Vasectomy in 2018, full snip snip in 2020: An Eunuch for thee, but not for me

 

After holding out for $2k/person, the vote for which was supposed to be tomorrow, instead of the $600 in the current COVID relief bill waiting for him to sign, true to form Trump folds like a cheap suit and signs the thing anyway, warts and all

 Along with the inability to appoint the right personnel from the beginning, Trump's inability to negotiate for what he claims he wants has to be the biggest tell that THE ART OF THE DEAL was purely aspirational for him, kind of like following what THE BIBLE says is merely aspirational for Christians.

He's the biggest phony we've seen in a long time, and appropriately now the biggest loser.

Sad!

Drudge soft-peddles the Biden stories, distorts the Trump stories

 Did Trump say Afghanistan was "better than the US" as Drudge claims? Nope. Trump said their elections were better run than the US election in 2020.

Was a "White House" counselor's brother recently hired by Amazon as a lobbyist? Depends on which "White House" you mean. Certainly not the current one. The "White House" counselor is Joe Biden's counselor, and his brother conveniently was just recently hired by Amazon to lobby for it.

When I don't have Rush Limbaugh to kick around anymore, I'll always have Drudge.

The basic premise of the Election 2020 fraud proponents is completely mistaken

 The basic premise is that Trump was winning on election day, only to lose overnight as a flood of fraudulent ballots washed away his lead.

This is completely mistaken.

It is now clear that just 54% of voters voted "in person", either early or on election day. 46% voted by mail/absentee.

66% of Trump's vote was "in person", but only 42% of Biden's. That's why it appeared that Trump won on election day.

Most of Biden's vote, 58%, was counted after the polls had closed into the next day(s) because it was absentee/by mail. He had a larger reservoir of his voters to draw on than did Trump, whose post-election day reservoir was only 34% of his vote.

There were doubtless more fraudulent votes cast this election because so many of the ballots were absentee/by mail, and so many more people voted and voted this way. The problem has been proving it, and proving it was large enough to flip places like Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

Absentee/by mail ballots typically post high rejection rates for voter noncompliance reasons: failure to sign the envelope, failure to return it on time, failure to mark the ballot correctly, failure of the signature to match the record, failure to show a return address matching the file, and much more. These rates typically exceed 1%, often by quite a lot. The problem is rejection rates in this election are coming in much lower than 1%, which, contrary to the Democrats, is a huge red flag.

Investigation of these problems should have been Team Trump's number one objective in challenging this election. Unfortunately and characteristically it got side-tracked by craziness and laziness, the hallmarks of the Trump era. Pieces of paper are evidence. Fanciful theories using computer "data" are not. Courts are not interested in jeopardizing their claim to impartiality by facilitating fishing expeditions for one political party against another. Either you've got the goods, or you don't.

It's sad Trump is such an incompetent and wasn't ready for this, but it is what it is. All the "shouldas wouldas and couldas" in the world ain't gonna fix it.

Buh-bye.

US Coronavirus update through 12/12/20

 Deaths per day from COVID by state since Jan 22 through Saturday 12/12/20:

NY  122

TX  80

FL  69

CA  65

NJ  62

IL  47

PA  44

MI  40

MA  36

GA  34

OH  27

LA, IN  24

AZ  23

NC  20

CT, TN  19

MD  18

SC, MO  17

VA, MN 16

MS, AL  15

CO, WI  14

AR, IA  11

WA, NV, KY  9.

Deaths per day from COVID monthly have leapt from 763 in October to 1,250 in November to 2,496 in the first twelve days of December. If the current December rate per day is sustained it will top April's 1,961 and May's 1,330.

Current hospitalizations for COVID were approximately 30k at the beginning of October, 47k at the end of October, 92k at the end of November, and at a new high of 108,487 on 12/12.

Mask-wearing and social distancing, where practised, have been insufficient by themselves to stop transmission since the lockdowns, where implemented, have been lifted. The entire US strategy hasn't been worthy of the name under Trump, and it won't be under Biden, either.

What was required was: temporary lockdowns to slow the spread, and then a permanent regime after opening of 1) mask-wearing, 2) social distancing, 3) universal testing, 4) isolation of the infected, and 5) tracing the contacts of the infected, followed by testing, isolation and tracing for an indefinite period until transmission became minimal and a vaccine became available.

This was the program enunciated by Dr Michael J Ryan of the World Health Organization on March 13. It has hardly been followed but for a few countries. And it's a scandal that the American CDC and NIH haven't insisted on this.

COVID-19 remains the 3rd leading cause of death in the US behind heart disease and cancer.

The compound daily growth rate for COVID deaths measured weekly is threatening to return to spring levels:

 

It's remarkable that this video from 2018 documenting Biden's self-confessed 2016 malfeasance in office to this day has fewer than 1 million views

 Congress allocated the spending Biden threatened, unlawfully, to withhold, but Trump became the bad guy and Biden was elected instead of Trump.

Simply amazing.

Looks like Brad Parscale, formerly of the Trump Campaign, and Anita Dunn of the Biden Campaign were on the exact same page in Election 2020

As was Chris Irons of QTR Research on Feb 26, here.

This isn't rocket science. This isn't "mastermind" level stuff. It didn't take a genius to predict that Trump would lose to a virus. All it took was paying attention and being honest. 

From an important story with an hyperbolic title by Edward-Isaac Dovere for The Atlantic, "The Mastermind Behind Biden’s No-Drama Approach to Trump", here:

' [M]any Democrats stressed over the campaign’s decision to ignore most of Trump’s daily diversions in favor of focusing on the coronavirus pandemic. Dunn’s plan, and Biden’s, ended with a win. ... “Those of us who had worked in the White House, and Joe Biden, who had been vice president of the United States, had a much better understanding of why the Trump strategy that everyone was panicked about, the daily press conferences, would not work unless they actually did something” about the pandemic, Dunn said. “All those people who were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s doing daily press briefings. He’s all over. He’s dominating,’ were missing the bigger point, which is unless he actually does something to deal with what is a genuine catastrophe, then it doesn’t matter how many press briefings he does.” '

 

Attorney General Barr appoints John Durham special counsel to continue criminal inquiry into FBI post-Trump

Democrats are already fuming. 

Reported here:

"An order making Durham special counsel, which was revealed on Tuesday, provides the federal prosecutor further protection against the prospect of President-elect Joe Biden trying to shut down the criminal inquiry into the origins and conduct of the FBI's investigation."

Former Trump Campaign manager Brad Parscale says Trump lost in the suburbs because he went with opening the economy instead of public empathy over COVID fears

 I agree.

His basic perception about the public was right. They were, and are, afraid.

Whether they should have been or should be now is irrelevant. They were, and Trump failed to play to that fear, which is exactly what Biden did.

About 16 minutes in.

Drudge really is a traitor to conservatism: He actively worked to defeat Trump, now he's working to defeat Perdue in Georgia

 

Trump was less popular in his own races than Republicans running for US Senate in theirs in 12 states in 2020

 Trump underperformed:

Ronchetti in New Mexico (loser)

Lummis in Wyoming

Capito in West Virginia

Cornyn in Texas

Rounds in South Dakota

Somebody you never heard of in Massachusetts (loser)

Sasse in Nebraska

Gardner in Colorado (loser)

Cotton in Arkansas

Collins in Maine

Sullivan in Alaska

Perdue in Georgia.

Imagine doing worse than three losers.

Election 2020: He's dead, Jim

 

Hillsdale College professor is hopeful because Roman Catholicism dominates the intellectual wings of modern conservatism and nationalism

I'm hopeful because 72 million Americans sided against Joe Biden.

From "A Review of Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History by Gillis J. Harp (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019)", here :

Still, perhaps there is more reason to hope than Harp lets on. Neither Modern Conservatism nor the new nationalism shows signs of a distinctly Protestant political perspective. To the extent either one has a political theology, it is dominated by Roman Catholics, who occupy the lion’s share of both movements’ intellectual wings.

Yeah, sure, buddy, it wasn't Catholic priests who used their pulpits to call the men to arms in the revolution against the English king. It wasn't Catholic priests who then doffed their robes and grabbed their rifles and joined them in the field. It was Presbyterians.

Joe Biden, a Catholic, preaches a return to normalcy, which amounts to acquiescence to the status quo of liberal dominance of most American institutions. That is the default position of Catholicism, acquiescence to authority, submission to hierarchy, rule by elites. By definition they'll revolt against nothing and adapt themselves to every nutty innovation which comes along in the spirit of taxation without representation.

The Loyalists have made a comeback, largely on the backs of Catholic immigrants to the United States since 1850.

Is anyone surprised they are for open borders, mass immigration, and globalism, especially if it augments their dominance in America?

Donald Trump, in his feeble way, was a resounding No to all this.

We're still out here.

It's pretty funny how the media call the race for Biden Saturday morning after the Supremes intervene in Pennsylvania Friday night

 Meanwhile Pennsylvania ain't called nothin'.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-defeats-trump-win-white-house-nbc-news-projects-n1246912

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/110620zr_g31i.pdf

Black Lives Matter burned down the business district in Kenosha, WI, but Kenosha could barely bring itself to vote for Trump

They got what they deserved, and they will get even more of it.

 

Trump v Biden has tightened dramatically

 Internal polls reported by both the Meijer campaign and the Scholten campaign in Michigan district 03 from September show Biden +2 in the district represented by Justin Amash.

Rasmussen has been publishing daily national polls since Monday, with Trump and Biden effectively tied:

Monday Trump +1

Tuesday Biden +2

Wednesday Trump +1

Thursday Biden +1.

Rasmussen's first weekly national poll from July 12 had Biden +10.

Real Clear Politics just moved Michigan back into "toss-up" on the strength of a Trafalgar poll showing Trump +2 in the state.

Biden and Obama are scheduled to appear together in Michigan on Saturday, three days before the election.

It's a business trip.

Stock market performance under Trump has been good in comparison with his predecessors, but best ever remains Eisenhower by far, followed by Truman

The post-war boom was almost inevitable and had little to do with the individual man and his policies. The income tax code's punitive elements at the time drove money into domestic investment, which received favorable tax treatment.

For America to be great like that again we must punish foreign investment and reward domestic. That's what creates jobs for Americans and expands markets for housing, autos and everything else here at home, with the result that companies make money and stocks do well.

But everyone in both parties, it seems, still want everything for themselves, investing abroad where labor is cheaper and regulation lax.

The only person in politics even remotely open to reversing the status quo remains Trump.

LOL, The Associated Press just redefined "suburban white woman" faster than "sexual preference" became offensive to Crazy Mazie Hirono

 Key descriptors from the LOL story, "Suburban women lead the charge vs. Trump", here:

yoga pants

sneakers

left her Lincoln Aviator idling [climate change for thee but not for me]

Lori Goldman

could not have described the branches of government

white

started her group Fems for Dems in early 2016 [Hillary partisan]

→the stereotype of a suburban woman [uh huh]

She’s hungry because she often doesn’t take the time to eat [see below]

Her knee aches from a replacement surgery six months ago [see below]

Often the houses have Trump flags hanging from the porch rails 

[oops, how'd that get in there?]

“But this is war,” she says, and she considers herself a street fighter

a $2 million house

fancy car

American Express black card that she always loses because she keeps it in her bra

"mansplaining...it’s happened since Adam and Eve"

Sometimes she stands up in the middle of Starbucks and bellows [I'll bet she does].

Just because Congress in 1869 stipulated a Supreme Court of nine doesn't mean Trump must appoint anyone

 Trump would be a fool not to make a Supreme Court appointment, of course, and he has done it, but the executive branch is co-equal and doesn't have an obligation to comply with the act of Congress from 150 years ago by appointing a replacement for RBG to make it nine if it doesn't want to make an appointment for prudential or even political reasons.

The executive can say the court costs too much and for that reason not make the appointment. The executive can say the court hears too few cases to require a ninth justice. The executive can say "eight is enough". Marbury v Madison, perhaps the most consequential decision ever, was decided by a Supreme Court 4-0 with a 6-member court (two were sick at the time). There was no magic odd-numbered formula which was required before that decision was made. No one today as a matter of politics views the decision as illegitimate for that reason, nor because the case was decided by too few members.

And FDR certainly is precedent for saying there were prudential reasons for believing the nine member court was inadequate for the historical moment. Just because he lost in this political quest doesn't mean it was illegitimate.

Consider that FDR wanted to pack the court in 1937 through a bill scheming to swell its numbers because the Supreme Court kept thwarting his New Deal legislation in Congress as unconstitutional from 1933. The Great Depression was a dire moment in American history, requiring, in FDR's mind, one attempt after another to alleviate it, no matter how unprecedented.

The other powers that be thought otherwise.

But eventually and fortuitously one justice on the Supreme Court, named Roberts !!! by the way, actually switched sides to favor a New Deal case pleasing to FDR, which ended up having the odd result of taking the wind out of FDR's court-packing sails.

The March 1937 5-4 decision came to be known for this reason as "the switch in time which saved nine". The court showed that it could, in fact, rule New Deal ideas constitutional. That removed the argument for packing the court, by effect if not by intent. The nine member court was adequate after all.

It's an interesting case showing the power of the Supremes, not just to rule, but to maneuver.

The presidential appointment power is a political matter because the president is elected.

But don't kid yourself that the court absolutely eschews politics when rendering its opinions. Though not politically conservative in nature, a March 1937 ruling upholding innovative, New Deal legislation, ended up preserving the traditional character of the Supreme Court reaching back to just after the Civil War. And it persists to this day.

The founders were genius in this respect, recognizing that political forces are inescapable and must be accepted, accounted for, and balanced in order to prevent a lurch into the absolute tyranny of a single one of the branches of government.

The imperative of the moment is the free exercise of politics within the constitutional framework, not tampering with the framework.

Never forget, one week before Election 2016 Trump was getting creamed in the polls in WI, MI and PA and ended up winning them all

"He's NOT going to retake WI (Clinton +5.7), Michigan (Clinton +6.7), Pennsylvania (Clinton +6), or New Mexico (Clinton +8.5)."

I said at the time, Tuesday Nov 1.

I said that it was dumb for Trump to be spending money in those states. Obviously Trump campaign internal polling must have indicated something quite different.

Today Biden is +5.5 in WI, +6.7 in MI and +7.1 in PA.