Calm now, storm coming?

I went through my browser tabs Monday evening. I closed several of the ones I won’t ever have time to write about. I listed the ones I do want to write about and got a list of thirty items. And yesterday added another five. Way back in my browser tabs, probably months old, there are still a few I couldn’t bring myself to close. So to plow through the list as far as I can. Emily Murphy is creating a name for herself. She’s the administrator of the General Services Administration, appointed by the nasty guy. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Murphy has refused to issue the letter that allows the incoming presidential transition team access to millions of dollars. That money is for such things as office space and computers. Such a letter is routinely issued within hours of a winner being declared. Not this time. It’s part of a general slowdown of Biden’s ability to deal with the pandemic and the transition in general on his way to inauguration. Hunter of Kos reported William Barr, the head of the Department of No Justice, issued a letter to US attorneys across the country that they have the power to investigate if there are allegations of vote irregularities. Hunter wrote the important word is if. This is a power these attorneys already have. So the letter was written to mollify the nasty guy or to add to the noise of propaganda. Or both. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that in all the cases the nasty guy has filed to do something with the election none of them – even taken together – will switch enough votes for the nasty guy to win. For example, one suit in Pennsylvania is about 7,800 votes, yet Biden won the state by 45,000. Of the cases decided the nasty guy is 0-12. Historian Michael Hattem tweeted:

The f*****g nerve it takes to not only benefit from an already imbalanced system but to then gut the Voting Rights Act, engage in unprecedented gerrymandering, remove voting machines to cause hours-long lines, pass voter ID laws, cripple the USPS & then claim YOU'VE been cheated.

Ian Millhiser of Vox tweeted:

I still don't think the courts will toss out the election and install Trump in a coup. But the mere fact that we're not all convinced that there's a zero percent chance that they will do so is a sign of how much the judiciary as an institution was diminished under Trump.

Rémy Anne tweeted:

it’s not actually a coup unless it comes from the coup d'état region of france, otherwise it’s just a sparkling authoritarian takeover

Mark Sumner of Kos reported the nasty guy is cleaning house at the Department of Defense. Why bother now with only 70 days before the next administration takes over? The transition between presidents is already a vulnerable time for America. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has already been terminated. The reason is he told his boss he refused to bring military forces on the streets of Washington, DC where they might fire on fellow Americans. Which implies the nasty guy wants someone in charge who would follow such an order. Ryan Browne, a CNN national security reporter, tweeted:

Pentagon finally confirms near total decapitation of civilian leadership in the last 24 hours. Secretary of Defense Esper fired Monday, the top Pentagon Policy official, top Defense Department intelligence official, and chief of staff to the Defense Secretary all out today.

In another post Sumner discussed the Defense Department situation, saying it doesn’t make a lot of sense and is not making us feel secure. What is the nasty guy planning to do with the military? David Nir of Kos lists all the GOP leaders who have refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s win. Then he asks an important question: Where are the Democrats? They should be speaking out against the nasty guy. They can’t just “humor him” until January 20. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the Supreme Court, through teleconference, held oral arguments on whether the Affordable Care Act as a whole should be struck down because a part of it had been struck down and zeroed out (I’ll let you read details). Two of the conservatives – Roberts and Kavanaugh – questioned the lawyers saying Congress had the opportunity (actually, several) to overturn the law and didn’t. Roberts added “but that’s not our job” to overturn what Congress didn’t. This suggests how the justices will decide when the decision comes out sometime before June, but isn’t a guarantee. Matthew Sheffield used to be a major player in conservative media. He had complained about mainstream medial being “unfair” to conservative views. Now he is working to free people from what he had previously built. Here are excepts from a long tweet thread:

What I did not realize until I began expanding my work into creating actual media and reporting institutions such as the Washington Examiner (I was the founding online editor) was that U.S. conservatives do not understand the purpose of journalism. ... I eventually realized that most people who run right-dominated media outlets see it as their DUTY to be unfair and to favor Republicans because doing so would some how counteract perceived liberal bias. ... I realized later that I didn't understand that journalism is supposed to portray reality. This thought was phrased memorably by @StephenAtHome as "reality has a well-known liberal bias" which is an oversimplification but is more accurate than the conservative journalist view which is that media should promote and serve conservative politicians. ... Truth for conservative journalists is anything that harms "the left." It doesn't even have to be a fact. Trump's numerous lies about any subject under the sun are thus justified because his deceptions point to a larger truth: that liberals are evil. ... At the same time, the tens of millions of people who vote Republican are not deplorable. They are misled. And the mocking and tribalistic coverage that lefty media often engage in only makes things worse. Only love can defeat hate.

Kos of Kos discussed the election results, looking at a half-dozen aspects. The one that caught my attention he titled White people will be white people. That thing about 2008 when Obama was elected “solved” racism? Nah. Kos laid out some numbers. In 2004 GW Bush got 58% of the white vote. 2008 McCain got 55%. 2012 Romney got 59% 2016 Trump got 57% 2020 Trump got 57% (though numbers are not final). Those are numbers that don’t move much. Leah McElrath, a psychotherapist, wrote a thread about malignant narcissists, otherwise known as psychopaths, and what happens when a victim finally gets away from them. There is sometimes a “pink cloud” period where the narcissist is acting agreeably while they are planning to destroy the target. So things may have seemed calm during the last week. But destruction planning is going on. Bill Barr popped up (see above) after being silent for a while. Moscow Mitch has accepted the results of Senate and House races (at least the GOP winners) but said the nasty guy is “100% in his rights” to pursue legal options. Hey Mitch … If the votes for president are suspect, so are the votes for all winners in the House and Senate. You can’t accept one and not the other. (Thanks to Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press for that insight). McElrath believes the nasty guy, the vice nasty, Mitch, and Barr are planning something to get the election before the Supreme Court. She doesn’t yet know what. Though of what Barr has done so far (see above) McElrath wrote:

While Americans were dancing in the streets, Barr was busy creating—literally making up—a legal justification for FEDERAL investigations into election processes and results that are run by STATES, thereby violating state sovereignty.

Good to hear the Biden team in prepared. Maybe the pink cloud has already passed. I had written the GOP legislature in Michigan didn’t let ballot counters to handle the flood of early votes until election day. Chris Hayes confirmed that was an intentional plan (in PA too) so they could sow doubt over the delay in counting. McElrath confirmed the GOP strategy was always chaos. As part of that McElrath tweeted about the termination of Mark Esper:

Given that people celebrated the election by dancing—not protesting or rioting—and that Trump forced Esper out after celebrations were over, we have to ask: What is Trump anticipating happening in the next two months in response to which he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act?

This is where protesting is seen as trying to overthrow America so force could be used to eliminate those protests. Sumner reported the nasty guy is raising money to defend his stay in the White House. Or maybe line his pockets. Or to take over the Republican National Committee in preparation for the pandemic princess to run in 2024. About four years ago the Republicans made a bargain. They would support the nasty guy, wait him out, and inherit his base. Except it has become the nasty guy’s base. And the nasty guy, or his heirs, will run the party. McElrath repeats that the nasty guy will steal and destroy on his way out the door. We are not safe yet.

Trump can do immense damage as a “lame duck” and his character structure virtually guarantees he will.

This is a time when one should gird their loins. McElrath used that phrase, then got lots of questions about what it meant. So she tweeted a card showing how a man of 2000 years ago would gather up his tunic and tying it in such a way as to keep his legs bare. After girding his loins in this manner he was better able to go into battle or handle hard labor. Last Saturday the nasty guy tweeted that his lawyers would be doing a press conference at the Four Seasons. He meant the posh Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia. The presser was held in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. That’s in an industrial area with the landscaping company between the adult store and the crematorium. I had a minor computer disaster yesterday at this point in writing this post. I lost my browser tabs. If you’re really curious I can explain how it happened. I’m sure I mentioned before that I keep a lot of browser tabs open to save interesting sites (bookmarks are so 2007). When I lost them I had over 100, including several I wanted to include in this post, and a few going back several years. That put a stop to my writing yesterday. I used browser history to recover the stories for this post (as I mentioned they were in a list), then began scanning my browser history for the rest, or at least some of them. Including the ones for this post I’ve recovered about a third of them. These include where I get Michigan’s coronavirus case and death data (it’s not obvious from their main coronavirus page) and what is playing on the Metropolitan Opera free streaming service (also not a direct link from their main page). As for the rest of those sites, will I really miss them? We’ll compare with how much I really want to scroll through five years of browsing history to find a few dozen nuggets. Former president GW Bush is acting like the adult in the GOP family. He actually called Joe Biden to congratulate him on his win. He called Kamala Harris too. Then he released a public statement about what he had done. Ah, for the rest of the party to do the same. TBashII quoted the Associated Press:

“It was all a sham. I felt terrible, terrible. I knew I was lying. I knew I was doing something wrong." Two census takers tell The @AP that supervisors pressured them to enter false information into a computer system about homes they had not visited.

TbashII responded:

The census is fully compromised and has to be redone. That was well-known before this story came out.

Scott Simon on NPR does a bit of commentary during his morning show on Saturday. A few days ago he commented on the amount of money spent on this campaign cycle. Jamie Harrison of South Carolina, running for the Senate, raised $107 million, $67 million more than his opponent. He lost. Candidates for the Senate raised $88 million in Kentucky, $68 million in Maine, $47 million in Iowa. They also lost. Simon then said “Campaigns are rewarded for winning, not being cost-effective.” A losing campaign doesn’t want to regret not spending more. But the campaigns for president, House, and Senate combined spent $14 billion. That’s twice the previous high set in 2016. And much of that money didn’t accomplish much. A lot of money could hurt a candidate by making them appear to be the choice of outsiders. What might we have accomplished of that money was given to food banks or for rent assistance? On the same topic Rachel Martin of NPR talked to Ami Copeland, former deputy national finance director for Obama’s first presidential run. Copeland responded to Democrats having spent $6.9 billion on House seats in the last week and didn’t get much to show for it.

Well, there's an old saying in politics that remains true today - early money screams, and late money whispers. With early money, we see that campaigns have more time to be innovative. They get to try new voter contact and persuasion programs, invest in technology, text messaging and ultimately create a campaign that has agility. Also, money begets money. The earlier campaigns are able to raise, the more they get at the end of the day. However, on the flip side, campaigns can do less with money that comes in late, as we saw with many of these Democratic Senate pickup opportunities this cycle. Just because - traditionally, campaigns budget against what they think will come in; they are less prepared to spend it outside of that budget. So they end up just doubling down on what they'd been doing before and not know whether or not if it's working until the end. … When it comes to those state and local campaigns, however, we really should be examining more closely as to where those donations come from and not mistake those overall totals for local voter enthusiasm.

When budgeting my campaign donations I didn’t include anything for October or November. That seemed too late. These comments show I was right. Even so I did donate some in October. I got campaign emails with desperate wording all the way up to, and including, election day. I though how are they going to spend it at this point? Kate Halliwell tweeted:

can’t believe we have to skip the one thanksgiving where WE get to be annoying as f&%# about the election

I added a few more items from today and still have a dozen items in my list. Yeah, I’ll write again.