Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trivia time

Harris isn't the first minority person to be President/VP

Charles Curtis, who was Hoover's Vice President, was 3/8 Native American. Curtis was a very powerful political figure in the Senate but pretty much forgotten now (your future, Mitch).

Even more interesting to me is that he's the last executive officer born in a US territory and not a state. He was born in Kansas pre-statehood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Curtis

[Hannibal]

Kamala pulls the best political move in US history.

She'll be President before the end of 2021.

Got to tip your hat to her. Opportunist extraordinaire.

Yup. First woman President. Got elected Senator in the most Left wing state in America and she will have parlayed it into being the leader of the free world in two years, tops, without even having lasted in the primary until Iowa.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Biden won two counties in Wyoming. Without looking, can anyone guess where they might be?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Good example of a tweet from a 2024 hopeful that sounds vaguely supportive of Trump but doesn't really back his claims of fraud at all.

When all the lawful votes are counted, we will know who won. So true. When these 60 minutes are up, we will know who won the football game. So insightful.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Biden won two counties in Wyoming. Without looking, can anyone guess where they might be?

Let me guess...the county where U of W is...and Jackson Hole?

Shocking.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Let me guess...the county where U of W is...and Jackson Hole?

Shocking.

A dozen Wingstop wings for the Wizard!!!!

[Hannibal]

Biden. You better give me the free $$$. I’m now expecting this promise to be fulfilled.
$10,000 student loan forgiveness. I’ve been parked at just under $10k since March.
Give. Me. Free. Money. Thanks US voters.

We can't afford to forgive your student loans. We've got to save up for the trillions of dollars of free medical care that 40 million future citizens will be getting over the next 20 years.

[Hannibal]

Does Joe Biden's husband know that he won reelection to the Senate yet?

[Jeff Buchanan]

With Biden being declared the presidential election winner, pending legal challenges and recounts that have to honored, here's some thoughts on President Joe Biden's pandemic response strategy. I garnered the contents of this post from several articles in my news feeds recapping plans he outlined as part of his campaign. There's also some info gathered from other sources coming from PH experts looking more carefully at what he can and can't do as well as what he should do..

On the virtually symbolic national "mask mandate." Symbolic because mask mandates are already in place at the county level - enforcement however is patch work. There are legal questions here. One thing that is not in question is a county elected leadership's authority to issue mask mandates and enforce them under their emergency powers in a public health crisis. I don't think I've seen a case where a county wide mask mandate has been successfully challenged. I think this is where the authority to issue a mask mandate should lie and it should rightfully be based on local data that suggests the degree of community spread present.

Where Trump would have some leverage to issue a national mandate and be on sound legal ground to do it, would be in Federal spaces to include transportation hubs. TBH, I don't see a lot of people in airports, for example, not wearing masks anyway so, sort-of symbolic. Even then, there would be broad, "fuck You Biden, " resistance making, rendering such a mask mandate potentially ineffective and at a very high political cost. Here's a short article on the question, "can he do it." A good approach would be to appeal to the common patriotic interests in containing the spread of the virus. Biden has articulated such an approach. He's not going to strong arm governors or county officials although he could by withholding federal funding. That's not his MO.

https://qz.com/1929107/how-joe-biden...-mask-mandate/

The US Public health Service (USPHS). The entire USPHS is designed to operate at the state level. Biden has articulated his general view that he will beef up USPHS. That should be a key feature in his COVID response strategy. Get USPHS energized and more capable of responding to pandemics. The concept and organizational wiring diagrams to be able to do that was always there for the USPHS. The structure just withered over the time frame of three successive administrations and is mostly underfunded, undermanned and ineffective in its capacity to respond to a health crisis like this. What were seeing now, the reality, is that keeping USPHS's capacity at 100% as a means of responding to a pandemic should have been a top national security priority.

Testing and Tracing. I've made my case for a federally coordinated program and Biden has laid that out. It would be using the model of FDR's War Board that he formed in 1942, after Pearl Harbor, to coordinate the logistics of a national response within the homeland. A COVID Response Board's charter would include tasks like, centrally managing procurement and distribution of PPE and test kits, manning a large scale testing and reporting operation, hiring and coordinating a COVID Testing Task Force (Biden says 100K people). Other tasks would include the logistics of vaccine procurement, distribution and storing. Biden could use his war powers to direct production and he's more likely to do something like that than Trump who, strangely was reluctant to do it. If Biden just funds and fills out the USPHS, the infrastructure is there to do all of this.

Mitigation and Containment: I think Biden has been pretty clear on mitigation and containment measures. He's not going to lock everything down like Trumpsters declared he would if elected president. There's no question that governments globally aren't locking down economies. Those are the misleading headlines but that's not what's happening. Certainly there are degrees, some more restrictive than others, but finally, government officials in countries where "lockdowns" are being implemented are making informed decisions on locations and degree ..... most of the time. And when a blanket restriction is issued that is considered too broad or too strict using cost/benefit calculations, such measures are being challenged.

IMO, if any country is capable of sorting out what are the best targets to reduce community spread, what are the best measures to implement, given the goal of keeping businesses as open as possible, leisure and social activities operating, than the US through the CDC. Biden will reengage all the agencies within DHHS. There are some smart people there that have been more or less muzzled if there views, which were mostly, not always, right, IMO, if they didn't align with Trump's strategy, poorly messaged, to dismiss the public heath threat of SARS-CoV-2.

I'm hopeful, like I usually am about the pandemic reaching an end-point. It's gone on a whole lot longer than I thought it would. I'm not sure how the next 80 or so days between now and January 20th will go with Trump as a pissed off lame duck president. Could be ugly. Hopefully his R supporters not named Lindsey Graham will keep him grounded.

The primary article informing this post is from the WSJ and paywalled. Sorry.

[CGVT]

I'm not sure how the next 80 or so days between now and January 20th will go with Trump as a pissed off lame duck president. Could be ugly.

Hopefully his fat ass will spend the time golfing so he can't fuck up anything else.

[Hannibal]

I thought that the Trump golfing thing was an Onion article when I heard it. JFC.

[CGVT]

You think that is ridiculous, check this out. This was posted by a Facebook friend. I can't believe people believe this bullshit.


Huh... All I’m going to say is if this is true, Trump is a genius! You guys read this! Someone sent me this, and I’m hoping this is the case and keeping all the faith in God, good will prevail!
Either he’s totally nuts or he’s 100% right. Trump knew all along they were going to cheat. But if you catch them in advance of a crime you can not expose it to the public and they can deny it. This cheating has been going on for decades. They watched the 2018 elections and observed how they cheated. They let them cheat to take the House so they could let them think they got away with it. That is why Trump said the Senate was the key. He did not care about the congress. It was best to let the public see how crazy the Dems and Nancy were when they were in charge. It did not matter as the Senate was the key. He exposed them by letting them cheat to get control of the house in 2018. Trump wants to end it so he set a trap. He made an executive order in 2018 that all Federal elections are a national security issue. All the resources of the 16 intelligence agencies have been monitoring the fraud. They have been documenting and recoding everything. When Trump took Florida and Ohio big time he was speeding to an election landslide. They could not let that happen. They stopped the counting in the middle of the night in the key Democratic controlled states and told all the counters to take a break. Then at 4 am while they are all on break the 128,000 ballots all 100 % for Biden (Statically impossible) were delivered to be counted. Same thing for Wisconsin. Trump knows this and has had the National security agencies who had spies in there document everything. Now when he goes to the Supreme court he has all the evidence. Trump has never tweeted anything that he has no evidence of. He has always told the truth. That is why he looks so confident. He has caught them in the act. If you saw his 2 am speech he was smiling like he was so happy they caught them. He mentioned at 2 am about a 4 am drop of Ballots, he was signaling he already knew what they would do. He said he wants to make sure they never do this again to any president. Do not worry Trump has already won, what you are seeing is the theater playing out. It has all been planned for and scripted. I believe we are still going to take the house. There are still 14 congressional seats where the Republican challengers against the incumbent Dems have the Republicans leading. I believe this time the cheating will be reversed and people will be prosecuted and made examples of since they have been recording and documenting everything. Do not watch mainstream news; they are all lying and distorting the facts. They called Michigan for Biden but the Michigan elections board officially shows Trump with an insurmountable 3.5% lead. They know they can not win but they are hoping to cause enough confusion. Trump will have to go to court and they know the judges Trump appointed will rule in favor of Trump. Then the next four years they can say he stole the election , he is illegitimate as his appointed judges gave him the election. This is the narrative they want to spin. Trump knew in advance what they would do. That is why it was so important to have Amy Coney Barret appointed ahead of time. By claiming he stole the election they can obstruct him over the next 4 years like they did the first time. But that is not going to work this time. Trump has a plan and watch it play out. He has asked for a recount which they will fight. He had the real ballots marked before hand with a secrete water mark, The forged ballots do not have this. So in the recount they will sort out the real ones from the fake one. Trump was prepared. He knew Biden was in China's pocket, His NSA told him what was going on at the Houston Chinese consulate that is why he ordered it closed 6 months ago and there were reports of them burning papers in the yard when he announced the closure. That is where they were storing the forged ballots to turn Texas Blue on election day. What better place to store fake ballots then at a foreign consulate where you can not get a warrant to search because of diplomatic immunity. Because of closing this consulate Texas remained Red. So the intelligence agencies have been doing their job behind the scenes. So do not worry we already won we are just watching a movie play out. That is why Trump always says grab the popcorn and enjoy the show.

[froot loops]

How can somebody so smart about exposing a criminal conspiracy be so ignorant of paragraph structures?

[Jeff Buchanan]

Interesting stuff ....... Trump hasn't conceded and probably won't any time soon. There is a legal process to certify votes, appoint electors to the EC and elect a president. If there are snags in that process, there is a legal process to resolve them ..... most of the time. Several articles describing the entire process are out there. A nightmare scenario exists if the process gets to a Contingent Election:

It is possible that Congress could fail in its job on Jan. 6, with two candidates each still claiming to have won, said Mr. Foley, the Ohio State law professor. The country faced an equivalent situation in 1876, when claims of voter fraud forced a special electoral commission to decide the election just two days before the inauguration.

“I do think it is a fundamental problem in our American political system that we have this vulnerability that we have not fixed, even though we have come close to this disaster before,” Mr. Foley said.

I got to this article in the NYT that isn't paywalled that provides a flow diagram of the process of determining who won a presidential election.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/politics/election-results-contested-disputed.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20201108&instance_id=23922&nl=the-morning&regi_id=66290138&segment_id=43956&te=1&user_id=eb3770cd26926d6908b2da6e075b25bf

Recommended reading.

Also in my NYT news feed was a description of Biden's transition plan. Found it interesting that his advisors have been planning contingencies for months involving circumstances where Trump won't concede and agencies will block traditional presidential transitions. Seems like they have a plan for that. That most government agency heads and high level staff disliked Trump and were the targets of his frequent attacks, Trump may find it hard to get them to hold up much of anything.

[CGVT]

How can somebody so smart about exposing a criminal conspiracy be so ignorant of paragraph structures?

Ha! it is tough to read, but I didn't feel like fucking with it to fix it to try to make it more readable at 1:00. Suffice it to say that if you couldn't get through it, it is not loss. It is as about as ridiculous voter fraud/conspiracy theory as I have read.

Their answer is that Trump comes riding in on a white horse to save the day, save the election and save 'Murica