Election, Supremes, Pardons, Time of Year, Hunter Attax, Gohmert Decay

Texas has no standing, now must sit     [Image from Daily News]
  • I’ve been thinking about how often Joe Biden has run for President. He lost twice. He lost in 1992. He lost in 2008.
     
    But in 2020 he has, so far, won …like… nine times. Ten with last night’s Supreme Court ruling. That would be 3060 electoral votes. All those lawsuits and weird workarounds and threats and armed attempts at intimidation keep the fun going and going, in a potentially violent, dangerous sort of way. It’s like (and don’t correct me, I’m on a roll here) watching Rocky IX and wondering who will win.
     
    But nojo is one of the wisest sages on line, and he warns that the erosion of democratic principles will continue. The coup will keep on as a never ending enterprise. There is always the slavery holdover electoral college that quadrennially becomes a dice throw. The fake-danger might not be so much fun, or fake, in the end. Remember Westworld from the wayback machine? The fun will be over when democracy is killed.
     
  • The Onion takes an electoral stand saluting those courageous Trump supporting legislators who have pledged to bravely stand up against American voters.
     
  • Gingrich Fox contribution: The objective fact is I believe Trump probably did actually carry Georgia… News Corpse uses Newt’s now semi-famous statement to show that Republicans have forsaken democracy in favor of faith based elections. Don’t count the votes. Just believe as hard as you can.
     
    I dunno. If you slice the words thin enough, I might buy the objective fact that Gingrich believes something deranged.
     
  • The new Supreme Court non-ruling, knocking down the latest bit of Trumpish legalish gibberish, was an unusual sort of split decision. 2 justices wanted to reject the application to overturn the election. The other 7 didn’t want to hear it all all. So the vote was:
    2 NO
    7 HELL NO.
     
    Which leads us to a bit of wisdom from Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez:

  • After Trump has forced the nation to join him in reliving his 2016 win over and over, Sarah Cooper realizes that our torture is now rewarded.
     
  • Aside from keeping on keeping on and on and on, trying to override the election, two more issues seem to be engulfing the declining outgoing administration: the escalating pandemic and the preparation of a phenomenal number of unexpected pardons for various criminal activities. As Andy Borowitz reports, the White House is meeting the parallel crises by offering curbside amnesty pickup.

  • Let’s stop speculating about some sort of additional coverup by the Trump administration. For one thing, messages in or out are documented, preserved, and protected from destruction by law. Massive violations of that preservation would be impossible to hide. At least somebody, one person somewhere, would slip up or go public and there would be a hole in the dyke.
     
    Uh… tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors notes a hole on White House illegal intervention in the CDC dyke. Okay, so let’s do go ahead and speculate.
     
  • Now this has gotta hurt!
    In Hackwhackers my president (for the moment) is again deprived of Time Magazine’s title of Person of the Year, which instead goes jointly to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. In the past, huge misses by Trump in the Time sweepstakes have brought on tweet storms of rage from Mr. Trump. This time? Nothing.
     
  • Jonathan Bernstein observes the jockeying, pushing infighting among Democrats as President-Elect Biden sets about preparing to staff the White House. Jonathan suggests the tumult is a sign of party health.
     
  • Frances Langum has the announcement by Hunter Biden himself. His taxes are being investigated by Delaware. So Mark Levin proclaims the news to be worse than the Holocaust.
     
    One tweet by someone who lost family to that genocide suggests that Levin self-administer the Gaddafi death insertion.
     
    By the way, my taxes were investigated several decades ago. I eventually got a letter explaining that, because of some innocent arithmetic error on my part, I had paid too much and the government owed me more money. At the bottom of the cover letter was a sentence that began: “If you wish to appeal this finding…” I thought about it, but accepted the refund instead.
     
    Good luck to Mr. Biden.
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica, Rep. Louie Gohmert tries to generate interest in the suspect story of Hunter Biden traveling across the continent to give over his faulty laptop, anonymously, to a repair guy who sees through his disguise and happens to be buddies with right wing personalities.
     
    Louie angrily disputes that he lost his tooth on camera during a zany press conference. Claims it was only a crown, not the entire tooth.
     
    So he broke his crown? Like in a nursery rhyme?
     
    My thought: Gohmert just can’t handle the tooth.
     
  • Trump seems to be on the verge of finally going down, so Mitch McConnell has a backup plan. Iron Knee at Political Irony notes that Republicans believe they can get back in power, defeating Democrats next election, if they screw up the country enough. The exercise has been performed before with some temporary success.
     
  • I don’t at all mind a both-sides-are-guilty conclusion when it comes as a result of considered analysis. I do object to it as unexamined premise. But, like all human frailty, lazy cynicism will always be with us. driftglass goes to the mats with quotes and documentation as reflexive both-siderism encounters Senate COVID relief obstruction. No, it isn’t both sides this time, children.
     
  • Tommy Christopher chronicles the reaction after Joe Biden promises to mandate masks as a health measure, and a Congressional representative suggests the President-elect kiss a portion of his anatomy. Most reaction contrasts the blast with the decorum Republicans demand toward Presidents of their own party.
     
    When I was coming up, grown relatives would rebuke a profane kid by asking if he would kiss his mama with that mouth.
     
    I would simply ask the good representative if he would use those lips to kiss his poor dying-of-COVID grandma.
     
  • In Scotties Toy Box a Congressional Representative from Tennessee joined other Republicans in accusing mainstream media of a political agenda in sensationalizing COVID-19. Now he is asking for prayers, hoping for a miracle as doctors consider putting him on a ventilator. The coronavirus has pushed his blood oxygen level into a dangerous collapse.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has a less than gentlemanly reaction as New Hampshire Republican officials begin collapsing after an unprotected event.
     
  • Reductress has word that the CDC will recommend people who pronounce it ‘onvelope’ be vaccinated last.
     
    Oh yeah. Like those of us in public school during the Eisenhower years don’t have it tough enough now.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research tells us that, in India, there actually exists the Association of Dead People. It is legitimate and quite serious. Apparently, innocent folks are deprived of property when voracious relatives declare them to have died. The false witnesses then are free to steal property and possessions. Those falsely declared dead must travel through a bizarre legal labyrinth to get their death declaration reversed, then must battle to get their property back. The association is a mutual support group composed of victims.
     
  • I do enjoy a good burn. Twenty plus years ago I was at a free candy sample display hosted by a young woman, there to answer questions.
     
    I made the same lame joke as always. “Is this guaranteed to make me good looking?”
     
    She studied me for a second and said, “You’d better take two.”
     
    I have treasured that moment ever since.
     
    So I take some glee with PZ Myers as the professor critiques a video presentation arguing for male superiority. Myers is unsympathetic. I am a knee-jerk liberal jerk so my vote, of course, is with him. He is delightfully acerbic.
     
  • Infidel753, in a heartfelt message, eloquently misses his mother on the anniversary of her loss.
     
    Makes me sad for him and for all of us who still miss loved ones.
     
    My then very young boss of years ago had recently lost his dad. Knowing my father had died decades before, he asked me how long before the grief had mercifully passed.
     
    I answered, “I’ll let you know.”
     
    Many years later, I still have dreams.
     
    Which brings us back to COVID, I suppose. Individual loss is easy to miss in statistics. Each one of those hundreds of thousands of deaths produces pain that cannot be imagined by others, not even those of us who have gone through our own parallel experience.

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