I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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As to the Trump campaign -- this is a re-run, but I loved it the first time I saw it so here it is again.
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Since I was away a couple of days and didn't go back to look I'm hoping I'm not putting in ones already here.
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This gave me some hearty yuk-yuks -- and I think its VERY true.
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Jackie: While you may have been away for a few days recovering, these are not duplicates and certainly worth the wait. Whoever made those horrible DT clothes? Surprised DT has not ordered face masks made of that fabric for his cronies to wear. Certainly an effective birth control method because not only does he have poor taste in clothing (& presidents) but also not too many brain cells. Great Halloween costume though. Thanks for the laughs.
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Has any Republican denounced this?
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FIRST READ: Trump's coronavirus briefings are back. But the trust isn't.
They're baaaaack – at 5:00 pm ET today, President Trump will resume those daily coronavirus press briefings he held in March and April.
The decision to fire up those briefings again comes after slipping poll numbers for the president, after more than 140,000 Americans have died from the virus (including some 80,000 since Trump's last briefing in April), and after Sunday's 5,000-word New York Times look into how Trump gave up his leadership role on the issue.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP
But it's one thing to restart the briefings. It's another to regain the public's trust on the coronavirus.
According to the online NBC News|SurveyMonkey weekly tracking poll on social, health and economic matters, 68 percent of adults say they trust their governor more than Trump when it comes to reopening businesses in their area.
That includes 92 percent of Democrats, 78 percent and even 42 percent of Republicans.
By comparison, just 26 percent say they trust Trump more than their governor.
And that trust deficit comes as:
- 71 percent say they're "very worried" or "somewhat worried" that they or someone in their household will be exposed to the coronavirus;
- 91 percent are worried that the coronavirus will have a negative economic effect on the U.S.;
- and 74 percent are worried that it will negatively affect their household finances, per the poll.
And Trump's trust deficit comes as he's fired off seven tweets this morning (as of publication time), and only two of them having anything to do with the coronavirus.
They include:
Thank you for the good reviews and comments on my interview with Chris Wallace of @FoxNews. We may have set a record for doing such an interview in the heat. It was 100 degrees, making things very interesting!
Looking forward to live sports, but any time I witness a player kneeling during the National Anthem, a sign of great disrespect for our Country and our Flag, the game is over for me!
You will never hear this on the Fake News concerning the China Virus, but by comparison to most other countries, who are suffering greatly, we are doing very well - and we have done things that few other countries could have done!
Boy, someone sure gave tRump different info than most of us saw concerning his Chris Wallace interview
As to the game being over for Trump if someone kneels -- now you'll have them all crying.
The last quote is so off the charts it is not even worth the bother.
Not sure doing the briefings is going to get him too far. I watched about 8 mins. or so and the drone of his reading finished me off. I turned it off and we watched a non-news program until I thought he might be off. I didn't miss a thing so that will likely do it for me. I have no desire to waste time. I think this guy suffers greatly when not in front of a camera so his people had to let him do something since it seems he can't get people to rallies anymore. Now there, a perfect excuse for why you lost -- not able to do rallies.
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Fake ad from fake prez
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A part of us wants life, wants to make the commitment to live, and is willing to trust our intuition and follow it from moment to moment. There is also a part of us that doesn't trust this inclination. "I can't do this, it's too much, too intense. I don't want to surrender. "When we distrust this inclination we experience only effort and struggle. When we surrender to life the flow of energy increases, and we feel the passion of being alive. -Shakti Gawain
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Oh Serenity -- just look at it this way. Trump's people will love it. The un-educated or possibly un-caring who cannot relate will cheer for anything as long as it makes their head-guy look good -- and unfortunately they actually believe he is helping them when he behaves like this. It is sad to think people can be so easily led. I honestly didn't realize there were so many of that type out there. Nothing is helped by the ignorance of Fox either. May they get theirs as well. It is by sheer will that I ( not at the moment till I'm more recovered ) keep going twice a week to help out a lady ( huge Fox fan ) that also helps my BIL who is another huge fan. She does say that she can't vote for Trump this time -- but oh, I just can't give it to Biden. I just looked at her and said -- just spare me this and vote for Trump because that is what you are doing. You are sentencing people who are suffering just like you say you are to go on in that condition if you don't make sure where your vote goes.
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This was really yesterday at the new and improved virus briefings. How long will he stick to the stupid and or lying script?
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July 21, 2020
Jul 22
One of the day's biggest stories came from Ohio, where the House speaker, Republican Larry Householder, and four other political operatives, were arrested by federal officials for racketeering. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio David DeVillers said the case was "likely the largest bribery money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio."
Householder and his accomplices allegedly accepted more than $60 million in exchange for a public bailout for an ailing company. The bailout was worth more than $1 billion.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) immediately demanded Householder resign. So did Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Timken, who tried to spread the blame by saying "Greed, lust for power, and disdain for ethical boundaries are not unique to any particular political party."
Her words were, perhaps, unfortunate, because her description was one that many people would use for the president. That Trump is right now trying to argue that the Republican Party stands for "LAW & ORDER," when a Republican leader in Ohio is arrested for a "pay-to-play" scheme is a coincidence that undercuts his message. ("This was pay-to-play," said DeVillers in a new conference. "I use the term pay-to-play because that's the term they've used as alleged in the affidavit.")
It was a moment that seemed to crystalize today's politics: an elected official accepted a huge bribe in exchange for using taxpayer money to bail out a crony's failing business. It reminds me of the Teapot Dome scandal of 1922, when the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, leased the oil production rights from naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hills, California to oil companies in exchange for large financial gifts. When the story came out, Fall became the first U.S. Cabinet official to go to prison.
The Teapot Dome scandal seemed to epitomize the administration of the president at the time, Warren G. Harding, although Harding himself was not implicated in that particular scandal. He had created an atmosphere in which the point of government was not to help ordinary Americans, but to see how much leaders could get out of it.
This same attitude is crippling today's government as it tries to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Part of the reason that Trump and Republican leaders are hastening people back to work despite the spiking infections is that many Republican-led states do not have social welfare systems in place to support people through more weeks of lockdown, and Republican leaders do not want to develop them.
We are approaching a new crisis. At the end of July, the emergency unemployment benefits put into place in an early coronavirus bill will expire, leaving more than 20 million Americans unable to make ends meet and thus vulnerable to eviction, which would trigger another wrench in the already-ailing economy. At the same time, local and state governments, badly hit by falling tax revenues, will need to make cuts, as well, which will further stress the economy.
In May, Democrats used their majority in the House of Representatives to pass a $3 trillion spending package to provide another round of stimulus checks to individuals, give money to hospitals, and support state and local governments. Led by Republicans, the Senate refused to take the bill up.
Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to write a Republican bill, but is running into the specific problem that Trump refuses to admit the coronavirus is a problem and the more general problem of a Republican ideology that opposes government funding for a basic social safety net.
Trump continues to maintain that the only reason we have so many coronavirus infections is because we are testing for them. He wants to block funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as money for testing and contact tracing. At the same time, he wants a payroll tax cut to stimulate the economy, and funding in the bill for a new FBI building.
More generally, Republican senators are mortified at the spending involved in a bill that focuses not on shoring up businesses, but rather on supporting ordinary Americans. "What in the hell are we doing?" Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked his colleagues. He warned that a large relief package would anger Republican voters in the November elections. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) disagreed about the means, but not the end. He told his colleagues that if the Republicans don't do enough to save the economy, Democrats will win in November and put in place policies that will cost even more money. A rescue bill now could save money in the long run by keeping Republicans in power.
As they calculate, the national unemployment rate is over 11%. The unemployment rate in cities closer to 20% as the coronavirus has shut down restaurants, theaters, gyms, and so on. And our vulnerability to Covid-19 increases. Almost 4 million Americans have been infected with coronavirus, and more than 140,000 have died of it.0 -
Dan Rather
---2h-- ·I am haunted by that phrase "preventable deaths." To say the words is still not to fully grasp the meaning. Especially when the tally is in the several tens of thousands. Each represents a web of human connections that will never be the same. So much sadness. Preventable sadness.
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Trump's campaign is in freefall, with COVID-19 on voters' minds
William A. GalstonFriday, July 17, 2020 FixGov- \
It is never a good sign when a candidate is forced to replace his campaign manager less than four months before the election. In Donald Trump's case, it is an indication that his reelection campaign is in a crisis so pervasive that it threatens to take down not only his presidency but his entire party.
At the national level, former Vice President Joe Biden now leads President Trump by an average of about 9 percentage points according to FiveThirtyEight, which adjusts for the timing and quality of individual surveys. Focusing on the highest-quality surveys released during the past three weeks, the picture gets even darker for the president.
TABLE 1
Biden Trump Margin Quinnipiac 52 37 15 Monmouth 53 41 12 NBC/WSJ 51 40 11 Suffolk/USA Today 53 41 12 Marist 52 44 8 CNBC/Hart 47 38 9 Siena/New York Times 50 36 14 AVERAGE 51.1 39.6 11.5 A 9-point win for Biden would give him the largest margin of victory since Ronald Reagan, while an 11.5-point win would exceed even Reagan's victory margin over one-term president Jimmy Carter in 1980.
The outlook for the president is no brighter in the most closely contested states, whose results will determine the outcome in the Electoral College. Table 2 compares the polling averages according to FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics with the results in 2016. A positive number indicates a Trump lead in 2020 or victory in 2016; a negative number indicates a lead for Biden in 2020.
TABLE 2
RealClearPolitics poll average FiveThirtyEight poll average 2016 The Blue Wall and Midwest Michigan -7.7 -9.1 +0.2 Pennsylvania -7.8 -7.7 +0.7 Wisconsin -6.0 -7.6 +0.8 Iowa +1.0 +0.7 +9.4 Ohio -1.0 -2.2 +8.1 The South and Southwest North Carolina -2.0 -2.9 +3.7 Florida -6.4 -6.8 +1.2 Georgia +0.5 -0.9 +5.1 Texas +0.2 -0.3 +8.1 Arizona -3.8 -2.6 +3.6 Trump "expand the field" states Minnesota -16.0 NA -1.5 New Hampshire -7.0 -8.0 -0.4 Nevada NA -8.5 -2.4 Here are the takeaways from Table 2:
- President Trump is trailing by substantial margins in all three "Blue Wall" states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—which he narrowly carried in 2016, and he is running no better than even with Joe Biden in two Midwestern states—Ohio and Iowa—which he won by substantial margins four years ago.
- Although he won every contested race in the South in 2016, he is trailing badly in Florida, in trouble in North Carolina and Arizona, and fighting to prevail in Georgia and Texas, where he won easily four years ago.
- Earlier this year, the Trump campaign hoped to expand the field into Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nevada, states the president lost by narrow margins in 2016. As of now, it does not appear that any of these states is in play. It is the Biden campaign that is widening the contest, forcing the Trump campaign to defend states Republican presidential candidates have long taken for granted.
President Trump's weak political standing is having an impact on other Republican candidates. It has created tougher-than-expected battles for Republican Senate incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, and North Carolina, and it is dimming the hopes of the Republican challenger in Michigan. The president's double-digit deficits in Colorado and Maine, both of which Hillary Clinton carried by smaller margins in 2016, is making life more difficult for Republican incumbents in these states as well.
President Trump's impact is also apparent in two deep-Red states that should be slam-dunks for Republican Senate candidates. In 2016, Trump prevailed in Montana by 20.4 percentage points and in Kansas by 20.6 points. As of now, his lead in both these states is down to 9 points. The Democrats' Senate candidate in Montana, the current governor, is running about even with the incumbent Republican senator, and Kansas Republicans openly worry than if they nominate a Trump-style populist conservative in their primary, they could end up with a Democratic senator for the first time since 1932.
President Trump is reshaping public assessments of the two major parties to the disadvantage of the Republicans. A Gallup survey released on July 16 found that the 2-point edge in party affiliation the Republicans enjoyed as recently as January of 2020 had turned into an 11-point Democratic advantage by the end of June. The bulk of this Republican erosion has occurred during the past two months.
For years, majorities of Americans have rendered negative judgments on President Trump's character and personal conduct while giving him high marks for his management of the economy. But circumstances have changed. Fewer Americans approve of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which pulled the country into a deep recession. For the first time ever, a high-quality survey has found a majority trusting Joe Biden to manage the economy better than Donald Trump, and they prefer him over the president as the country's pandemic manager by a margin of 59 to 35.
The more the 2020 election turns into a referendum on President Trump as crisis manager, the worse the outcome will be for him. As recently as June 7, 47% of Americans thought the coronavirus situation was getting better, compared to just 30% who thought it was getting worse. Just three weeks later, after the massive upsurge in COVID-19 cases, the share of Americans who thought the situation was getting better fell by half to just 23% while the share who thought it was getting worse had more than doubled to 65%. An ABC/Washington Post poll released on July 17 found that approval of the president's handling of the pandemic fell from 51% in March and 46% in May to just 38% in mid-July, while disapproval rose from 45% in March to 53% in May and 60% today.
Americans are losing hope, at least for the near-term. Seventy-four percent expect the coronavirus disruption that has upended their lives to last through the end of 2020 or longer. Fifty-six percent worry about catching COVID-19, the highest since April, and 72% say that it is better to hunker down at home rather than resuming normal activities. Until these attitudes become more positive, it is hard to see how the economy can regain its vigor.
Have President Trump's chances of reelection disappeared altogether? Not quite. If a vaccine demonstrates its safety and effectiveness by early fall and new cases begin to drop, the public mood could shift. The president could admit error and change course in both substance and tone, as savvy Republican analysts have recommended. Joe Biden could commit a gaffe as damaging as Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment, or he could perform badly enough in the debates to raise doubts about his fitness for the presidency. But as things now stand, President Trump would have better odds of drawing to an inside straight, and changing campaign managers won't help him very much.
This is an article from Brookings Institute.
I am hideous at reading graphs and probably could have almost left out the second one, but others are likely far better at "getting" graphs.
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I watched the briefing yesterday. It was very repetitious from the earlier ones. The most meaningful thing Trump said was that the virus would likely get worse before it gets better. I was amazed! Not sure his minions will get on board with that. I am very concerned about the Federal ‘police’ getting involved in city crime. I do think the people in Portland could stop acting up late at night. They are no longer helping the George Floyd situation and are not really helping themselves. It might be better to walk away and leave the Feds with nothing to do...for now. There is nothing Federal troops can do in Kansas City or Chicago. The shootings are crime relatedand not highly preventable. I would not feel safe with armed officers on the city streets. It would be too menacing. I do think Trump is using this as a distraction from COVID-19. I have been on a vacation at a friends mountain house in NC. The Trump yard signs are pretty thick. We have to get people out to vote in November. Our lives depend on it!
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JCSLibrarian I was having some of the same identical thoughts about that police force of Trumps. I just read that he is on somewhat shaky ground sending them in. The Governors are supposed to request help -- and I think Trump is using the excuse that he can send them if federal properties ( monuments/federal buildings ) are involved. You are right about Chicago -- it is not about Floyd but gangs getting after each other. I think Trump wants to impress his following. I really can't see it impressing normal people much. Also he says he is for law and order but that was about the only thing he could try and run on as he has fouled out everything else. Make such a mess of everything. It is like the one meme -- he spent most of his time inciting people and now that they are boiling over he has to pretend that he is for law and order. He could care less. It is his special form of chaos.
I think/I hope these federal people will be on notice that their 'role' has limits and especially where peaceful protestors are involved and if no one if bothering federal buildings, or statues or the like that they may end up on the wrong side.
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Only someone with a mentality off the charts would say war is beautiful. And he is talking about two of ours.
This is old, but I had forgotten he said it and now I'm highly disgusted all over again.
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What a humiliating excuse for a woman.
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AMEN!
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