Trump is already interfering in the election

We just voted by mail in the Minnesota elections, but it may be more difficult in November: Trump is openly trying to suppress votes.

President Trump says the U.S. Postal Service is incapable of facilitating mail-in voting because it cannot access the emergency funding he is blocking, and made clear that requests for additional aid were nonstarters in coronavirus relief negotiations.

Trump, who has been railing against mail-in balloting for months, said the cash-strapped agency’s enlarged role in the November election would perpetuate “one of the greatest frauds in history.” Speaking Wednesday at his daily pandemic news briefing, Trump said he would not approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service, or $3.5 billion in supplemental funding for election resources, citing prohibitively high costs.

The only reason it’s “cash-strapped” is that Republicans have been ham-stringing the postal service for decades, and now they’re preparing to simply destroy the whole institution so they can rig the vote. They really hate democracy, don’t they?

Why I think Kamala Harris is a plus mark for the Biden candidacy

I haven’t been reluctant to say that Biden is one of my least favorite candidates, and that my support is lukewarm. Harris wasn’t my top choice in the primaries, either, but I think she’s better than Biden, so I can’t help but see this choice as better.

But what really matters is her policy positions. She has a record! We can actually look up what Harris has supported. All I have to say is that she has a 100% rating from NARAL and an “F” from the NRA to make the case for her. She also wants legislation to combat climate change, co-sponsored Medicare for all, is pro-union, opposed Trump’s tax cut for the rich, and thinks we ought to support the US Postal Service.

This is not to say she’s perfect, but I can hope that she’ll advance some progressive causes. I have more confidence in that than I have in passive empty suit Biden.

Of course, either one is better than evil fucking clown Trump.

I can live with Kamala Harris as VP

I was out spidering this afternoon when Biden announced his vice presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Not that it matters, but here’s what I think.

I have one negative: she was a prosecutor, so she was an enabler of the carceral state. That’s the opposite of what we need, but maybe she’s learned from recent events? We can hope? Maybe someday I’ll learn that my hopes are always shattered?

I have lots of positives, though. She’s relatively young, but old enough to be experienced; she’ll represent multiple minorities, as a woman, black, and Indian; she’s smart and has teeth. I would love to watch her rend Pence into a pulp in a VP debate, although I doubt that they’ll have one.

She’s not Joe Biden. In the run-up to the primaries, I had a much more favorable impression of Harris than of Biden, so seeing her on the slate is a net gain. I’m not enthused about Biden, but he could have screwed up this choice far more catastrophically.

I didn’t chuckle even once at this McSweeney’s article

But then, I’m not laughing at much nowadays.

We could have poured resources into prevention. We could’ve spent all summer enforcing mask use and social distancing. We could’ve sacrificed small pleasures for the greater good. We could’ve kept this from happening. But instead, we’re blindly barreling toward reopening even though we know teachers and students will die. We’re going to treat COVID the same way we treat school shootings. An unfortunate but unavoidable cost to doing business.

One rule for you, one for me

Did you hear the one about social media having a liberal bias? Yeah, right.

Facebook has allowed conservative news outlets and personalities to repeatedly spread false information without facing any of the company’s stated penalties, according to leaked materials reviewed by NBC News.

According to internal discussions from the last six months, Facebook has relaxed its rules so that conservative pages, including those run by Breitbart, former Fox News personalities Diamond and Silk, the nonprofit media outlet PragerU and the pundit Charlie Kirk, were not penalized for violations of the company’s misinformation policies.

Misinformation is OK if you are a Republican. Better yet, it’s the breath of life for those asshats. Oh, and bite me, Facebook.

In related news, never buy anything from Teespring. They’re fine with selling merchandise with swastikas, but don’t you dare add a rainbow to it. They’ll yank the hippie-dippy love & peace apparel from their product line, but if you want a black t-shirt with Nazi symbols all over it, no problem.

Teespring, which is owned by KA Design, says it didn’t sell any of the design and didn’t profit from it. In a video on its Facebook page, KA Design said the swastika is thousands of years old and is a symbol of peace, love, life and other ideas. But the Nazi party corrupted that symbol, the company added.

“[T]hey stigmatized the swastika forever. They won. They limited our freedom. Or maybe not? The swastika is coming back,” the video said.

Sure, Nazis corrupted it and made it representative of their hateful ideology. That’s a significant part of its history now. It ain’t coming back until everyone forgets WWII and the Nazis and the Holocaust, so everyone can just stop playing stupid and stop pretending that shameful blight on the world never existed.

I’d rather put something in the mail than sacrifice myself for Donald Trump

I don’t know who Josh Bernstein is, but he’d be fine with me dying. He compares voting in person to storming the beaches at Normandy and thinks we ought to be willing to do that. Sacrifice yourself for Donald Trump!

Some of these folks may actually get sick, and that’s sad, and it’s unfortunate, and I hope that it doesn’t happen, Bernstein continued. “And some of them, yes, they may even die and pass away. So be it. I don’t mean to be callous. I don’t mean to be cruel. I don’t mean to be insensitive. But we’re not asking you to storm the beaches of Normandy here, and we’re certainly not asking you to try to overtake Hamburger Hill either. We’re asking you to get out of the house and go down and vote for President Trump so that you can secure your children and your grandchildren’s future, to make sure that they live in the freedom that you have enjoyed as well. OK? Some people are going to die. So be it. It will be their last sacrifice for this country.

He might as well announce that “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” by voting Republican.

Of course, military action in WWII was necessary to oppose a totalitarian force that threatened to invade us, and was killing its own citizens. If we had an alternative to D-Day that involved simply mailing some letters, I would have suggested we do that. We didn’t have that alternative, but we do have a way to vote that doesn’t require me to risk my life. I think we should do that, despite Bernstein’s paranoia about imaginary voter fraud.

Also, if I had to vote in person, it wouldn’t be for a Republican of any kind.

North Paulding High is the epitome of professionalism!

North Paulding High in Georgia has opened, and there are swarms of students milling around maskless in crowded hallways. What to do about it? I know! Prohibit the publication of any photos that show how incompetently they’re managing the pandemic!

All those students ignoring the mask requirement? They’re fine. The student who posted that photo? Suspended! (It’s probably better for him, anyway). The administrators who permit that kind of crowding? Oh, they’re fine, no problem.

Would you believe there is already a COVID-19 outbreak among the football team, which held a practice the week before? You probably would. They opened anyway. The administration is incredibly slack.

Despite recommendations from CDC health officials, the district has called mask-wearing a “personal choice” and said that social distancing “will not be possible to enforce” in “most cases.” While the school provided teachers with face shields and masks and encouraged staff and students to wear them, they are not required and not all teachers have chosen to use them. One North Paulding teacher resigned last month over concerns about virus safety.

Jeeeezus. Just close all the schools already.

The Quack-in-Chief is dispensing dangerous medical advice again

When will Twitter and Facebook get around to banning this guy? Isn’t it bad enough that he has his sycophants at Fox News broadcasting his garbage everywhere?

Watch this excerpt (starting at around the 12 minute mark) in which Trump opines on why we need to open the schools, after a rant from one of the Fox & Friends morons declares that the threat of closing schools is political extortion.

Once again, we get Trump’s wishful thinking, this thing is going away it will go away like things go away, whatever that means. The numbers are going up, not down. He claimed that the virus would go away over the summer, because the sun would kill it; now he doesn’t seem to care that we’re heading into fall, and that we’re planning to pack people into classrooms again.

children are almost — and I would almost say definitely — almost immune from this disease…they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this…they don’t have a problem, they just don’t have a problem. Jebus. No. They’re also at risk, but also kids aren’t isolated. Even if he were correct (he isn’t), doesn’t he see the problem with hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic disease carriers scurrying about, infecting parents and grandparents and teachers and random people they bounce off of? (Grandparents and teachers…this is getting personal for me.)

He claims I’ve watched some doctors say they’re totally immune. Name them. They need to be censured as badly as the President of the United States. Also, his magaphone, Fox News, needs to be smashed.

This is why I don’t talk to mammals anymore

It’s also why I avoid grocery stores. Jon Rosenberg recounts a perfectly ordinary encounter at the supermarket.

I am not a talking asparagus, but this kind of thing is going on all over the place.

By the way, another reason I shun the local grocery store is because, despite the state-wide mask mandate, the management of that filthy pesthole still allows customers to stroll around maskless. And they do.