The week of living dangerously

Trump is right!  We are "rounding the turn."  Not on covid, that's worse than ever.  But every prediction from Pew, Quinnipiac and the Magic Eight-Ball says there's a Biden-shape light at the end of the tunnel.

Vladimir Putin can see it, too.  Days after Benjamin Netanyahu carefully distanced himself from Trump in front of witnesses, Putin gave an interview where, according to Reuters, he "took the time to knock down what he made clear he regarded as false allegations from Trump about the Bidens."  No wonder the bot army has apparently been ordered to stand down.  

Gerrymandering, voter ID requirements, purges, limited hours, defective machines, long lines, a crippled postal service, what will they think of next to prevent democracy?  How about a little fire?  Ballot boxes in Los Angeles and Boston have been set on fire in the past week, destroying some of the contents.  Trump is encouraging armed goons to show up at the polls when people try to vote, especially in largely Black cities like Philadelphia.  (You know, the place where they wrote the damn Constitution.)  A cornered Trump is a dangerous Trump.

For some reason, people just aren't responding to his litanies of self-praise and staggering mendacity.  The whole campaign is in disarray.  For some reason African Americans don't respond to Jared Kushner's suggestion that they don't "want to be successful" enough to overcome systemic racism the way he did, by being born rich and white.  Nor are women excited to read things like this:

It explains the unseemly haste but underscores the misogynistic hate.  Not cool, House Judiciary GOP.  Prepare to see your minority continue to shrink.

Did you see that debate, where Biden said "Poor Bois" instead of "Proud Bois"?   Dementia, right?  Then you'll love today's exploding cigar.  Biden confused Trump with George Bush!  Except he didn't.  Before the video was doctored it was clear he was responding to a question from the comedian George Lopez.  The Today Show on Trump's old network gleefully spread the story and had to back down when Ana Navarro-Cardenas pointed out their error, or to use her phrase, "unethical crap."  NBC apologized, which is more than President Covfefe has done.

Are the Republicans short of cash or just really, really dumb?  Last week it was a Facebook ad of a purported American doctor that might as well have had Cyrillic graphics.  Now they've been caught using another actress to portray Typical American Voter-mom in Senate campaign ads in Maine, Kansas and Iowa.  Did Berkman and Wohl recruit her on Craigslist and then fail to pay her?  We're a week from election day, guys, put your backs into it.

Like these people in the Biden Disinformation Collective.  The George Lopez interview didn't work out, OK, they got right back on the horse.  Biden made a speech in Warm Springs, Georgia, where FDR used to take the waters, and said, "Why am I doing this?  Why?  What is my real aim?"  Ha, more video of the foolish, fond old man.  Except it turns out he was quoting from an encyclical of Pope Francis.  I suspect the next Trump ad won't make that clear.  And Trump is working as hard as ever, watching Fox News and complaining because they carried Barack Obama's drive-in rally in Orlando:  "no crowd fake speech."  He still doesn't get this social distancing thing.  "Fake speech"?  Sounded real to me.  Dementia?  Sounds real to me.

Trump always takes the high road, so he left it to Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) to make fun of Biden's stammer.  Which, to be honest, I was completely unaware of until this year.  That's how well he handles it.  And it's a full-time job.  I once heard Jonathan Miller talk about the circumlocutions he used to avoid certain consonants.  I could not do it, I think I'd resort to hand-signals.  We used to admire people who overcame disabilities, like Helen Keller; like Jim Abbott, the pitcher born with one hand; like Wilma Rudolph, who overcame polio and racism to win three Olympic gold medals.  We're pitiful.  They're not.

Trump calls the Sixty Minutes interview, in which he willingly participated for free publicity, "a very hostile attack by a woman who does nothing."  So now Lesley Stahl joins Anthony Fauci, Christine Blasey Ford, Ilhan Omar and Yoel Roth of Twitter's site integrity team in learning to live with bodyguards.  Death threats:  Valentines from impotent cowards.

Dr. Fauci says the US is still in its first wave of covid.  Except for the White House, which is in its second.

None of this may matter because the ice in the Arctic Ocean has begun to melt, releasing vast amounts of methane.  But why listen to "the experts"?

American survivalists are preparing for the election by buying guns and toilet paper.   Relax, Trumpanzees, you can always use your MAGA hat to wipe your ass.  Your lawn sign, too, in an emergency.

Amy Coney Rabbit has been on the job for less than twenty-four hours but Norman Ornstein has explained how she can be impeached.  That sounds complicated.  To get rid of all three McConnell stooges, all we have to do is make perjury a crime again.  The statute of limitations has run out on attempted rape, but not on the shit Kavanaugh was slinging at his confirmation.  (Do you know that polka, Brett -- "In Prison There Is No Beer"?)  Right now perjury is a job qualification, which is why nobody could get a straight answer out of them.  No need to expand the court, just call Merrick Garland and two other qualified justices.  And maybe move Dianne Feinstein onto the agriculture committee where she can't do much harm.

Trump has already taken bows for the CDC directive to prevent evictions of people unemployed by the pandemic.  Astonishingly, it's not working.  Well, that's one way to cut down on voting -- you can't vote if you don't have an address.  Oh and look where the evictions have begun:  Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.  Well played.