2020 Presidential Election 4: How Much Longer?

[Flossie]

19 hours ago, Alisamer said:

You are a much kinder person than me. I recently got asked out (out of the blue) by a gun-toting Trump supporter I've not spoken to since high school. So far I've just ghosted him because I can't come up with a kind way to say "hell no!" I'm glad he doesn't have my phone number because the older I get the less filter I have, and I'd probably piss him off. 

That's a dealbreaker for me. I'd much rather be alone than put up with ignorance. Especially willful, harmful, Trump supporting ignorance.

How about this:

"I'd love to go.  How about tomorrow, I'm done with my shift at the Biden/Harris election campaign office at four.  

How about we meet at this cute little outdoor cafe where we can safely have a meal at a reasonable distance to be safe.  We could even take turns eating so one of us will always be wearing a mask.

After that I'm attending a BLM protest.  You're welcome to join me.  Wear comfortable clothes and shoes.  I've got a few signs we could carry.  I'm using the "We're all in this together" one, but you could use my "Silence is Violence" or "Color is Not a Crime" one.

It's going to be a good night, weapons not allowed, masks and social distancing strongly encouraged.  I don't plan to stay much past ten, as I have plans the next day.  I'm attending a sunrise Wiccan ceremony followed by yoga in the park, then I'm going to spend a couple hours working in the community garden, face timing lunch with my mom, followed by spending a few hours pounding nails at a Habitat for Humanity home.  Busy, busy!"

[Marmion]

14 hours ago, fraurosena said:

It’s a pity they don’t look at the number of online viewers. As so many people watch online, the numbers in the article have become rather meaningless if you don’t account for them. It’s my guess that the disparity between the two would be even greater if they did look at the online numbers.

I have only been able to watch the Democratic National Convention online , as I do not have a television set that is set up to receive channel signals .  Well that and there's the fact that my family is still staunchly Republican .  I have only been reading recaps of the RNC .   

 

10 hours ago, Flossie said:

How about this:

"I'd love to go.  How about tomorrow, I'm done with my shift at the Biden/Harris election campaign office at four.  

How about we meet at this cute little outdoor cafe where we can safely have a meal at a reasonable distance to be safe.  We could even take turns eating so one of us will always be wearing a mask.

After that I'm attending a BLM protest.  You're welcome to join me.  Wear comfortable clothes and shoes.  I've got a few signs we could carry.  I'm using the "We're all in this together" one, but you could use my "Silence is Violence" or "Color is Not a Crime" one.

It's going to be a good night, weapons not allowed, masks and social distancing strongly encouraged.  I don't plan to stay much past ten, as I have plans the next day.  I'm attending a sunrise Wiccan ceremony followed by yoga in the park, then I'm going to spend a couple hours working in the community garden, face timing lunch with my mom, followed by spending a few hours pounding nails at a Habitat for Humanity home.  Busy, busy!"

The only possible problem I might see with that approach is that , if things were to really go downhill , you could end up becoming a target of a deathsquad .  It is increasingly seeming to me that the U.S.A. has been turning into Weimar Germany , before the rise of the Third Reich .  {  https://www.facinghistory.org/weimar-republic-fragility-democracy/readings/why-study-weimar-germany  ,  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_paramilitary_groups , https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/04/donald-trump-america-weimar  ,  https://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/can-it-happen-here-donald-trump-and-fracturing-americas-constitutional-order-0  ,  http://cincinnatirepublic.com/welcome-to-weimar/  }  

[GreyhoundFan]

"Kanye West campaign in Virginia is accused of deceptive signature gathering"

Spoiler

Kanye West’s campaign is facing allegations that voters were deceived by signature gatherers circulating paperwork to qualify the rapper-entrepreneur for the Virginia ballot, the latest setback for a stumbling presidential bid that also is facing problems in other states.

Two signed affidavits were submitted Friday to the State Board of Elections from registered voters who said they were duped into signing up to serve as electors for West in Virginia. In a separate account, an Alexandria woman said Saturday that a man tried to obtain her signature on one of West’s petitions under false pretenses.

West has qualified to appear on Virginia’s ballot this fall as an independent presidential candidate, a state elections official said — meeting the requirement for 5,000 petition signatures, at least 200 of them from each congressional district.

It is unclear how the accusations of deceptive signature gathering could affect his status. The West campaign and state elections officials did not respond to questions about the allegations on Saturday.

Those who say they were targeted expressed outrage at the campaign’s tactics — and, in some cases, regret that they may have inadvertently helped West onto the ballot.

“I am so embarrassed,” said Matthan Wilson, a 53-year-old high school government teacher from Suffolk who submitted one of the affidavits. “I don’t want to be an elector for Kanye West. I don’t want to vote for Kanye West. I only like one or two of his songs.”

Wilson said he was out for a bike ride earlier this month when he was approached by three people who asked whether he would like to serve in a statewide pool of electors.

Distracted during his exercise, Wilson said, he signed, only later realizing that the request didn’t make sense because electors — a largely ceremonial position held over from the early days of the electoral college — are chosen by political parties.

He said he found out that he was named as one of West’s pledged electors from a reporter, about 10 days after the encounter with the signature takers.

“I feel that I’ve been cheated,” he said.

Samantha Durant of Newport News also submitted an affidavit to the elections board stating that she was approached by a group that presented her with what they said was a petition to “get an independent candidate on the ballot.” She writes that she did not know that she was signing up as an elector for West.

New York magazine reported earlier this month that seven of West’s 13 electors in Virginia said they were unaware of how their signatures were being used.

The affidavits were submitted to state elections officials by Virginia Democratic Party activists, said Robert H. Brink, chairman of the elections board. Brink declined to comment on whether the affidavits could alter West’s standing on the ballot.

Barbara Scheeler, a 55-year-old Alexandria Realtor, independently emailed The Washington Post to describe an encounter she had with another signature collector for West.

She said she was standing outside a Walmart on Aug. 20 when a man approached her with what he described as a petition “to give somebody else a chance” on the ballot. He would not answer her questions about who it was or what race it was for, Scheeler said in an interview. She said the man also folded over the cover sheet on his clipboard to hide the name of the candidate.

Scheeler said she took the clipboard to look at the name. When she expressed incredulity that it was West, she said, the circulator turned to her 16-year-old son and asked whether he would like to sign.

“If this is the way that they were handling most of the signatures, I think that people didn’t realize what they were signing,” Scheeler said. “It was very, very deceptive.”

The allegations in Virginia are the latest in a series of problems faced by West, who has been kicked off the ballot in multiple states because of deficient paperwork. In some cases, his petition circulators have been accused of using deceptive tactics to collect signatures.

West has been an outspoken supporter of President Trump, and the motives behind his campaign are murky. Republican operatives are connected to the West bid in at least five states.

In the key swing state of Wisconsin, the Democratic Party submitted affidavits to the state election commission from people who had signed West’s petitions but said they had been misled about their purpose.

The state’s election commission earlier this month voted to disqualify West from appearing on the November ballot, saying that his forms had been submitted too late. On Friday, West’s campaign filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin challenging the decision.

 

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

Why is a President who was impeached in his first term allowed to run for a second term?

[Marmion]

20 hours ago, Don'tlikekoolaid said:

Why is a President who was impeached in his first term allowed to run for a second term?

Because he wasn't convicted . Trump wasn't the only president in history to be impeached , yet not removed . I know of Andrew Johnson , and Bill Clinton .   {  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-andrew-johnson-impeached  ,   https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-clinton-impeached } 

[nausicaa]

2 hours ago, Marmion said:

Because he wasn't convicted . Trump wasn't the only president in history to be impeached , yet not removed . I know of Andrew Johnson , and Bill Clinton .    https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-andrew-johnson-impeached  ,   https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-clinton-impeached } 

And Nixon was never actually impeached. He resigned first. 

[JMarie]

On 8/30/2020 at 8:54 PM, Marmion said:

Because he wasn't convicted . Trump wasn't the only president in history to be impeached , yet not removed . I know of Andrew Johnson , and Bill Clinton .   {  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-andrew-johnson-impeached  ,   https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-clinton-impeached } 

Trump was, however, the only one to be impeached during his first term.

[Marmion]

3 hours ago, JMarie said:

Trump was, however, the only one to be impeached during his first term.

Let's hope there isn't a second term . 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Marmion

[fraurosena]

6 hours ago, JMarie said:

Trump was, however, the only one to be impeached during his first term.

Trump was also the only one who was undeniably guilty but acquitted for partisan political reasons by a corrupt and treacherous Congressional leader.

[smittykins]

12 hours ago, Marmion said:

Let's hope there isn't a second term . 

Your lips to Rufus’s ears.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, smittykins said:

Your lips to Rufus’s ears.

Better yet, her lips to voter's hearts.

[fraurosena]

Because of course they did.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Lawsuit seeks to kick Kanye West off the ballot in Virginia"

Spoiler

RICHMOND — Two voters who say they were tricked into supporting Kanye West's campaign for president are suing to try to get him kicked off the ballot in Virginia, seeking immediate court intervention as deadlines for printing and mailing absentee ballots are fast approaching.

In a suit filed Tuesday in Richmond Circuit Court, Matthan Wilson and Bryan Wright, both Suffolk residents, said signature-gatherers for West misled them into pledging to serve as electors for the rapper and entrepreneur.

While West’s independent bid is seen as a long shot, some Democrats fear he could become a spoiler candidate in swing states, possibly benefiting President Trump’s reelection effort by drawing Black votes away from Democrat Joe Biden. West has been an outspoken Trump supporter and Republican operatives have assisted his efforts in at least five states.

Wilson and Wright are represented by Marc E. Elias and other attorneys at the nationally prominent Democratic firm Perkins Coie.

The suit names state elections officials as defendants, saying they should not have certified West for the ballot last week. Robert H. Brink, chairman of the elections board, said he could not comment on pending litigation, as did Andrea Gaines, spokeswoman for the state Department of Elections.

Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) filed a motion for an emergency hearing, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, and a brief that highlights “concerning deficiencies” in all 13 elector oaths.

West’s campaign, which has faced accusations of deceptive tactics in other states, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has been removed from the ballot in multiple states because of deficient paperwork.

“Defendants have a legal duty to ensure that only the names of the candidates who meet the requirements of Virginia law are placed on the ballots in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” the suit says.

The suit asks the court to intervene immediately, noting that the state would typically start printing ballots this week and that it must mail absentee ballots by Sept. 19.

Virginia’s Board of Elections found last week that West had met the requirement for 5,000 petition signatures — at least 200 of them from each congressional district — and for 13 electors who pledged to support him.

The suit asserts that at least three of the elector oaths were obtained under false pretenses. It says another eight were invalid because of alleged irregularities related to how the oaths were notarized.

In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Wilson said he was out for a bike ride last month when he was approached by three people who asked if he would like to serve in a statewide pool of electors.

He said he found out that he was named as one of West’s pledged electors from a reporter, about 10 days after the encounter with the signature-gatherers.

After The Post published voters’ accounts of deceptive signature-gathering on Saturday, other Virginia residents got in touch to share similar stories.

Fairfax County resident David Pincus said he was heading into the Giant grocery store at University Mall — just south of George Mason University — a couple of weeks ago when he encountered a couple of men with clipboards. One of them approached him and said they were collecting signatures to ensure that West did not get on the ballot in Virginia. Were the rapper on the ballot, the petition circulator said, he would draw votes from other, more serious candidates.

Pincus said he would be interested in signing to keep West off the ballot. However, when he looked at the petition something didn’t seem right.

“This certainly sounds like it’s a petition for Kanye,” Pincus recalled saying.

The signature collector would not answer his questions and Pincus chose not to sign. Upon arriving home, he said, he looked up the format for the petitions presidential candidates must use to qualify for the ballot. It was identical to what he had seen outside the Giant.

“At that point I am hopping mad,” Pincus said. “They’re fraudulently trying to get people to sign something under false pretenses. It’s maddening. It’s infuriating, actually. You just want elections to be fair.”

Pincus emailed state elections officials on Aug. 19 to report his experience. To date, he said, he has not heard back. Gaines did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pincus’s account, which is not part of the lawsuit.

I hope he is booted off the ballot. I would love to see the people who lied to get people to sign up be prosecuted. Talk about election fraud. Of course, Agent Orange has no problem with this type of fraud.

[GreyhoundFan]

I guess a lot of people chose to not tune in because he says the same crap every single time. Who needs to hear his shit for the 10,000,000th time?

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I guess a lot of people chose to not tune in because he says the same crap every single time. Who needs to hear his shit for the 10,000,000th time?

*Grins and whispers*

He’s not as popular as he thinks he is...
 

Edited September 3, 2020 by fraurosena

[fraurosena]

 

Here's video evidence of Trump committing a felony live on air.

Of course they're now scrambling to clean this mess, and doing a piss-poor job of it. 

Under spoiler for brevity:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Judge orders Kanye West off Virginia ballot"

Spoiler

RICHMOND — A Circuit Court judge ordered state officials to remove independent presidential candidate Kanye West from the Virginia ballot Thursday, granting an emergency order sought by two voters who said they were duped into helping the rapper-entrepreneur qualify for the ballot.

Circuit Court Judge Joi Jeter Taylor made the ruling in a lawsuit filed this week by Matthan Wilson and Bryan Wright, who sued state elections officials for putting West on the ballot but faced their only opposition from West, whose attorney petitioned to intervene in the case.

West’s Roanoke-based attorney, Chris K. Kowalczuk, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the ruling. Arguing against West’s removal in court, Kowalczuk invoked the social justice protests that have swept the nation all summer and noted at least twice that West is Black.

“For the court to remove an African American from the ballot at plaintiff’s request — if anything, this summer has taught us we all need to reexamine the way we look at how disparate treatment of a whole segment of our society for 350 years affects every aspect of our life, whether it’s the police department, whether it’s schools . . . whether it’s sports,” he said. “Today’s subject is elections.”

Justin Sheldon, who represented the two voters, asserted that West’s campaign had “secured the signatures to get on the ballot by fraud.” He warned that if West got away with the alleged dirty tricks, that would “create a blueprint for others” to do the same.

Time is running out for Virginia to make any changes to its presidential ballot. The state would have typically started printing ballots this week ahead of a Sept. 19 deadline to mail absentee ballots, which are in especially high demand this year because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

West, who has been an outspoken supporter of President Trump, has been kicked off the ballot in several other states because of deficient paperwork. Democrats fear that he could act as a spoiler in swing states by drawing Black voters away from Trump’s rival, former vice president Joe Biden.

Virginia’s Board of Elections found last week that West had met the requirement for 5,000 petition signatures — at least 200 of them from each congressional district — and for 13 electors who pledged to support him.

But Taylor found that 11 of the oaths were “obtained by improper, fraudulent and/or misleading means, or are otherwise invalid” because of irregularities related to how they were notarized.

Wilson, one of the 13 electors, was the only witness to testify, appearing in court by way of Zoom. A high school government teacher who lives in Suffolk, he said that three people flagged him down while he was out on a bike ride and asked if he would like to serve in a statewide pool of electors. He said he learned from a reporter more than a week later that by signing the document, he’d actually pledged to serve as an elector for West.

“As a teacher, I assume you have a college degree, correct?” Kowalczuk asked on cross examination, suggesting that his educational background would have made it hard to deceive him.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, named state elections officials as defendants, saying they should not have certified West for the ballot last week. But Kowalczuk, who successfully petitioned to intervene in the case on behalf of West’s campaign, made the only arguments against removal.

The office of Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D), which typically defends state agencies and boards in court, sent a representative but did not weigh in on the substance of the case. Heather Hays Lockerman, the senior assistant attorney general sent to represent the state, only urged the judge to move quickly because of the need to print and mail absentee ballots.

“We need to know today, tomorrow at the absolute latest,” she said.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[Marmion]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

 

Here's video evidence of Trump committing a felony live on air.

Of course they're now scrambling to clean this mess, and doing a piss-poor job of it. 

Under spoiler for brevity:

  Hide contents

 

 

 

My mother actually asked me recently if it were permissible to request an absentee ballot , and then go on to vote in person .  I informed her that it's not .  But actually , I discovered just now that the person would just have to cast a provisional ballot .  

Quote

If you requested an absentee ballot and choose to vote in person on Election Day instead, you will fill out a provisional ballot.

A provisional ballot is one that doesn't count until election officials complete some additional verification. In this case, they would check to make sure you didn't cast two ballots: the absentee and the provisional

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/08/25/election-ohio-early-voting-absentee-ballots-what-to-know/5607846002/  I think that she was concerned that something like this might happen again , so she has decided to simply vote absentee again , just in case .  https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/17/coronavirus-canceled-ohios-primary-heres-how-dewine-and-state-leaders-made-decison/5066319002/  

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a nice idea, but I still think true BTs would ignore any news that showed their master in a bad light: "Standard metrics won’t suffice. Here’s how to measure Trump’s failures so they register with right-wingers."

Spoiler

After a recent column about President Trump’s lackluster economic record, my inbox flooded with furious, incredulous emails from Trump fans. They all knew, in their gut, that their charismatic leader’s achievements — on the economy, public health or any other arena — must be the greatest ever.

Because he’d said so, after all.

Sure, 29 million Americans are claiming unemployment; at least 183,000 have died from the coronavirus; and some 20 percent of small businesses that existed pre-pandemic are closed. But no matter the statistics, no matter the citations from government agencies or private analysts, Trump followers refuse to accept that this president’s legacy might be in any way lacking. Especially compared with his predecessor!

It seemed like any suggestion that Trump’s numbers are unusually bad, no matter how well-documented, was doomed to get written off as fake news. Then, it hit me:

Maybe what’s needed are different units for measuring the Trump administration’s failures and scandals, since the standard metrics aren’t registering. His record should be quantified in scales that a Fox News viewer might be more familiar with: not body counts or dollars, but Benghazis and Solyndras.

For instance, sometimes pundits try to put the 183,000 covid-19 deaths in context by noting that cumulative deaths per capita in the United States are double those of Canada, quintuple those of Germany, 20 times those of Australia, 90 times those of South Korea, and so on.

But let’s be real: Lots of Americans don’t care about international comparisons. So here’s a different way to contextualize this national trauma: The number of lives lost to covid-19 is roughly equal to the death toll of 60 9/11 attacks.

Or, if you’d prefer a more recent ghoulish reference for quantifying mortality, the coronavirus death toll is about 46,000 Benghazis. Somehow, for years, the four tragic deaths in Benghazi consumed the agenda of six GOP-controlled congressional committees and the programming of the most-watched cable news channel. But today, a deadly shock magnified by government ineptitude that has led to 46,000 times as many lives lost “is what it is.”

Similarly, perhaps we could put recent jobs changes into perspective by using much-ballyhooed, Trump-approved benchmarks.

For example, shortly after winning the presidency in 2016, Trump took credit for saving approximately 700 jobs at an Indiana plant run by Carrier. The achievement received oodles of adoring right-wing media coverage, and is still cited by acolytes as evidence of the president’s economic prowess.

Last week alone, though, 1.6 million people newly applied for unemployment benefits. That’s the equivalent of 2,300 Carrier plants.

Then there’s the alleged misuse of taxpayer funds to “pick winners and losers,” a sin right-wing media often attributed to Democrats (especially Barack Obama). There are plenty of Trump-era examples to choose from — subsidies for failing coal plants, say, or farmers harmed by Trump’s own trade wars. But let’s use as our case study the record of a single White House official, Peter Navarro, in bungled contracts related to the pandemic response.

According to congressional investigators, Navarro negotiated a contract that resulted in the government overpaying for ventilators by $500 million. (The contract was canceled Monday.) He also championed a $765 million federal loan to Eastman Kodak to transform it into a drugmaker. (The loan has since unraveled and is the subject of a securities investigation.)

So how many taxpayer dollars was Navarro involved in wasting through these two deals alone? Measured in units that should be familiar to consumers of right-wing news, it’s roughly two Solyndras.

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the national debt will reach about $22 trillion in the coming fiscal year. This means that, for the first time since right after World War II, the debt would eclipse the size of the overall U.S. economy. For all those fair-weather fiscal hawks who long complained of Obama’s profligacy: The debt increase under Trump during a single term is on track to surpass that under Obama across two terms.

Likewise: For each Hillary Clinton private email scandal (one), there are at least eight senior Trump officials who have reportedly used private email to conduct official business. For every Obama-era incident involving supposed retaliation against political opponents, there are literally dozens of instances of Trump trying to use the power of his office to punish perceived enemies, whether through tweets or regulatory actions. Including, this week, a likely illegal order to block federal funding from going to Democratic-led cities.

Die-hard Trump followers have long been fans of alternative math, so perhaps this mental exercise might prove useful. Or maybe they’ll finally admit that any scale of crisis, failure or scandal remains acceptable, so long as their man is in office.

 

[fraurosena]

Normally mild-mannered Biden sounds really angry. 

More under the spoiler:

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

He'll claim an allergy to facts and stupid Dr. Ronny Jackson will concur:

[fraurosena]

OH wow! Biden just said what we all think. He has finally found his stride.

 

He is absolutely on a roll here. 

 

Edited September 4, 2020 by fraurosena
Yep, they merged again, so it's a longer post. Sorry.

[GreyhoundFan]

Good job Pete!

 

Longer clip, very interesting: