Both teams took a knee

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos started off by writing:

A sandwich shop owner in Buford, Gwinnett County Georgia, is angry that his fellow Georgia residents who lost their jobs to coronavirus don't want to come to work for him for $8.50 to $10.00 an hour. He says it's because of that sweet $600 a week they're getting in unemployment insurance (which expires at midnight tonight). … But according to the would-be employer, it's lazy people sitting at home on their fat $600. Get out here and make me a sam'ich.

The shop owner is a bit understanding that $8.50 an hour just isn’t enough money to risk endangering their family during a pandemic. But Republicans in the Senate aren’t.

They want to force people out of their homes, into the raging pandemic, to pretend like the economy is working. That's ignoring the fact that the economy is working as much as it is precisely because this extra injection of cash, in the form of $2,400 a month to unemployed people, has kept the economy afloat.

This extra cash and eviction restrictions end now. And what does Moscow Mitch say? He hopes to pass something in a few weeks.



Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the slow service of the Postal Service. Bills and paperwork are late, causing a cascade of problems, including potential evictions. Long lines of people trying to find out what happened to their package. Prescriptions by mail that are late or missing. Sumner wrote about Louis Dejoy, the crony but in charge of the USPS by the nasty guy.

But if DeJoy doesn’t know how to carry letters, he certainly knows how to carry water for Trump. DeJoy seems to recognize that his entire role at the Postal Service is to breed contempt with the public. Months of late bills, missing checks, and lost packages are exactly what Trump wants to see, both to bolster his argument against vote-by-mail and to make him “right” about the need to privatize mail delivery.

There’s also the little matter that DeJoy himself has between “$30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors.” It’s such a major conflict of interest that DeJoy should never have been accepted into the role. Except that an ideological crony with every incentive to wreck the department he’d been handed was exactly what Trump was looking for.

Slow USPS service prompted Tony Dokoupil to tweet:

@USPS says you should give mail in ballots at least 14 days round trip. No guarantees.

So if you plan to vote by mail, election day isn’t November 3rd.

It’s October 20th.

Or sooner.

Don’t be one of the *tens of thousands* of people whose vote wasn’t counted in 2016.

Or hand deliver your ballot to city hall or collection bin.



Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported a few days ago the nasty guy and William Barr of the Department formerly known as Justice announced 200 federal agents to Chicago and 35 to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver has some concerns. How the nasty guy decides where and when to send federal thugs is not transparent. Also obscure is what they are there to do, whether the mission will change, and how long they will stay. Some mayors, such as Quinton Lucas of Kansas City would appreciate the help of federal agents in investigating violent crimes and murders. But he is also concerned about mission creep. As for that, Oliver said:

As we approach the election, again, in just about 105 days from today, if they are still here, who's to say whether or not these agents could potentially be used to intimidate or otherwise disturb the election process while they're here.

Elise Viebeck and Robert Costa of The Washington Post discussed the chaos that could come with November’s election. The chaos would be greatly lessened if Joe Biden manages a landslide (so let’s make that happen). But if it is close… the writers discuss several scenarios.

The nasty guy is already claiming the system is rigged (as he did in 2016), that mail-in ballots have a big security hole (they don’t). So he could go into a legal war over the validity of votes.

He could claim victory on election night even though mail-in votes may not be counted for days or weeks. Then he could claim votes not counted election night must be fraudulent. He could then pressure GOP legislatures to certify electors who would support him. If Dem governors don’t agree Congress could receive conflicting certificates.

The GOP is already accusing Dems for shenanigans they claim will be tried leading up to the vote.

The nasty guy could call on his militant supporters – the ones that showed up at state capitols without masks – leading to unrest.



There is a baseball season and it began this weekend. I ignore sports, but this is worth mentioning. We remember when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem before football games. He was pushed out the league because of it. My, how things have changed. Before the Yankees and the Nationals played every player and coach on both teams – even the white guys – took a knee.

Marissa Higgins of Kos described some of the other ways sports are now honoring Black Lives Matter. She also reminds us it has been four years since Kaepernick took a knee.

Mark Sumner put a photo of the kneeling players at the top of a post in which he discussed all that has happened this year (remember there was an impeachment trial and it was this year?). Sumner’s point is that it feels like America is at a pivot point. But it’s a point that could go either way.

On one side:

It’s a dead certainty that once Trump is enjoying golf in some non-extradition country, Republicans will attempt to wave the “but the budget” flags once more. It’s just as certain that no one will listen to them. That ship has sailed, sunk, rusted, been made into a movie by James Cameron, and become home to a billion barnacles. It is over.

The Republican stance on the environment? Dead. Objections to national healthcare? Dead. The whole rugged individualism means never having to give a damn about anyone else? Gravely wounded.

And the other:

Heck, it’s not even certain that anything will change. After all, we did just emerge from a record national recession caused by deregulation of banks and a massive imbalance of wealth, and the almost immediate response was to make the imbalance greater, strip away more regulations, and grease a pipeline to take tax dollars straight into the pockets of billionaires. America has an astounding ability to absorb any blow … and then pretend that it didn’t happen so we can avoid learning a damn thing. See Trump, racism.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed the current situation in Portland. Eleveld quoted journalist Masha Gessen, “A lot of power is performance.” The nasty guy and his thugs are showing performative power. However, it works both ways.

Gessen's point, in short, is that a show of resistance must bubble up from the people in order to quash the evolution of fascism. That resistance is also a crucial show of performative power. Americans aren't just going to stand by while Trump declares war on the roughly two-thirds of the population who happen reside in U.S. cities.

And that's the stand the citizens of Portland are making.

The Black Lives Matter protests had dwindled to the hundreds. But thousands are now protesting the nasty guy and his thugs. The Wall of Moms was joined by the Wall of Dads toting leaf blowers. And last night the Wall of Vets came too.

To keep our democracy we need to do two things. One is to deliver an electoral rout in November.

But the second is to deliver a sizable show of resistance to his authoritarian policies in every possible way.

Gessen explained it like this: "Whether the Secret Service or other uniformed services escort Donald Trump out of office after he refuses to recognize an electoral loss—god willing it's a loss—will depend on whether they perceive the people are on their side or his side."

Again, power is performative. It's up to all us to show up at the voting booth, on the streets, or in our capacity as elected officials and resoundingly reject Trump's fascist regime.