Let Freedom Ring

The Day That Was:  Yesterday was about as Trumpian as it gets. The day began with the  release of awful, horrible economic data which was quickly followed by the distraction of all distraction Trump tweets, the death of a prominent Trump supporter, the celebration of the life of an American hero, another lie filled Trump press conference and ended with the release of some of the much awaited Ghislaine Maxwell deposition.  In between, Senate Majority leader McConnell sent his crowd home for the weekend without reaching agreement on the next coronavirus relief package, the DC Appeals Court agreed to take up the Flynn matter, and the hearing for a Trump Defense nominee who hates Muslims and once called Obama a terrorist was cancelled.  Oh, and that virus, it’s still out of control.  On the economic data front,  The GDP fell 9.5%, the equivalent of a 32.9% annual rate of decline, in the second quarter as people stopped spending, businesses cut back on investments and global trade went kaput.  The drop would have been even worse without the aid provided to individuals and businesses, one of the key reasons that the failure to agree to the next package is such a bigly problem.  So much for that V shaped recovery that Trump and his economic advisors have promised would be upon us before the election.  Trump, who’s been relying on his economic “prowess” to bring back those voters who’ve had it with his virus performance and who aren’t all that impressed by his race baiting or LAW & ORDER theme, reached into his bag of evil tricks and pulled out one of his long term favorites, the election fraud myth, and tweeted  "With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"  Even though Trump doesn’t have the authority to postpone the election and elections have been held during wars and other times of national emergency, that tweet sent shivers down everyone spines. Pushback rolled in all day from many Republican legislators not just Mitt Romney, but several governors, Senators, House leaders, Mitch McConnell and even the co-founder of the generally supportive conservative Federalist Society who called the tweet grounds for another impeachment.  Even the Wall Street Journal criticized him, though they couldn’t resist the opportunity to call for Democrats to clean up their act with regard to mail in ballots.  Nevertheless, Trump doubled down again during his afternoon press conference.  By the way a mail-in ballot is a mail-in ballot whether it comes from a state with a universal mail-in policy or from millions of people  voting via absentee ballot but Trump wants everyone to think that there is a distinction.  He also wants enough people to believe that if the election isn’t settled within a day of November 3 that its not fair and that he gets to be president for life which explains why his newly appointed Postal Chief has been slowing mail down and also why he’s doing his best to cut post office funding.

Good Trouble:  Civil Rights icon John Lewis, who fought for voting rights his entire life, must have anticipated Trump’s antics.  Days before he died he gave the NY Times an op ed message to print on the day of his funeral, one where he reminded us that we have to take action to maintain and improve our Democracy. Yesterday during his funeral, three former presidents George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama spoke and while all of the speeches showed up Trump’s inadequacies it was Obama’s speech that was hard hitting.  He took Lewis’ message and hammered  Trump and the Republicans with it, calling the filibuster a Jim Crow relic, pushing for election day to be a national holiday, calling for Puerto Rico and DC statehood, and generally dissing all things Trump without ever mentioning his name. Trump of course, who was not there, made no mention of Lewis but during his afternoon press conference, the one that was scheduled as Obama was speaking, did mention the death of his good buddy Herman Cain, the one-time presidential candidate/pizza executive, that’s the death that he attributed to the “China” virus, while failing to mention that the unmasked Cain caught COVID at the now infamous crowded Tulsa Rally.  Trump even expressed just a teeny tiny amount of sadness about the other 150,000 people who’ve died from the virus, but then of course reminded everyone that were it not for him and his superb handling of the “China” virus millions more would be dead by now, he did that while again insisting that despite daily death counts reaching new highs and another increase in the projection of the number of people who will fall to the virus by year end that everything is getting much better.  As to that superb handling, while Trump claimed that kids are going to be fine in school and that cures and vaccines were right around the corner, Vanity Fair published an article about how Jared Kushner’s secret plan for wide spread testing went “poof into the air” in part because he and the people that he surrounded himself  with weren’t capable of rolling out such an ambitious plan and in part because Trump and his advisors decided that since the virus was at that time only killing people in blue states, there was no need for widespread testing.  Yes, you got that right, old people, minorities and blue state residents dying, who really cares about that?

Still More: When we last left the Michael Flynn affair, the one-time national security advisor’s fate was in the hands of Judge Emmet Sullivan who was resisting the AG Barr led Justice Department’s efforts to have the charges that he had already admitted to dropped.  Yesterday, providing an indication that Judge Sullivan’s efforts aren’t for naught, the DC Circuit Court vacated its earlier 2-1 decision that ordered Sullivan to listen to Justice and dismiss the charges against Flynn, sending the case to be reheard by the full court.  The bottom line, Flynn is not off the hook yet, he may still need that Trump pardon.  Vice President Pence was involved in a bus accident that no one noticed because of everything else that was going on and late last night the first tranche of Jeff Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell’s secret depositions were released.  Suffice it to say that Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz has a lot of explaining to do and it would be fair to ask Trump again why Mar a Lago was hiring underage girls for age inappropriate jobs.  And taking another page from the Putin book, apparently the Department of Homeland Security is going after the press, saying that they’re fair game since so many protestors are claiming to be members of the press or something like that.  In addition it turns out that DHS has been compiling “intelligence reports” about the work of American journalists covering the Portland protests, something that “current and former officials called an alarming use of a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors.”  Another pointer that Trump got from Putin?  And proving that Putin isn’t the only autocrat that Trump takes pointers from, this morning with the “support” of the Chinese government, Hong Kong’s puppet Leader Carrie Lam announced that the government would postpone legislative elections by one year, blaming the postponement on the worsening coronavirus outbreak. 

Take a deep breath, enjoy the weekend and #WearAMask