This Week in Trumpland
The latest:
The birthers are back, and this time with a vengeance. Trump repeated the lie that Kamala Harris was not born in the US from the podium in the White House briefing room.
Trump’s goon, Louis DeJoy, continues his dismantling of the Post Office, happy to inconvenience 300 million Americans and all businesses for his boss’s benefit. After the uproar, today he put out a letter acknowledging “unintended consequences” for his actions. Translation: “Exactly what Trump wanted.” DeJoy’s letter is laughable since, just yesterday…
Trump admitted he was withholding funds from the Post Office to make it harder for Americans to vote. The one feature of Trump’s presidency is that he really doesn’t do anything to hide his criminality and corruption. He just does it and admits it on national television. Trumpists believe, “He’s just saying it like it is.”
At the same time, he and Melania applied for vote by mail ballots in Florida. Yeah. They really did that.
Presidency by Chaos continues as the invertebrates in the Senate started their 6 week Labor Day vacation after doing diddly squat for suffering Americans. We’re truly living in a post democracy country.
Ballot Box Ballet
EDIT: Texas: The Texas Supreme Court ruled last week that being afraid of contracting the coronavirus alone is not a “disability” and therefore all self-identified able-bodied people living in the state must gather at a polling location. HOWEVER, Texas voters are still able to self-identify as disabled without having to produce evidence.
So in essence, a wash.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/501577-heres-where-your-state-stands-on-mail-in-voting
1The Kamala Birther slander is a bit more nuanced – the claim is that although she was born in the US, it doesn’t count because her parents might have been here on student visas. Pity that’s not how it currently works – but if the Roberts Court gets its teeth into it, who knows?
2Could we just call him ‘Mr Golden Showers’
3As one commenter said ‘His mother was an immigrant,he is a first generation child of an immigrant,his wife is an immigrant
4his 1st wife is an immigrant, of his 5 children 4are 1st generation children of immigrants.
All that in one week.
5Can you imagine the damage over another four years, another 208 weeks, without giving a whit about re-election?
I have heard some states came up with the idea for managing mail in ballots. They are setting up lock boxes under the states’ division of taxation laws where voters deposit their ballots in a lock box that resembles the old drop off post office boxes we used to see on the streets where we deposited mail.
6Then locked and picked up by the states’ election staffers who then can count them as the ballots come in.
If enough of these lock boxes were placed all over towns and cities, that solves the problem of Trump sabotaging the USPS. This is a far more direct way of handling mail in ballots and it can only be picked up the the states’ election staffers and delivered directly to the state.
@mega – All he needs to do is trim a few percentage points off the total. Many vote by mail people won’t go to the trouble to find a box and drop off. Trump wins. If we don’t get this Post Office problem fixed, the election is in peril.
7El Jefe @ 7 The Dems seem to do nothing except voice exasperation, there’s no operative planning that I can see. I agree but we need to try every counter to the interference. Probably should have been thinking about this months ago.
8There are eleven drop boxes for ballots in Harris County; we have 2.5mil voters, will they be enough now that we have been warned off the USPS?
9@ 8 Make more.
10@mega – The Dems have been ringing the alarm bells for months, introduced legislation, called hearings. McConnell blocks everything.
11Re “admitted he was withholding finds…”
He is not even trying to hide.
“Trump does not care if he gets caught. He cares if he is punished.” — Sarah Kendzior, scholar on authoritarianism
12El Jefe@11, exactly: McConnell blocks everything. It doesn’t matter what the House or his constituents or anybody else says: McConnell blocks everything. He is right now the most dangerous man in the world. My hopes are that he will go down in flames with his favorite lickspittle. I’d be okay with Covid-19 taking them both out.
Joan @4, we need a good reporter to ask him about that….
13Joan, all those immigrants are white, so no problem.
14Oops my typo: meant Re “admitted he was withholding funds…”
>He is not even trying to hide.
>“Trump does not care if he gets caught. He cares if he is punished.” — Sarah Kendzior, scholar on authoritarianism
15RE: “all those immigrants are white, so no problem.”
It seems education and one’s peers plays into this category.
“new Pew Research national poll:
whites without college degree
Trump 64%, Biden 34%
everyone else
Biden 68%, Trump 30%
https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1294270279062036480
16Consider the following:
1) Trump’s anti-immigration statements and policies
2) Through his inaction he allowed COVID-19 to run rampant through the population, disproportionately affecting minorities and the poor
3) He is in the process of dismantling the operational capability of the Post Office, and the timely sorting and delivery of mail. Many people receive their medications, like insulin through the mail, a requirement of their insurance coverage (lower cost). If prescriptions are late, some Americans could die.
Is Trump our first eugenics President?
17One more time: The Postal Workers Union needs to call for a nationwide strike for restoration of overtime, the return of mail sorters removed by on DeJoy’s orders, and the removal of DeJoy himself, NOW, so we can get the Post Office back in business by November.
Is DeJoy’s conduct actually illegal? If so (how could it not be?), is it in court yet? Time is extremely short.
18The republicans have been trying to get shed of the postal service for years. But I have never seen or heard a thing about what happens to rural delivery when the USPS is privatized. How much would sending and receiving a letter cost? Do they get weekly or daily or no delivery out in the country? I have heard the suggestion about 5 day a week delivery, and/or everyone picking up their own mail. The storage problems would be huge, so that was never seriously considered. Is there a plan?
DeJoy has so many conflicts of interest it is and boggling.
19Haven’t pulled the source myself but read an interesting article referencing a Reddit group. The article was wondering if there would be bread riots. Reddit group apparently has May contributors writing about their dire straits, suicide thoughts.
20And this is the greatest country on earth? I remember when it was…
thatotherjean#18 – my best guess is if they struck ,they’d get the Reaganesque treatment the air traffic controllers got…fired. And an even bigger mess than we have now.
I’m out in the county. Without overtime, every now and then when the volume is heavy we get no mail. And everyone has noticed it’s slower. An article today pointed out that sorting machines are being removed from many centralized sorting centers right now…so sorting will be increasingly done by hand (again, without overtime).
DeJoy’s wife (Aldona Wos) was appointed as head of the Department of Health and Human Services during a GOP administration in North Carolina a few years back. She ‘took no salary’ – but gave out no-bid contracts to her pals and ‘cut costs’ (NOT!!), and things in that department (child protection, food stamps, medicaid…) pretty much fell apart. That family is like a plague of locusts…my apologies to locusts everywhere.
21tRump reminds me of a 4 year old running amok in the grocery store – eating grapes, bouncing apples on the floor, poking holes in the meat packages, pulling cereal boxes off the shelves, pushing carts into little old ladies, and stuffing candy bars in his pockets. Meanwhile, on-lookers wonder where the parents are. (Moscow Mitch et al).
The GOP sent a delegation to tell Nixon that it was time to pack his bags and get out of town. It worked. They now have a responsibility to gain control over their monster to preserve our democracy and protect Americans from death and economic destruction. I am just disgusted.
22Schismatics like Democrats love to clutch their pearls.
Hating on Hilary brought us Trump.
Get it together.
Vote Blue.
23Watching the nightly news tonight was nauseating. Trumpf’s 2015 playbook of birtherism with help of foreign (russian) internet posts and more news on the destruction of the USPS right in front of our eyes. How handy Moscow Mitch sent his soldiers home through September so they wouldn’t have to face the press about all of this. Voters need to be the rebellion that ends all of this bullshit.
24Karen @#22: perfect description of donnie.
Zerlina Maxwell filled in for Chris Hayes last night. She made the argument that white people never have “birtherism” thrown at them, that it’s only people of color. Therefore we should ditch the term birtherism and just call it racism.
25It’s not just sorting machines. Now they’re taking away mailboxes. The only thing left is to confiscate our black and blue pens.
26Hannah says:
“birtherism” thrown at them… only people of color.
I find it suspicious when white people celebrate St Patricks Day (Ireland), Octoberfest (Germany), and Columbus Day (Italy). Why do they refuse to assimilate into our nation like other Americans? Isn’t the 4th of July, Labor Day & President’s Day good enough for them? If they want to commemorate the customs and observances of their homeland, why don’t they just go back…
27And…the orange thing asks for a mail-in ballot for his ‘residence’ that apparently is not a true residence, aka the ‘Southern White’ house as Mar-a-Lago is taxed as a private club and not a private residence. See Lawyers, Guns & Money
28Damn his eyes and Louis DeJoy, the Postmaster General, the guy who stole my grandson’s graduation greeting card with $20 of my Social Security money in it! Gues what! You can’t write a letter to DeJoy. All mail goes to the Consumer Relations person. May they all be rode out of town on November 4th!
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