A Couple of Entertainment-Only True Blue Liberal Twitter Polls

Yesterday there was speculation in the The Guardian about Ivanka Tr*mp running for Marco Rubio's Florida Senate seat in 2022, and earlier we have seen multiple articles about Lara Tr*mp running for Richard Burr's North Carolina Senate seat in the same midterm election. That led to the obvious poll question about the other Tr*mp spawn. 

If #PrincessIvanka Tr*mp runs for Senate from Florida and Lara Tr*mp runs for Senate from North Carolina, which states will @DonaldJTrumpJr & @EricTrump run to represent in the Tr*mpist Senate? https://t.co/oW5t1NXi8X

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) December 14, 2020

And today, we heard from Tr*mp's most beloved henchman and longest-lived White House staff member (not named Tr*mp or Kushner), Stephen Miller, announcing on Fox News that there will be an alternate slate of Tr*mpist electors chosen today as the states' actual electors are voting to confirm President-Elect Biden's November 3rd win.

POLL:
What will Tr*mp Propaganda Minister Stephen Miller's job be after January 20, 2021?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) December 14, 2020

Did Rudy Giuliani's most destructive act take place in 1996?

We hear a lot in recent days about Rudy Giuliani's acts in the end stages of Donald Trump's political career, from his activity in Ukraine that helped lead to Trump's impeachment to his current inept attempts to throw out hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes as Trump refuses to accept his overwhelming loss (in the Electoral College as well as the popular vote) to President-Elect Joe Biden.

But what I've been thinking about today is the action of Mayor Giuliani's that may have done as much as any other to lead Trump to the White House in the first place.

In 1996, the Fox News Channel was started by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, with its main studio in New York. However, it was not immediately available in any major television markets, including New York City. There was no internet method of getting video news in 1996, so Fox News was even more invisible than Trump's current favorite online right-wing channel, OANN, to the vast majority of Americans. The only cable provider in NYC was Time Warner, and they said they had a waiting list of 30 other cable stations vying for space and they didn't have room for a nascent cable news channel from the Australian owner of the New York Post.

"It began with a phone call to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Sept. 20 [1996], an entreaty that would soon mire City Hall in a feud between two media conglomerates. On the line was an old friend of the Mayor, Roger Ailes, a former Republican political consultant who is now chairman of the 24-hour news channel started by Rupert Murdoch." --New York Times, November 4, 1996

It could be just that Ailes was an old friend, or that Rudy's second wife, Donna Hanover, was then working at Murdoch's local station, WNYW-5, or that Rudy saw Fox as a national stage for his own presidential ambitions, or that he was unselfishly trying to save a few hundred NYC media jobs for a fledgling cable station, but the fact remains that he went to bat -- hard -- to get Fox News on New York's only cable provider, engaging much of the mayor's office and staff to do so, and he was ultimately successful. 

On a personal level, this has stuck in my head (and craw) because in the same year, 1996, Rudy sold the television station I watched most regularly, the city's PBS station WNYC-31, to a private buyer who immediately stopped showing BBC & PBS programming (he also sold my favorite radio station, WNYC-FM and AM, but those airwaves were bought by a foundation that kept the call letters and they have remained the city's main outlets for National Public Radio content.)

We'll never know if the struggling brainchild of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes would have survived its infancy if it hadn't been able to move into the New York cable market, but maybe more importantly, we'll never know if tri-state real-estate con man Donald Trump would have become PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP without the Trump/Fox feedback loop that created his political "philosophy" and gave him a similarly-brainwashed audience for his political ambitions. Even though Trump had shown some of his political leanings publicly as early as 1989 when he lobbied heavily for the killing of the (innocent) Central Park Five, he was mainly a tabloid punchline for his marriages and affairs and bankruptcies and real-estate battle with Leona Helmsley; it's hard to imagine Trump becoming TRUMP without Fox News. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a real possibility that Fox News never would have appeared on the television screens in the Trump Tower penthouse without the heavy-handed intervention of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. It may be one of Rudy's greatest crimes.

Start learning German while you maintain social distancing this winter...

...so that you can enjoy the best COVID-19 videos; both of these new videos are from the German government: 

You can understand the story of these exceptional heroes of the winter of 2020 without English subtitles, can't you?

Ex-President [Expletive Deleted]

 

From September 15, 1973...

Mike Stivic:
Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate!
Archie Bunker:
Don't say that no more, GODDAMN IT!
Edith Bunker:
You shouldn't swear like that.
Mike Stivic:
You shouldn't swear like that, Arch.
Edith Bunker:
Ever since this Watergate thing, it's GD this and GD that.
Archie Bunker:
That ain't swearing, Edith, GD. The first word there is God. How can that be a swear word? The most popular word in the Bible. The second word, that's damn, that's a perfectly good word, you hear that all the time, like they dammed the river to keep it from flooding, see? And even in the Bible you read where some guy is damned for cheating or stealing or having "insex" in the family. And who damned him? Who else? God. God damned him. Edith, beautiful words right out of the Holy Book. Don't show your ignorance!

The setting of linguistic standards for broadcast radio and television is a very fluid matter, and it runs in both directions - toward and away from absolute freedom of speech. In my high-school years, All in the Family pushed a lot of limits, using slang descriptions of ethnic groups and sexual orientations in the early 1970s that would be taboo on the air or in polite company in 2020. Their broadcast use of  the relatively mild expletive "Goddamn It!" also expanded freedom of televised speech in 1973, and even appended Archie's defense of the everyday expression of disapproval or exasperation. Slightly earlier, its use on the radio with the Grateful Dead's 1970 "Uncle John's Band" also broke broadcast barriers ("God damn well I declare | have you seen the like? | their walls are built of cannon balls | their motto is 'don't tread on me'" [a prophecy of the Tea Party?]) Now, however, because every mention of the words "God" and "damn" in combination will invoke the knee-jerk wrath of self-proclaimed guardians of American Fundamentalist Christianism, the networks have turned into cowards. As quoted in this NPR article "Bleeping Out Words" from 2009, the Standards & Practices department of All in the Family's old network CBS replied via email: "No gd on cbs." NBC also told NPR "As a general rule, we would not permit 'GD' to be used on our air. We would bleep one or the other...usually the first word." All of this network cowardice, despite the fact that the FCC does not consider "God damn" or its variants to be legally profane.

This is all to show that definitions of profanity change, so there is no reason that the "T-word" -- the family name of the person who is currently squatting in the White House for 70 more days -- should be heard on America's airwaves anymore. It can easily become the eighth word to join the Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, and I can stop using it here on my blog even though it's been used in almost every single post since 2015. Standards can change. The euphemisms You-Know-Who, or Mango Mussolini, or Adolf Twitler, or Cheeto Jesus, or Orange Julius Caesar, or Cadet Bone Spurs, or Putin's Puppet, or Putin's Puppy, or Short-Fingered Vulgarian, or Sore Loserman, or Diaper Don, or The Whiner In Chief, or Bunker Boy, or Trumpelthinskin, or The Groper In Chief, or The Dick Tater, or The ImPOTUS, or Tangerine Trash-Can Fire, or Lame Duck à l'Orange, or... , can all be used in place of the T-word without losing any meaning, or causing any confusion about the subject of one's sentence.

True Blue Liberal Poll: When Will We Know The Winner?

 

POLL:
In exactly 24 hours, polls in many states will be closing. When will we know the winner of the electoral college?#1Day #2020Election #BidenHarris2020 #TrumpPence2020 #Poll #VOTE

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) November 3, 2020

What America's Voting System(s) Look Like From Abroad.

 The New York Times showed some details of the archaic United States voting system(s) to residents of some of the worlds newer and less baroque (or broken?) voting systems.

Here's the resulting video:

"When we showed voters from around the world what American elections are like in practice, they weren’t impressed. But they were impressed with our resilience and determination. So, while the world’s 'oldest democracy' may be a bit creaky these days, let’s be clear: Go vote! That’s really the best way to make a change."

ONE DAY LEFT!

VOTE!

"When a man's frauds have been enormous there is a certain safety in their very diversity and proportions."

_____________ 

I first posted this on trueblueliberal.org on August 17, 2016 when Donald Trump's chances of a first term still seemed remote (terrifying, but remote). With four days until the election that could give him a second term -- and after all the intervening years with all the new crimes, lies, and misdemeanors from Trump and the #TrumpCrimeFamily -- I still think it's the most important thing that has appeared on this blog about that man. This post explains why vague insinuations about "Hillary Clinton's Emails!" in 2016 or "Hunter Biden's Laptop!" in 2020 can get more media coverage than Trump's sexual assaults and payoffs to porn stars, or his missing tax returns, or the fact that he kowtows to authoritarians like Putin and Erdogan and Kim, or that the First Couple of Nepotism are making millions while working in the White House, or that his last three campaign managers have been arrested, or that he calls Nazis "very fine people," or his impeachment less than a year ago, or..., well, you get the picture. There are too many scandals for any one person to keep up with, which turns out to be his best defense.

So here's the 2016 post again, without further changes.

_____________

At this point, about two thirds through Trollope's The Way We Live Now, shadowy London financier August Melmotte is making his first foray into the political world, running for Parliament and finding out that one of his recent shady real-estate transactions might be exposed publicly right after he had hosted a dinner in his home for the Emperor of China attended by the great men of England and Europe.

My current pleasure reading takes a political turn.

...I think he took some pride in his own confidence as to his own courage, as he stood there turning it all over in his mind. Very much might be suspected. Something might be found out. But the task of unravelling it all would not be easy. It is the small vermin and the little birds that are trapped at once. But wolves and vultures can fight hard before they are caught. With the means which would still be at his command, let the worst come to the worst, he could make a strong fight. When a man's frauds have been enormous there is a certain safety in their very diversity and proportions. Might it not be that the fact that these great ones of the earth had been his guests should speak in his favour? A man who had in very truth had the real Brother of the Sun dining at his table could hardly be sent into the dock and then sent out of it like a common felon. (page 472 of Penguin Classics paperback)

With legal cases about Trump's so-called "University" still pending, his complicated tax returns still unreleased, a history of bankruptcies, thousands of "minor" lawsuits, and more, the "diversity and proportion" of Trump's financial shenanigans put August Melmotte's to shame (though Melmotte did it from nothing without being given a head start by his father). If we do see any of Donald Trump's tax returns before November 8 (unlikely at this point as he continues to thumb his nose at the voters and the media), the chances are that, unless he gave nothing to charity or paid no taxes, the rule-bending in those thousands of pages would be so financially arcane that it would take teams of forensic accountants to root it out and another team to try to reduce it to layman's terms. It's only "the small vermin and little birds that are trapped at once."

If I entertained any notion that Donald Trump might have the attention span to tackle it, I might think that he had modeled parts of his life on The Way We Live Now.

The "Law And Order" Candidate Has No Respect for People Who Obey the Law.

There is one statement of Donald Trump's from the final presidential debate on October 22nd that keeps sticking with me; the topic was immigration:

Trump: Catch and release is a disaster. A murderer would come in, a rapist would come in, a very bad person would come in -- we would take their name, we have to release them into our country. And then you say they come back. Less than 1% of the people come back.

Biden: Not true.

Trump: We have to send ICE out and Border Patrol out to find them. We would say, ‘Come back in two years, three years -- we're going to give you a court case. You did Perry Mason, we're going to give you a court case. When you say they come back, they don't come back, Joe. They never come back. Only the really -- I hate to say this -- but those with the lowest IQ, they might come back.

[from the USA Today debate transcript]

The part about less than 1% showing up for court cases was a lie, of course (the truth is that 83% showed up for all court hearings), but it was that last line about only those with "the lowest IQ" showing up that stuck with me. Trump shows over and over again that he believes only stupid people will voluntarily obey laws.

"Smart people," on the other hand, find ways to bend laws (tax laws, nepotism laws, the Hatch Act, emoluments clauses, charity laws, campaign finance laws, etc., etc.), especially if the main enforcement is the honor system. We saw how well the honor system works with the Trump family when its members were asked to wear masks at the first debate. Once again, just yesterday, Trump found a way to brag that not paying a $287 million dollar debt made him a "smart guy" (although the "smart guy" may ultimately be in trouble with the IRS again for not paying taxes on those forgiven loans as income).

The nadir of his insulting the intelligence of those who voluntarily obey the law (or pay what they owe) came in early September when The Atlantic reported that he called people who died fighting for this country "Losers" and "Suckers." If the "suckers" and "losers" had been "smart guys" like Donald J. Trump, they would have been smart enough to have been born with rich daddies who could pay off crooked podiatrists for phony "bone spurs" diagnoses to keep them out of the armed forces.

This Trumpian attitude toward the law has at least two major downsides. One, obviously, is that the family of grifters -- for whom the only overriding philosophical principle is "WINNING" -- will continue to be looking to grab as much as they can while "pushing the envelope" of legality. The second is that Trump believes everyone else is -- at heart -- as venal as he is; that supposition leads him to believe that the only way to keep other people in line is through the use of -- or the threat of -- overwhelming police use of force. That's how someone with no respect for the law can end up having a strong belief in #LawAndOrder of the most brutal kind.

Which Trump Will Leave America First?

Donald Trump may be the first president or presidential candidate to threaten to leave the United States if he loses the election (though, if you know of a previous historical example, I'd love to hear it).

"Maybe I'll have to leave the country, I don't know." Donald J. Trump

He is also the first president to face tax problems with the IRS; legal problems with the Manhattan District Attorney, the Attorney General of New York, and others; private lawsuits from his numerous sexual assault victims; and maturing debts of at least 421 million coming due from unknown creditors around the world, all on the day he leaves office. Richard Nixon, before Gerald Ford pardoned him, faced possible federal charges after he left the White House, but the depth and breadth of his exposure was nothing compared to Trump's -- and Nixon never threatened to leave the United States.

Trump's kids, who are intimately tied to the frauds of the Trump Organization, the tax scams, the fake Trump "charities," etc., are not immune from from serious legal challenges once their Daddy leaves office, so the True Blue Liberal Poll question is this, which member of the #TrumpCrimeFamily will flee the country first?

POLL:
Now that Donald Trump has publicly admitted that he might flee from the United States if the #BidenHarris2020 team is victorious, which principal in the #TrumpCrimeFamily will likely be the first to leave the country to avoid American justice and taxes and debt collectors?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) October 17, 2020

And will they start leaving right after the election on November 4? Or will they only begin their exodus after inauguration day on January 20, 2021 (when the chances of their arrests begin to increase dramatically)?

The Banality of Rosenstein

 

banality noun 

ba·​nal·​i·​ty | \ bə-ˈna-lə-tē , bā- also ba- \ 

plural banalities  

Definition of banality  

1: something that lacks originality, freshness, or novelty : something banal : COMMONPLACE 

2: the quality or state of lacking new or interesting qualities : the quality or state of being banal

Source: Merriam-Webster online dictionary

If you were going to look for an American face or a manner of corporate dress that embodied the words "lacking new or interesting qualities," you would have to search long and hard to find a face and suit more commonplace than Rod Rosenstein's to fit that definition.

Google Image search for "Rod Rosenstein" - 10/7/2020

evil noun 

\ ˈē-vəl , British often and US sometimes ˈē-(ˌ)vil \

Definition of evil

1a: the fact of suffering, misfortune, and wrongdoing 

  b: a cosmic evil force 

2: something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity

Source: Merriam-Webster

And if one were to ask what the most evil action of the Trump Administration was based on those dictionary definitions, a large percentage of Americans would reply with a description of the actions the Administration took to separate parents from their minor children at our southern border, and the suffering and sorrow those actions brought [since more than 200,000 Americans have died in 2020 from an out-of-control COVID-19 outbreak, there might be competition for the most evil act, so let's assume the questions were asked at the end of 2019].

Both words, and Hannah Arendt's short book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, immediately came to mind last night as I read the fourth paragraph in a New York Times article about the family separations. It was not totally unexpected that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was quoted as saying "We need to take away children" in the Justice Department Inspector General's report on the separations, but it was the following paragraph that made me think of Arendt's book.

"Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants."

It's been more than forty years since I read Eichmann in Jerusalem in college, but it has always stuck with me on a very deep level. Evil, real evil, will always need bureaucrats who are simply efficient at doing their jobs, no matter who the boss is. All of us who have worked in the corporate world (I had decades in that environment) have met many potential Eichmanns and Rosensteins who are almost invisible in an office environment, and who would easily and efficiently (if not eagerly) implement or amplify orders without ever questioning the ethics behind them or the effects they might have on other people.

"For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all."

--Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

 

Watch Joe Biden's Gettysburg Speech - October 6, 2020 - "Again we are a house divided"

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who missed seeing Joe Biden's speech on the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, battlefield yesterday. It was easy for the media and voters to be distracted by the steroid-fueled tweetstorm from the recently-dehospitalized White House resident trying to divide us further with strings of short all-caps tweets while Biden was speaking about bringing us together (without mentioning his opponent's name).

I did miss the speech when it was being delivered live on a Tuesday during a work week, but the beauty of the internet is that I can watch it now -- and so can you, if you have 22 free minutes. You don't need my commentary; just watch it.

How Many Republicans Should Be Quarantining Rather Than Campaigning Right Now?

If contact tracing were taking place right now to find all the recent close contacts of Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Kayleigh McEnany, Ex-Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), Bill Stepien, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), Hope Hicks, and other current #TrumpVirus sufferers, how many Republican Senators and Congresspeople would be caught in that net, especially after so many recent unmasked COVID-19 superspreading events to which Democrats were not invited? 

The C.D.C. page on contact tracing seems to be crystal clear about what to do if you were attending an event like the infamous Amy Coney Barrett #RoseGardenMassacre: "If you have been around someone with COVID-19, stay home and away from others for 14 days (self-quarantine) after your last contact with that person and monitor your health." 

So,

POLL:
If the C.D.C. were to begin actual #ContactTracing from the #RoseGardenMassacre and other recent Trump contacts, what percentage of GOP members of Congress (House and Senate) would currently be in #quarantine?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) October 5, 2020

This, of course, assumes that contact tracing is taking place. It's not. 

JUST NOW: @shearm, one of the WH reporters who has tested positive says he has received ZERO outreach, no contact tracing at all. ZERO.pic.twitter.com/TngXhKuDUc

— John Berman (@JohnBerman) October 5, 2020

The White House considers itself immune from the laws that govern the rest of us, sending VP Pence off to a debate and more MAGA rallies, and calling the Senate back to rush their right-wing replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg onto the Supreme Court bench before November 3rd.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 10/5/2020, 7:00pm

And now it's official, the White House will not be doing contact tracing of the Rose Garden superspreading event.

From The New York Times this evening : "The White House has decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members at the Rose Garden celebration 10 days ago for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, where at least eight people, including the president, may have become infected, according to a White House official familiar with the plans."

Karma Still Has Some Work To Do.

Last week was a heavy news week. OK, that's an understatement. There was a figurative open firehose of political news blasted at us all week long, and there's no indication that the pressurized flood of information overload will lessen between now and the election taking place in thirty days.

However, among the stories that need to be remembered are the actions of the #TrumpCrimeFamily at Tuesday's first (and possibly only) Biden/Trump Debate in Cleveland, Ohio. Anyone who was watching on television saw Trump's third wife, adult kids, spouses, and Junior's girlfriend, walk into the hall as a group, wearing masks, and saw them remove their masks in unison as soon as they sat down, breaking the rules of the Cleveland Clinic and the Commission on Presidential Debates that were being followed by everyone else inside and outside the hall. We were all told by masked television reporters that the only exceptions to this ironclad rule would be Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and the debate moderator Chris Wallace. The family obviously couldn't claim ignorance (even though ignorance runs in the family).

What we didn't see on live TV was the following video of a Cleveland Clinic employee offering the Trump team masks after they sat down. They declined.

Since then, we also found out that members of the Trump family, campaign team, and White House staff on the trip openly disobeyed a mask mandate at the InterContinental Suites Hotel Cleveland in advance of the debate. "ABC News spotted Eric and Lara Trump, White House adviser and the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien -- who has since tested positive for COVID-19 -- walking around the hotel lobby without masks."

The "Law And Order" campaign obviously only believes that laws apply to other people.

In coming debates (if there are any) the Commission has strengthened their rules to address those who have shown that they never honor "honor systems," stating that “Those who don’t comply will be escorted out.”  That would be fun to see, but the real punishment for not wearing a mask should be administered by the laws of karma.

The Perfect Lesson On the Correct Usage of 'Literally' and 'Figuratively'

I love Joe Biden, and I'm obviously going to vote for him and Kamala Harris exactly one month from now on November 3rd, but Joe does have a linguistic glitch that has figuratively driven me crazy at times, his constant use and misuse of the word 'literally.' (Full disclosure: I spent part of my early working years copyediting and checking the copyediting of books and I have a number of grammatical pet peeves, of which this is only one.)

First some video examples of Joe using his favorite word:

Now here is the perfect lesson in a single sentence to help Joe remember the difference, based on the largest events currently dominating the news: I don't literally want to see Trump buried because of COVID-19, but I figuratively want to see Trump buried under the largest landslide in American history.

The October surprises are coming faster than usual this year...

It's entirely on message for this week that it would end with the announcement that the current couple living in the White House have both tested positive for COVID-19 (which will be known in future histories of 2020 as the #TrumpVirus).

Monday morning saw the detailed exposé of Trump's taxes in the print edition The New York Times (released online on Sunday), in which we learned that he paid $750/year in federal income taxes in the years when he wasn't paying absolutely nothing.

Tuesday night saw Trump's self-immolation at the first Presidential debate, a debate that will be remembered for his constant interruptions, his complete lack of empathy for Beau Biden, his mask-free family flouting debate rules, his sweaty orange complexion, and especially for his telling the Proud Boys to "Stand Back and Stand By" when asked if he would denounce those violent white supremacists. 

Wednesday saw the online release of the results of a five-month investigation from the Times' Magazine about the depth and breadth of Trump's "Voter Fraud" lies and how they fit into a continuing GOP project of voter suppression, which now seems to be Trump's only remaining election strategy.

Thursday night saw the release of a recording of First Lady Melania Trump saying "Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration" and "they said 'Oh, what about the children that they were separated?' Give me a fucking break." Melania's war on Christmas and refugee children got approximately ten seconds of media attention before the news broke that Trump's closest aide Hope Hicks had tested positive for #TrumpVirus after spending all week traveling in close contact with her boss to the debate and Trump superspreader rallies.

Friday morning we woke up to the news that the POTUS and FLOTUS were positive for the virus named after them, which leads to our True Blue Liberal poll question of the day.

POLL:
Which of these other blockbuster stories of the week is Trump most happy to distract us from with his #TrumpVirus announcement?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) October 2, 2020

POLL: Do you complete the phrase "Trump Is A Ra_ist" with a "c" or a "p"?

Evidence has been presented to show that Donald Trump is both a racist and a rapist, but which of those labels is more central to your image of the man?

POLL:
With #TrumpIsARacist trending this evening, it may be time for this question again.

When confronted with the incomplete phrase "TRUMP IS A RA_IST," are you more apt to fill the missing space with a "C" or a "P"?

Is "racist" or "rapist" more central to your image of Trump?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 30, 2020

POLL: Which Trump Crime Family Member Will Be the First to See the Inside of a Jail Cell?

After today's historic front page of The New York Times on the Trump Crime Family's tax returns and financial crimes, it seems clear that somebody connected with the Trump Organization is going to be found guilty of a financial misdeed, but which member of the family will be the first one we see in a perp walk? 

 

POLL:
Which member of the #TrumpCrimeFamily will be the first to see the inside of a jail cell for financial crimes?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 28, 2020

POLL: The World's Future Reserve Currency

As distressing as it is, we should prepare for the eventuality that the current occupants of the White House and the Naval Observatory might still be at their current D.C. addresses on January 21, 2021. If that happens, and they continue in their quest to transform the United States of America into the Bankrupt Republic of Gilead, what will replace the formerly-mighty U.S. Dollar as the world's favorite reserve currency.

POLL:
So, if Trump is re-elected, what will replace the American dollar as the world's most important currency?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 27, 2020

Is Russia Still Targeting American Blacks on Social Media?

And will we only find out the details years after this November's election?

One of the most shocking conversations I had in the days after the election of November 2016 took place over a lunch with two African-American co-workers, one male and one female, both in their forties. I spoke (ranted?) about my horror of the new White House resident planning to move in on January 20, 2017, and both of them told me that they had not voted, even though they were registered and had voted in 2008 and 2012. When I asked why, the short answer was that "Hillary Clinton would be just as bad as Trump" and "her emails" were somehow proof that she was just as dishonest as Trump. Neither one of them was a heavy consumer of television news or a reader of the New York Times (our local paper), but they were both watchers of popular entertainment (including the Apprentice shows) and active on social media. As more and more has come out about targeted Russian propaganda aimed at American Blacks through Facebook (as addressed in the following 2019 video from Senator Kamala Harris), I have to believe that some of their attitudes about Hillary came from that blizzard of lies, even though we were not living in one of the swing states that Trump's Campaign Manager Manafort had told the Russians to target.

Today’s bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russia confirms what I talked about back in August 2018: Russians targeted Black voters and attempted to suppress Black voter turnout. pic.twitter.com/8tjDdy0t4o

— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) October 8, 2019

With only 41 days until the election, what lies are currently being told to Black voters (and other key groups) about vice-presidential candidate @KamalaHarris in targeted social-media posts? What lies are being told about @JoeBiden to suppress voter turnout in 2020?

A quote worth remembering from the Notorious RBG

 It's worth remembering this quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg captured on my television screen on July 12, 2016.

"I can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg #NotoriousRBG pic.twitter.com/UfufNQCf06

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) July 12, 2016

She tempered these statements about the Republican nominee for President soon after they became public, but that didn't make them any less true. None of us -- in our worst prognostications -- could have imagined what the country would become with Donald Trump as our president.

Remembering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dead at 87

Video proof that Donald Trump knows nothing about American election systems.

Anyone who believes that Donald Trump is actually an expert on voting by mail, or voting in person, or voting at all, should watch this video of a very short-tempered Trump voting in person (or attempting to vote in person) at various locations on the Upper East Side of New York in November 2004 ... with a camera crew and Billy Bush (of Access Hollywood tape infamy) at his side. While he does finally vote (or at least fill out a provisional ballot) by the end of the video, this still doesn't inspire a lot of confidence about his knowledge and familiarity with the mechanics of the process that he is now questioning every day as we approach the 2020 election (just as he had prior to the 2016 election when he believed he was going to lose).

The frame of this video is interesting too. Billy Bush and his co-host Kit Hoover are in the Access Hollywood studio on election day of 2012 looking back at Donald's antics of 2004 and giving an update about Donald's current (2012) racist attempt to get Barack Obama to release his college transcripts and passport documents.

"Your vote is one vote. His vote is a GIANT vote." --Billy Bush, Election Day 2004

______________________

NOTE:

An earlier version of this was posted here on the True Blue Liberal blog on October 21, 2016, because plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose in Trumpworld.

Poll: Should We Blame Exploding Trees or a Climate Arsonist for the West Coast Wildfires?

Are the current California (and Oregon and Washington) wildfires due to exploding trees and leaves?

 

Or are they being worsened by a climate arsonist in the White House?

POLL:
Which is a more likely root cause of the record-setting wildfires currently spreading across all the western United States? The #ClimateChange addressed in @JoeBiden's speech today or the #ExplodingTrees that you-know-who talked about?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 14, 2020

Commas for Dummies (and Stable Geniuses)

Criticizing the grammar in the tweets of the current White House occupant seems like swinging at the lowest of low-hanging fruit, but there are Americans reading his misspealings and random CapitalizatIons and thinking they are normal. Many adults can laugh off his constant abuse of the language, but think of those who look toward him as "a very smart person," and think, God forbid, of the children who might be reading his tweets and repeating his grammatical examples in their school assignments. 

Today the topic is commas because of two howling errors in recent tweets (and I'm making an effort to not look at all of his 280-character presidential pronouncements, so these are two found at random). 

This morning came the "Just call me Kate" tweet:

Some things just don’t get any crazier. Just call me Kate, problem over! https://t.co/86SCqZ05ZG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 2, 2020

And two days ago he tweeted about his son, Donald, [sic] and his "important new book":

My son, Donald, just wrote a really important new book, “Liberal Privilege”, talking, with great knowledge, of our world today. Lets make him a number one bestseller, again! @DonaldJTrumpJr @seanhannity

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2020

The error in first tweet should be obvious. He is asking all of us to call him Kate. If he were asking someone named Kate to call him, he should have included a comma before her name to show that she is the one being addressed. But wouldn't it be wonderful if simply calling him Kate would solve all our problems?

The error in the second tweet is more interesting. The president might have to go back and study the rules about appositives, but by placing commas around "Donald," he is clearly suggesting that he only has one son. Is this actually an error, or is the stable grammatical genius subtly trying to tell us something about the paternity of Eric and Barron?

Your use of commas suggests that you have only one son.

Hire a copyeditor (unless this is your subtle way of telling us that Gary Busey really is Eric's father).

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 1, 2020

Did Trump prepare for his failures on the actual Atlantic City boardwalk by playing Monopoly on the fictional Atlantic City Boardwalk?

 

POLL:
When @realDonaldTrump plays Monopoly, does he routinely cheat, or does he repeatedly go bankrupt (i.e., lose) and then tip over the board while whining about a 'rigged' game?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 31, 2020

Where's the Biblical Citation for the "God-Given Right" to Brandish Guns?

During last night's opening session of the Trump Crime Family Reunion that is officially known as the Republican National Convention, the McCloskeys of St. Louis, Missouri, spoke about their "God-given right" to brandish firearms at Black Lives Matter protestors outside their home.

This is not the first time that this outlandish claim has been addressed on this blog. Last September I asked about Press Secretary (#2 of 4) Sarah Huckabee Sanders' tweet stating that "we have guns because it's our God-given right enshrined in the Constitution." And back in June 2012, in a discussion of a Texas Republican Party Platform with a number of very strange planks, I also asked about the origins of a claim that Texans had a right to own guns and "their God-given right to carry that firearm" (incidentally, when you see how much bizarre crap the Texas GOP was able to cram into its platform, it was probably good that the national party punted on the process at the 2020 RNC). 

So, to get to the point, there's still an open question. Where in the Bible is this "God-given right" enunciated? I was able to find a September 2019 article in Politico from National Review editor Rich Lowry titled "Yes, Gun Ownership Is a God-Given Right" that cites John Locke and Noah Webster and the Declaration of Independence, but no sources dating back to the Torah, Koran, or Bible. Maybe we have to get America's leading biblical scholar, the Bible-verse-tweeting @MarcoRubio, involved to find the answer to this nagging question. If he can't find the biblical basis, then maybe Republicans should stop repeating this lie.

Donald Trump loves beauty contests so much, maybe he should compete in one.

 

POLL:
Trying to ignore for a moment their inner prejudices, ugly greed, and the state of their blackened 'souls,' who do you find the most *physically repellent between @realDonaldTrump, AG Bill Barr, and @SenateMajLdr McConnell?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 19, 2020

Who Should Headline President Biden's First White House Correspondents' Dinner?

 

POLL:
When the White House Correspondents' Dinner reconvenes next year with a president who has a sense of humor, who should provide the comedy entertainment, @RandyRainbow, @sarahcpr, or someone else?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 17, 2020

Here are the latest videos from both Randy and Sarah:

Another Twitter Poll: Am I Safe In Ordering My "Biden Harris 2020" Bumperstickers Early?

POLL:
Not that @JoeBiden is looking at my Twitter account for guidance, but -- just out of curiosity -- who is your favorite running mate for Joe?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 5, 2020

Obama & Hamilton

First of all, Happy 59th Birthday to President Barack Obama.

What better way to celebrate than with one of the greatest cultural events in White House history from the first spring of the Obama presidency. On May 12, 2009, 'An Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word' gave us a sneak peak at a song from a proposed hip-hop album that would become the Broadway classic 'Hamilton' six years later.

Will we ever have a White House that has such cultural highlights again?

Who, for example, visited the current president for a photo op (there are no musical or poetry performances there since 2017) during his first spring in the office?

"They Are Dying...And It Is What It Is" -- Donald Trump's Memorable Quotation on the #TrumpVirus

'The Buck Stops Here'

'Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You'

'I Am Not A Crook'

'Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself'

And now we've found the quotation Trump's presidency will be remembered for:

'They Are Dying, That's True, And It Is What It Is.'
https://t.co/Da0lhcQj6Z

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 4, 2020

For those of you, like me, who don't subscribe to HBO, Axios has posted the entire interview that Jonathan Swan conducted with Donald Trump on YouTube as a public service:

This Swan/Trump interview may not be remembered as long as Frost/Nixon, but it certainly should be studied by every other interviewer who sits down with the Prevaricator-in-Chief to see how follow-up questions should be deployed when Trump tries to lie or (more frequently) change the subject.

Happy Birthday to James Baldwin

This photo was taken by me at the Women's March in D.C. on January 21, 2017.

"Ignorance Allied with Power Is the Most Ferocious Enemy Justice Can Have."

Trump Steaks! They're INNNNSANE!

After stumbling on this commercial for Trump Steaks, something became immediately obvious,...

...the real-estate con man from Queens (who also failed with Trump Steaks, Trump "University," Trump Foundation, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Soho, Trump Airlines, the Trump "Administration," etc., etc.) missed an opportunity to be the next pitchman for another New York institution, Crazy Eddie's appliance stores.



Rather than becoming an on-screen television personality where he played a "successful billionaire" and a president, maybe Donald Trump would have finally found his true niche in selling televisions instead.

Trump's Approval Ratings Envy - "Nobody likes me; it can only be my personality."

Which does Trump care about more, his approval ratings or 150,000 American deaths from the #TrumpVirus?

Before you answer, watch this statement from this afternoon's press conference in which he whines about his approval rating vis-à-vis Dr. Anthony Fauci's:

 

...and he's got a high approval rating, so why don't I have a high approval rating with respect and the administration with respect to the virus? We should have a very high....

Now you can vote in this Twitter poll:

POLL:
Which of the following upsets Donald Trump more?
150,000 Americans dead from the #TrumpVirus or the fact that he is much less popular than Dr. Anthony Fauci?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) July 29, 2020

One-Week Poll: "The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire"

Is it possible for residents of an empire to accurately see where their empire is in the span of its lifecycle while the empire's leaders are still proclaiming their empire "exceptional" and therefore immune from the fate of all empires?

In other words, where do Americans think we are in our allotted period at the top of the global heap? Are pandemics, extreme inequality, militarism, racial and regional divisions, corruption, etc. etc., solvable problems or signs of our end times?

You have one week to vote in this Twitter poll.

POLL:

Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was published in six volumes.

Which volume of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire" are we currently living through?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) July 24, 2020

Feel free to retweet to harness the wisdom of crowds.

Should someone who threatens war crimes and pardons war criminals be allowed to have a Twitter account?

POLL:
If you were @Jack, would you use your power to permanently block future posts from the @Twitter account of @realdonaldtrump* (while archiving past posts for use by prosecutors and historians)?

*impeached

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) January 7, 2020