babylonsister
babylonsister's JournalCharles P. Pierce: The Republicans in Congress Are a Bunch of Pathetic Cowards
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34563503/republicans-congress-cowards-trump-undermine-election/The Republicans in Congress Are a Bunch of Pathetic Cowards
Even now, as the president attacks the legitimacy of our elections, they will only whisper their opposition anonymously.
By Charles P. Pierce
Nov 3, 2020
Ah, one last ensemble bleat from the chorus of scabied sheep in the Congress, and Politico was there to hear it.
Christamighty, what a passel of poltroons. What can he possibly do to them now? His threats have been largely empty ones ever since the 2018 midterms handed Nancy Pelosi the big gavel again. They have to know this. But this apparently now is a line on every resume belonging to every ambitious Republican conservative: "Privately Opposed President, 2016-2020."
Don't worry. I have a feeling that the entire country has at least one more of those handy.
David Corn: Biden Got It Right: The 2020 Race Is About the Soul of the Nation
This must have been very cathartic for Mr. Corn; he let it rip!
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/11/biden-got-it-right-the-2020-race-is-about-the-soul-of-the-nation/
November 2, 2020
Biden Got It Right: The 2020 Race Is About the Soul of the Nation
Will American voters beat back the Trump virus?
David Corn
It always sounded hokey, but it was an accurate description of the 2020 election: a fight for the nation’s soul.
Joe Biden adopted this as his catchphrase when he entered the campaign. But whether he were in the race or not, this shorthand would have aptly framed the contest. Since moving into the White House, Donald Trump, the first reality-show president, has debased the country with his bigotry, divisiveness, and demagoguery. And to make literally everything worse, his brazen incompetence, willful ignorance, and pathological narcissism shaped an inept response to a national disaster that has resulted in over 230,000 American deaths and widespread economic calamity affecting millions. The driving question of 2020 had to be: would the voters of the United States accept this? What would it say about the country if they did?
snip//
Reality proved to be a killer for Trump. He had always bullshitted his way to success. And he and his minions were prepared to pooh-pooh Biden’s critiques of Trump’s character as those of a sniveling weakling and career politician who couldn’t match Trump’s fortitude and fierceness. But the rising death count and the continuing economic disaster made Biden’s case: Trump’s flaws had consequences. This was not just a question of style. Trump represented the worst qualities of the nation (and of human nature), and Americans were dying because he was in power.
So this election is indeed a reality check. Do most voters—and do enough voters in swing states—recognize the realities of Trump’s fake presidency? He has spread a deadly strain of authoritarianism, animus, and ignorance within the US government and American society. Will the body politic now expel this virus? Are the antibodies strong enough?
There are sharp policy differences galore between Trump and Biden. One is aiming to throw millions off their health insurance; the other wants to expand health care coverage. One shouts “law and order” in the face of police brutality and racial injustice, the other proposes steps to address these challenges. One touts tax cuts for his rich friends, the other vows to redress economic inequality. Climate change, gun violence, reproductive rights, immigration, education, nuclear nonproliferation—run through the list; they hold starkly opposing positions. Much of this is the usual R-versus-D stuff. But in the 2020 showdown, more is on the table. What is being tested in this election is whether the Trump infection and this democracy’s slide toward authoritarianism and kleptocracy can be beaten back. Trump and Biden are on the ballot, but the nation’s character is on the line.
Shock Number: 61,000+ U.S. Kids Caught COVID-19 Last Week
https://www.thedailybeast.com/61000-us-kids-caught-coronavirus-last-week?ref=home
Shock Number: 61,000+ U.S. Kids Caught COVID-19 Last Week
‘HORRIBLE TO EVEN WORSE’
Jamie Ross, Reporter
Updated Nov. 03, 2020 7:01AM ET /
Published Nov. 03, 2020 6:47AM ET
Reuters/Mike Blake
Biden's Plan to Assert Control
https://politicalwire.com/2020/11/03/bidens-plan-to-assert-control/
Biden’s Plan to Assert Control
November 3, 2020 at 6:19 am EST By Taegan Goddard
“Biden advisers learned the lesson of 2000, when Al Gore hung back while George W. Bush declared victory in that contested election, putting the Democrat on the defensive while Bush acted like the winner.”
“So if Biden is declared the winner, he’ll begin forming his government and looking presidential — and won’t yield to doubts Trump might try to sow.”
Stocks zoom higher as Wall Street predicts Joe Biden will win
Stocks zoom higher as Wall Street predicts Joe Biden will win
By Anneken Tappe, CNN Business
Updated 4:05 PM ET, Mon November 2, 2020
New York (CNN Business)US stocks finished higher on Monday, one day before Election Day -- when Wall Street expects Joe Biden will win the presidency and Democrats will retake the Senate and maintain control of the House.
Stocks opened sharply higher before encountering volatility and paring some gains.
The Dow (INDU) closed up 1.6%, or 423 points, having gained more than 500 points at its high point. The broader S&P 500 (SPX) finished 1.2% higher.
The Nasdaq Composite (COMP) had a choppier trading day, opening sharply higher before turning red in the early afternoon and then clawing back some ground before the closing bell. The index finished up 0.4%.
All three benchmarks retraced some of their losses from last week, when they recorded their worst week since March.
Although stocks typically favor Republican policies, investors are eager for more fiscal stimulus, that will buoy an economy headed south once again as coronavirus cases soar. Investors predict a "blue wave" would lift the chances of a comprehensive stimulus deal getting passed in the winter.
A Biden win would also likely mean less news and headline risk for stocks in the term to come, investors believe.
Even if the polls are wrong, the evidence is still pointing to a Biden victory, they added. Prediction market PredictIt puts a Biden win at 66%.
more...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/02/investing/dow-stock-market-election/index.html
The Rude Pundit: The Simplest Endorsement Possible: Fewer People Will Die If Joe Biden Is Elected
https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-simplest-endorsement-possible-fewer.htmlThe Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
11/01/2020
The Simplest Endorsement Possible: Fewer People Will Die If Joe Biden Is Elected
snip//
But lemme bottom line this for anyone who may still be stupid enough to be on the fence at this point: You vote for Joe Biden because fewer people in this country will die if he's elected.
And this isn't even an argument. It's just fucking factual. If Trump is re-elected, then nothing will change in how the country handles the coronavirus. We'll just keep suffering and dying until there's a vaccine or some miracle treatment. And even then we'll keep suffering and dying by the tens of thousands because of how long it will take to distribute a vaccine, which will likely not work to prevent 100% of the cases anyways.
The way to prevent far, far more death and complications from COVID even when you survive is to elect Joe Biden. It really is that simple. And when you think of it that way, it's about as clarifying as anything can be. You can ask yourself, "What kind of person am I? Am I the kind of person who wants more people to die? Or am I the kind that would like to prevent more coronavirus deaths than necessary?" Yeah, it's that fucking simple.
Jesus, just look at what Biden wants to do. It's all the easy shit that Trump could have done, and if we had done it from the start, we might not be looking down the barrel of a long winter killing a bunch more of us. A massive expansion of testing, a massive expansion of the medical personnel available, a massive increase in the supplies of PPE, a huge boost in the spending on those hit by the economic disaster of the pandemic, a huge boost in spending to make schools and businesses safe, and so very much more are all part of it. Health professionals think it's a good plan. Hell, it's a fuckin' plan, unlike the lack of a plan we have now. As one expert put it, "I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘What if we had this all along during the pandemic?’ What a different place we would be in." Imagine that. Imagine being South Korea, where they never had to lockdown and where they can go out to eat and to work and to school and to concerts and live a normal goddamn life again.
Yeah, that's fuckin' enough for me. And it should be all you need to convince you to vote for Biden.
snip//
So there's my motherfucking endorsement of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I shouldn't have to make any other argument, just like Donald Trump shouldn't even be in pissing distance of winning reelection after helping to cause the deaths of a quarter million people in this country.
I'm not being trite or ignoring other things. We're in a big fucking crisis. One candidate makes the crisis better. One candidate makes the crisis worse. For once, it's pretty fucking clear that the election is not about the lesser of two evils. It's about defeating a genuine evil.
Democrats debate fate of Trump probes if Biden wins
Democrats debate fate of Trump probes if Biden wins
By Olivia Beavers - 11/02/20 06:00 AM EST
House Democrats are weighing how to move forward with a flurry of ongoing probes and future investigations if President Trump loses on Tuesday.
The big question hanging over Democrats, who are expected to keep the majority in the House, is whether to lean into post-election investigations that could detract from their legislative priorities under a Joe Biden presidency and risk further dividing the electorate.
The answer is likely to come into focus once the chairs of the various investigative committees receive direction from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Biden, if he wins.
But some key Democrats and House committees are already planning — and pressing party leaders — to keep digging into open investigations.
The Intelligence panel plans to pursue its investigation into the potential politicization of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, a probe Democrats say was obstructed by the Trump administration, according to a committee aide.
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/523725-democrats-debate-fate-of-trump-probes-if-biden-wins
Eric Boehlert: Missing -- where are the "Trump Lies About Voting" headlines?
Missing — where are the "Trump Lies About Voting" headlines?
Tell the truth
Eric Boehlert
snip//
It's part of an unnerving media trend of not calling out Trump lies, and specifically not labeling them as he barnstorms across the country trying to demolish faith in public elections. Wasting nearly all of Trump's first term hiding behind claims that he was merely spreading "inaccuracies" or he was "misinformed," the press has allowed Trump’s pathology to become normalized.
What Trump's now pushing goes far beyond the long-running, and bogus, conservative claims that U.S. elections are riddled with frauds, and that laws need to be passed to make it more difficult for Americans to vote. It also extends beyond the series of court battles across the United State that Republicans have waged trying to limit the time and opportunities voters have to send in early ballots.
What Trump is now promoting is stunningly simple: Don't tally all the votes. Specifically, he's lying about how votes are tabulated by the states days after Election Day, regardless if television networks declare a winner on Election Night.
On Monday, he claimed we "must have a final total by Nov. 3," which Twitter flagged as misleading and blocked users from seeing on their feeds. He made the incorrect claim that it’s “totally inappropriate” to count ballots after Election Day. (Voting ends on Election Day, the counting can continue for days and weeks.) Trump also suggested election results can't be trusted because voters can change their votes after they've been cast.
The lies are unprecedented for a presidential nominee, as is Trump's attempt to damage centuries of American election laws and guidelines. Yet much of the news coverage treats it all as merely a unique campaign strategy. "Trump advisers said their best hope was if the president wins Ohio and Florida is too close to call early in the night, depriving Mr. Biden a swift victory and giving Mr. Trump the room to undermine the validity of uncounted mail-in ballots in the days after," the New York Times reported matter-of-factly this weekend, without a hint of how stunning and dangerous that is to our democracy.
“If Trump’s “best hope” is stealing the election, newspaper should say that’s what he’s contemplating, and not describe it as a “best hope,” noted Crooked Media’s Brian Beutler.
more...
https://pressrun.media/p/missing-where-are-the-trump-lies
Feds to Erect Non-Scalable Fence Around White House
How very pathetic. Running scared; you reap what you sow.
https://politicalwire.com/2020/11/02/feds-to-erect-non-scalable-fence-around-white-house/
Feds to Erect Non-Scalable Fence Around White House
November 2, 2020 at 6:34 am EST By Taegan Goddard
Young Voters Could Fuel Blue Wave for Years
Here's a lovely thought...
https://politicalwire.com/2020/11/02/young-voters-could-fuel-blue-wave/
Young Voters Could Fuel Blue Wave for Years
November 2, 2020 at 7:46 am EST By Taegan Goddard
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