Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

As you are doubtless aware, the Republican National Convention circus starts tonight.  There'll be plenty of freaks and oddities, clowns piling out of clown cars, prestidigitation designed to distract, and lots to clean up after the elephant parade.  The carnival barker will dominate the show because it's his show, his circus.

Better late than never:

Two dozen former Republican lawmakers on Monday came out to endorse Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on the first day of the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Fox News reports that the list of former GOP lawmakers is headlined by Jeff Flake, the former Arizona senator who frequently clashed with the president before retiring in 2018.

The other Republicans endorsing Biden are former Sens. John Warner of Virginia, Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire, and former Reps. Steve Bartlett of Texas, Bill Clinger of Pennsylvania, Tom Coleman of Missouri, Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Charles Djou of Hawaii, Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma, Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland, Jim Greenwood of Pennsylvania, Bob Inglis of South Carolina, Jim Kolbe of Arizona, Steve Kuykendall of California, Ray LaHood of Illinois, Jim Leach of Iowa, Connie Morella of Maryland, Mike Parker of Mississippi, Jack Quinn of New York, Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island, Chris Shays of Connecticut, Peter Smith of Vermont, Alan Steelman of Texas, Bill Whitehurst of Virginia, Dick Zimmer of New Jersey, and Jim Walsh of New York.

No Bushes, Corker, Romney, etc.  Integrity and principles were never a strong suit with Republicans. Just influence and power.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., tells us why the list above and the one of over 70 Republican national security officials published last week matters:

...[O]utside of his political base — you can expect it will be well attended-to on immigration, guns and abortion — Trump is not looking for love this week.

His primary goal is one Kentucky politics watchers have long ascribed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: The president wants to be the second most loathed person on the ballot come November. He will try to efface Biden’s image of empathy and decency with a ghoulish cartoon sketch of a man under the control of radical forces.

By highlighting support for Biden from prominent Republicans, Biden’s lieutenants made Trump’s job more difficult. The Democratic convention was also relentless in portraying the pain and suffering the nation has endured because of Trump’s mishandling of covid-19. And it was just as determined to turn Biden, by virtue of his own trials, generous spirit and thoughtful calm, into the ideal healer.

The party of no ideas:

The Republican Party will not adopt a new platform at its convention beginning Monday night and will instead maintain the party’s 2016 platform and broad support for President Donald Trump’s agenda, the Republican National Committee announced Sunday. In a resolution, the party stated that it would “continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda” and would not issue a new party platform until 2024, citing the scaled-back convention and inability for the Convention Committee on Platform to meet. It remains unclear what Trump’s second-term agenda is, as he has repeatedly failed to describe policies he plans to enact... 

Still can't believe a major political party punted on the incredibly basic task of drawing up a party platform and instead just issued a statement that's basically an "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) August 24, 2020

  
 
Good trouble:

Postal workers in Washington State have reinstalled high-speed mail sorting machines—dismantled after controversial orders from the U.S. Postal Service— despite USPS orders not to put machines back in use.  [snip]

Only two facilities, Seattle-Tacoma and one in Dallas, seem to be ignoring the Postal Service’s directive to leave decommissioned sorting machines out of use.

The postal unions need to get behind this and give these employees and others around the country cover for acting in the best interests of the Postal Service and the American people.

It seems oily oligarch/ foreclosure king and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had a significant role to play in getting Postmaster General DeJoy into his position:

In early February, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin invited two Republican members of the Postal Service’s board of governors to his office to update him on a matter in which he had taken a particular interest — the search for a new postmaster general.

Mr. Mnuchin had made clear before the meeting that he wanted the governors to find someone who would push through the kind of cost-cutting and price increases that President Trump had publicly called for and that Treasury had recommended in a December 2018 report as a way to stem years of multibillion-dollar losses.

It was an unusual meeting at an unusual moment.

Since 1970, the Postal Service had been an independent agency, walled off from political influence. The postmaster general is not appointed by the president and is not a cabinet member. Instead, the postal chief is picked by a board of governors, with seats reserved for members of both parties, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for seven-year terms.

Now, not only was the Trump administration, through Mr. Mnuchin, involving itself in the process for selecting the next postmaster general, but the two Democratic governors who were then serving on the board were not invited to the Treasury meeting. Since the meeting did not include a quorum of board members, it was not subject to sunshine laws that apply to official board meetings and there is no formal Postal Service record or minutes of what was discussed.

Nearly six months later, that meeting, along with other interactions between Mr. Mnuchin and the postal board, has taken on heightened significance as the Trump administration confronts allegations it sought to politicize the Postal Service and hinder its ability to handle a surge in mail-in ballots in November’s election. In interviews, documents and congressional testimony, Mr. Mnuchin emerges as a key player in selecting the board members who hired the Trump megadonor now leading the Postal Service and in pushing the agenda that he has pursued.

Of course, Mnuchin has been involved in sabotaging USPS funding, blocking access to Trump's tax returns, and so many other egregious acts in service to the Orange Shitstain that he deserves a special place in the Trump regime's pantheon of evildoers.

We close by recommending you get a fuller picture of life around the Internet with Infidel 753's excellent link round- up.  Hopefully by now you've bookmarked his blog like a good citizen!