"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

XP Developing that Herd Mentality...

I'm pleased to read about planning:

Some House seats might count a lot more than others in this chaotic campaign season.

Take Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, where Joe Biden is expected to visit Friday. Though Biden’s trip to Grand Rapids will boost his bid to claim a state President Trump narrowly won four years ago, Hillary Scholten hopes the former vice president can help her win a Western Michigan district that Democrats have not held in 28 years.

And, if successful in elevating Scholten, Biden’s trip could serve as a backstop for his own presidential bid.

A Scholten victory would likely give Democrats eight of Michigan’s 14 seats in the House, helping House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s newly stated goal of blocking Trump from a last-gasp effort to remain in the White House if he does not win the November election.

It’s all very complicated, but there is a remote chance that neither Trump nor Biden will be a clear winner in the electoral college.

Look, Christmas comes but once a year... migrant children are 24/7/365. It's still a big deal in Slovakistan.

Slovenia

“Slovakistan”

Wtf?

SLOW WALK GEDDIT

Sorry, sorry... I'm being facetious. I never felt like she had a nice attitude towards fellow immigrants.

https://i.imgur.com/wyjHuU7.jpg

Of course she fucking hates him too

Trump, when asked on “Hannity” about Hope Hicks’ coronavirus, blamed members of military and law enforcement for approaching White House staff. “They want to hug you and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them. You get close and things happen.” pic.twitter.com/fZ0oz5ps8B

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 2, 2020

jfc

Lawrence! As promised, @Lawrence , here's the fuller version of Representative @malcolmkenyatta at yesterday's hearing in Pennsylvania. It's 🔥:https://t.co/okkVbcPcxK

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) October 2, 2020

“No one is getting Malcolm Kenyatta under control”
lol

welp, looks like trump is going to begin a "quarantine process" as they await test results

so uh....we hopin Trump does or does not get sick?

I'm hoping not yet.

Dying of the 'rona might be poetic justice but I'm still hoping he dies on the shitter like Elvis, mid-tweet

I can’t think of any way I’d prefer him to die than after 30 days intubated on a respirator, unable to appear on TV or open his foul fat mouth, watching the election results roll in as he takes his last desperate breath.

Malcolm Kenyatta did a good job explaining why he was opposed to that resolution.
Chairman Garth ignoring the question about whether it would be effective immediately or retroactively post-election, and then threatening to have security remove Malcolm Kenyatta for his tone, did not so much do a good job.

Also, you know how some people are repulsed by images of surfaces covered with little holes? I react similarly to twelve-legged octopus-like power-splitter boxes lurking in the center void beneath a conference room ring-table.

we have a thread for that

for twelve-legged octopus-like power-splitter boxes lurking in the center void beneath a conference room ring-table?! goddamn, what isn't there a thread on!

xp *shudder*

since Trump is incapable of doing or saying anything that will help his numbers this might be his only way back in the race

Here's Hope Hicks with Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, and Nicholas Luna -- none of them wearing masks -- on their way to board a helicopter on Wednesday, hours before Hicks tested positive for coronavirus (Getty Images) pic.twitter.com/v1hFLjg06x

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2020

how the fuck is something like this the 5th biggest story today

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/us/politics/mcmaster-trump-russia-election.html

so there is no way Trump is gonna quarantine for 2 weeks but doing one of those fucking rallies next week guarantees yet another week of bad news & a perfect angle for the Dems and he's already way behind

what to do, what to do

sad thing is, i'm sure biden's getting tested too. you can pass covid19 without symptoms, or pre-symptoms, and 2 days ago he was standing 6 feet away from an angry sweaty guy spewing out invective and potentially covid19 for 90 minutes

Commercial All Over TV In 2022: "Did you or a loved one attend a Rally For Former President Trump in 2020, and contract Covid-19? You may be eligible to take part in a class-action suit..."

and also, who knows who hope hicks got it from. possibly from "people from the military, or from law enforcement, and they come over to you, and they want to hug you, and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them. You get close, and things happen" like trump said tonight. or possibly she got it from someone else in the close orbit. who the fuck knows, because they don't wear masks or practice basic social distancing or anything like that

Amazed he didn't turn that into "she really gets around folks, you know what I mean? Very... giving."

this might be a long post and I'll probably get slagged for it. idgaf!

I'm actually really bothered by this Hope Hicks news. They were supposed to be testing the staff on a very regular basis. I imagine the USSS details were getting tested all the time. I imagine all the other WH (non-campaign) staff were getting tested all the time. Then they just let whomever on the plane, with no masks, no distancing at all, because Big Daddy Said So.

I have worked in federal government, in one form or another, since I stopped being an undergraduate. I have put an at-times-unreasonable amount of faith in the system, that people follow procedures and checklists to ensure things are going to be predictable and consistent, if rarely "good." I'm learning as I grow older that I'm probably that guy nobody wanted to play in D&D, the "lawful neutral" asshole (I'd like to be "lawful good," but posters like table keep reminding me how far we are from good - and that good is never just an individual choice, good is a thing that a society does together).

But predictable and consistent. That seems fundamental to civilization. Let's try to aim for that. Doing that would require ensuring the duly elected President is safe from harm, including infectious diseases that we know have a 2.5% fatality rate (even higher for his demographic) and that we have procedures to protect against - testing, tracing, masks. Nobody did that. They just straight up let a campaign staffer hang out with the President and all of his staff and family (is there a difference? no) without any of the preventative measures we already know work.

On this board, we all hate this guy. We don't care much for his staff or his family either. But I'm kinda shook that all of the protective measures fell down. After the vote - which we're also in the process of fucking up, thanks Governors Abbott and DeSantis - the "protect the President from an incurable and potentially fatal infectious disease" checklist is pretty high on the list of procedures that the government should be able to follow through on. The fact that we can no longer do that tells me two things, both of which I already basically knew, but it puts it in very stark terms:

1. The only thing this administration really knows how to do is get Trump paid.
2. That's why the only major legislation they passed was a tax cut.

To repeat myself, they have disintegrated the core of the federal executive branch to the point where it is no longer capable of protecting its own commander-in-chief. This bothers me, because even though I also hate the fucking guy, this Hope Hicks COVID case isn't funny to me at all. It's a WTF moment of "how did we let it get this bad?" - it's been like that all along, I know, he's been forcing the federal government to do terrible things since January 2017, but now we're at the point of "sir, you shouldn't wipe your ass with your bare hands and then eat" and he's saying NO I WILL IT'S PART OF MY DIET NOW

I don't know, this is a waste of words. Everything has broken down, I knew it was broken, I just somehow felt surprised that the "perimeter" was such a joke that they just let a staffer in with a hot cup of COVID and she got to hang around with everyone. It feels like if anybody seriously wanted to kill this man at any point in the last four years they probably could have done so, all they needed was a half-decent story about how they were going to help him get bigger ratings with demographic XXX. Jesus Christ.

TL;DR I am actually sad that Hope Hicks brought COVID on the plane, because I am a safety & security checklist dickhead.

Well said.

xp soooo, you're concerned now that high-profile people are getting sick?

every security measure in place to prevent him from contracting a deadly illness broke down for one reason and one reason only

It seems likely to me that Asshole would insist that he had absolute authority in such decisions, and after four years of his autocratic, stupid bullshit I can imagine that nobody would be too invested in fighting him on that.

Texas Republicans have been rigging elections here for decades, Abbott's recent moves are public enough to make me think they're truly scared of losing Texas this go around, they're usually content to let gerrymandering and high hoops for voter registration do the trick. Their concern is less about Trump winning or losing than the fact that the Texas House is in danger of flipping in a Census year... let Dems have a hand in redistricting Texas is truly terrifying to the Texas GOP.

We're not getting the straight-ticket voting option this year either.

And here we go

The president and the first lady have tested positive for COVID. The president is among the higher-risk groups given his age. https://t.co/QXpfm57K2P

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 2, 2020

trombone sound

My conspiracy theory -- it's just his excuse to get out of the rest of the debates.

"protect the President from an incurable and potentially fatal infectious disease" checklist is pretty high on the list of procedures that the government should be able to follow through on.

In full agreement with you there.

It's a WTF moment of "how did we let it get this bad?"

Simple. "We" elected Trump to an office at the very pinnacle of the chain of executive command, which gives him the legal power and ultimate authority to fuck things up in every respect not hedged by the Constitution or law. The only remedies provided for a seated president like Trump (which the framers of the Constitution did foresee as possible and feared) are impeachment or invoking the 'incapacity' provision of the 25th amendment.

The framers did deploy a further mechanism designed to forestall the possibility of a Trumpian president, but it was the fucking Electoral College and we all know how effective that has been. It was the best solution that occurred to a group of patrician and paternalistic rich white men in a nation partly run on chattel slavery. It has been a dismal failure and a millstone around all our necks since the very beginning.

guess that hydroxychloroquine didn't work

i assume trump and melania are not the only one in the gang we don't know about yet.

well, this is an interesting late season plot twist

The monkey's paw curls...

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hope his ventilator fails, the dumb fuck.

My conspiracy theory -- it's just his excuse to get out of the rest of the debates.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, October 1, 2020 11:59 PM (yesterday)

it is pretty convenient that it happened 2 days after one of the lowest points (the lowest?) of his presidency

I know this is buzzfeed not like USA today but I think this is what a lot of people including swing voters will be thinking right now. Not expecting a sympathy vote!

"Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus after he spent months downplaying its severity, refusing to regularly wear a mask, undercutting the government's top scientists, and so severely mismanaging the nation's response that 200,000+ are now dead."https://t.co/ZdnIl36vNm

— Stephanie M. Lee (@stephaniemlee) October 2, 2020

that debate was a pure disgrace, but it was not a moral or humanitarian outrage, so it doesn't even make the top ten lowest points

My conspiracy theory -- it's just his excuse to get out of the rest of the debates.

honestly my first thought too, the doctor's statement is from his pet navy dude