A few thoughts and comments while we’re in the middle of a murderously-hot week here in the Valley of the Sun:
This year’s monsoon season is off to a very slow start. Last week we had a brief thunderstorm with perhaps 1/10 to 1/20 inch of rain, but that’s all. There was some nice thunder and a bit of lightning, but it was primarily to our west. This photo from the middle of my swimming pool doesn’t do justice to just how shimmering the sky was with its copper and salmon-colored overtones, but it was drop-dead gorgeous. Need more storms just like that!
…of course, we’re not into August yet, so no need to be impatient.
People are freaking out about this President Trump tweet, completely unaware that he’s just exposing their same way of thinking when it comes to opening schools, mail-in voting and the like. What he’s basically saying is, if the virus is so bad that we can’t open schools, can’t worship in churches, and have to resort to mail-in voting all because of the virus (even if we can all shop in places like Lowe’s, The Home Depot, pool supply stores, and supermarkets – with appropriate social-distancing, of course!) then I guess we’re to sickly and fearful as a nation to even have a national election. An epic troll by an epic troller, but the usual suspects take everything he says as gospel.
…the fact is, if you can have voting precincts utilizing the same kind of single-line separation for social distancing just like at Walmart, Lowe’s, and your local supermarket entrances, with plenty of surface sanitizer and folks voting via paper ballots and single-use pencils, you can have an election that is done both correctly and expediently. To argue otherwise is nothing but fear-mongering and the height of ignorance. The Federal Election Commission needs to move on mandating this ASAP.
…which is why, I believe, the President brought the issue of mail-in voting to a head today via his own unique use of his Twitter bully pulpit.
BTW, this is the kind of guy he really is. Just don’t expect to hear anything about this from the cable news talking heads.
I have always thought “Slo’ Joe” Biden was going to pick failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams or California senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. It’s therefore interesting to Obama national security advisor Susan Rice’s name become prominently mentioned over the last few days. If Rice is indeed chosen for Biden’s VP slot it would tell me two things: (1) regardless of what the media-hyped polling is saying, Biden is in deep trouble and he needs to pull out all the stops for Barack Obama’s unwavering and enthusiastic support in order to (2) motivate the Democratic base and Obama’s previous coalition to pull Biden’s gonads out of the fire.
…think about it: why else would such a career Washington politician with Biden’s supposed bona fides need another national security “expert” to be a part of his team. The fact is, he doesn’t. But he desperately needs all the help he can get from the Obama coalition to gin up enthusiasm for his candidacy – enthusiasm which even the most optimistic Biden pollsters know is in desperately short supply.
…of course, if Biden picks Harris, that doesn’t mean he’s not going to need that Obama coalition (he absolutely will) but he’s going strictly for the race and gender card – neither of which I see as helping him at all. Biden is nothing but a sacrificial lamb being tossed into the Trump meat-grinder by the Dems party establishment to delay the likes of Bernie Sanders and his progressives wrestling the Democratic Party’s power center away from the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Chinacrats like Dianne Feinstein.
Forget about what the national pollsters are telling you. The fact is – and I’m hearing this not just from my “big guy” contact in national GOP circles whom I befriended back in 2016, but from a couple of folks I know in a couple of other GOP congressional campaigns as well – is that there is no way pollsters are able to identify the Trump voters out there. There’s a huge (and I mean HUGE) amount of fear out there what would happen if folks’ support for the President’s reelection were ever published. Not only are these voters not getting represented, but if they are called they’re either neglecting to answer or disguising their votes.
…the national pollsters are too lazy to take the time and do the kind of digging that is needed in order to ferret out these voters, so it is left to smaller pollsters who care deeply about their profession (and their reputations) to try and get it right. There are scientific ways of doing with, which is why I respect pollsters like Richard Baris and Scott Rasmussen.
R.I.P. Herman Cain. Never had the honor of meeting the man but he always seemed like a nice guy who oozed the kind of positivity one would expect from a successful entrepreneur. I liked him a lot and would have gladly voted for him as President.
And R.I.P. as well to Peter Green, one of the truly great and innovative British blues guitar players who was single-handedly responsible for Fleetwood Mac’s early success with songs like “Albatross” and “Black Magic Woman”, which Carlos Santana later made a hit with. He was a troubled individual in life, hope he finds the peace he never found with the angels in eternity.
Wait a dog-gone minute here: I was under the impression that the Portland demonstrations were “primarily peaceful”, or, as congressman Jerry Nadler called them, “a myth”.
I close with this spot-on tweet from TheHuBLife:
Imagine showing up to a funeral and then going into a lengthy diatribe about fractional reserve banking, the plight of the Arctic penguin and closed with a “get out in vote in November” request.
Who does that?
A Jihadi terrorist spreading propaganda… that’s who.
Indeed.
Granted this might be considered anecdotal, but all I can say is that at the pool supply store I continue to see at least one couple from places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Illinois come into the store saying they’re new to Arizona and have just adopted their first year-round swimming pool. You can look at stories like this (and I’m sure the same pool stores in Florida would say the same thing) but there is an exodus occurring from “blue” states to “red” states that you’ll never see the mainstream media pick up.
…all I can say is that around here real estate has never been hotter than it is right now. Lots of folks wanting to buy with record low inventory. Fact is, folks are pissed off at the assholes running their Democratic states and are choosing to vote with both their feet and their wallets. Good for them.
The video everyone has seen and needs to be seen. PERIOD. Take control of your own health and tell the morons in the mainstream media and the doctors who believe what they are saying to go f**k themselves. What I don ‘t understand is that you have this whole thing politicized to the point where the patient is being taken completely out of the equation. If the patient wants to take the HCQ treatment to fend off COVID19 LET THEM DO IT. If you want them to sign a friggin’ waiver protecting your pathetic, yellow-bellied ass from future litigation I’m sure they’d be happy to do so. It’s just so pathetic.
I get it. I really do.
There is a problem with mail-in voting security. I’ve been railing against it for years after seeing compelling evidence of fraud during my tenure as a county commissioner.
But it’s not WHAT he says, it’s THE WAY he says things. The LAST thing you want to give the other side is ANOTHER reason to pile on during what will be a very tight election. And the one thing you don’t say, after years of Democrats sounding like lunatics for claiming you won’t leave office if you lose in 2020, is that maybe we should delay a national election!
He’s trying to say the right thing, but his damned mouth keeps getting in the way. He KNOWS his opponents and the media (the same thing, btw) will take the headline, not the detail, SO DON’T GIVE THEM THE FRIKKIN’ HEADLINE!
Comment by Dave Richard — July 31, 2020 @ 2:10 am
Actually, bro I think he knows EXACTLY what he’s saying, and I think he knows why he said it as well. What he has done is box the Democrats into a corner by forcing them – and their Democratic political operatives in the mainstream media – to raise the issue of mail-in voting up front, and out in the open. Think about it: the Democrats want mail-in voting. And because of the COVID-19 virus thing there is going to be mail-in voting. I think Trump knows that.
But Trump’s tongue-in-cheek comment about delaying the election (at least in my humble view) does two things: (1) his absurd suggestion about delaying the election in turn raises the absurdity of the teachers unions pushing to delay the opening of schools; if the COVID-19 pandemic is that bad, then perhaps everything everything down. (2) Most importantly, Trump knew the Left and the cable news talking heads would go apeshit over his comments and take the bait, but in doing so pushing to the forefront the need for a frank discussion on how mail-in voting needs to be done so that the country knows on November 3 (or at least November 4) who has been elected President. This forces the media to confront the mail-in abuses going on in New York and elsewhere, and it forces the FEC to come up with guidelines as to how mail-in voting is going to be handled this year when it comes to federal elections.
I know it can be infuriating to see him doing this kind of thing to some, but I’ve come to see Trump’s tweets are his way of playing poker. I take very little (if anything) seriously. Given the mainstream media’s censoring of anything positive that he or his administration does, and he’s getting no help from establishment Republicans!, so his outrageous tweets force the media to cover him and force the issues he cares most about to be discussed. As a direct result of yesterday’s tweet it’s a lock that mail-in voting is no longer a background whisper, it’s now out in the open. As a result I expect the FEC to start discussing seriously guidelines for mail-in voting and procuring the resources necessary to ensure the integrity of mail-in voting so that the votes counted are only those who are received by, say, November 1.
Thanks for your comment, and keep those RV wheels on the right side of the road!
Comment by The Great White Shank — July 31, 2020 @ 10:57 am
This is where I disagree.
The media isn’t going to start focusing on mail-in voting. They’ll bury the story, just like they have done with COVID-19 testing results coming out of Florida.
Did you hear that story out of anywhere but the local Orlando FOX station? Nope.
And the FEC doesn’t have the power you think it does when it comes to regulating elections. Now, if the FEC does try to insert themselves, it will guarantee a legal battle that will not be concluded in a few days or weeks like it was in Florida in 2000 where it was a clear-cut violation to count votes using two different standards. More over, I don’t think SCOTUS will look favorably on the Federal government interfering in state election processes.
The only place I see them interfering in state election processes is with this idiot Electoral College Compact being approved on a state-by-state basis where the Electoral votes will go automatically to the national vote winner. That clearly destroys the integrity of the vote in each state which approves it, by wiping out the winner of the state. That little trick is doomed to fail once it gets to SCOTUS, but it can’t get there until someone tries to change their votes using it.
Comment by Dave Richard — July 31, 2020 @ 12:33 pm
Well, I guess we’ll just have to see how all of this plays out. Even in the most normal of years 100 days is a long time in terms of politics. Does Ruth Bade Ginsberg pass away? Does the COVID-19 virus burn itself out? Or does it come back with ferocity? Does The Great White Shank pick up his golf clubs again? If anyone thinks they know how the rest of this year is going to go they’re fooling themselves. All I know is this: Donald Trump isn’t just going to sit there and allow an election to be taken from him. He’s playing 4D chess while the Democrats are living in the 60s and playing Chinese Checkers.
Comment by The Great White Shank — July 31, 2020 @ 10:29 pm