Remember all the hubbub about exactly who donated the money spent on the Trump inauguration?  They raised $107 million but we are still not exactly sure where it came from.

“… that includes a donation of $25,000 that appeared to have been made in the name of Katherine Johnson, a former NASA mathematician who was a character in the biopic ‘Hidden Figures.’ The listing included an address at NASA headquarters, from which Johnson has been retired for decades. After the donation was first reported by the Intercept, Johnson’s family quickly denied that Johnson had ever made such a donation.”

Yeah, somebody was being cute, huh?

The shaking-my-head part is that they don’t have to tell how they spent the money, only where they got it.  That’s kinda junior high school stuff.

They promised to fix it but they never did.  Mainly because they weren’t ask to. The FEC’s Reports Analysis Division, which is supposed to ensure the accuracy of all reports filed with the FEC, never asked the inaugural committee to make corrections.

Wanna know why?

Yeah, because “a top Federal Election Commission official, whose division regulates campaign cash, has shown support for President Trump and has close ties to his 2016 campaign attorney, Don McGahn. Experts said the actions raise questions about impartiality.”

How do they find each other?  Did they bring a ship of fools up the Potomac River and unload them on Capitol Hill?  In this case, they literally made fun of honest people who were trying to play by the rules.  In emails. They sent emails to each other name-calling honest people.

Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.

Many of us believe Trump doesn’t care whether you live or die.  There is ample evidence of that from his behavior over the years, but was in plain view last night at Eppley Airfield outside of Omaha, Nebraska.  To use Air Force One as his backdrop, he had thousands of supporters bussed 4 miles to a remote area on the airport.  He held said rally, playing all of his Fat Elvis hits, then boarded his plane and was gone.

Thousands of his supporters were then left stranded out on the airfield, with few buses taking people back.  Oh, and it was 30 degrees last night.  Emergency medical teams were called and were treating people for hypothermia.  At least 7 people remain hospitalized this morning.

Two lessons here: 1) He really doesn’t care if you live or die; 2) Incompetence pervades every aspect of Trumpland.  They can’t even get buses right.

I just heard that NBC News moved Texas from “leans red” to “toss up.”

And Michael Bloomberg is making good on his promise.

Beto O’Rourke’s Texas Organizing Project was been amazing.  They swoop in like locusts and squeeze every Democratic vote out of every neighborhood.  I hope some of the Bloomberg Money goes to them.

My numbers on early voting shows us winning my county by five points.  That’s enormous.

And … news.

Sid Miller, our Jesus-Lovin’ Ag Commissioner and Premier Trumpian, sent this notice to his supporters.

Bloodbath, I tell you, Blood Freaking Bath.

The New York Times reports that Putin is mandating mask wearing during Russia’s new wave of corona virus.

The directive was unusual because President Vladimir V. Putin has resisted taking any nationwide measures to stop the virus’s spread in recent months, delegating the battle to regional leaders. And after a nationwide lockdown in April and May caused widespread economic pain, officials have been loath to order any new business closures, even as the infection rate reached new heights in recent weeks.

Sound familiar?

And right in line with Putin, Texas’ own governor, Greg Abbott, is ordering 1,000 Texas Army National Guard troops to the polls in five major Democratic strongholds in Texas on election day.  The purpose is either to suppress votes or start trouble.  They are just trying to make it safe for the bad boys to start fires and then run pointing fingers at minorities.

All five of these cities have excellent sheriff departments who are perfectly capable of handling any problems.  People are voting, you don’t need a damn army.  I thought the whole purpose of voting was the peaceful transfer of power.  Apparently, not in Texas.

Nick Caraway comes by for a say …

Last night I got into one of those long and drawn out arguments on the twitter machine. It was fairly benign as far as those go. It started off with someone going out the deep end (or around the bin) on the whole Hunter Biden nonsense that has been circulating in conservative news circles. 

Yeah, I know. I should have known better. The difficulty with arguing politics these days is that you are operating with two sets of facts. There are the facts from the mainstream media and then there are the facts from whatever ideological bubble the individual exists in. 

So, I calmly laid out the facts from mainstream media sources. We don’t know that the laptop is his. He lives half way across the country from where the laptop was dropped off. I didn’t even go into the inconsistencies in the story concerning the computer itself. 

It is the kind of stuff you would find in the National Enquirer or Weekly World News. Of course, this fact is a deep dive into the mind of a conspiracy theorists. See, the mainstream media is in on it. Facebook and Twitter are in on it. That’s why they refuse to publish it. It couldn’t possibly be for any other reason.

Let’s say it’s all true. Let’s say that Joe Biden used his influence to get his son a job at Burisma. Let’s say he knew about Hunter’s attempts to use the family name to make business deals with China. Let’s say his son is a pedophile. Let’s say all of these things are true. What does it really matter?

The first thing we would note is that Hunter is not running. Hunter might indeed be a son of a you know what. Like I told the guy coming into the conversation. I’ll never vote for him. Some of that would fall on Joe though. Using his influence for his kid is wrong. In a normal election it might be a big deal if you could prove it.

We aren’t dealing with a normal election. We have a president that has done all of those things and more. More importantly, he’s killed nearly 250,000 Americans. He is both corrupt and incompetent. That’s a magical combination folks.

So, your tales of standard corruption just aren’t going to fly. The point that they aren’t true is really immaterial. You cannot win an election by convincing us that Joe Biden is a bad guy. There is no way you can drag him down that far. You have to find some way to lift yourself up and you just can’t do that. Everyone knows what you are by now.

We’ve been through a year of darkness, so I found an upside to Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation:  You don’t have to set your clock back this weekend.  She’s doing that for us.

Except like years and years and years backward.

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