Must read: Yesterday, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post listed 50 things that are better since Biden took office. The list is great, so I encourage you to read it all, but here are a few highlights:

• You can ignore Twitter
• The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies
• We have not heard a word from presidential children
• You feel calmer after hearing the president
• The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even
• Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and efficacy of vaccines
• The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin

Enjoy the list.

You remember all those scandals under Obama, right?  You know the ones – Obama’s tan suit scandal, Michelle’s bare armed dress scandal, Obama’s “Religion and Guns” scandal.  Those “scandals” occupied weeks and hundreds of hours of air time in RW media, breathlessly reporting on how so many Bible thumping “Christians” we aghast at how the Obamas could be so tone deaf and insensitive to them and white supremacists.  During the Rein of Trump, all those outrages were explained away when Trump (an actual criminal) did everything from extorting a foreign government to leading an insurrection to take down the federal government.  Now that he’s off to Mar a Lago, the outrage switch has been turned back on.  Here are this week’s “scandals” caused by the Biden presidency:

1. The “Chinese handler” scandal:  Rumors began circulating on Twitter and RW media on inauguration day when talk started about an Asian man who was everywhere Biden went, telling him what to do at every step.  He was immediately dubbed the “Chinese handler” with all kinds of talk about how Biden was being controlled by “Communist China”.  Turns out that this Asian man was not Chinese at all, but of Korean descent, and the head of the Secret Service presidential detail on Inauguration day.  His name is David Cho, and, funny enough, he received the Department of Homeland Security’s exceptional service gold medal. The award was given to him “for tireless and direct participation in high-level negotiations” during the second summit between former President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam.  What a scandal.
2. The Rolex watch scandal: The NYTimes pointed out that, rather than a Timex or other cheap watch, Biden dared to break presidential tradition and wear a Rolex.  Gasp.  #bidenrolex and #bidenwrist starting appearing on Twitter and other social media, shocked that Biden would wear such an elite watch.  Never mind that Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Reagan, and latter day Obama also wore Rolex watches.
3. The Biden wears an earpiece scandal returns:  On Inauguration day the stupidest rumor mongering returned on Twitter, claiming that, because he’s in rapid mental decline, he must wear an earpiece where a handler instructs him how to behave.  There was some video floating around social media where Biden is walking through a door at the Capitol with Dr. Jill when, spotting Marines at the door says off-handedly to her, “Those are good looking Marines”.  That was immediately picked up by the Q-types who interpreted that he said, “Salute the Marines”.  When he didn’t salute, they immediately concluded that he just repeated the instructions in his earpiece but didn’t actually do it, obviously because of his mental decline.  Stupid, right?  Again, Twitter and other social media blew up to the point that the Washington Post Fact Checker debunked it and gave it 4 Pinocchios.

This is only the beginning.  As the Q types have now figured out that Trump actually did play them for chumps, rather than disowning RW bullshit, they have just shifted back to old, pre-Trump bullshit.  If it’s anti-Dem, they just assume it must be right.  And here we go again, round and round to nowhere.

The end of our long national nightmare.  Now the work begins.

Today, the Washington Post published an article about an “undecided voter” from Indiana named Mike Baker.  Baker supposedly watched both conventions yet still can’t make up his mind who who is the best candidate for president.  My first thought on reading this is that Baker is either a closet Trumpist too ashamed to just admit it, or just simply a dumbass.  In the article, Baker fretted over Trump’s personality; he had fretted so much over that key feature that he even sat out the 2016 election, saying that he couldn’t have Trump as a guest in his house.  Okayyyyy….

Baker went on to say that his number one concern, though, was the economy and that he liked Trump’s “pro business” policies.  It was then that I realized that Baker doesn’t understand the economy, not in the slightest, since the economy is in the ditch and has been whipsawed since Trump’s “biggest crowd EVER”  inauguration day up until about 5 minutes ago.  Unemployment exploded this spring to 22 million people, and still is hovering at 13 million.  By all measures that affect American workers, the economy has collapsed.

Fretting about Biden, Baker said, “Trump is defining Biden, but I sort of need to hear Biden define Biden, or at least the Democratic Party to define Biden. It’s got to be more than [Trump] is the worst person on Earth.”  My answer to that is this: When you were watching the Democratic Convention, you must have had your head up your ass looking out through your navel.  The convention carefully laid out Biden’s and the Dems goals and policies.  Oh, and there’s that little detail that Joe Biden has been in the public eye for half a century.  If you don’t know his polices, you’re not paying the slightest bit of attention.

Mike, you’re worried about Turmp’s “personality”?  How about the fact that he’s a fucking felon and corrupting the entire government while destroying centuries long alliances and America’s standing among the entire global community?  How about the fact that he is sabotaging the Post Office, extorted a foreign government, and his lying in a continuous stream about the US voting system simply to steal the next election?  How about the fact that he just used the White House, OUR White House, as a political prop for his cheesy display of corruption and narcissistic obsession?  How about the fact that he’s already said that he’s not going to accept the decision of the voters in November if he loses?

If a voter is “undecided” now, that person is either lying or truly a dumbass.  I’ll let you decide.

One more comment: I find it hard to believe that the Washington Post actually published an interview this stupid.  They had to look really hard to find someone willing to make himself look like an idiot in a national newspaper.  C’mon, folks, you can do better than this.

Trump and Giuliani are close to succeeding in permanently damaging Joe Biden through their illegal extortion scheme to smear him.  Add that to attacks from the left who support zero chance presidential candidates, and that makes for an almost insurmountable task for Biden to take the nomination.  It’s a shame, and it’s unfair, but Biden has a real problem.  Similar to Hillary’s baggage in 2016, Biden has been saddled with a “scandal” that’s not a scandal at all.  The problem?  It doesn’t matter if it’s true; the damage is done.  If Biden doesn’t bounce back by double digits in Nevada and South Carolina, it’s going to be over.

So, who can beat Trump in November?  It’s clearly none of the top four Dem candidates, and that has been apparent for months.  Trump is a vicious campaigner and slanderer, and I can’t see ANY of the primary leaders with enough fortitude or toughness to top him.  There’s only one out there, and that’s Bloomberg.  An ACTUAL billionaire, Bloomberg has the resources on top of NY toughness.  He’s already hitting Trump where it hurts insulting him about his silly hairdo, heavy makeup, and obesity.  He’s a street fighter, and an objective numbers guy.  He’s already risen to third in the latest Quinnipiac poll and he’s not even on the early states’ ballots.  Bloomberg won’t take any shit off of Trump, AND will attract those he needs to win – independents, moderate Republicans, and suburban women, the same coalition Barack Obama so successfully assembled in 2008 and 2012, and the one the Dems rode to victory in 2018.  It’s a winning combination.  Tom Friedman made the perfect case for Bloomberg in today’s NY Times.  You can read that here.

And before you say it, I know some of you hate me for my opinions on this election and the last.  I’ve been excoriated for those opinions and some of you have even accused me of misogyny and worse because I didn’t support Hillary, Harris, Klobuchar, or Warren.  I’m about winning.  Period.  As I’ve said before, all policies are secondary in this election.  There is one issue and one issue only in 2020 – beating Trump.  I’m not going to waste even one second arguing over healthcare plans, student loans, war fighting, or even climate change.  Those policy questions are important, critical even.  But THIS is not the year for those discussions.  As Friedman noted, another four Trump years will destroy our country.  His corruption is total, and his control over the Senate, the Judiciary, and the DOJ is nothing short of shocking.  Trump must be beaten and beaten badly  to run him out of office.  Bloomberg is our last, best chance if (when) Biden stumbles; the remaining candidates simply are not.  I know you hate that, but it is what it is.

Remember during the 2012 and 2016 elections when Republicans admitted (on television) that their strict voter ID laws were not about fictional “voter fraud”, but about suppressing Democratic voter turnout?  Well, in 2020, it’s happened again.  This time, right-winger, Joni Ersnt of Iowa, said (on television) that the Iowa caucuses were coming up and mused about how smearing Joe Biden using the Trumped up Ukraine conspiracy was going to hurt him by keeping people from caucusing for him.

The shocking thing about how conservatives talk is that they say this crappola so much amongst themselves that they blurt it out are the worst time – for them.  The jig is up.  Not only was Trump trying to smear Biden with a fake conspiracy theory and associated fake investigations, the GOP is continuing that strategy by saying “Biden” as much as possible during the trial about TRUMP.