FairAndUNbalanced.com

 

From Heather Cox Richardson:

There was a foreshadowing of that exodus on Wednesday, when Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) let loose about the president in a telephone call with constituents. Sasse was an early critic of Trump but toned down his opposition significantly in the early part of the administration. On Wednesday, he reverted to his earlier position, saying he had “never been on the Trump train.” He complained about the way Trump “kisses dictators’ butts,” and went on: “The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor…. [He] mocks evangelicals behind closed doors…has treated the presidency like a business opportunity” and has “flirted with white supremacists.” He said: “What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?”

The theme of abandoning the administration became apparent yesterday, when officials leaked the story that intelligence officials had warned Trump against listening to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. This was a high-level leak, and suggests that more and more staffers are starting to look for a way off the S.S. Trump.

The audience numbers for last night’s town halls was also revealing, as Biden attracted 700,000 more viewers on just one ABC outlet than Trump did on the three NBC outlets that carried his event. Biden’s town hall was the most watched event since the Oscars in February. It appears that people are simply tired of watching the president and are eager for calm and reason.

– More –
 

 

From Frances Langum:

She is there rallying the voters SAFELY, keeping the rally‑goers physically distant from one another, masked, and out in the open air.

See, this is what it looks like when you actually want your constituency NOT to die from COVID‑19.

– More –
 

 
From Facebook:
 

Thank you Norris Gunby Jr.

 

From Max’s Dad:

You think guys like Gorsuch, the folksy fascist who ruled once that a truck driver should have died in the cold rather than abandon his corporate owned vehicle and cost his employer money, are bad. Or you think guys like Kavs, a privileged Catholic prep school drunk, are unqualified. Or you think the continued presence of a bitter old sexual harasser like Thomas are bad. Or you think a slave to the 15th century like Alito are wrong, you aint seen nothing yet.

This Amy Coney Barrett is nothing but a paid off super spreader willing to do the white mans bidding as far as keeping them in control. In control of womens bodies, in control of overturning minority rights, in control of overturning voting rights, in control of protecting Citizens United, in control of stuffing the LBGTQ community back in the closet and making sure we all know who is in charge of this dying nation.

You see, shes an “originalist” when it comes to the Constitution. The 237 year old outdated document written by white males who protected slavery, protected male domination, put the slaves in their place, figured American Indians were nobody, and kept women in the home to do as they were told is as relevant now as the freaking butter churner.

– More –
 

 

From Infidel753:

With three exceptions (Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota), the states in the hardest-hit category are all solid Republican. That’s superficially surprising because most of these states are heavily rural, with scattered populations. California, New York, Oregon, Washington, etc. have most of their populations concentrated in dense urban areas which should be more susceptible to a highly-infectious disease like covid-19. Yet it’s states without that vulnerability which are suffering the most.

The reason, of course, is that the factors that made the US easy prey for the virus — bad leadership and mass stupidity — are especially evident in the red states.

– More –
 

 

From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

There is a good argument to be made that the Republicans unpacked the Supreme Court by refusing to consider Merrick Garland, bringing the size of the court down to 8 seats in 2016. This then allowed them to repack the court during Donald Trump’s administration, appointing three justices.

This doesn’t include hundreds of other federal court judge appointments that were delayed during Obama’s administration, but were then rushed through during the Trump administration, stacking the federal court system with staunch conservatives who are barely qualified for the job.

Even worse, the media seems to be ignoring that Republicans have been doing lots of court packing with little notice at the state level.

– More –
 

Perhaps Biden’s best video yet. Is it the most effective?

• Infidel753 listens to Joe Biden’s Gettysburg speech, including happy talk about working with Republicans, and finds evidence that he is smarter than we might think. Maybe smarter than the rest of us.
   
• Sarah Cooper thinks about Trump losing the election but refusing to go away, and comes up with a way to make him happy, preserve democracy, and keep us safe.
   
• He definitely was not gonna do it. Never, never. No fire related aid to California. Buncha damn hippies.
   
  tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors went to vote, came back and found that, 2½ weeks before election day, desperation took its toll. My president suddenly changed his mind. California has been declared a disaster area, with aid on the way.
   
  Not exactly selling out, since it always was the right thing to do. So, maybe… selling in?
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger looks through all the prognostications about this year’s election and presents a quick, compelling case on which prediction will turn out to be most accurate.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein invites us to marvel at the ever more bizarre campaign antics of Donald Trump.
   
• Scotties Toy Box defines mutual loyalty between Trump and Trump followers.
   
• Max’s Dad watches the dueling town halls that voters got when Trump refused an actual debate and sees a tale of two uncles.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit also watched the Trump half of the debate substitute and posts a fair objection to how Trump was treated. Shame on you, Savannah Guthrie!
   
• Okay, so we didn’t get a Trump/Biden debate, since my president backed out. In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson does pretty well contrasting the dueling town halls we got instead. I caught a bit of Trump action but I couldn’t bear to watch more than a little of it. It made me feel a little sorry for Trump. I didn’t think that was possible.
   
  He was churlish. He looked haggard. He kept trying to catch his breath. Maybe it was the aggressive questioning from Savannah Guthrie, although I missed most of that. Maybe he was just sick or under the influence of Remdesivir or hydroxychloroquine or bleach or snake oil or something.
   
  To me he appeared anxious, desperate. He was a man sitting on a pin with no place to put his feet.
   
  I saw a candidate gazing into an electoral abyss, hoping somehow to bluster his way back to solid ground, but unable to see that ground anywhere. Perhaps part of it was some odd momentary confluence of positioning and light. Later, I found myself thinking about those glistening rivulets of orange perspiration. It occurred to me that, after evening became night, he might become the only White House occupant ever to sweat while taking a presidential shower.
   
  It is an image I’ll spend the rest of the weekend not thinking about.

Continue reading “Smart Joe, Votes, Fire, Town Halls, COVID, Insider Trading, Barrett Care”

 

From The Propaganda Professor:

I must confess that once upon a time, I was a firm believer in a conspiracy in the assassination of JFK. I was quite skeptical, mind you, of theories implicating the CIA, the FBI, LBJ, or any other notorious set of initials. But I was convinced that Oswald could not have acted alone. Not because I was prone to believe in conspiracy theories in general, but because I just couldn’t get around that seemingly impassable roadblock of the “magic bullet”. Therefore, I concluded that since magic bullets don’t exist, there must have been at least one more shooter. And whenever you have two or more people involved, you have by definition a conspiracy.

I had fallen prey to a type of fallacy that I call the fallacy of single explanations: the rush to a conclusion based on the assumption that just because a particular explanation is the only one you can conceive of under the circumstances, it must be the only explanation possible. You also could call it the fallacy of incomplete data, since these faulty conclusions result from trying to bridge the gap when there is missing information.

The “magic bullet theory”, like many other single explanation fallacies, depends on the presumption that normal conditions apply (when in fact “normal” conditions are largely a myth). But there is one little fact about that fateful day that many people do not consider, a fact involving the seats in the presidential limo ; and it makes all the difference.

– More –
 

 

From News Corpse:

In the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election, the bad news for Donald Trump just keeps piling up. Every new poll that is published shows him falling farther behind Joe Biden, including those that are devotedly biased toward Trump. He’s losing in most of the critical battleground states. His crazed rhetoric keeps descending into an abyss of dementia. He’s even threatening to go to war against aliens (from Mars, not Mexico).

Now the chairman of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, is predicting that Trump is going to lose to Biden in a landslide. This is an election year defection that should rattle the rafters of Trump’s campaign operation. Murdoch has been a reliable supporter of Trump for years (even if that support has been reciprocated). And his cable network is Trump’s de facto Ministry of Propaganda. According to the Daily Beast (via Talking Points Memo)…

“Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has predicted privately that Democratic nominee Joe Biden will defeat President Donald Trump in the presidential election in a landslide victory, the Daily Beast reported Thursday.

“The Australian-born billionaire who has been an influential supporter of the President in the past has remarked to close associates that Trump is his own worst enemy, according to the Daily Beast. Murdoch suggested to at least three Daily Beast sources that Trump has handled the COVID-19 pandemic poorly and ignored advice on how to better manage it, which has created a never-ending crisis for his administration.”

The suggestion that Trump has “handled the COVID-19 pandemic poorly” is a gross understatement.

– More –
 

 

From nojo:

“Underneath his button-down dress shirt, [Trump] would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer.”
— NYT, October 10

 

• Break out of heavy chains after being tossed in a lake.
   
• Stand athwart a hail of bullets that will surely bounce off your chest.
   
• Show up for a debate.

– More –