Vote Early, Vote Often?

Take a Deep Breath:  At least so far Trump’s LAW & ORDER charade isn’t working, or at least that’s what the polls, for what they are worth, appear to indicate.  The national polls still show the spread between the two candidates somewhere between 8 and 10 points with Biden in the lead, no change from before the conventions.  By now we know that national polls hold less water than state polls but the picture there looks positive for Biden as well.  Fox News, as in the home of Hannity and Carlson, has Biden leading Trump by 9 points in Arizona, 4 points in North Carolina and 8 points in Wisconsin, as in the home of Kenosha. Those results probably explain Trump’s newest voting strategy, yesterday he suggested that his North Carolina voters vote twice to test the system, once by mail and a second time in person.  And of course, because he endorses everything his lordship Trump utters, during an extremely disturbing but revealing interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Attorney General Barr said he didn’t know if voting twice was illegal.  In case you’re considering it, despite that old Chicago adage “vote early and often,” voting more than once is illegal and Barr knows that.  Though Barr hasn’t seen any examples of foreign countries mailing in thousands of counterfeit ballots, logic, or at least his logic, says that they could if they wanted to which isn’t accurate given the plethora of ballots across all the states and localities.  Sticking with that theme, Barr couldn’t cite more than one case of voter fraud, but that didn’t stop him from claiming that mail in ballots made fraud more likely.  Barr went on to deny that there was any systemic racism in law enforcement and that the idea that Blacks are treated differently by the justice system is a false narrative.  He tried to explain that by differentiating the George Floyd “murder by knee” from the James Blake “shot in the back seven times” thing saying that Floyd’s treatment was bad because he’d already been subdued to the ground for the heinous crime of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill but that Blake’s shooting was okay because he was armed and committing a felony.  When Blitzer pointed out that Blake, who had a knife tucked away in his car, wasn’t armed when he was shot, in front of his four young children, Barr whined that’s not what he heard and by heard he meant that’s not the narrative that he’s going with.  Among other things the devious Barr also doubled down on Trump’s assertion that black clad thugs were seen on airplanes flying into all those “violent” cities.  He even went so far as to say that reports of all those people (Congresspeople and Senators?) flying into Washington DC are being investigated.  When Blitzer pointed out that Trump’s ninja assertion was based on a conspiracy laden Facebook posting, Barr just glared back and shrugged.  As to that oft promised but still undelivered John Durham report, the one that may or may not “prove” that the whole Russia investigation was illegally predicated, Barr implied that he’d be willing to break the practice against releasing election impacting reports within 60 days of an election, but only if doing so would help Trump. On a more positive front, at least for Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Barr said that neither was currently under investigation despite Trump saying that Barr could really distinguish himself if he threw the two in jail for spying on him.

 

Pick Your Poison: In other news, German medical professionals confirmed that Russian dissident Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok group, a Putin favorite.  Both Britain’s Boris Johnson and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemned the Russian government while Trump remained silent, leaving it to the National Security Council to issue a statement about the “reprehensible” and “disturbing” poisoning.  Roll up your sleeve and get ready for  your vaccination.  At least that’s the message that the Trump administration is trying to delivery.  Yesterday, the CDC sent urgent requests to state governors requesting that they facilitate the rapid deployment of injection sites, waiving all impediments so that the sites can be up and running by November 1, as in right before that key presidential election. It’s not clear what mind altering drug will be injected into us on November 1 as no responsible medical experts believe that a vaccine will be ready by then.  It also remains unclear exactly what Trump’s on but whatever it is, it had him in a frenzy yesterday so to use up some of his Adderall, caffeine or whatever generated energy he announced that he plans to defund all those anarchist, Democratic run cities including NYC, Portland, Washington DC and Seattle because he “will not allow federal money to be used to fund cities that are letting themselves become lawless zones.”  In particular, he says that he’s going after any cities who plan to defund the police.  Of course the fact that many of those same cities will be forced to cut back funding for all essential services due to coronavirus driven budget cuts exacerbated by the failure of his administration to push the Republican led Senate to pass legislation that would help states out of their budget holes is totally irrelevant.  By the way, out and about in NYC yesterday, I failed to note any anarchy.  Lots of skate boards, adults and kids scurrying around in facemasks, restaurant seats in the middle of the street and outdoor pedicure venues but nothing else of note.  And yes, I finally got a pedicure!