This is what has me most concerned for this election. Well, what currently has me most concerned, I’m sure something else horrible will happen soon.

All media is strictly for profit now, and creating tabloid fodder has been Trump’s main business for decades. He’ll be the lead every time, because more people tune in for that. It’s the same reason Twitter and Facebook will never actually get rid of the conspiracy and hate speech. Companies that exist solely to make money don’t refuse when people insist on giving them money.

To Withhold or Not: Trump's Order Gives Employers a New Dilemma

SMH

I think that is the perfect definition of this administration in a microcosm.

The rollout itself may be expensive and time consuming for businesses. The payroll tax rate does not usually change in the middle of the year, Isberg said, and the shift would require businesses to reprogram computer systems that can be balky.


“Things of this magnitude normally take six months or so for orderly programming,” Isberg said. “So there will be some employers that just never get this done just from a technical perspective if they have systems that are old or difficult to maintain.”


In addition, by focusing on people who are employed, the measure fails to address the needs of the roughly 16 million Americans without jobs, some of whom are on the verge of losing their homes and cars.

Connecting to virtually everything in this conversation now... there was a time when I now realize how little I understood about the effects of "election meddling" and "social media manipulation" and "fake news." I'm not sure I was 100% of the way there, but my p.o.v. wasn't too far away from "hey, as long as they're not hacking in and changing votes, then i guess free speech and fair play and all that."

I suppose it has taken time, for an old never-Facebook person like me, to understand just how pervasive the forces of manipulated media and pseudo social presence is on people. The relative uniformity with which the people who years ago clicked on an article about, say, Obama's birth certificate are now so heavily in line on the "my science says masks don't do anything, and also not wearing one is suddenly my most important freedom" team... it's just stunning and awesome.


I don't really understand or comprehend what in this should be "illegal" (even setting aside foreign actors being a root source) but wow, it's a big fucking deal.

They just need to take that trillion dollars (or more) they're proposing and just send $1000 checks every month to every adult. For a trillion dollars it would last 5 months by my napkin math.

What about the dead people?! You'll send $1000s to dead people!!

Wait, we are sending checks via USPS? They can't be trusted with that type of money flowing through it.

Just think of all the fraudulent transactions when people steal a chunk of checks!

You send $1000 per person. Or you send $1000 per adult and $500 per child. I think this was very nearly my response when this hit. That the government would need to print and send money to everyone just to keep the economy afloat. Getting cute with tax cuts, and incentives, and whatever is not helping enough. A simple, short term solution is necessary.

They did spend a lot of money. Just gave it to the wealthiest people.

Wouldn't the wealthiest people have ended up with the money anyway? At least your way helps everyone else too.

I don't think Rainmaker was disagreeing, just saying the way it was done as opposed to giving everyone a stipend made it just go to the top.

I know that Sanders and Harris introduced a bill to give everyone $2000 a month. Do that and you don't have to worry about extended unemployment benefits arguments as well.

However, I would like to see the federal government help States and localities as well who are dealing with a lot more expenses and less tax amounts.

Let the local/state governments tax the stipend checks.

Also these taxes will be owed next year the article stated so people are recommended to save the "extra" money now to be able to pay the money everyone will owe next you do to this. That is if their particular employer even does this.

Some hopeful results for my fellow South Carolina Democrats-they had a special election today for a state Representative to replace a Republican who got a new job as a US Attorney, The District had strongly gone Republican for Trump and before him Romney. Not only did she beat the Republican, she did so by about 20 points. She will only hold the seat for 3 months, but her opponent in Nov will be the same one she just beat. So have faith, Lindsey Graham can lose in November too!

And the GOP is guaranteed a big Q supporter in congress with the GA14 results.

I am so proud that my state regularly produces these right-wing nut jobs.

That actress was great


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I said this a couple months ago, but I realize I was wrong. If there is no election, then the GOP loses their Senate majority on January 3rd. The Dems would then select the new President Pro Tempore. By tradition, it's the longest serving Senator int he majority party, which would be Pat Leahy. But there's nothing requiring that.

That was pretty amazing

I think this is one for the political thread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...n-billy-woods/

Washington PostWashington Post
‘This is no longer a debate’: Florida sheriff bans deputies, visitors from wearing masks
Florida set a new record with 217 covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, while Marion County also set its own record for daily deaths with 13. (64 kB)

“We can debate and argue all day of why and why not. The fact is, the amount of professionals that give the reason why we should, I can find the exact same amount of professionals that say why we shouldn’t,” Woods wrote in the email.

The GOP and Trump so far today,

- We love the Q woman from GA, she's our future!
- Is Kamala black or simply tan?
- Scarey black men are going to make you live next to other scarey black people

I'm at least comforted in that I'm pretty sure a George Wallace campaign can't win nationally.

edit- Just saw a new one.

-One of Kamala's ancestors owned slaves, so she's not really black.

If there's no election, then arcane Senate rules go out the window.

If there's no election, then the President will be whoever has the best combination of will to power/popular support/military & law enforcement support.

Here's something that occurs to me. It does not strike me as likely, but it does not strike me as impossible either.

As the election draws near, Trump looks very likely to lose.

So, a few days before the election, he declares that the whole thing is "hopelessly rigged" and then orders his supporters not to vote.

So he (and the GOP) loses in a mega-landslide. But he can go the rest of his days saying that he "would have won" if the results had not been corrupted.

This would devastate the GOP downballot, but Trump does not care about that.

I can't see this guy giving up like that. He wants the power that comes with the job. He is going to use that power to keep the job, no matter what it takes, right or wrong.

That would be awesome. I’m more inclined he’ll litigate if can’t steal the election.

I figure after the election if all is lost, he scorch Earth and then quit and have Pence fully pardon him and then he’ll Twitter, rally and talk show on how everything the Democrats will do is a failure while Pence is left to manage the transition.

They are just determined to prove to us that they don't understand racism.

This particular idiocy is being promoted by D'Souza. You'd think a person of Indian descent would understand the idea of British masters raping women of color.

D'Souza is a bootlicker of the highest order. He recently was trying to convince people that the British, Australians, and Indians pronounce Thailand as "Thigh-land" because Trump mispronounced the country's name. Which let to a bunch of Brits, Aussies, and Indians saying: No we don't.

I think it’s more they are determined to prove to the base that they will never acknowledge racism.

Only way I can see this happening is if his poll numbers are so low that its pulling all R's down ballot too, and they desperately cut their ties to Trump to try to squeak out a win. Trump's ego won't be able to handle such "disrespect" that he says "F&*! you all then" and laughs at them on the way out.

Trump will never admit defeat. That's one thing I know for certain. The only way that he loses is a "rigged election". He will drag this out in the courts afterwards. The chad counting in Florida in 2000 will look like nothing.

For as crappy as a number of months of this year have been, November and December have potential to be the worst. Buckle in?

SI

I've been saying for months that I am dreading Thanksgiving/Christmas with relatives because it's gonna suck when all of this political crap is going on. I got through a 3 day visit with my parents a couple of weeks ago, but 4-5 days with an election controversy is going to be very uncomfortable.

This is the price for everyone having a voice. The stupid/wrong/crazy/deceitful voices are indistinguishable from the rest. We have so much information that we're paralyzed by "both sides-ing" every single issue, because there is a purported "expert" voice for any argument you want to make on any issue.

Like QS said, I don't know how you police any of this, but the fact that there are differing viewpoint on science isn't new. But 50 years ago, the quacks didn't have the opportunity to reach as many people as they do today. And if they happen to say something that fits your politics or opinion or whatever, then they become your justification for refusing to go along with the vast majority of experts.

Authoritarianism of some sort will eventually be the answer. The only questions to my mind is how long until we accept that, and what form it takes. The civic requirements of a free society are ones we stopped pretending to accept responsibility for some while ago - not that we were ever fully accepting of them, but I do think it was quite a bit better than it is now.

One of my more (I think) radical proposal is that Sheriffs should be appointed by governors. It is silly to elect law enforcement officers.

There will be upwards of a dozen states involved this time instead of one. This is going to be a nightmare scenario.

Biden isn't a great speaker, but five minutes of him talking just obliterates all of the conservative taunts of his mental failings.

I'm really not sure who the GOP is trying to reach with the "not black enough" thing.

Trying to sway Biden voters to Kanye.

30% Trump, 30% Biden, regardless of the polls.

What 40% do the candidates get out? Pro black or pro White.

That is the election.

That's the only thing that makes sense, but if he's taken off the ballot in Wisconsin it's a hell of a lot of money and effort wasted by the GOP to bleed what's likely an insignificant number of voters away from Biden.

Unless something drastic happens it comes down to how many votes the GOP can keep from getting counted.

538 has Biden's chances at 71% and they've pointed out that polls adjusted in ways that would favor Trump after 2016 and they're skeptical those changes were needed. RCP has Biden's chances at 60%.

When I typed that I didn't even know if I was joking or not.

I think there's an idea in conservative circles that its dishonest to hold someone out as "the first black" this or that unless they're 100% African-American. I do remember Obama getting a little of that. Rush Limbaugh called him a "Hafrican American". He thought that appealed to his audience. Obviously those weren't swing voters. But whenever being diverse is portrayed as a positive thing, that seems to be their knee-jerk response.

Not sure where they're going with this. Her father is Jamaican and her mother is Indian, so she's the second biracial person in history to be on a presidential ticket.

Surely Trump’s trying to work his way towards this?

Trump WH is going on the attack against a GOP Rep that said QAnon was garbage.

Burn down the whole damned party and start over.

Who knew that "one drop" rule would come back to bite white America in the ass 100 years later?

Yeah, they're turning anti-miscegenation laws on their heads. 1/32 white counts as not black.

dola


Nope. That's not a winning message. Here's a hint, you shouldn't bring up 2020. Ever.

So when a Republican says "You didn't build that. President Trump and I built that" it's awesome and OK and not at all insulting.

It can be so hard to keep up sometimes

dola

Me: Black Lives Matter

GOP: That's the problem with you Dems. You are obsessed with race. You are the real racists. All Lives Matter to me because I am colorblind. We should all be colorblind.

Biden: [Picks Harris as running mate]

GOP: Next on Hannity--we stole a hair from Kamala Harris's brush and ran a DNA test on it. After the break, we will give you her exact genetic breakdown. You'll be shocked to learn what percentage Swahili she is.

From the "so petty it's just sad" category:

US to ease water rules after Trump's shower moan

SI

In addition to being ridiculous, I don't understand how this helps. If I've got 10 showerheads but they are all capped at 2.5, how is that resolving the pressure issue? I'm honestly confused as to how more water fixes the issue. Can't you just buy a bigger showerhead today to get more water to come out? If he's complaining about the 2.5 cap, this doesn't change that.

EDIT to add... I can't believe a Seinfeld episode is coming to life in this absurd a way.

QAnon whack jobs are organizing a Save the Children protest in my town. And people are falling for it.

Sometimes I think I’m in The Twilight Zone.

I'm Catholic, so growing up, abortion was always the conversation-ending card that right-wing people would play. No matter what public policy matter you were discussing, you could always end the conversation with "It's not as bad as killing babies."

(This is also why I was a conservative Republican until law school).

Q-Anon's obsession with pedophilia is the same way. No matter what you are discussing, they can come back with "It isn't as bad as pedophilia."

And then if you try to counter with "I'm pretty sure Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates aren't running an international child sex ring," then they have already won b/c they've managed to take the debate away from whatever real issue they'd prefer not to discuss.

There's a lot of Trump to get wet. Maybe instead of more water he should focus on less body.

It appears there is a big peace deal between Israel and UAE and Trump had somewhat of a hand in it (probably allowing for a neutral party to allow both parties to discuss it).

Israel and UAE reach historic peace deal, Israel to suspend annexation - The Jerusalem Post

Looks like the UAE and Israel will have flights between each other. Israel will suspend annexation of more of the West Bank. Some cooperation between the two countries?

Well, he could always visit Sea World and jump in the Orca pool and bath with the local inhabitants. Plenty of water in there.

Trump campaign starting to go all in on Kamala Harris birther angle.

The old hits are always the best.

Well, maybe.

The UAE has now said it's a roadmap towards normalization and Israel has said they will still annex, but they've put it on hold for a while because of the agreement.

I'm picturing Don Jr. and Eric onstage at a club with their guitars. And they just finished a rousing rendition of "Black People say the N Word in Rap Songs, so Why Can't We?"

And then Don Jr. says, "OK. Now we wanna play y'all something from our upcoming album that Eric wrote. I think that y'all are going to like this"

And everyone decides it's a good time to get up and use the restroom.

(This is 10% funnier if you picture Eric with a nose ring and a Megadeath T-shirt.)

Trump openly admits he is starving the post office to stop voting by mail. He openly brags about voter suppression, not to mention distroying small businesses that depend on the postal service. The GOP remains silent.

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Apparently Harris upset so many GOPers, Herman Cain came back from the dead to tweet a Trump campaign video about her!

The Voice of America is going full time Trump/Pence propaganda.

Ivanka Trump Continues Women Empowerment Agenda Amid Pandemic https://t.co/wnKj93oNN2 pic.twitter.com/L6gvHu9rLR

— The Voice of America (@VOANews) August 13, 2020

Trumps “unemployment extension” is going to pay between 1-3 weeks max. The allocated money is about 15-18billion and for 30million unemployed people @$300/week that’s 1-3 payments. What a troll job.

I'm pretty sure the law doesn't matter anymore, but using the FEMA money should require states to pay 25% in order to get anything from the Feds.

The 25% can be already existing benefits that the state is paying. So it basically it doesn’t mean anything.

Thanks. I didn't realize that was the new interpretation. That's not what the government was saying when the EOs were signed, but like I said, I doubt the law matters.

Remember this the next time we lecture the world about freedom and democracy. It's a hunk of shit.

Anyone with a benefit amount less than 100$/week would get nothing extra. His order is so insignificant.

The President is bragging about intentionally making part of the government work worse. Not just one of the "help poor or minority people" parts of the government (people brag about shutting those down all the time). But one of the parts of the government that middle class and white people use.

He's not doing it in secret. He's proud of it.

And 39% of the country is still 100% behind this guy.

On the plus side, the orders are so weak sauce and ineffectual that most people agree that they are legal.

So he's doing better than he normally does with these things.

It won't matter, but Michael Cohen is claiming to bring the fire in his book.

Just listening to the latest "Model Talk" on 538. They are clear to caution that a 8 point lead at this point is far from safe, and there is no way to model the level of voter suppression that we might be facing. They are saying this is basically a 2 point Electoral College lead for Biden, so really razor thin.

From the Trump campaign

The people who call others snowflakes are having a complete meltdown over not being able to watch 20 years old play football.

No College sports is nothing more than an inconvenience. Make a huge deal about these kids missing their chances, and you're missing the thousands of kids who are paying for college and missing their own chances that maybe aren't televised. College athletes aren't the only ones effected by Covid.

So he pissed on Trump in Vegas :confused:

Supposedly it's a known story about a pee show rather than Trump peeing or being peed on.

To be fair, there are many fine people on both sides who are concerned about the Big 12 being able to defend against the spread.

But kneeling is disrespectful.

And to no one's surprise Trump applied for a mail ballot in Florida today

Trump went from a high of 4.1 intelligence briefings per week on average in March 2017 to 0.7 per week since July 1. An intelligence briefing held on Monday was the president’s first in August and the first since July 22. https://t.co/IITgRLDc68

— Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) August 14, 2020

right, then

You have got to be fucking kidding me, how do people still except this without flinching

Kudos to the Trump team (whoever lead the charge) on getting the UAE-Israeli deal. A mid-size foreign policy win. Don't know what all the "carrots" were but wouldn't be surprised if easy access to future vaccine was part of it. Won't be surprised if there is a huge push by the Trump team to get others onboard quickly. Domestic policy/legacy is problematic to the 56-62% but he may be able to pull off some positive legacy on the ME front.

Palestinians being a tier-1 problem that is on all the front pages have come and pass, world dynamics have moved on to other priorities. Time for them to cut the best deal with a Biden administration they can knowing they won't get near everything they want.

Good news assuming other follow. Time to diversify the supply chain to other low cost countries. I've got a good chunk of Apple stock (and in MF) but it took forever for them to be a 1T company and now in 2-3 years they are on the verge of 2T, they have plenty of padding to survive.

I don't think it was just the trade war (convenient excuse) but also some other factors (e.g. it's a Taiwanese company) but Trump did more to escalate and bring to the forefront China practices so he does get some credit.

Foxconn CEO: China no longer 'world's factory' due to Trump trade war - Business Insider

The absentee/mail-in ballot debate has been heating up, and I'm trying to understand both sides of this. Trump keeps making a distinction between the two, while his detractors say there is no distinction.

Here's what I see - there is a distinction, in terms of who qualifies for it and if it has to be requested. You have about 10 states where ballots are automatically mailed. This seems to be what Trump is mainly railing against. I'd be interested to see if there have been any studies on voter fraud in these states (mostly west coast states). I assume Trump and Friends are concerned that, given the pandemic, other states will adopt something similar. Again, I haven't seen anything that suggests voter fraud is (or is not) a valid concern - although presumably his voter fraud commission would have found it...

Then you have the vast majority of states, where "absentee" voting is permitted for anyone (which begs the question of why it's called absentee). Presumably, in these states, every single person could vote by mail, but they have to request a ballot, it's not automatically sent. This includes Trump's "home" state of Florida. True to form, I assume he would say Florida does it right and states likely to vote against him can't be trusted to do it right. But the threshold here is that it has to be requested, it's not just automatically mailed as in the Group 1 states.

Then there are the other 8-10 states which require a valid excuse to vote absentee. This includes my state of Kentucky, although it appears we may have a bipartisan agreement to expand the definition of absentee to allow for health/Covid concerns without requiring any proof of a real ailment that would prevent in-person voting (TBD in the next couple of weeks). This is obviously the most restrictive set of states in terms of allowing mail-in voting.

is this a fair summary? Is Trump just objecting to Group 1, or Groups 1 and 2 (other than FL, of course)?

I do think Trump detractors ought to better explain this rather than just saying he's talking about the same thing. He's not - although again, it's unclear whether, from the standpoint of voter fraud, there's any practical difference. I think that's the tack they ought to take when explaining why they disagree with him on this issue.

It is also apparent to me that Trump is hedging his bets, so the USPS slowdown will help his position one way or the other. But that's another issue.

I think you pretty much have it right.

Group 1 is what everyone is calling "Mail in voting". Group 2 is what they're calling "Absentee". To me, absentee voting IS mail in voting. They use the terms this way as a way of distinction I guess.

I have talked to 3-4 people about this and they all have the same concerns. With mail in voting, how many ballots get sent in by dead people? How are their voter rolls updated so that ballots aren't sent to dead people.

I tend to think that the amount of ballots that are truly from dead people are such a small percentage to not make a difference but this appears to be the main issue for some people.

And again, I don't know the details of those 8-10 state that have mail-in voting, but this isn't going to be the first election they use it, and presumably they would have a good feel for any potential fraud or other concerns that they have ACTUALLY experienced, versus this boogieman BS Trump is spewing.

Like in person voting, there are isolated cases of fraud, but nothing like the thousands or tens of thousands of fraudulent votes claimed by Trump. And it makes sense, that sort of organized, labor intensive voter fraud would come with very high risk of getting caught and would still be unlikely to change state level outcomes.

Mail-in voting states haven't experienced any more fraud than in-person states.

The one thing that I think is a legitimate concern is the capacity to deal with the increase in mail-in ballots. In KY, for example, we had about 700K mail-in ballots for the primary and the expectation is that if we did the same for the general election, we'd be looking at around 1.7M ballots. It would overwhelm the system (even outside of any USPS shenanigans). So I do think that's a valid concern.

Personally, I'd be fine with expanded absentee voting, plus early voting. There's no excuse for not being able to get to a polling place once in 14 days. For all the crap that KY got for having only 1 polling place open per county - which drew a ton of national criticism due to the slanted coverage - we had more people vote than ever before AND the only time there was any wait in Louisville was at rush hour (5-6pm) on election day. There were few lines even earlier that day at the same polling place, not to mention it was open for like 10 days prior. Why people would wait until then to vote is beyond me.

Personally, I think mail-in voting is going to be a disaster in large part because Trump is going to make sure it's a disaster. I'd love more early voting aross the country to alleviate pressure on election day, but the GOP isn't interested in making it easier to vote. I think the only option, as shitty as it is given the pandemic, is in-person voting.

Dems really need to be planning and communicating for voting. The GOP is quite openly planning to steal the election and our norms won't save us.

We'll see what the ultimate plan ends up being in KY, but I'm surprised that our GOP SOS and Dem Governor have worked so well together. Mainly, I'm shocked that the GOP has allowed the SOS to give in on some of the points that the GOP has typically argued against.

It probably speaks more to the fact that KY is solid red and McConnell is likely not in any true peril than anything else, I'm guessing. But whatever the reason, it's been refreshing to see.

I'm sure there's just as much racism and partisan crap (if not moreso) involved with which polling places are open for early voting, too, though.

"It's impractical to leave every polling place open for early voting. You wouln't want to expose our poor, elderly poll workers to more COVID risk. It's /definitely/ only a coincidence that the ones you can early vote in are in older, white, more affluent neighborhoods that are 20 minutes away from anyone who registered as a Democrat in 2016."

SI

Eh, that's probably an issue in some places, but in Lexington and Louisville, it was simply the largest places they had - UK stadium in Lexington and the state fairgrounds/Exhibit Hall in Louisville.