An end to these recurring characters

Leading up to the low turnout rally in Tulsa a couple days ago the nasty guy campaign got pranked. Bobby Allyn of NPR talked about it with Mary Jo Laupp. She directs musical theater productions at a high school in Iowa. She created a TikTok video suggesting people reserve tickets to the rally even though they had no intention of going. Prominent TikTok people shared it. Korean Pop boosted it. The day after Laupp posted the video 300,000 people said they were interested in the event. A lot of them, actually got tickets as a joke.

Did it actually have an effect on the rally’s turnout? Who can say? There are other reasons for pranking.

Steve Schmidt, a political strategist, has worked on GOP campaigns, but strongly opposes the nasty guy. His teenage daughter got a ticket. Schmidt said:

It was really an act of civil disobedience, of subversion by young people who understand the consequences and are appalled and disgusted by the comportment and behavior of this president.

Laupp says there are teens and young adults who are saying, we did this. It will likely lead to more online activism and get-out-the-vote efforts.



Sarah Kendzior tweeted a quote from her Gaslit Nation podcast:

If Biden wins, he needs to spend four years identifying every official who was complicit in Trump admin corruption. They have to be named, outed, and permanently banned from power. They can't let it go.

We can't have a repeat of what happened with every other admin dealing with GOP crime, which was to let criminals go free. Nixon, Iran-Contra, 9/11 aftermath, 2008 crash. That's how we got the same criminal elites in power over and over.

They can't -- for the sake of 'not being divisive' or 'moving forward" or whatever euphemism they'll give it -- excuse elite criminality. They must prosecute it. There needs to be consequences and an end to these recurring characters.

Kelly Thompson describes himself as “Person for the ethical treatment of facts and humans. Fan of inalienable rights.” He tweeted a quote from Kendzior’s book Hiding in Plain Sight:

Kushner does not need to fear the law when his father-in-law can rewrite it. That is how life works in a dynastic kleptocracy. That is how life works now in the United States of America.

Kos of Daily Kos looks at the nasty guy’s current reelection prospects. His approval rating remains low and stable. His rating for handling the virus is low and stable and is at the top of voter’s minds. There isn’t much white backlash against the Black Lives Matter protests. That means his “Law and Order!” campaign message means little with so many people dying from the virus. As Kos wrote, keeping grandma alive might be a good campaign message but the nasty guy has zero interest in that.



Greg Dworkin of the Kos community, in his pundit roundup for today, quoted Stephanie McCurry of the Atlantic:

For the four years of its existence, until it was forced to surrender, the Confederate States of America was a pro-slavery nation at war against the United States. The C.S.A. was a big, centralized state, devoted to securing a society in which enslavement to white people was the permanent and inherited condition of all people of African descent.

Bill in Portland, Maine honored the birthday of George Carlin. Bill described him as Philosopher of Comedy and included a few quotes. Here’s one of them:

Traditional American values: genocide, aggression, conformity, emotional repression, hypocrisy, and the worship of comfort and consumer goods.