I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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ChiSandy--Lots.....and very interesting and informative !
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Life sucks lately...Thanksgiving was muted, Xmas looks to be not much better, and Covid has a field day wherever a mask slips, an un-masked cough explodes, or an unmasked kiss between strangers goes totally French.....
But wouldn't it be nice if Georgia voters, heeding Donald Trump's oh-so-often spewed shouts and tweets regarding the general election, thought to themselves, "Hmm, Donald's pretty smart. If HE says the election was rigged, it was RIGGED! Votes meant for HIM went to Biden!!! Ugh!! If votes for the GOP candidates here should all end up going to the Democratic contenders, shoot, I'd be better off NOT voting! I don't want to give them a leg up--or even a middle finger! Hah-hah-hah!"
Yeah: Hah-hah-hah!
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Sometimes tramp stamps are just but ugly and this one approaches vomit inducing territory. Glad I don't have to see it in person. Yuck.
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Why Republicans still refuse to accept Trump's defeat
Opinion by Dean Obeidallah, CNN.com, Sun December 6, 2020
It's been over a month since Donald Trump was soundly defeated in the 2020 election. Since then, Trump has had numerous days in court to prove his baseless claims of voter fraud or other voter irregularities -- yet he has lost again and again.
The Trump-requested recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia have been completed and failed to change the election results. Add to that, Trump's own notoriously loyal Attorney General Bill Barr announced last week that the Department of Justice had not found election fraud "on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election."
Yet on Saturday, The Washington Post reported that of the 249 Republicans in the House and the Senate, only 27 acknowledged Joe Biden won the election.
More alarmingly, when these same Republicans were asked if they would accept Biden as the "legitimate" winner of the election if (as expected) he's awarded enough electoral votes to become the next President, only 32 said yes; 215 gave no answer or were non-committal. (One Republican Congressman, Arizona's Paul A. Gosar, has said he would never accept Biden as the legitimately elected President.)
The traditional narrative during the Trump presidency is that GOP-elected officials -- especially members of Congress -- don't vocally denounce Donald Trump when he does something that should be condemned because they fear him and his base. Some continue to suggest that's the reason why Republicans remain silent now in the face of Trump's un-American efforts to overturn the election.
It's time that narrative be retired and replaced by what appears to be far more accurate: GOP members of Congress are not silent because they fear Trump, they are silent because they agree with him.
Full article at: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/06/opinions/trump-loss-republicans-authoritarianism-obeidallah/index.html
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Sorry but I find the Canadian definition meme offensive. It is a generality about Americans and that is the root of the offense. I am neither gun toting nor uninsured and proud to be an American.
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The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned it enables a person to hold his or her head high, to claim the future for him or herself and not to abandon it to the enemy. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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While I'm not a huge fan of tattoos, I can deal with some. I think the person with the artwork on his back ( where he doesn't have to see it much, and if fortunate not too many others too often ) is horrid. Way too bold just for starters to the point it seems like a body defacement. Tends to highlight flab so just more ways for me to be critical although some of that could be the belt I guess. I admit that Trump is so UGLY to me that I start out with a big bias and that makes it worse.
As long as I'm on the subject, Paul Gosar is certifiable and anyone who thinks or talks like he does is too. I find it upsetting because this has been looked at up and down, inside and out, over and over and fraud, cheating, suppressions, screwing with the postal service, were all things that came from the other side. There was as Bill Barr stated -- nothing that would HELP Trump to be found, because it simply wasn't there period. Gosar is NOT being reasonable in the least as he ( along with too many others ) is just denying common sense. If they are un-happy Trump lost and wanted to express that, okay. Denying honest democratic election is NOT okay.
I will hope that some of these people regain their senses to some degree, as much as they can, after Trump takes his leave of office. I read where he plans to try and keep some, if not all of his ugly orange foot in the door. That said, I do think investigations and SDNY and other entities will be looking for Trump for a variety of reasons and plenty of them being for prosecution, along with calling in loans etc. I hope that means that Trump will be far too busy with depositions and finding ways to pay what he owes and he won't be able to keep the rally on for these yo-yo's who think they may need him.
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Better known as "don't forget my pardon", Dad.
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Oh how I love the sound of “safe harbor" day.
“Even some members of the Trump administration have begun to acknowledge the inevitable. On Monday, Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic adviser, praised Biden's pick of Janet Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve.“
“White House communications director Alyssa Farrah announced last week that she was resigning her position "to pursue new opportunities."Even Kayleigh McEnany appeared to admit Biden and Harris won by mentioning if Dems win both GA sente seats, Harris would be casting the tie-breaker vote
As 'safe harbor' day arrives, reality sets in for Trump supporters
David Knowles
December 7, 2020, 4:09 pm
As the lumbering process of American democracy moves forward, any lingering illusions that Donald Trump has a chance of a second term as president are about to evaporate, and many of his own staffers and supporters are beginning to acknowledge it.
Tuesday marks the arrival of "safe harbor" day, the deadline set by federal law for states to resolve challenges to election results, locking in the 538 electors who will meet in their state capitols to vote on Dec. 14. All of the battleground states contested by the Trump campaign — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia — have certified results showing Joe Biden as the winner.
The final step before Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20 is for Congress to meet on Jan. 6 to receive the Electoral College votes and declare a winner. Although Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., has said he plans to challenge Biden's victory, the process is basically a formality.
In a long-shot effort to persuade Republican state lawmakers to ignore the poll results and appoint electors who would support Trump anyway, the president's campaign mounted a multistate search for evidence that the election results were tainted by fraud and errors. But pretty much all it turned up were conspiracy theories and hearsay accounts by poll workers and voters who seemed not to understand what they claimed to have seen.
While Trump's legal team presented its accusations of fraud to panels of Republican state lawmakers, it largely steered clear of making such claims in actual courtrooms, where there are consequences for raising false or bad-faith arguments. The cases that have been argued in court haven't gone well for the president and his allies. On Monday, two more federal judges ruled against Trump loyalist Sidney ("The Kraken") Powell, who sought to have the certification of votes in Michigan and Georgia tossed out. The legal strategy has proved a redundant and futile bid to convince judges to simply overturn the will of the voters.
Even in the face of more than 40 courtroom defeats, Trump continued on Monday to insist he had actually defeated Biden.
"In politics, I won two, so I'm 2-0," Trump said at a White House ceremony honoring wrestler Dan Gable. "That's pretty good, too. We'll see how that turns out."
But with Trump's lead lawyer Rudy Giuliani hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19 and the courtroom losses continuing to pile up, it is clear that "safe harbor" day will provide nothing of the sort for the 45th president.
Absent some as-yet-undiscovered legal lifeline, finalizing the slates of electors pledged to support the winner of their respective states, the writing on the wall for Trump and his supporters is clear.
The tally shows that Biden won states and districts accounting for 306 Electoral College votes to 232 for Trump — coincidentally, the identical margin by which Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, a result he has described as a "landslide."
Even some members of the Trump administration have begun to acknowledge the inevitable. On Monday, Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic adviser, praised Biden's pick of Janet Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve.
"She has very sensible views on the economy," Kudlow told the Washington Post's Robert Costa.
Kudlow also sent a post-election note of congratulations to Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein.
While Kudlow's is the most explicit acknowledgment to date from a member of the administration that Biden will be the 46th president, there are other signs that the race is finally over.
White House communications director Alyssa Farrah announced last week that she was resigning her position "to pursue new opportunities."
Though Trump spent his weekend promoting falsehoods about the results in Georgia and other states, giving voters the impression that he still may be heading for reelection, his own press secretary acknowledged that was not the case.
In a Sunday interview with Fox News, Kayleigh McEnany made clear that if Democrats won two runoff elections for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, the GOP would lose control of the chamber.
"Right now, if we lose these two Senate seats, guess who's casting the deciding vote in this country for our government? It will be [Vice President-elect] Kamala Harris," she said.
The only way this could be true, of course, is if Biden and Harris were in fact the winners.
While still rarely acknowledged openly by most members of the administration, Trump's loss will ultimately come as no surprise to most Washington Republicans.
In an interview last week, former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway edged even closer to the truth.
"If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail," Conway told the 19th. "I assume the electors will certify that and it will be official. We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do."
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Dean Obeidallah: Trump loves Rep. Mo Brooks' election objection. But Congress can't overturn Biden's win.
Dec. 4, 2020
GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama wants to scare the more than 80 million Americans who voted for President-elect Joe Biden into thinking that there is a chance he and other Republicans in Congress could overturn the 2020 election results. To this end, Brooks stated Wednesday that he's planning to challenge the Electoral College votes when they are reviewed by Congress on Jan. 6. As Brooks put it (without any evidence): "This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud and election theft measures." Brooks also shared he's actively seeking to recruit additional GOP members of Congress to join his efforts to prevent Biden from becoming the 46th president because as he sees it, "Donald Trump won the Electoral College by a significant margin."
Brooks' words have raised alarm bells with progressives, with my SiriusXM radio Wednesday night getting a flood of concerned listener calls.
Brooks' words have raised alarm bells with progressives, with my SiriusXM radio Wednesday night getting a flood of concerned listener calls. And if I wasn't familiar with the law that controls the counting of electoral votes, I, too, might be concerned. But here's the bottom line: Brooks' partisan, fevered dream isn't going to happen. And on some level, we should thank Brooks for raising this issue now, well ahead of the Jan. 6 date when a joint session of Congress counts the electoral votes. (While nothing is technically impossible, the only way for Brooks to be successful would be for House Democrats to join him in rejecting the electoral votes — and that ain't happening.
Biden is projected to win 306 electoral votes, well over the 270 required to become the next president. The Electoral College formally votes Dec. 14, and experts agree "faithless" electors will not overturn the election. Then, pursuant to federal law, a joint session of Congress will be held Jan. 6 to count and accept these electoral votes.
If during that session, Brooks were able to raise objections and convince enough members of both the Senate and the House to toss out electoral votes in a few key battleground states, then Biden could fall below the 270 vote threshold.
What happens then, per the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is that the House of Representatives would select our next president. This would actually be bad news for Democrats, even though they technically control the House. The 12th Amendment dictates that each state gets one vote for president, and with the GOP controlling 26 state delegations, bingo, you have Trump as president again.
But while a fun constitutional thought experiment, in reality, it doesn't matter. The Electoral Count Act provides that when Congress holds its joint session to review duly certified electoral votes Jan. 6, if one member from both the House and the Senate object — in writing — to state electoral counts, it will trigger a stoppage in the count. Then the House and the Senate will separately consider the objection — for up to two hours.
And here's where Brooks' fantasy gets a bucket of cold water tossed on it. To reject the electoral votes from any state, both the House and the Senate must agree to do so. As the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service explains, "Both houses must vote separately to agree to the objection. Otherwise, the objection fails."
Thankfully, this vote is not by state delegation. Since the Democrats control the House, Brooks' pipe dream comes to an end.
Now to be fair — which is very unlike me — I will note that the last time there was a formal objection like this was after the 2004 election, in which George W. Bush was re-elected, defeating John Kerry. (This was only the second formal challenge, per the Congressional Research Service.) At that time, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with several House Democratic members objected to the count in Ohio, alleging there had been widespread voter "irregularities."
The objection was voted down 74 to 1 in the Senate and 267 to 31 in the House, meaning Ohio's electoral votes were counted. But comments from Republicans 16 years ago represent a complete reversal from what we are seeing now. At the time, House GOP majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas slammed the Democrats' objection in Ohio as the shameful actions of conspiracy theorists he dubbed the party's "X-Files" wing. Other Republican House members criticized Democrats for only wanting "to gripe about counts, recounts, and recounts of recounts," urging them to "get over it."
Ahhh, politics. While GOP Senate leaders currently have signaled little to no enthusiasm for Brooks' plan, if Trump starts lobbying them, that could change. Brooks may very well be able to enlist one GOP senator — or even more than one — to join Jan. 6, given that such grandstanding will ingratiate them with Trump's base. This will likely cause a several-hour delay in the process. But that's all it will be — one final delay. So let the GOP have their little political theater if it makes them feel better about Trump's loss. Come Inauguration Day, Trump will be yelling at TV screens in Mar-a-Lago, and Joe Biden will be sitting behind the Resolute Desk.
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Oh, s**t--Bob came home early, as his office is now closed because two staffers are quarantining. One tested negative, the other--who has a positive family member--is awaiting test results. He last saw the former five days ago and the latter a week ago. Still.....
And now he might not get the Pfizer vaccine at all: after IL's initial shipment of 109,000 doses (out of the Federal gov't's 110 million), Pfizer won't ship any more to the U.S. till at least June--because the Uncle Scam administration declined to purchase more or even contract for an option to do so. So now, assuming he's not considered "front-line" enough as a health worker (despite multiple encounters with pre-symptomatic COVID+ patients), he will have to wait for the Moderna vaccine...or (if he can avoid getting sick till then) till June for Pfizer
I am seething. The number of doctors & nurses infected has DOUBLED in just the past week.
And y'know, I've always thought that internment camps for American citizens--such as those to which Americans of Japanese descent were exiled during WWII--were an atrocity. Now I believe that they were 70 years premature, and for the wrong inhabitants. I would love to see those caught violating COVID safety protocols--the "maskholes" who party like crazy and crowd together in bars & restaurants and illegal indoor worship services--rounded up and interned so they can infect only each other and nobody else (especially not health workers, and essential workers whose economic circumstance makes social distancing at home impossible).
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Hear, hear Sandy. I was in a store the other day when a woman entered with no mask. The manager told her the store policy she was to wear a mask and she stated she had none and saw no reason to wear one since "it wouldn't work anyhow". The manager told her he would provide one and that she must wear it if she wanted to stay in the store since everyone else was wearing a mask to protect themselves and others. She was muttering as she put on the mask and continued talking to herself. I was at the check out counter so I did not hear the rest of her spiel but my DB has been ill with Covid for nearly a month now, has underlying lung issues (pulmonary fibrosis R/T psoriatic arthritis) and is barely able to walk from his foyer to the back of the house twice a day (not a great distance). He was on steroids and antibiotics and is now also dealing with thrush in his mouth and esophagus. He is so SOB on the phone that it is difficult to hear him let alone understand him between the wheezes. My DSIL is very concerned about what residual sequelae will mean as to his ability to be independent once again. He was very active prior to this and now he is also dealing with swelling in his left leg but refuses to go to the hospital because he doesn't want to be admitted. My DSIL is concerned about phlebitis as am I.
So I am all for those who want to risk their lives to be interned with those with like minds. My DB took precautions, seldom left the house and was careful when he did, but still managed to become infected. I am hoping that Bob will be a candidate for the vaccine in the first tier. We need to protect our health care workers so they are there when we need them.
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That would be my neighbors, Sandy. We are having a huge surge here in Los Angeles and my idiot neighbors decided to have a party with about 40 people yesterday afternoon. I was livid. How dare they?
I normally have a friendly-ish relationship with them. They are Vietnamese, with four or five related family groups living on the large property. The only issue I normally have them is that they sit outside 18 plus hours a day, talking and smoking. I can't open the windows on that side of my house.
But I lost it yesterday. I yelled over the fence: "Ard you frigging kidding me? A party in the middle of a raging Pandemic? Who the hell does that? Selfish people like you are the reason we keep having to shut down."
It got real quiet, real fast. All the cars took off within five minutes. I didn't hear another peep out of them all afternoon. Urghhh. I'm still fuming.
Rant over.
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It is sad that some people are so cavalier about wearing masks. And having large gatherings. My sister informed me she plans to have her usual extended-family Christmas Eve get-together. Uh, dh and I won't be attending. She and another sister are working at the craft store of a family friend who will also be at her house Christmas Eve. They are experiencing record sales, working in close quarters together and with the public. One brother manages a hospital cafeteria. And who knows who all the other relatives have been around. Cases are surging in our county. It was as low as 16 in August, now about 1,050 active cases . Plus hospitalizations and some deaths. Sister seems to think nothing about the fact I take oral chemo and am living with metastatic breast cancer. Thinks nothing of it!
Betrayal, I’m so sad to hear about your brother. I hope he will be able to find his way out of the clutches of Covid.
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I hope Bob is okay & also your DB, Betrayal.
Good for you, Trish!
'Covidiots' is about the best term I've heard for people who deny facts because it doesn't fit in with how they want to live. If they only harmed themselves, I could care less, but that is not how it works with this diease.
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Prayers for your DB, Betrayal. May he recover...and enjoy vengeance (albeit vicariously).
Bob's office is open only for telephone "visits." The staffer who tested negative is in the clear: she believes her exposure was 10 days ago, was tested Sat., and got her results today. The other staffer, awaiting results, allowed her college-student kids to come home for Thanksgiving. I certainly hope my son & his girlfriend finally get the common sense to cancel their driving trip to Houston to see her folks over Christmas week. They may be safe down there--the family rented a 2-acre spread with separate cabins for all 4 couples--but I'm terrified they'll be exposed on the road.
Trish, five more minutes and I'd have reported your neighbors. A similarly shameful situation occurred in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago today. The flagship location of a beloved Swedish restaurant was "outed" by a passerby yesterday who saw people--albeit masked and physically distanced--being served and eating indoors (which has been illegal in Chicago for nearly a month). Turns out there was a heaping helping of hypocrisy being served up as well: the owner is none other than a popular alderman who has been a voice for the surrounding LGBTQ community. His mea culpa was that it was an "error in judgment" to allow "a few regulars" to dine indoors. I hope he gets fined six ways from Sunday, even though I wholeheartedly approve of his politics and activism. (The other branch of the restaurant is in my neighborhood--and has been doing only takeout for nearly two months now. Its hours have always ended daily at 3pm, and it never did much patio dining business--given the alternatives in the neighborhood, which had friendlier dining hours--and the (sometimes hostile) homeless person camped on the corner between the door and patio tables.
IL & Chicago's positivity rates are dipping, indicating that the mitigations are starting to work--but the expected Thanksgiving-gatherings spike is still on the horizon.
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