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Open Thread

As usual, use the comments to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 22, 2020

30 Comments

  1. Just how did Trump “win” an additional, unanticipated 10 million votes?

  2. Plague Species

    Exactly, Ten Bears. That doesn’t compute. They claim hispanics, the ones he’s been locking in cages for the past four years and stealing their babies, made up this 10 million difference. That’s a hell of a lot of hispanics.

    Also, have you all seen the video of the fist pump between Graham and Harris? Kamala initiated it as though she and Lindsey are best friends for life. My wife and daughter and son voted for Kamala and here she is in bed with the guy who quite literally tried to UNLAWFULLY coerce the Secretary of State to throw their specific votes out. I made sure to point this out to them and to underscore that this is specifically why I didn’t vote. Sure, I gave them my vote and signed, but I made sure to indicate I didn’t agree with them. Right away, Kamala, symbolically and ceremonially, proves my point by fist-pumping Lindsey Graham as the apparatchiks and media talking heads play up the alarmist Kabuki Theater as though it’s real.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7CnsYDXdmw

    That video is as much an indictment of Harris’ sincerity as it is of Graham’s and yet the so-called “liberal” faction of the media is presenting it ONLY as an indictment of Graham’s sincerity.

    Damn them all to hell. Over 250,000 murdered Americans and they’re playing Kabuki Theater. Harris proves the Dems are as responsible as McDonald Trump for these murders.

  3. anon

    Glenn Greenwald did a new interview with Jimmy Dore:

    https://youtu.be/9uHbXMPP0pc

    https://youtu.be/VZ6-qimnboM

  4. Plague Species

    Dems lose Congress miserably in the mid-terms in two years and lose the presidency in 2024 to Pompeo. Pompeo is the feared competent fascist autocrat who will make Trump look like and angel in comparison. Biden has already set the stage and he hasn’t yet become president. Just look at the backlash on Twitter per the Biden and his transition team trying to raise transition money.

    https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1329878933043515392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1329878933043515392%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fpresident-elect-joe-biden-asks-public-fund-transition-trump-refuses-concede-1549173

    Twitter blew up on him and rightfully so. They raked the prick over the coals.

    Here’s Joey’s plea.

    Here’s the deal: Because President Trump refuses to concede and is delaying the transition, we have to fund it ourselves and need your help.

    If you’re able, chip in to help fund the Biden-Harris transition.

    Hey Joe, f you. You raised more than a billion dollars for your campaign. Where did all that money go? That’s right, it went to about three Dem consultants. Get the money from them you worthless prick, or from the 186 billionaires who contributed to your campaign in return for saving their heads. What a total corrupt disingenuous ass this guy is. THIS is why the Dems will lose Congress miserably in two years and this is why a competent fascist autocrat will win the presidency in 2024 and then it’s done.

    Hey Kamala and Joe, ask Lindsey Graham for the money or Mitch McConnell since you’re all such great chums. What a bunch of immoral scum.

    Here are some responses from the Twitterati.

    Didn’t you just put half the corporate lobbyists in America on the transition team? Didn’t you just piss off ERIN BROCKOVICH? Isn’t Uber’s handpicked top lobbyist on your labor advisory committee now? If you did all that and they DIDN’T give you a pile of money then L M A O

    Ask Obama to donate from the proceeds of his memoire he’s hawking at a most opportune, yet inappropriate, time. These freaks simply have zero shame. They’re as horrible as Trump, just not as crude and obvious and they in fact made Trump — in their image.

    I tell you what, you get me some stimulus, I send a lil somethin your way

  5. Plague Species

    Wow. This will work out real well. Armed vigilantes being deputized by Batista Cubans. Miami is going to light up. It may be the Fort Sumter of the Civil War 2.0. These Batista Cubans have to go. They are no good. America has always been a safe harbor for the world’s exiled fascists, hasn’t it? Land of Liberty, my ass. Unless it means Liberty for fascists crooks.

    https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/11/21/desantis-new-stand-your-ground-would-provoke-the-danger-it-professes-to-prevent-column/

    Among its “innovations” are enhanced immunities for police and civilian violence alongside tough financial penalties for localities trying to defund or reconfigure their police forces. It would outlaw forms of social protest that have long been protected as free speech, while criminalizing those who “obstruct or interfere with the regular flow of vehicular traffic.”

    At the heart of the state’s original stand your ground legislation was an effort to “flip the script” on cause and effect, target and aggressor, by framing the victims of violence as perpetrators, and the perpetrators as self-defenders.

  6. Plague Species

    I promise, this is not The Onion, although it should be. Like I said, it’s ALL Kabuki Theater. There is not a genuine moral bone in their rotting bodies.

    https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/11/gov-cuomo-wins-emmy-for-masterful-coronavirus-briefings-during-early-pandemic.html

    Emmy’s are for actors, right?

  7. Keith in Modesto

    Plague Species, I saw that tweet from Biden begging for money. Here’s my contribution to the thread:

    https://twitter.com/KeithInModesto/status/1330139801517953026?s=20

  8. Plague Species

    Perfect, Keith.

  9. I frankly found the degree of enthusiasm for Trump, as seen by the huge crowds turning out for his rallies and (supposedly) “organic”, caravans and boat flotillas, to be surprising. I don’t think Trump has proven to be a very good President, and certainly not much of a reformer. I suspect that he’s gotten a lot of sympathy votes, because you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that he’s incessantly smeared and/or represented in the worst possible light, by mainstream media. I’m sorry I didn’t take a screen shot, but about a week before the election, I counted 9 front page links with “Trump” in the title, I think at msnbc.com. All but 1 was clearly negative.

    The court cases, so far, have been almost all thrown out. Nevertheless, I’m optimistic that Trump will prevail. I say that based on the reputation of Sidney Powell:
    https://stream.org/i-know-sidney-powell-she-is-telling-the-truth/

    See also the following. She may not be willing to damage her own case by exposing evidence on Tucker Carlson’s show, but she hasn’t kept it a complete secret: https://twitter.com/MrMMarte/status/1329928031583023105
    .
    She’s also talking about Witness Protection. (Thankfully; I’m half expecting somebody to get whacked, soon. Oops, I meant suicided.)

    In any event, if she doesn’t show her cards, at least in a court of law, within 2 weeks, she’ll be joining Trump in the unemployment line.

    Meanwhile, an affidavit re PA vote fraud has been sworn out by a math professor with a Princeton, Ph.D. pedigree. In the 1940’s, Princeton was the center of the mathematical world. They are probably still in the top 10 math departments. I had a professor who also took his Ph.D. in math from Princeton. He told us that, as a student, he basically solved ALL of the problem’s in Herstein’s famous Abstract Algebra textbook. Those are smart dudes…..
    https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/prominent-mathematician-flags-up-to-100000-penn-ballots-voter-fraud/

  10. Hugh

    In the election we were given the choice between a failed leader (Trump) and the failed leadership that produced him. (Biden, Obama, Bush, the Clintons). We could choose the lying fascist with the severe personality disorder or the vacuous spokesman for the “you can’t have nice things” Establishment which has been looting us for the last 45 years.

    And of course the Democratic party filled with stuck-in-the-past retreads like Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer is setting itself up to get smashed in 2022 and 2024. Trump was awful, a puppet of his disease, but the Democratic leadership hasn’t had a good idea in years and hasn’t fought for anything worthwhile in decades.

    The bottom line is that our society has real, even existential problems and nobody in power has or wants a clue how to fix them. We can go the Trump route and simply deny them or the Biden route of mostly denying them and certainly not doing anything like what’s needed to deal with them. We’re on a sinking ship. Trump tells us, just ignore the incoming water. Biden after a lot of heming and hawing suggests a small bucket to bail the ship out. It’s all lesser evilism: go down fast and hard with Trump or a little more slowly with Biden and the Democrats. We’re screwed, and we aren’t even given a real choice, only a rigged and limited one how.

  11. S Brennan

    Not spoken about here but, as a direct result of Pelosi’s refusal to work out a deal with Trump to [extend/replace/renew] CARES millions of unemployed receiving federal unemployment extensions fall off the rolls at midnight 31 Dec 2020.

    That’s a reality that will put millions on the street….simultaneously. Those millions will not be entitled to any relief because their prior income will exclude them. That’s 8-9 million people who, could and normally would have been helped. In the past, during employment crisis federal extensions were the norm, not this time, the unemployed are not going to be helped this time because it’s an election year and D’s thought effing over those out of work would help their election numbers.

    And this is brought on by the “blue no matter who crowd” who can’t understand that guaranteeing their vote at the outset without extorting any firm quid pro quo a priori guarantees that the working class can be safely ignored. Any yet, almost everybody here argued for just that….and will the next time…and the next.

    Why will something like that happen…

    If the polls are to be believed, Biden is the most popular Democrat of all time and by a large margin. If polls are to be believed, the DNC denying the Sanders wing was the smartest thing the DNC has ever done. If polls are to be believed, Biden strode through battle unscathed while lessor Democrats were squashed. The DNC was right, the Sanders people are fools, if…polls are to be believed. The immense Biden vote proves once and for all, that any who diverge from DNC dictata should be ignored for all time.

    That was the message sent in 2020, was that the message so many Bernie supporters here wanted to send? Yeah, yeah it was, mission accomplished. Even if Trump were to somehow reverse the count and emerge victorious, the DNC triumphed by getting Bernie to sheepdog his supporters into the slaughterhouse.

  12. Zachary Smith

    Dueling headlines:

    “‘No evidence’ that asymptomatic Covid-19 cases were infectious, analysis of post-lockdown Wuhan concludes”

    vs

    “CDC coronavirus update: Agency says most COVID-19 infections spread by people without symptoms”

    Both of these cannot be true. The first one is from the increasingly “clickbaity” RT site. And a quote from that story:

    The paper’s authors acknowledged that previous studies had found evidence that asymptomatic individuals were infectious and could become symptomatic later, but theorized that Wuhan residents still testing positive for the virus after the city’s strict lockdown had a “low quantity of viral loads” and therefore were unable to pass the illness on to other people.

    I’ll go with Trump’s erratic CDC on this issue. Because it defies reason and contradicts those “previous studies”, the Nature account is very probably somehow messed up.

    Talked to a Southern Relative yesterday, and found they’re going to have Thanksgiving as usual. I hope they’re lucky. Participants will include a person in their late Eighties, two courthouse workers, and three twenty-somethings. They’re probably going to be as careful as they know how, but because every single one of them are Trumpies who watch only Fox News, will that be enough? Today’s Naked Capitalism had a headline which I HOPE isn’t relevant:

    “After Big Thanksgiving Dinners, Plan Small Christmas Funerals, Health Experts Warn”

    https://www.rt.com/news/507402-wuhan-asymptomatic-cases-coronavirus-study/

    https://abc7ny.com/health/cdc-says-most-covid-19-infections-spread-by-asymptomatic-people/8144335/

  13. Hugh

    Pelosi is no prize, but it was McConnell who put a second covid relief bill on ice for months because he wanted to make it as small as possible. With him, it’s billions for the rich and grudge pennies for the poor. Meanwhile Mnuchin and Trump were mostly going through the motions. So naturally our fascist Trump supporters blame anyone but the Republicans.

  14. S Brennan

    Once again, recent history shows our resident political hack to be a liar:
    ————————————–

    Stimulus Deal Fading? Pelosi Spurns Trump’s $1.8 Trillion Offer – Andrew Solender

    *https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/10/10/stimulus-deal-fading-pelosi-spurns-trumps-18-trillion-offer/?sh=7398bd7a5df8

    “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Saturday sharply rejected President Trump’s $1.8 trillion stimulus offer – up from $1.6 trillion – casting doubt on the prospects of a deal before Election Day.”
    ______________________

    So the long and the short of it is, Pelosi wanted more [$2.2-T] Trump less [$1.8-T] partly because it had to pass the Senate and many Republicans opposed Trump’s generosity, [the Bush/Rmney R’s have made it clear, they were prefer a president with a greater blood-lust for war]. Pelosi’s negotiating tactic was “my way or the highway”, no compromise, we the elite of the D party won’t be hurt so “let them eat cake”.

    Hugh conveniently “forgets” that it was Pelosi that told D’s to “be quiet” when it became apparent almost all of the the 1st stimulus was directed to the benifet to her donors. It was Pelosi who then promised she would make a deal that would help workers but her priority was securing a President who had a greater blood-lust for war, which if Biden is seated, she accomplished..workers be damned.

  15. Willy

    Only a conservative would choose McConnell over Pelosi. Why not hate em both?

    But this isn’t about that. Trump supporters, listen up!

    Whether you’re into crosstraining, lifting, or just angrily waving your cane at clouds, I got some bumpin inspirational remixes for today.

    This one features the world famous BBQ-Beer-n-Freedom:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXhI75JoQsY&feature=emb_rel_end

    Here’s one for the more spiritual:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP3YHKghs_4

  16. S Brennan

    “Pelosi has refused a White House offer for a $1.8 trillion coronavirus aid package – despite mounting pressure from members of her own Democratic caucus who would like to see a compromise.

    Pelosi angrily defended her stance Tuesday when a CNN interviewer asked her to respond to a progressive Democrat, Representative Ro Khanna, who had urged her to accept the White House proposal instead of waiting until February next year.

    “it’s no use giving them a false thing just because the president wants to put a check with his name on it in the mail,” she told CNN.”

    *https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-usa-congress/mcconnell-sets-senate-vote-on-coronavirus-aid-pelosi-spurns-white-house-bid-idUKKBN26Y1V0

  17. Willy

    S Brennan, only a two pronged attack will win this. Why don’t you focus all that cane wavey angst at the conservatives? Let Hugh will handle the establishment dems. Your clumsy-sloppy cane waving has smashed up all the furniture.

  18. Hugh

    The $1.8 trillion Trump covid relief figure was from around October 8. less than a month before the election, Pelosi opposed it because it did not give enough to state and local governments and cut the $800 unemployment benefit down to $400, but its biggest opponents were McConnell and Senate Republicans. McConnell had proposed a trillion dollar stimulus while many Senate Republicans wanted only $500 billion.

    That Senate Republicans felt they could depart so far from Trump, and get away with it, showed there was a dead rat in the room and that the Trump proposal was more about election PR than something Trump was going to go after them for.

  19. Zachary Smith

    Now some insanity:

    “ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CALVINBALL?”

    Last year Pennsylvania Republicans pushed through a law turning PA mail-in voting from really difficult to easy. After the election those heroes have gone to court claiming their law is unconstitutional.

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/11/are-you-ready-for-some-calvinball

  20. NR

    Another Trump lawsuit was thrown out because of lack of any actual evidence of fraud:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/in-scathing-opinion-federal-judge-dismisses-trump-campaign-lawsuit-in-pennsylvania/ar-BB1beZaw

    The judge had this to say, among other things:

    “This Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter.”

  21. Stirling S Newberry

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/21/science/artificial-intelligence-fake-people-faces.html

    They do not look real to me because they have problems, for example, all of the men have the same beard color as hair color, which does happen, but it’s rare. The are some other tags that say “fake.” But this is an improvement because at first glance or one face that is faked in a crowd of real people it will blend it. Gather some experts to catch the details.

  22. Chuck Mire

    How Many American Idiots Are There? 73 Million.

    https://eand.co/how-many-american-idiots-are-there-73-million-bded995868cf

  23. Plague Species

    The CDC recommends people don’t gather for Thanksgiving. Recommends? As if half the adult population in America would ever abide by the CDC’s recommendations. Hell, even the half that recognizes the CDC as expert authority won’t by and large abide by the CDC recommendation let alone the other half who see the CDC as an extension of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) even though their orange jesus in the White House is in effect a Chinese Communist considering he pays his Chinese taxes while receiving $72 million welfare credits from the American government .

    Cigarette packs and cartons for the past 60 years have had not a recommendation on them but a warning from the Surgeon General that smoking cigarettes will kill you and yet people still smoked them and still do. The warning had little to no effect. It would take other more draconian methods and means to diminish cigarette smoking and even these methods have have a limited effect. Thus was and is the power of marketers. Thus still is the power of marketers in convincing the morons the pandemic is a hoax even when they’re dying from it and die from it and deny the pandemic even as they draw their last delusional breath.

    I have an idea, perhaps the the CDC and/or the Surgeon General should recommend that these imbeciles breath. Since they’re averse to recommendations let alone warnings, the hope is they will refuse to breath and thus die of suffocation. Then, perhaps, maybe, we can move on.

  24. Plague Species

    Stirling, it’s chilling.

    As the weakest amongst us are dying from this pandemic and drug addiction, they are being replaced by this — a wet dream for the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Our brave new world. Compare and contrast with Farmer Boy and Little House On The Prairie. Frightening. Our daughter doesn’t know it, but those she communicates with online may be AI. In fact, they probably are.

    I’ve noted at Naked Capitalism an AI bot is using the names of our family pets as their various monikers. My wife brought her classroom pet hamster home after her school closed for good because of this pandemic this past summer. The hamster’s name was Rosemary and we all quickly attached to her and grew to love her. She was quite a character. Shortly after my wife brought Rosemary home and we were announcing her name around the house on a daily basis, a commenter arrived at Naked Capitalism named Rosemary. It has, or it had, all the hallmarks of an AI bot. Rosemary, sadly, died several months ago. I haven’t seen the commenter Rosemary commenting at Naked Capitalism since.

    Our 12-year-old Golden Retriever recently passed away as well under tragic circumstances. It was very sad and awful. We have since adopted a another rescue dog, a Siberian Husky, who we have named Ella. What do you know, I pop into Naked Capitalism to read the commentary and who arrives in the commentary but, you guessed it, Ella. I never saw that name posting in the commentary heretofore just as I never saw the name Rosemary commenting prior to Rosemary becoming a fixture in our household.

    It’s unnervingly diabolical.

  25. Plague Species

    Trump deployed B-52 bombers to the Middle East yesterday. B-52s can and do carry nuclear warheads. As he announces troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq. There are only 4,500 troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq. This is nothing, really, so it’s no great accomplishment to bring these small numbers home. It’s not comparable to withdrawing from Vietnam, for example. I agree America never should have been in Afghanistan or Iraq, but America’s presence and influence has greatly been diminished since 2001 to 2008.

    Would Trump nuke Iran? I doubt it, but hey, you never know. I never thought Trump would be POTUS. I clearly underestimated the evil malevolence of the wealthy elite. They wanted Trump for this time and place, otherwise he never would have been POTUS. The implication of this is chilling. They are this sick and twisted. There’s only one thing that can be done to and with creatures this sick and twisted and if we don’t do it, they will do it to us instead, and in fact they are doing it to us as I type. The wealthy elite for all intents and purposes are a rabid dog and there is only one cure for a rabid dog.

  26. Plague Species

    Thanks for that insight, Tucker. McDonald Trump and Mitch Turkey Neck McConnell and Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers and Fox News and OAN are just the folks to put the pinch on the hedge funds, right? As if. Too funny.

    Here’s Tucker’s audience. The comments reflect Tucker’s target market — the rubes. By their logic, the hedge funds are controlled by Hillary and Biden who are Chinese communists and therefore the capitalist hedge funds are really effectively communist.

    Let’s demand a Re-Vote America and let the National Guard count them!!!!

    Sure Linda Sikorra (the author of that comment), McDonald has done such a great job of reversing this trend, hasn’t he? I mean, every day he touts how great the economy is. We know the economy to him is the stock market and we know the stock market is Wall Street and we know Wall Street is, in part at least, the hedge funds and here your orange jesus is cheering them on, the very same hedge funds Tucker is decrying here, with his claim the economy, read the stock market, is doing great and therefore America is great again.

    These people really are this imbecilic. You can’t reason with them. They are incapable of critical thought.

  27. Hugh

    That the stock market does well or quickly recovers after mega-economic disasters like the 2008 Great Financial Crisis and the 2020 covid-19 pandemic results from the Fed juicing the market with trillions in free money. As upwards of 90% of all stocks are owned by those in the top 10%, those who need the help the least are those who get helped the most. Meanwhile those who need the help are put on endless wait and treated as unworthy. This, of course, should surprise none of us.

  28. different clue

    @Hugh,

    If Joemala gets in and the ship sinks more slowly, this gives time for a few of us to sneak around and take some of the ship’s furniture and cut it up and make a few lifeboats and quietly slip over the side and away.

    If the ship is sinking, the ship won’t be needing that furniture anyway.

  29. different clue

    @Willy,

    I just saw your comment. If Caney-Wavey has already smashed up all the furniture, then we already have pieces ready more or less to nail together into life rafts.

    Which we can then sneak to the side of the ship, over it, and silently away in.

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