xi Jinping to agree to purchase American agricultural products as a means to bolster popularity with U.S. farmers to help with 2020 re-election prospects.

Tom Rogers adds:

“Just ten days ago [June 23] he [Trump] tweeted, he actually tweeted, ‘rigged 2020 election,’ millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries it will be the scandal of our times. so he’s laying the groundwork for this. So he does an investigation and [Attorney General Bill] Barr backs this up with all kinds of legal opinions about emergency powers that the president has.”

“Then what happens is it’s all geared towards December 14th. Why December 14th? Well, that’s the deadline when the electors of the states have to be chosen. Why is that key? Because that’s what the Supreme Court used in Bush v. Gore to cut off the Florida counting. They keep this national emergency investigation going through December 14th. Biden, of course, challenges this in the courts and says, ‘hey, we won these states, I want the electors that favored me named. The Supreme Court doesn’t throw the election to the Republicans as it did in 2000; instead it says, ‘look, there’s a deadline here.’ If they can’t be certified in these states because of this investigation going on, there’s a constitutional process for this.”

That constitutional process lies within the 12th amendment, which states:

“If no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.”

Republican are already running full-tilt voter suppression ahead of November.

All it takes is for only a couple of states -- say, Texas and Florida -- to cast some doubt over the election’s integrity for it to be tossed to the House of Representatives.

That may appear on the surface to be good news since Democrats hold the majority in the House.

But they won’t be the ones to certify the election.

Remember, the 12th amendment stipulates, “The votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.”

With more Republican-controlled legislatures than Democratic, this means Trump can legitimately lose both the popular vote as he did four years ago and the electoral college, securing re-election.

There is already a precedent for this.

In the 1876 election that pitted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes against Democrat Samuel Tilden, Tilden clinched the popular vote but was one vote shy of the requisite electoral votes.

As Ohio Republican Congressman James Monroe (no relation to our fifth president) published in The Atlantic in October 1893, “The votes of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina, with an aggregate of 22 electors” would decide the election.

That election happening in the midst of Reconstruction, federal soldiers occupied the three southern states.

Ku Klux Klan presence was also heavy in all four states.

Congressional Democrats claimed soldiers intimidated and suppressed the votes of Southern Democratic voters.

With the threat of re-igniting the Civil War that had only concluded 11 years before, Republicans and Democrats hammered out a backroom deal to hand the presidency to Hayes if he agreed to withdraw Union soldiers from the South.

He did.

He was made president, thus ending Reconstruction.

Judging how this primary season has gone, it isn’t inconceivable for Republican-controlled states to revive the “three-to-five million illegal voters” lie Trump screamed about in 2016.


My, how I enjoy single sentences as separate paragraphs.  They really add a dramatic flair that the content seems to lack.  Have I spent too many pixels on this?  In other postponement news ...

(Trump's) campaign has frozen a majority of its TV spending less than 100 days before the 2020 election. A campaign official said the demotion of former campaign manager Brad Parscale has led them to start a “review” and “fine-tuning” of their re-election strategy.

“With the leadership change in the campaign, there’s understandably a review and fine-tuning of the campaign’s strategy. We’ll be back on the air shortly, even more forcefully exposing Joe Biden as a puppet of the radical left-wing,” a Trump campaign official told NBC News.


Sometimes it's difficult to judge which of Trump's minion's lies are the most ridiculous, but today I'll go with that last one, particularly since ...

-- ... word broke that the DNC voted down a Medicare for All plank in the party platform, insisted upon by a group of Bernie delegates.  (Update: And also getting the corporate money out.)


The very next tweet in that thread lists all the votes.  My response here is very easy.


-- Speaking of wasted votes, let's congratulate Zachary Wolf at CNN, this week's Daily Jackass, who delivered a third-grade teacher's scold of anyone who colors outside the two-party lines.


As you should be able to predict, the response was swift and merciless.


David Collins also got in a retort to last week's Jackass, One 'f' Rouner.

-- Word on the street is that Joementia is going to choose a running mate next week.  The front-runner is Kamala, followed by Susan Rice.  Val Demings and a name I've not seen previously advanced, California Cong. Karen Bass, appear on the finalists list.  Of these -- of all of those under consideration, in fact -- Bass is far and away the most progressive, so I'll be stunned if she winds up on the ticket with Old Joe.

Update: Welp ... maybe I blogged too soon.  Not about the 'stunned' part; Bass seems to have gaffed her way out of consideration.

Harris has perhaps encountered the last white water on her river to the White House.


This could be performative to throw everybody off, but I'll bet a little more on the KHive.  You really don't want to stir up those murder hornets, trust me.

Update: Behind the scenes, Chris Dodd and others in Biden's closest circle -- his wife Jill, his sister Valerie Biden Owens -- are knifing Kamala.  This news really leaves the front-runner status up in the air, unless you believe Susan Rice has the inside track (I don't).

-- Speaking of more interesting veep selections:


-- Trump's visit to the Permian Basin, his new Demon Sperm doctor, and his back-up plan for rigging the Census to screw over states with large immigrant populations like Texas and California are all items I'll put in the week-ending Lone Star wrap, coming later today or tomorrow.

-- I mentioned in the lead to last week's WH Update that we shouldn't be talking about Kanye West any more.  Kat Tenbarge and Connor Perrett at Business Insider make the point that if you're going to talk about him, mention his mental health issues.

His wife traveled to their Wyoming ranch to have a heart-to-heart with him.  It doesn't appear to have gone very well for their marriage.

-- Finally, while I hope that he does, I doubt that Herman Cain is going to be resting in peace.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Lone Star Round-up catches COVID

TPA's second Wrangle this week lassos the coronavirus (news, finally).

Update: Devastating.



But first, a digression; The free-range political implication-chickens have come home to roost for the South's "Puttin' Bidness First and Lives Second" governors, of which ours isn't even the worst.


Abbott is managing his balancing act, even as the Allen West/Dan Patrick posse ride tall in the saddle and sight him in for '22.  His still-rich friends in the Trump Disillusionment Caucus have built him a big beautiful wall made of cold, hard cash to keep the barbarians outside the gate.

The same cannot be said for 2020 downballot Texas Republicans.


Fun!

Not so for all of those suffering mightily from the TXGOP's fuckups.


I simply cannot muster the same amount of sympathy for the state's fossil fuel industry as can Justin Miller at the Texas Observer.  YMMV.


Yeah, yeah bankruptcies houston economy blah blah state budget shortfall blah blah cuts to essential services blah blah especially for poorest Texans blah.

Almost nine billion in the Rainy Day Fund (double the estimated shortfall).  Ten billion annually for Medicaid expansion waiting to be claimed.  A Lege that won't legalize (and thus tax) weed or casino gambling, for openers.  It ain't the state's money people want to cry about; it's theirs.  At core, they simply cannot accept change.

Texas families, children, their mental health, and their right to live in their communities without being poisoned are always going to be more important to me than some roughneck or landman or corrosion engineer's livelihood.

And it seems there are many others besides me who notice and are pointing out the glaring and disparate inequalities.

 
I got plenty more -- environmental updates and other election developments -- but I'll wrap today's Wrangle with the lighter side.

The San Antone Current reports on the plight of the Kerrville Folk Festival, which is soliciting donations to stay afloat after canceling its 2020 event.

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Monday, July 27, 2020

The TexProgBlog Wrangle: Fascism Rising

The round-up of blog posts and Tweets and links to news from the best of the left of, about, and around Deep-In-The-Hearta begins today with reports of Trump's fascist supporters surging in Austin, Tyler, and Weatherford over the weekend.


Shell Seas, blogging at Living Blue in Texas, has more.

In northeast Texas the Democratic challenger to Louie Gohmert tried to hold a rally to protest Louie's latest effort to cancel the Democratic Party.  Hank Gilbert was shouted down by Republicans who scared off most of his supporters, then fought with the few who remained.


Gilbert's Twitter feed has three links to East Texas media accounts of the skirmish, all with video.

And from the state capital, Saturday night:


I'll save the political and corona-related posts for a later Wrangle (most of the pandemic-related ones I've been holding are too dated to use anyway; last week's news ages pretty fast these days).  Here I'll keep going with the theme of lives lost and threatened due to the spread of corporatism, militarism, and fascism in our still-beloved Texas.


And last:


Much more Wrangled -- and to be posted -- shortly.
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Saturday, July 25, 2020

Sunday 'Cognitively Fascist' Funnies

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Thursday, July 23, 2020

White House Update: Leave Kanye Alone

-- He really needs to spend more time in his basement.

Kim Kardashian West has shared a message about her husband Kanye West and mental health.

In an Instagram Stories post on Wednesday, Kardashian West acknowledged that West has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and said it's "incredibly complicated and painful" for many to understand.

It's not easy to have empathy for a man who has been given every single material thing life could possibly offer ... who also seems to be trying very hard to throw it all away.  So we'll hope everything turns out okay for him, he gets the help he needs, takes his meds, and never hear any more about his presidential aspirations ever again.

-- I'd very much like to say the same of Joe Biden.  But part of his strategy, as we know, is to stay quiet and out of sight, and for reasons so painfully obvious by now you can almost predict them.



This is one of those off-the-cuff gaffes Biden is renowned for.  His staff -- in this case, the obnoxious Symone Sanders -- nearly always gets to clean up his mess.  Bless their shitty, dark little hearts; they can't stop him.  They've kept him from wandering off camera, (now you know why he's always sitting down) but they can't do anything about him wandering off script, and that's on his good days, when the Aricept is working.

-- Still, 'Muricans trust Old Joe's cognition more than do Trump's, and with damn good reason.


And this is the man with the nuclear codes.


Yeah, he's leaving.  Like it or not, wants to or not.  It's just a crine-ass shame Biden will be the one replacing him, for however long that happens to be.  Yes, we're all on tenterhooks for another week or so.  Still no promises as to whether a woman of color is the choice, either.

“I am not committed to naming any but the people I have named, and among them are four Black women. So that decision is underway right now. And by the way, Black women have supported me my entire career. You all act like all of the sudden there was an epiphany in South Carolina.”

[...]

“We have gone through about four candidates so far in the two-hour vetting, and we will get all the vetting done of all the candidates, and then I am going to narrow the list, and then I will have personal discussions with each of the candidates who are left,” Biden said.

He has indicated that he expects to name a running mate around Aug. 1, which is next week.


Getting a little bored of this game, personally.  I just don't think it's him making the final call.

-- So while I have Tweeted more than enough this week about Trump's fascism in Portland, it's creeping into other cities now.  This will be the worst, most dangerous legacy of this president.


It's not, naturally, the only destabilization effort Trump is making.  I have zero doubt he would like to get an actual war started in order to declare himself an actual wartime president ...


... especially since he's gotten bored with the coronavirus wars that he and the Republican governors have so abjectly lost.

Update: The convention celebration he moved from Charlotte to Jacksonville, FL because North Carolina was restricting indoor gatherings?  Yeah, he had to cancel that because Florida is aflame with the 'rona.  Or maybe because of this.

-- All this cheery news might make a person feel that it would be really important to vote for Biden as the only realistic option to eject Trump from the White House. 

That would be a hard NO from me.


Whole lotta BS lately about how great Biden's climate plan is.


Congratulations to Jef Rouner; he's the the first "Daily Jackass" of 2020.  It's almost like a record skipping on Joe Biden's turntable.


-- I should wrap this up with some thoughts about John Kasich speaking at the convention.


Not the Unity Strategy I can get on board with.


-- Are we all in agreement, finally, that Russiagate was bullshit?


-- Rest in peace, Michael Brooks.

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