As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
What a depraved, fascist moron would do:
The packed crowd at a South Florida airport erupted into a chant early Monday: “Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!”
President
Trump let the chorus grow louder for almost 20 seconds, turning to both
sides as if pondering the request that he dismiss Anthony S. Fauci, the
country’s leading infectious-disease expert. Finally, he responded.
“Don’t
tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election,”
Trump said, his supporters cheering almost immediately. “I appreciate
the advice."
Trump’s
suggestion that he might fire Fauci marks another escalation in his
months-long feud with the public health expert over the president’s
response to the coronavirus
pandemic. It came at a rally where the president defied local
coronavirus regulations, as the pandemic continues to worsen across the
United States, endangering the president’s reelection hopes.
At the risk of counting chickens before they're hatched, David Faris explains why the Democrats' first priority is to fix the election system in this country:
If Joe Biden and the Democrats somehow manage to navigate this morass
of voter suppression, election violence, and ominous threats and
capture the presidency, the Senate, and the House this week, they must
move quickly and decisively to democratize a country that is rapidly
sliding into competitive authoritarianism. The Elections Clause of the
U.S. Constitution unambiguously grants Congress the authority to exert
its authority over this archipelago of hateful, extra-judicial election
rigging.
And that is what they must do. Outlaw racist voter ID laws. Require
ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted. Mandate that states
tie the number of polling places to population targets. Re-enfranchise
every formerly incarcerated person in the country, whatever the racists
in state government say. Clean up the ridiculous ambiguity over the
rules of the Electoral College while we wait for the National Popular
Vote Interstate Compact to become law in enough states to end this
madness forever. Enact sweeping new criminal penalties for voter
suppression activities. Register every American to vote automatically
when they turn 18 (or better yet, lower the voting age to 16). Refuse to
admit members of Congress who won their seats through blatantly lawless
voter suppression. Deploy force against states that refuse to comply.
Apologize for nothing.
Even if this isn't the absolute first priority, it has to be near the top.
Be confident, but take nothing for granted:
Kudos to all who are foiling Republican voter suppression efforts by making the decision to vote:
... In a year when the act of voting felt more precarious than ever, more
than 94 million had voted in the 2020 election by Monday, casting their
ballots early or by mail in record numbers in virtually every state in
the nation. Tens of millions more will don masks, and in many places
warm clothes, to vote the old-fashioned way — in person, on Election
Day. They’ll do it despite — and in many cases, because of — the
isolation and obstacles of this unusual year.
Those who have voted have lost jobs or loved ones to the pandemic or have battled the coronavirus
themselves. They have withstood rain and heat and lines that lasted
from morning until dark to register their electoral choices, risked
exposure to the virus and navigated dizzying rule changes about
signature requirements and drop boxes and ballot envelopes. They have
been inundated with unsubstantiated attacks by President Trump on the
integrity of the election.
They were
helped by the unseen labor of thousands of state and county election
administrators, some of them stumbling through messy primaries but then
rallying to get ready for November, gearing up for massive demand for
mail and in-person voting with rush orders of envelopes and high-speed
scanners and backup rosters of election workers.
None
of that felt inevitable at the start of the year, when the arrival of
the pandemic collided with the first primaries of the 2020 campaign.
Acute shortages of poll workers forced election officials to shutter
many voting locations. Voting rules were changed to accommodate the
health crisis, only to be overturned by the courts. States that had previously handled a trickle of mail voting suddenly faced a deluge.
Infidel 753 posted "The Choice" twice, most recently back on September 14. The whole post is worth reading, especially if you're still in an "undecided" mode (really?), but we're just excerpting a portion to give you a flavor:
This post is addressed to those who, for whatever reason, don't like
Biden. Maybe you consider him too centrist or too old or too
old-fashioned or "Republican-lite" or whatever...
Maybe you think the process by which millions of rank-and-file
Democrats chose the nominee (from among a remarkably large and varied
group of candidates) was tainted in some way. Maybe you hold that your
vote has to be earned and Biden hasn't done this or that thing that
qualifies him as having done so.
None of that is a good enough reason to let Trump be re-elected.
None of that is a good enough reason to let him saddle the whole country
with a 7-2 majority of reactionaries and theocrats on the Supreme Court
for decades to come.
None of that is a good enough reason to risk four more years of migrant
family separation and kids in cages, or of rhetoric which blatantly
scapegoats Latinos, Muslims, and whatever other minority makes a
convenient target.
None of that is a good enough reason to leave this vicious and hateful
man in a position where he could block laws to help the unemployed and
the uninsured, laws to end gerrymandering and vote suppression, laws to
protect gay equality and the right to abortion nationally, that a
Democratic House and Senate might pass.
None of that is a good enough reason to tolerate four more years of the
massive and flagrant banana-republic corruption we've seen.
None of that is a good enough reason to risk four more years of
budget-wrecking giant tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and
efforts to sabotage Social Security, the Postal Service, and the Devil
knows what else.
None of that is a good enough reason to facilitate four more years of
bungling the response to covid-19 (yes, it will still be around long
after January 2021).
You should also check out Infidel's link round- up, which we recommend every week because, well, you can't do any better!
