It’s a busy chemo day, here at the CatBox. Happy Hump Day!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today/s took me 3:04 (average 5:03). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Long Take:
Democratic National Convention: Day 2
Elect our Presidential nominee!
I have to admit, I was worried about how Democrats would handle the new format for the Democratic National Convention. It was necessitated by the Republican plague, Trump* virus. They did quite well, and I was particularly impressed with Bernie’s speech. Nevertheless, I felt sorry for Bernie. He spoke before Michelle Obama, and Michelle not only rocked the house, she rocked the nation!
Democrats kicked off their virtual nominating convention Monday with a focused denunciation of President Trump, showcasing dozens of testimonials that culminated in lancing criticism from former first lady Michelle Obama, who cast Trump as incapable of meeting America’s needs and said Joe Biden would usher in racial justice and ease the coronavirus pandemic.
In the centerpiece speech of the night, a searing indictment of her husband Barack Obama’s successor, Obama declared that Trump has mishandled the pandemic and failed to respond to outcries over the deaths of Black Americans. She warned that the nation would suffer more if he is elected to a second term.
“Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can: Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us,” she said, before quoting a line Trump used about covid-19 [sic] deaths in a recent interview: “It is what it is.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Washington Post>
Click through for much more.
Here is the complete video (2 hrs.) for night one.
Democratic National Convention 2020 – Night 1
If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend watching it.
I’ve been watching political conventions on TV every year, since I was a child. The one exception was the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was busy demonstrating and trying to defend myself against a police riot. This year, there will be a completely unique convention.
On Monday, CNN gave an overview of the major speakers to expect on the kickoff night of the Democratic National Convention, as the party holds its nominating ceremony virtually for the first time in history.
“It will be a convention unlike any other: The coronavirus pandemic forced Democrats to scrap their planned in-person Milwaukee convention,” said the report. “Instead, speakers will deliver speeches from locations across the country and without the large in-person crowds that are traditionally seen at these events. All eyes will be on how smoothly the transition to a virtual convention works.”
“Top speakers of the night include former first lady Michelle Obama, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and a Republican — former Ohio Gov. John Kasich,” continued the report. “Obama and Sanders are two of the most popular figures in Democratic politics. Kasich, a former presidential candidate, is emblematic of the kind of anti-Trump Republican who Biden is hoping to win over in November.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Raw Story>
Click through for much more info.
CNN talked about the whole convention, not just tonight.
The DNC will look a lot different this year
I hope it goes well. I’ll try to include the full video from the night before every day.
It’s another sweaty, stinky day here in the CatBox. I had a rough night last night, because I ate supper too fast and plugged my esophageal tumor. I spent most of the night imitating criminal Fuhrer Trump’s* AG. The blockage didn’t clear until this morning. Tomorrow please expect no more than an Open Thread or a Personal Update. It’s a WWWendy day and the TomCat could not be more stinky. I’ll try to swap the Politics Plus Poll, if I can, but it will probably have to wait until Sunday. TGIF!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:43 (average 4:51). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Trump* Virus Update:
US Cases: 4,638,288
US Deaths: 155,371
World Cases: 17,553,155
World Deaths: 678,097
Trump’s* Share of World Deaths: 22.9%
US Share of World Population: 4.3%
Short Takes:
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Morgan Freeman Reads Rep. John Lewis’ Last Words
;
His own epitaph was a fitting memorial to a hero that will still be remembered as a hero one hundred years from now, if we can prevent the Republican attempt to convert the US from democratic republic to Nazi Reich. RESIST!!
From YouTube (CNN Channel): Group prepares for chance Trump refuses to concede election
For more information about the war game they took part in click here. If this doesn’t scare the shit out of you, WAKE UP! RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast of protest): The Chicks – Not Ready To Make Nice (Official Video)
Many, myself included, think that this song was partially directed at the Fuhrer of the 4th Reich, GW ChickenHawk, aka Crawford Caligula. He demanded that they back down on their true statement that his war for oil and conquest was fraudulent. How much worse is the Fuhrer of the 5th Reich? Support left wing protestors! RESIST!!
As of today, there are 99 days left until election day, and hopefully, not much longer before the US has a President for the first time since Obama left office. It would be hard for things to look much better for Joe Biden.
The polls say things are looking very good for former Vice President Joe Biden. Polling averages show the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee ahead in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. And some eye-popping surveys even have him leading President Donald Trump in Texas, which hasn’t gone for a Democrat since 1976. But is it all too good to be true? Many Democrats certainly seem to think so.
“I don’t trust polling,” Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell recently told the Atlantic. “I don’t believe that Biden is 16 points up in Michigan; that’s a bullshit poll, and it’s the same people who said Hillary [Clinton] had it in the bag.”
Dingell is among the Democrats traumatized by polling missteps last cycle, which led surveys to overlook the strength of Trump’s support in key battleground states including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — three states Clinton was counting on to win the election. In a late-October survey of Wisconsin, for example, the Marquette Law School poll had Clinton up by 6 percentage points, while Trump ultimately won the state by 0.7 points.
After the election, pollsters conducted an autopsy of why there was such a disconnect between state polls and the final electoral outcomes (though perhaps less so than some Democrats believe).
The review, led by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), identified multiple factors: For one, some pollsters failed to weight for education — so more educated individuals who favored Hillary Clinton were overrepresented in samples and skewing the results. For another, many surveys missed the wave of undecided voters who may have broken for Trump at the last minute.
Importantly, as many pollsters frequently emphasize, the way polls are interpreted also matters: These surveys, after all, are intended to be a “snapshot” in time, and not necessarily predictive of the election’s final result. It’s worth noting, too, that there are variables that make every cycle different: According to a mid-July New York Times analysis, because of the polling lead he currently has, Biden would still win key battleground states if the polls had errors comparable to the ones they saw in 2016… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Vox>
Map credit: medium.com
Trump won these key states in 2016. Now, he’s losing them
Of course, the worst thing we can do is to become complacent and overconfident. That could give Trump* at least four more years man maybe make him permanent Fuhrer of the Republican Fifth Reich. Nevertheless, day after day of ever increasing horrors can tire us to the point of PTSD. Therefore, it’s important that we recognize the light at the end of the tunnel to give us hope. Go, Joe! Go!
It’s another busy day here in the CatBox. My Providence home health doctor is coming this morning for her routine monthly visit. Other than back pain, it’s a pretty good day. TGIF!!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:12 (average 5:14). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Trump* Virus Update:
US Cases: 4,171,378
US Deaths: 147,364
World Cases: 15,715,850
World Deaths: 637,615
Trump’s* share of World Deaths: 23.1%
Short Takes:
From Alternet: If November brings the type of major blue wave that Democratic strategists are hoping for, it would include not only former Vice President Joe Biden defeating President Donald Trump, but also, Democrats achieving a majority in the U.S. Senate, increasing their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and enjoying victories in an abundance of state races. And the Cook Political Report is saying that according to its analysis, Democrats are now favored to retake the U.S. Senate.
Cook’s Jessica Taylor reports, “With just over 100 days until Election Day, the political climate appears dire for Republicans across the board. President Trump is the decided underdog against former Vice President Joe Biden in our Electoral College ratings, and Democrats could end up expanding their House majority. That leaves the Senate as Republicans’ firewall — the final barrier to unified control for Democrats in 2021.”
But that “firewall,” Taylor reports, could disappear because “as of now, Democrats are a slight favorite to win the Senate majority.”
A Republican pollster, quoted anonymously, told Cook, “Something remarkable would have to happen for Republicans to still have control of the Senate after November. It’s grim. There’s just so many places where Democrats either have the upper hand or are competitive in states that six months ago, we wouldn’t have considered at risk.” And a GOP strategist was equally pessimistic, telling Cook, “If you’re an incumbent in a bad environment sitting at 44%, you should be pretty damn scared. The expanding map has made it really hard, and there’s just a lot of Democratic momentum right now.”
From Cook’s projections to November results! RESIST!!
From YouTube (CNN Channel): Portland mayor is tear-gassed alongside protesters
Portland is my home. The rare crowd violence has nothing to do with the demonstrators. There are a few right wing anarchists using the peaceful demonstrations as an excuse to act-out. Both the federal Nazi Republican gestapo and the unmuzzled Portland Police Bureau are ignoring the violent anarchists and attacking peaceful demonstrators and our mayor. RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast from labor): Ryan Bingham “Direction of the Wind” (Madison, Wisconsin protests) (live performance music video)
Except for unmuzzled Republican Nazi police unions, support labor. RESIST!!
It’s a crazy day here in the CatBox. I’ve been having trouble changing my Fentanyl patches. They are tiny, transparent and sticky. Because my previous surgery to knock out eye cancer damaged my eyes, everything I see is blurry, and I have double vision. Also, my hands shake when I try to do delicate work. So far, I have destroyed two patches trying to change them, and with a copay of $10 per patch, that has to change. To solve the problem WWWendy will come every three days, instead of twice per week, so she can change my patch, when she’s here. Therefore, my WWWendy days will change every week, and my schedule here will be variable. I may be a bit scarce for the next two days. Store to Door is closed for the Fourth, so I ordered my groceries from Safeway.com. They will be delivering a huge order between 8:00 and 10:00 AM, and it will take me a long time to unbag them and put them away. Then WWWendy will be coming Thursday morning to destink the rancid TomCat, change my patch, goop, and help with chores. Don’t forget to remind everyone to flush the Republican Reich!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:33 (average 5:25). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Trump* Virus Update:
US Cases: 2,683,301
Deaths: 128,819
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: In an act of retaliation against the Russians for sponsoring Taliban attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Donald J. Trump is sending Jared Kushner to the Kremlin to offer advice on its coronavirus response, the White House confirmed on Monday.
“To all those who thought that this President was not taking the Russians’ actions seriously, this response should speak for itself,” the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said. “The President had an array of responses to choose from, and the one he selected is by far the most punishing.”
According to White House insiders, Trump and his advisers debated the response to the Russians for hours before finally settling on the Kushner option late Sunday night.
“Jared Kushner is the most brutal weapon in our arsenal, and deploying him is a decision that no one should ever take lightly,” one adviser said.
Awww, come on, Andy. Criminal Fuhrer Trump* would never do such a horrible thing to his favorite butt plug, Vladimir Putin [R-RU]. Furthermore, that would be a clear casus belli. RESIST!!
From Daily Kos: At least one House Democrat has had enough with Republicans ignoring mask requirements during House committee hearings. Rep. Jim Clyburn, head of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, has written a letter to ranking Republican Steve Scalise warning him that if committee Republicans continue to show up at hearings without masks, those Republicans will not be recognized to speak during subcommittee meetings. At all.
Clyburn was not particularly polite about it, either. In his letter, Clyburn reminds Scalise that it was Scalise who “repeatedly” has wanted in-person hearings and “you assured me that this could be done safely.” But when “every single Republican Member of the Subcommittee refused to comply” with congressional mask rules, Clyburn was fed up.
Kudos to Jim Clyburn. I hope that the other Democratic heads of committees and subcommittees, both women and men, grow a pair too! RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast from the past): The Doors – Break On Through HQ (1967)
Ah… the memories! RESIST!!
I mentioned in a comment on the open thread that I had received an email, and that it was too long to quote. But Alabama is now pursuing me the way Australia did a week ago (Carrie sends love by the way), and it has, besides highlights of the bill, some interesting allusions to negotiations, and after all, this is the guy who nailed the killers of those four little girls, and he’s worth a listen/look-see, so here it is:
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| Friends,
The Senate just passed the largest rescue bill in American history, and it’s going to help a lot of the people who are struggling right now. I have done everything I could to build bipartisan consensus and get this done. That’s not easy up in Washington under the best of times. Mitch McConnell’s draft bill that the Senate voted down Sunday would have left a lot of people in the cold. At times over the last 72 hours, negotiations were heated, with five of my colleagues out due to the virus and its impact, but I believe we were all looking out for the long-term best interests of our country, our families, and the economy. We know the Coronavirus presents a challenge like none we have seen in our lifetimes. But we got there and passed with a big bipartisan majority – a bill that will do the following to help those in need:
This is a good start to get Americans the help they need right now. Now it’s up to the House to pass this bill so we can keep rebuilding. But this crisis will demand more of each of us. This bill didn’t do everything I wanted, and I believe we will have to do more – and as this virus unfolds across our country, I have no doubt we will be back to add to the protections and support this bill provides. We have more than four times the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S than we did when this bill was introduced Thursday. I know I keep quoting Smokey the Bear, but it’s really important to remember that while we are going to do everything we can in the Senate to ease the economic burden and keep you safe, YOU are the front lines of the fight against Coronavirus. But no vote in Washington is going to stop this virus. Only you can do that. This is especially not the time to let up. I’m concerned that I am hearing talk of backsliding and even some of our public officials still underestimating the crisis we are in and the number of Americans that are at risk. The experts keep saying that the only way we are going to drastically “flatten the curve” and reduce the number of critical cases is to continue social distancing. We all still have to do our part. The good news is that social distancing works. It’s up to you and every other American to do what the medical professionals are telling us. We can and will beat this if we all do our part. We will make it through this together. The number of cases will continue to rise, but they will go down over time, and this will be over sooner if all of us do our part. I am doing everything I can to bring that day closer for all of us. We are all in this together. – Doug Jones PS: On a personal note, I am so happy to be headed home to Louise and my family. Stay safe everyone. |
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I was glad to hear Carrie says the he seems to be quite popular personally, though a Democrat. Hopefully we can keep him. And, by the way, don’t forget to pray (or however, as TC says, you communicate with the universe) for Katie Porter.
