Monday, November 30, 2020

Seattle City Council scales back police funding in new budget -- The Seattle City Council finalized their 2021 budget, including cuts to SPD. By Callie Craighead

Link. Beginning:

After months of deliberation amid a politically turbulent year, the Seattle City Council voted Monday evening to pass their final 2021 budget which included investments in a new homeless outreach program, tiny home villages and most notably an 18% cut to the Seattle Police Department's budget.

The Council voted 8-1 on the $6.5 billion budget after a last-minute proposal from Councilmember and Select Budget Committee Chair Teresa Mosqueda aimed to cut an additional $2 million in SPD salary funding based on the accelerating attrition of officers in the past few months. The council had expected to see only 7 officers leave the force in October, when in reality 23 left.

Based on those attrition statistics, Council President Lorena Gonzalez said that she expects departures from SPD "will continue at an increased rate" and raised the council's projection of attritions to 114 for 2021.

 . . .

UPDATE: Same SeattlePI online layout page as the above; current as this post is typed:


Today in history: Looking back at the Battle of Seattle, the WTO riots

 

FURTHER UPDATE: From that item's beginning: 

21 years ago this week, Seattle exploded.

Violent labor disputes have a long history in the city, including the original "Battle of Seattle" in 1856 when settlers and Salish warriors attacked the village and were repelled by artillery.

Coming off of a decade of grungy fame, with all its middle finger to authority, this seemed to alter Seattle from just
Paul Joseph Brown, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

But the 1999 World Trade Organization protests have certainly become one of the Emerald City's defining flashpoints.

[...]

As soon as they announced Seattle's selection, activists began planning a counter-protest. Organizers across various factions and interests coordinated efforts to block access to the buildings themselves.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer


Civil disobedience was the name of the game, complete with time-honored Northwest protest tactics (devices to fasten people together to make them harder to remove) and performance art.

. . .

Hamlet should have spoken in the plural.

. . . slings and arrows of outrageous fortuneS . . . 





You tell me, would you buy a used car from Bloomberg, Bush, or Powell?

Of course not. But Donald Trump was so bad - tax cut for the rich and letting a killer virus run wild nationwide, both done with bombast and pure disdain for US - that we had to buy into a used Biden foisted from these outrageous fortunes. YES IT SUCKS. Smiling little mayor from McKinsey, Klobuchar, Clyburn and all. But my lesser evil vote was torn from me, that way, by them. Welcome to the Belarus coup, the Iranian provocations. Shock and awe bullshit redux.

Biden - Harris. Tools which they forced upon US.

Bless Elizabeth Warren for calling out the one asshole.

Hamlet was hoist in the petard of . . . or by taking arms, and by opposing, end them. What we need is a 21st Century equivalent of the Glorious Revolution that Britain had after the Charles/James/Cromwell years of terror Britain lived. 

Nina Turner  UPDATE: Upon reflection, make that

Ayanna Pressley

should primary Harris, 2024. But don't expect it. The money's behind Kamala's pliant ambition. [Hoping to live that long, to 80, to see how the two party circus screws US yet again, that election cycle; why not just expect more of the same?] Things were better before Reagan, but he was a scripted actor, mediocre at it but with MSM repeatedly lying to US per their "Great Communicator" fiction. Shoveling it for the paycheck.

A referendum on Trump, and he still got all those votes. It is what an utterly corrupt two party system delivers. We are getting bent over forward and jobbed.


At least Trump (but only on the way out) is downsizing their two-party CIA-opium trade Afghanistan adventuring, but expect Biden to be Obama redux, in continuing (or re-escalating) that Deep State intrigue; Sackler family and all. Biden will want his Martha's Vineyard waterfront.

UPDATE: Image is from DownWithTyranny.com, And, a Bonus link. Re that link: Giving the benefit of doubt to inner-party leadership of both mainstream parties, and to the mainstream media; what appears to be their online collective blind eye/hands-off parallelism possibly has been coincidental rather than informally, implicitly coordinated. A websearch.

Saturday, November 28, 2020

Cat on a tin roof, dogs in a pile. Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.

 Going where the wind don't blow so strange
Maybe off on some high cold mountain chain
Lost one round but the price wasn't anything
A knife in the back and more of the same

Whatever. Same as it ever was. Some have the same to say as others.


The same to say as others.

(How do you say that in Farsi)?

 

_________UPDATE________

How do you say ALL that in Farsi while the motorcycle pulls next to your car; nothing new, done before. Big Brother watches. 

FURTHER: How do you say “Remember that name," in Farsi?

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Biden gives a speech, saying, indirectly, get ready for austerity against the 99%. What else would "steel our spines" mean to you?

 To me it means nothing will fundamentally change. Except for the worse. If you want the speech, Strib link, from where the screen capture originated on the home/news page of the outlet - hit that link if you want to watch a video; the screen capture only toggles larger so you can read the headlining:


We go from Steal Your Face, to Steel Your Spines. Among media hosannas. 

Will you see a difference? Fundamentally or otherwise? For better? For worse? 

Worse has a high threshold; so, in honor of the Flynn pardoner - 



Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Who we are. If who we are is not who we should be, what steps follow? Say, perhaps, "downfund" instead of "defund?" [UPDATED - And recall the Biden motto, "Nothing will fundamentally change." It seems to hold true locally]

Image from here, Strib, and this post might be UPDATED, perhaps, perhaps not.


Dandy little Star Wars outfits, ready for next year, next Halloween,  Inspiring trust in the ability to manage a peaceful protest in the best show of compassion and grace.

And the chemical weapons, not shown, but in the ready in the background. Gotta get "their" attention, and then it's time for compassion and grace? 

Get real. If those outfits are not a provocation to escalation, what would be? Aimed assault rifles? We could, you know . . . Kent State redux? 2021 version?

________UPDATE_______

Happy Thanksgiving Day. No sheaves to bring in, but having morning coffee and Internet access deserve thanks, even under the perpetual real threat of morbid hackers and the Imperial Fascist Security State's attention (is there a difference?). 

The Strib item in which the opening image of this post originated, this link. Title:

Six months after George Floyd's death, division remains on police changes --- City budget negotiations will provide the next big test of elected leaders' willingness to implement changes.

Biden won. Accept it. Even if you never counted any votes and do not trust those who did. The Business Roundtable has spoken, back Nov. 7 in fact, so it's over; mainstream media in tow, in fascist lockstep agreement - The hall rang with the hosannas of the faithful -  so who'd credibly deny or even doubt?

Had it been Biden against Romney, what's the difference? But it was not, and Joe will wear his flag better than the train wreck he replaces, (for his own four years and out), 

New Top Dog, with his hanger-on entourage being identified in press releases. 

Don just did not wear the flag well. Biden is thinner, so you will be able to tell the difference.

_________FURTHER UPDATE_________

Sniff around those BRT links, Wikipedia and the several BRT pages; and  - - - 

there also is a BRT Facebook page

- - - be thankful? Thankful the nation is being run by such able hands and studied minds of the industrial engine we call the U.S. of A? Run by a big club. Never mind the politicians.

Monday, November 23, 2020

I think about Joe Biden and I can't breathe.

 I think about the Hollywood Harris lawyer-spouses; I can puke.

The Democratic Party can do better and needs scrutiny about who makes the decisions that led us to a choice between Biden and Trump - after a choice four years prior between the Clintons and the Trumps. 

It's a flawed process and party; after the other party went into the dumps Trumps.

Last, a question: Who likes Schumer?

In that sense - AOC and Ilhan Omar? Each is trustworthy - what you see - what they say - is what you get. Trustworthiness in DC is not coin of the realm. Coin is.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

WaPo publishes online, Nov. 7, "Joe Biden, in victory speech, says, ‘This is the time to heal in America.’ "

Did he mean "heel?" What's he building, and when do we see it?

Same day, same link, - same WaPo thread - second item - in part -

 Biden has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he was running as a Democratic candidate but would be “an American president.”

He echoed that sentiment again, talking about Trump supporters: “We have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They’re Americans.”

 Biden speaks unity and bipartisanship,. Embracing what is best of the other party? "Oponents are not enemies." Looking at Stauber, Emmer and Pawlenty (of the party other than Biden's), was Biden a hockey player too, playing back then when they did not wear helmets and high sticking was allowed? 

And then, taking the man at his word, unity - Americans; as he says - Might he at some point soon appoint Rudy Giuliani Attorney General? Will we live to see that? Hunter holding the Bible for the oath-of-office? 

Keeping Pompeo? A role for Bolton? Stephen Miller as Ambassador to the UN?

Really walking the talk. 

..............................................

How healthy is Dick Cheney's heart? Another former Vice President. Ambassador to Iraq? In charge of the Green New Deal?

Nominate Klobuchar for the next Supreme Court vacancy, to see the other side willingly reciprocate in the mood of good will?

Keep Kudlow?  --Without making him wear a clown suit?

 .......................

- walking the talk, as well as walking the dog -

Monday, November 16, 2020

Tucker Carlson.

Link.

Strib carries a NYT post: "Sex-abuse claims against Boy Scouts now surpass 82,000. - Lawyers say number far eclipses the number of abuse accusations filed against Catholic Church."

82,000. Abused wrongly. Why does that make me think of Trump voters? 

Little scouts put at risk when all they wanted was to grow up healthy and own pick-up trucks and assault rifles.

Worse than accusations against Bush - Cheney. Or Obama and members of the Muslim faith.

This election, a record number of to-be abuse victims voted, both sides. We gonna get it. Banks are ready. Big Business, wanting to shape us.

Strib's link.

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Two Sirota posts worth reading; linked per headlines - sub-heads; no excerpting here.

Down-Ballot Disasters

Democrats’ failure in state elections has empowered Trump’s move to steal the electoral college, and could cost control of Congress for a decade.

The Real Story About “Never Trump” Republicans

Data obtained by The Daily Poster show that Lincoln Project ads were often ineffective — and some may have even convinced some voters to support Trump.

 

 

Friday, November 13, 2020

From the Hollywood Life website:

Link. In part:

 “He represents large domestic and international corporations and some of today’s highest profile individuals and influencers in complex business, real estate and intellectual property litigation disputes,” Douglas’s bio reads on the law firm’s website.

Kamala Harris, Douglas Emhoff
AP Images

[...] One of his clients included TBWA, the ad agency which developed the Taco Bell Chihuahua. This led Wrench, a company based in Michigan, to sue Taco Bell over breach of contract because it claimed to have created the “Psycho Chihuahua,” according to Douglas’s profile in The Hollywood Reporter. Douglas kept TBWA from taking on the financial burden of this lawsuit bill.

 An LA entertainment and advertising industry operative.

Instead of quality, that. 

Just reading of the couple: 2022 will be a GOP frenzy after Joe and K have two years. Hollywood and Clyburn and Pelosi. They gave us this. And because a crazy lying psycho held the White House we had to swallow that "medicine." 

Inner party Democrats are awful.

Is anyone less competent than Cheri Bustos? Who? Name one.

Trump at least was voted out. 

Beyond that, there is no good news.

_________UPDATE________

Beyond the Taco Bell Chihuahua the man's been raking it in. MSN:

Emhoff and Harris's federal tax return show they earned more than $2 million in 2018.

During Harris's 2020 presidential campaign, she released 15 years worth of tax returns in April 2019, revealing that the couple jointly reported more than $2 million in income the previous year and paid nearly $700,000 in taxes.

A PREDICTION: The hand that fed them will not get bitten by either of the spouses. 

There are a host of puff pieces online similar to one another about Emhoff, nothing substantial, and for negative thoughts beyond the puffery, there is Breitbart:

  Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and her husband, attorney Douglas Emhoff, gave 1.1% of their income to charity in 2019, tax records show.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) failed as California’s attorney general to investigate faulty advertising claims against one of the nation’s leading nutritional supplement companies, which also happened to be a client of her husband’s law firm.

That is not much mud to see slung, Breitbart being what it is. 

As to the hand that fed them, again, Breitbart. (Kayne West must have used a different lawyer - law firm.)

_________UPDATE_________

From JTA:

She’s more AIPAC than J Street

Since being elected in 2016, Harris has spoken twice at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Her 2018 speech, with the California delegation, was off the record (itself not unusual, although critics of Israel were unnerved), but she gave a good picture of where she stands in her 2017 speech.

She’s for two states — so is AIPAC, although, sometimes less than emphatically — but she doesn’t believe in big-footing either side.

“I believe that a resolution to this conflict cannot be imposed,” she said. “It must be agreed upon by the parties themselves.”

[...] Harris also co-sponsored a Senate resolution in early 2017 that essentially rebuked the Obama administration for allowing through a U.S. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policies.

She supported the Iran nuclear deal, although she was not a senator in 2015 when Congress voted on it, and is on the record opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.

Harris also digs Israel’s Supreme Court building. [...] “The Court, like Israel, is a beautiful home to democracy and justice in a region where radicalism and authoritarianism all too often shape government.”

Clearly not of the same mind as Ilhan Omar, and instead pro-Israel; AIPAC flavor. 

It would take research to see how widespread support was for the Resolution against Obama's declining to use the Security Council veto to yet again save Israel from widely held international criticism being official UN policy in that single instance of the U.S. declining to so use the veto. 

Likely Harris was not alone as a sponsor. Instead the resolution likely had many co-sponsors. Look it up if you care.

_________UPDATE_________

1.1% of income to charity is pretty chintzy. For millionaires. 

A Hollywood 1.1 percent, and we are supposed to bow to their morphing power ranger and Schwarzenegger/Rambo propaganda mill?

And then there is the east coast Big Apple GOP style of charity.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Sirota has published in Guardian a warning, "Can Joe Biden avoid Obama's mistakes? He must – for the future of the party." But does Biden want to do better than Obama, or just coast, nothing fundamentally changed? It is a warning that Biden should consider, in order to avoid costly losses in the 2022 mid-terms.

 Link. In part:

[...] While Obama’s Affordable Care Act created some long-overdue consumer protections, it ultimately strengthened the power of private insurers. Despite Obama campaigning for a public insurance option, his administration dropped it, Democratic senators helped Republicans initially vote it down and then refused to ever bring it back up to force the issue, even though there was a good chance it would pass. [...]

Similarly, Obama backed off his promise to pass new union protections for workers, and he reversed his promise to reform bad trade deals, instead pressing even more of those pacts that have become a symbol of a corrupt Washington more interested in enriching CEOs than helping workers.

Obama’s administration also refused to prosecute bankers and its Wall Street reform package was pathetically weak. 

It will be the identical things to expect from Joe Biden, the not-Trump, but little else. 

Plus austerity; debt reduction propaganda reigning strong. It will be bad.


Tuesday, November 10, 2020

McCarthyism?

Link. Fitting together with Blacklisting by Bustos. With Pelosi/Clyburn intimidation tactics via conference calls against progress and progressives. A double-barreled purge in play? Money uber alles the common thread? Stalin was less subtle in his purges. Iron fist, velvet glove?

UPDATE: Tea Party being shown an exit, along with other zealots, by the Rockefeller Republicans, in alliance with the GOP-wing of the Democratic Party doing its dirt.

It seems Ms. Clinton's "basket of deplorables" is a sentiment held by the Kasich GOP bloc; while the term is not uttered by them, nor by the Pelosi-Schumer-Clyburn donor axis about Progressives. It seems Progressives and Tea Party dissatisfied purge targets should at least talk to one another about what's being done with big donor blessing to make big donors supreme - the "conservatives" of each party being the big donor ass kissers, as told. Do not expect reform from Biden. Expect disdain and Bush-Obama stuff - old fashioned fascism to rule for four years. It will be the Harris candidacy that must be primaried, so planning that should start now. Funds for that should be solicited and paid into the cause.

AOC is the better choice against Harris, if AOC will choose to be in that contest.

AOC is NOT married to a media-entertainment lawyer, not a millionaire by marriage and surely not by inheritance, like Trump. On the other hand, Harris never tended bar to leaven her worldview. Never had to. She's had it easy. Can't sing the blues.

It is most unfortunate that sometimes you need to access RT for the news U.S. mainstream media collectively, for reasons we can only guess at (Harris being married to one of the entertainment-media-axis lawyer-lobbyists being perhaps a reason Haim Saban might feel comfortable with her, plus the sister having been tight with the Clinton 2016 effort). The people funding Clyburn are comfortable with Harris, or else a different woman of color would have been put onto the Biden ticket. Pelosi relies on Clyburn's allegiance. Go figure what a Harris presidency would be, and how it would mirror closely the worse of the Obama years, when the insurer-friendly Heritage Foundation's Romneycare plan was foisted off on US being but one example. Yes, it had a few ornaments, but it was industry written. Franken was the force behind the 80% treatment spending, 20% admin load requirement, and got purged. Go figure that. 

A Harris presidency? Just Say NO.


Are Uber drivers really independent contractors, or are they employees? The question was Proposition 22 on the California ballot.

 Les Schafer wrote for Strib:

A ballot measure is a perennial feature of California public life, and it’s usually hard to care about them. But this one asked voters to agree that ride-share drivers and other gig workers should be classified as independent contractors and not employees. Nearly 60% of Californians agreed, an outcome that was instantly seen as a watershed in the transition from regular jobs to gig work.

There’s much to be said for working for yourself, the freedom to work when you want, where you want and without a boss hovering over your shoulder. But you really are on your own — for clients, pay, health insurance, retirement savings, payroll taxes and so on.

The ride-share companies Uber Technologies and Lyft Inc. have been dogged by the issue of whether their drivers are employees for years already, as they have steadfastly insisted their drivers are independent.

If they are not employees, Uber and Lyft have no minimum wage to pay, no unemployment insurance to fund, no overtime to pay, no workers’ compensation insurance to buy, no vacation time to pay, little risk of workplace discrimination claims and so [...] the companies decided to put the question to voters. Then they put their thumbs on the scale.

A handful of companies put up enough money to outspend the other side roughly 10-1, about $200 million to the Yes on 22 Committee by the end of October. Uber led the way with about $57 million, along with support from Lyft and delivery companies DoorDash, Postmates and Instacart.

It’s hard to fault these companies. If the rules permit corporations to buy an election and they have the money, then it’s probably a good business decision to go ahead and buy the election.

The outcome of the vote wasn’t even close.

The argument the ride-share companies made about work seems to boil down to their claim that their business model isn’t a service with employees but a provider of a technology platform. They enable a marketplace to form where people who need a car ride can find one from independent drivers willing to drive.

[...] This has all been enabled the smartphones and (reasonably) secure online payment systems, but there was gig work going on back when Silicon Valley was known for its orchards. [...] By some measures about a third of Americans before the coronavirus pandemic might have done some form of it, mostly moonlighting in addition to a more conventional paid job.

The share of workers across all industries who were working as gig workers grew about 15% since 2010 up through the start of the pandemic recession, at least according to research by the payroll and human resources services company ADP.

Some were older workers taking an interim step to full retirement but according to ADP many were millennials or even younger. These younger people think of themselves as regular workers, even though they had no promise of steady work or much, if any, employee benefits.

Why this is seen as a better way to structure our working lives remains a bit of mystery. Not having a boss may seem great, but anyone who has ever worked in service industries as a contractor knows the clients are the bosses, and sometimes they get so unreasonable they won’t even pay.

The boss back at their old job could never get away with that.

Control over your own calendar can be a fine thing, but paid time off is good, too. Signing up for employer healthcare plans can be a confusing nuisance, but have you tried shopping in the individual market? Or calculating and paying estimated taxes, including the full freight for payroll taxes?

[..] In Washington, Congress and the Trump administration recognized the vulnerability of the self-employed with no shot at unemployment benefits, putting a provision in this spring’s CARES Act for what’s known as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. [...] The number of Americans getting aid under PUA peaked in August at nearly 15 million. With still more than 9 million people getting benefits, the decline since the peak has been slower.

It will be interesting to see how many Americans are still drawing aid from that program come the week of Christmas this year. For all of them, it will be their last week as this program closes.

 Strib's headline writer for online content aptly headlined, "You are on your own financially in America, voters said once again."

Labor solidarity always stands open to capital spending to induce a divide and conquer anti-labor shift in the law. Recall the Janus decision impacting public sector labor solidarity. Janus subordinated a labor-solidarity preference. Compare. And the Janus decision was handed down while Ginsberg had her vote. Wage earners voting for "not employees" on this ballot Proposition need to reflect upon recognized labor rights and benefits each currently enjoys. Healthcare during a pandemic included, and try to imagine unsure income with regular monthly payments and household maintenance need, all without unemployment insurance benefits to help. Labor unions brought workers overtime; the forty hour week; and weekends. Via solidarity.

 

Readers get links to follow or not.

 Nina Turner, published by WaPo.

Norman Solomon, Jointly published by Common Dreams and Salon.

Quoting in part from Salon:

At the core of such conflicts, whether simmering or exploding, is class war. When Pelosi & Co. try to stamp out the genuinely progressive upsurge in congressional ranks that is fueled from the grassroots, they're "dancing with those who brung them" — corporate elites. It's an extremely lucrative approach for those who feed out of the troughs of the Democratic National Committee, the Senate and House party campaign committees, the House Majority PAC and many other fat-cat political campaign entities. Consultant contracts and lobbying deals keep flowing, even after Democrats lose quite winnable elections.

Biden almost lost this election. And while the Biden campaign poured in vast financial resources and vague flowery messaging that pandered to white suburban voters, relatively little was focused on those who most made it possible to overcome Trump's election-night lead — people of color and the young. Constrained by his decades-long political mentality and record, Biden did not energize working-class voters as he lip-synched populist tunes in unconvincing performances.

That's the kind of neoliberal approach that Bernie Sanders and so many of his supporters warned about in 2016 and again this year. Both times there was a huge failure of the Democratic nominee to make a convincing case as an advocate for working people against the forces of wealthy avarice and corporate greed.

In fact, Clinton and Biden reeked of coziness with economic elites throughout their political careers. To many people, Clinton came off as a fake when she tried to sound populist, claiming to represent the little people against corporate giants. And to those who actually knew much about Biden's political record, his similar claims also were apt to seem phony.

It's clear from polling that Biden gained a large proportion of his votes due to animosity toward his opponent rather than enthusiasm for Biden himself. He hasn't inspired the Democratic base, and his appeal had much more to do with opposing the evils of Trumpism than embracing his own political approach.

More than ever, merely being anti-Trump or anti-Republican isn't going to move Democrats and the country in the vital directions we need. Without a strong progressive program as a rudder, the Biden presidency will be awash in much the same old rhetorical froth and status-quo positions that have so often caused Democratic incumbents to founder, bringing on GOP electoral triumphs.

In recent months, Biden showed that he knew how to hum the refrains of economic populism when that seemed tactically useful, but he scarcely knew the words and could hardly belt out the melody. His media image as "Lunch Bucket Joe" was a helpful mirage in corporate media-land, but that kind of puffery only went so far. Meanwhile, the Biden strategists decided to coast on the issue of the pandemic, spotlighting Trump's lethally narcissistic insanity.

But when it came to health care — obviously a central concern in people's lives, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic — Biden largely fell back on Obamacare rather than advocating for a genuine guarantee of health care as a human right.

Turner's WaPo op-ed was arguably more blunt in tone and content.

Ed Markey would make a dynamite DSCC policy setter, candidate vetter.

 










Senate Dems - spending and getting one token change - either it is the candidates Schumer picks, Biden as little but lesser evil with no coat tailing, or the Schumer-Biden donor-friendly agenda lacking appeal among actual people while ringing the bell among Citizens United "people." Bankers' candidates, incumbents, Bloomberg sniping at Bernie, Bernie arguing an agenda while running; whatever, there was failure. If you don't blame Schumer it appears you have to blame AOC.

The opening screen capture  image is from Sirota's Daily Poster website. It states in part:

Many of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s candidates lost big, and trailed the national Democratic presidential ticket. 

Incumbent Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama and challengers like Jaime Harrison in South Carolina, Amy McGrath in Kentucky, and MJ Hegar in Texas combined to raise $250 million this cycle — and they all appear to have lost by double digits. 

Well-funded challengers like Sara Gideon in Maine and outgoing Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock in Montana took in nearly $110 million and lost, too. 

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the national party committee that elects Democratic Senate candidates, and the Senate Majority PAC, the DSCC’s allied super PAC, together raised more than $450 million this cycle.

The fundraising numbers aren’t final yet —

And Georgia still hangs in the balance with both of its Senate seats in play in a runoff scenario, to be held in January; results awaited. How could Schumer and friends spend so much to get so little and call it anything other than a failure while they held the drivers seat? Their failure. They picked the cause, they earned the effect.

Money can't buy you love? Or, Collins holding on in Maine suggests a Dem top ballot without coat tailing zap and panache. A locomotive pulling no train.

Or just run the entire thing better, more in line with what the people expect, and take the majority, which you'd then be expected to lead the way the people want.

UPDATE: Does Schumer make you miss Harry Reid? If Markey had that job you'd miss neither Schumer nor Reid. Or would you?

What is fascism? What do you expect from Joe Biden?

 Are the headline questions unrelated? From Harris?

AOC in 2024. Not Harris.

See what the 2022 mid-term elections bring. Under a Biden-Harris White House.

Parallel reporting on AOC opinion, post-election, here and here. Final three paragraphs of that first link:

The coming period of presidential transition and the Biden administration’s early days will be crucial to determining whether the Democratic party will incorporate in a permanent way its grassroots progressive engine – or veer off down a path toward defeat, Ocasio-Cortez said.

“So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy,” she said. “And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for all is not the enemy. This isn’t even just about winning an argument. It’s that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they’re just setting up their own obsolescence.”

Appearing on CNN later in the day, Ocasio-Cortez said: “Progressives have assets to offer the party that the party has not yet fully leaned into... Every single swing seat member that co-sponsored Medicare for All won their re-election, and so the conversation is a little bit deeper than saying anything progressive is toxic.”

Harris will be touted greatly by the Biden machine, while AOC is dynamic on her own. Try this compare Cheri Bustos to AOC. With help from that first linked NYT report, mid-item:

There’s a lot of magical thinking in Washington, that this is just about special people that kind of come down from on high. Year after year, we decline the idea that they did work and ran sophisticated operations in favor of the idea that they are magical, special people. I need people to take these goggles off and realize how we can do things better.

If you are the D.C.C.C., and you’re hemorrhaging incumbent candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them. So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing.

And the argument against AOC's point is???? 

Nancy likes Cheri does not cut it. Yes, Nancy and Cheri are on the same page. That page does not cut it. More from earlier in the NYT item:

Because before we even had any data yet in a lot of these races, there was already finger-pointing that this was progressives’ fault and that this was the fault of the Movement for Black Lives.

I’ve already started looking into the actual functioning of these campaigns. And the thing is, I’ve been unseating Democrats for two years. I have been defeating Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee-run campaigns for two years. That’s how I got to Congress. That’s how we elected Ayanna Pressley. That’s how Jamaal Bowman won. That’s how Cori Bush won. And so we know about extreme vulnerabilities in how Democrats run campaigns.

And wise exploitation of the vulnerabilities of GOP-lite folks led to better people filling House seats. It is not to be vilified. It is to be continued. Throw Bustos under the bus over the GOP-lite losses, or not. But don't blame the people in tune with the people, with US, for out-of-tune losses. 

Alone - Money don't buy you wins. Nor love.

How many Biden voters love and identify with Joe the not-Trump option?

Aside from not being Trump, he has nothing to like.

_________UPDATE_________

Harris made the ticket second spot largely via Biden following "advice" from Clyburn to put a black woman in the second spot. Without that, and on her own as a presidential candidate she never put together a campaign to reach consistent double digit polling, nor did she even make it to to the primaries before calling it quits. (See reporting from about a year ago, here and here.) 

This is a concern in terms of Biden being 82 in 2024, Harris then being eager and positioned. Can she do it? Is she particularly capable, or likeable in terms of what she'd bring to the top job? Ambitious, yes, but beyond that, is she anywhere near to being in the AOC league? On policy clearly not. On dynamism, you decide. 

You shall have something under four years to observe and ponder. 

As a side question, will Trump run again in 2024, or will he have other concerns then on his plate? If running, would he be the winner then, of primaries?

If Harris is one candidate, who'd be the opponent? AOC would face that same question. Decisions about 2024 can wait. Being premature on the issue may gain little to nothing, now.

Sunday, November 08, 2020

Sirota is among those recognizing the false blame shined on progressives for Biden's lack of coat tails down ballot.

 When you run as not-Trump and little positive beyond that, it's your fault down ballot was not a blue wave. Don't blame the ground game door-to-door folks who saved your bacon. How Sirota wrote of it from his new Daily Poster site:

They Are Trying To Silence AOC, Because Money Never Sleeps

We’re all exhausted, but in the 24 hours since the election was called, corporate interests and their allies have already started their war on progressives. There is no rest for the weary.

[...]

Since the election was called for Joe Biden, there has been a multitiered effort to blame disappointing election results on progressives, even as exit polls and voting results show that progressive organizing that rescued Democrats from the jaws of a presidential defeat. While the country was celebrating the defeat of Trump, here’s what the voices of Big Money have been doing since the election:

  • Democratic leaders are insisting that the party must abandon modestly progressive health care positions in order to boost the party’s chances in Georgia, even though polling says exactly the opposite.

  • Republican John Kasich — who was given a DNC speaking slot by Team Biden and who nonetheless failed to help Democrats win his home state of Ohio — went on CNN to bash progressives, insisting that Biden’s top priority should be appeasing Trump voters. 

  • Ian Bremmer — a Morning Joe character who is a reliable barometer of elite thought — echoed Kasich, suggesting that the first thing Democrats should do is reach out and appease Trump supporters.

  • Joe Scarborough himself asserted that the election proves Democrats must run away from the left, even though their entire strategy was running away from the left, and that strategy resulted in disappointing down-ballot losses. 

  • Politico published a list of alleged frontrunners for Biden cabinet slots, filled mostly with corporate-friendly Democrats and Republicans.

  • As GOP operatives at the Lincoln Project explore turning their operation into a media empire, they are turning their attacks on U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the party’s few stars with a large national following. 

  • Democratic leaders and the House Blue Dog Caucus — the corporate wing of the party — have spent the week attacking progressives, blaming them for a handful of moderate freshman lawmakers’ losses -- even as data show that Democrats in swing districts lost vote share as they moved further and further to the right.

[...]

And it is bullshit and it is setting off the effort to blame everyone but themselves, the New Dem - Blue Dog corporatist wing of the Democratic Party inner operatives, if both Georgia Senate candidates in the runoff balloting there fail to win. 

If both Georgia Dem candidates win, the Senate splits 50-50 with VP Harris holding the tie-breaking vote, so winning both contests is important. But nothing is important enough to lie about where the weaknesses in the Democratic Party exist, given that Biden - silent disappeared Joe - came so close to losing after four graceless years of Donald J. Trump, his family, his appointee failures, Rudy, Bannon, and other low life swamp creatures the dude promised he'd clean up, then appointing them in a parade of short term appointments and firings/resignations. 

Bernie, if the candidate, would have won big, with big coat tails, had DCCC and DSCC not picked such unappealing GOP-lite losers as they lost with. Run losers, go for money tree shaking over ground game campaigning, and them look to scapegoat the foot soldiers is simply money amok going to heads already too full of themselves [e.g., Schumer, Pelosi Clyburn]. 

Dumping on progressives is easy, and false, and should stop because progressives is all that sorry party has between it and 2012 mid-term losses and 2024 loss of the White House. Get progressive or get out of the way - a nice slogan for a party to use in order to grow a backbone against outside donor pressure and inside capitulation pressure. 

Phrased differently: How the hell did Biden fail to tromp Trump clearly, decisively, and with coat tail power up, down and sideways, this election, after four years of Trump lies, pandemic MIA, and ruin of the economy in a way threatening to the security and well-being of all citizens of the nation?

Answer that before dumping a load on progressives, who bit the bullet, went lesser evil after the screwing the inner party types gave Bernie, and then did the hard foul-weather GOTV foot soldiering which saved the cause from losing via a vigorous Trump GOTV-fueled four-more-years win.

%#T%&Y$ ingrates! They deserve each other, but we deserve better than Schumer. Better than Bustos. Running DSCC and DCCC respectively into wimpering finger-pointing ruin.

__________UPDATE__________

And, Nancy Pelosi, about that conference call dump on progressives; you know - progressives do not want your excuses and finger pointing - we want your job.

Sooner. Later. We get it, or the party stays with minority leader generals year in, year out, if the foot soldiers, the enlisted ones and volunteers, finally have enough and tell you, "Knock on your own doors," because all progressive lesser evil cave-in GOTV work this cycle work got not praise but instead bullshit conference calling, and scorn, and everyone knows, Nancy, that was both a power trip for its own sake but also because donor money is what counts in Nancy's world more than people. 

Not winning the Senate and losing numbers in the House after four years of Trump is failure. Winning is what could be had via a progressive agenda - enforced beyond the words, and losing with that fact clear, was NOT okay. 

It seems keeping the power leadership position, be it majority or minority, with it's ego-boosting, rings Nancy's bell. Gotta get better, truly inclusive rather than disdainful, or move aside. Right now Nancy, you are in the way.

As part of the ouster of Trumpelstilskin, this show hits the road too. Back to Florida for each, Boss and Spiritual Advisor.

 DWT link. Making Sarah Palin look cogent is a heavy lift.

 

__________UPDATE__________

 Sounding cogent, but Newt is Newt. I trust more the sincerity of what the spiritual advisior had to say. 

________FURTHER UPDATE_________

DWT - money don't buy you love. (However it really feeds the top and bottom feeders of the Beltway bandit pack of flack.)

Saturday, November 07, 2020

The Biden-Harris hundred days holiday honeymoon has already started. Forget about Jan. 20.

 Who's expecting a job doing what press coverage has barely gotten started, yet, less than seismic rumblings begin, some of which are telling - Common Dreams, here and here. The latter report, from beginning to mid-item:

 In a heated caucus-wide conference call on Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other centrist Democrats in the U.S. House reportedly blamed lost congressional seats on the redistributive agenda advanced by the party's progressive members, with Majority Whip James Clyburn warning that running on "socialized medicine" will result in losing the two runoff races in Georgia that could give the party a Senate majority.

The preemptive assault on universal healthcare by South Carolina's Clyburn, a top recipient of money from the pharmaceutical industry, comes just days after a series of Fox News polls showed that 72% of voters favor "changing to a government-run healthcare plan," among other egalitarian policies that received widespread support. 

"Polls consistently show a majority of the U.S. electorate [is] considerably to the left of both party leaderships... on issue after issue—the environment, electoral reform, [and] Medicare for All," said Jacobin's Luke Savage, less than 72 hours before the Democratic Party establishment recycled its attacks on popular progressive policies following a underwhelming showing at the ballot box.

 [...] Both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Georgia's Democratic senatorial candidates, support a public health insurance option that is universally accessible. 

But if the House Democrats' contentious conference call is any indication, moderates' hostility to universal healthcare could push the candidates to move closer to Joe Biden's position, which is, as the Daily Poster put it, "a public option [that] would only be open to lower-income Americans rather than being open to everyone."

According to Sirota and Perez, when Biden explained his plan during the first presidential debate, "a Democracy Corps poll found that voters reacted negatively to Biden's description—the survey, using real-time dial meters, showed a steep drop in support when Biden said his public option would be limited."

[...] According to Politico's reporting about House Democrats' tense conversation on Thursday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington defended her fellow progressive colleagues from criticisms she called unwarranted. 

Jayapal also argued, however, that "Democrats need to have 'conversations about language' as several members on the call complained about charged terms like 'defund the police' repeatedly weaponized against them during the campaign."

As Common Dreams reported Friday, leftists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) reiterated that Joe Biden is indebted to the get-out-the-vote efforts of progressives whose broad redistributive agenda resonates with many working people and energizes those who might have stayed home otherwise. 

After all, preliminary data suggests that it was progressive activists, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), whose on-the-ground organizing in diverse, working-class communities helped secure key swing state victories for Biden—not the long-distance courting of disaffected conservatives by the Lincoln Project, which critics say pushes the party further to the right.

Progressives went lesser evil, and Clyburn's donors now want to stomp on progressives' throats.

Leadership needs to look sincerely and thoughtfully into the mirror and admit their agenda is so gawd-awful of a failure that they need to try to play bully against the hands that closed ranks to lift them via grassroots GOTV against a strong Trump GOTV putsch (where centrist DEMs ran a stiff, a MIA candidate, a "not Trump"), when suffering and pandemic reality pressured openly and recognizably for actual, real, no-bullshit, people-friendly leadership. (Clinton blamed James Comey, not herself.) 

It is a posture they take and expect us to bow because they are the existing inner party hands on the throttle. A DWT post title, "The Moment The Democrats Picked Cheri Bustos As DCCC Chair, As I've Been Saying For Two Years, They Baked Terrible Losses Into The Cake."

Tom Perez hasn't punched his weight. Ocasio-Cortez has. Ocasio-Cortez could handle Blacklist Bustos' responsibilities - competently. Plain decency for a change, despite Biden, despite Schumer, has traction as a way of assuring 2022 mid-term doldrums are avoided. 

Four more good links - here, here, here, here.

_______________UPDATE________________ 

Please readers, do not forget Newsweek's earlier online item

Joe Biden Says 'Anybody' Can Beat Donald Trump in 2020 Presidential Election
By Tim Marcin On 12/17/18 at 2:16 PM EST

The fact is that "anybody" did not do too fucking well at that slam-dunk job; i.e., not bringing along on the coat tails a Senate majority, for Party, and people. We want justice. Not more of the same.

Things should fundamentally change.

In an election that was a referendum on Trump, voters picked not-Trump. Wow. What a landslide for Joe What's-his-name, the one with the Ukranian son.

Joe can flash his teeth all he wants, but he did not win. 

Trump lost. There is a great difference.

As in saying, "Lesser Evil?"

Readers - Can you say, "Don't steal any of the nation's tableware or silver or furnishings on the way out, but do take with you your Andrew Jackson crap?" Can you say, "Don't leave Jarad behind when you take Ivanka and the other offspring away, wherever?"

And, Don, stop tweeting. 

It lost votes, gained nothing, and was banal.

And Don, would you say Pence and Bolton were why you lost? Your base would believe it if you said it. Their believing it would be the one last helpful thing you could do. 

Watch the doorknob doesn't hit your ass when leaving. You deserve the love behind that last sentence.

Leave a MAGA hat for Joe. Go back to selling Trump steaks, Trump vodka.

Biden barely ahead. Bernie would have won in a landslide. With coat tails.

 Just saying. The Republicans appear to have held their Senate majority.

Just saying. Bernie would have had coat tail power dour Biden lacked. Bernie had passion. Biden had Clyburn. He also had the batch-quitter bunch, Klobuchar, the town mayor, Beto, even the Republican billionaire Bloomberg, all the stalking horses a conservative career politician like Biden could want. 

At least Harris quit earlier than Super Tuesday. That's in her favor.


Friday, November 06, 2020

Don't go away mad. Just go away - - - Told simply, in mixed image/text.

The headline is clearly for Trump, his VP, his cabinet, his White House staff, his offspring, the young in-law, all that crowd along with Fred Trump's overbearing ghost. 

Exit now. And stay away.

Sweep out the entire freak show. (Especially Bill Barr. Blame the Bush family for that creature emerging from swamp quagmire into the privileged Beltway bunch. Barr should never have happened. Blame his parents. His schooling.). 

At any rate, this man . . .

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhssq8UKLSmVBAP3YcCFVXWhtmrzcf6UHfJtTrV5QMUqbqKXfy76_aEh2E1CF9jR5tBQuvwuYBZw5NCmBuTKgDT8g4M8_tJI73DUECmefIomvqhiA5vbwoaoOuRWVaWWsg5M_WhSg/s1600/TheBigLie.jpg 

 . . . should follow the exit finality of this man, promptly, while posing as he might.

déjà vu

 

OUR FUTURE, (ABSENT OUR REVOLUTION): In large measure, Joe Biden has been entirely honest from early in this election cycle ...

 

... and there is cause to believe him.

KAUS - a theme for silly campaign hats. <i>Keep America Unjust Still.</i>

Thursday, November 05, 2020

Now that Biden has won - all over but formalities - let's look at BS and the future.

First, unconscionable bullshit over the fact Trump is so awful as person and president, is false bullshit when it is a claim Minnesota's DFL is popular. Being merely a lesser evil among two choices, both owned by money, is not popularity. It is desparation, as is the intent to keep the pressure for progress intense.

Strib in local content:

 Joe Biden cements DFL's strength in Minnesota cities, big suburbs
Biden racked up big numbers in Minn.'s cities and suburbs.
By Patrick Condon Star Tribune
November 5, 2020 — 8:45am

[...] “To outperform Hillary by something like 6 points when all is said and done is pretty remarkable for all the time, money and energy the Trump campaign spent on Minnesota,” said Justin Buoen, the DFL strategist who managed Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s presidential campaign.

[...]  In statewide returns tallied by Wednesday afternoon, Biden led Trump by more than 230,000 votes out of more than 3.2 million cast in the presidential race in the state. Clinton’s winning margin in 2016 was just over 44,000 votes.

Biden also narrowly carried neighboring Wisconsin, though the Trump campaign was requesting a recount, and the Democrat also carried Michigan. That seemed to validate the argument many Democrats including Klobuchar had been espousing: that the Upper Midwest could be the kind of “blue wall” the party needed to retake the White House.

Klobuchar and her hack campaign director were a BIG, BIG part of fucking Bernie on the eve of the South Carolina - super Tuesday stuff Clyburn et al. pulled. It shall be remembered. The last Klobuchar vote from Crabgrass quarters was cast last time she ran for Senator, and she'll get no more. End of that story.

THE FUTURE:

There is Our Revolution, NotHimUs.org, Blue America, Sunrise Movement, choice, and other ways to keep the heat turned up on the corporatists who are now feeling they own progressives because they won (against TRUMP but not taking the Senate with Schumer-DSCC garbage candidates) without conceding one thing popular with the people such as Medicare for All, student debt relief, reining in Big Pharma, ending perpetual war, or other things progressives wanted and instead got the giant Biden-Harris corporate-donor middle finger.

We concede nothing. We fight on. Trump's out. Biden and his stable of Lincoln Project republicans have their hubris of the day, since lesser evil in a two party situation is all they need to be; and it is not be all you can be, but be only enough, and don't strive for more. It is donor love over love of the people. 

The appeasers are now the main enemy. NOW THIS:

...................................................................................................

Published on by

'Not Him... Us': On the Ultimate Meaning of the Bernie Sanders Campaign

While Sanders continues to be the preeminent and most effective progressive voice in the country, the future—now that his presidential hopes are over—is truly up to us.


Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) addresses supporters during a campaign rally on March 8, 2020 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sanders covered his policy agendas for immigration, women's rights, healthcare and economic inequality. (Photo by Brittany Greeson/Getty Images)
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) addresses supporters during a campaign rally on March 8, 2020 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sanders covered his policy agendas for immigration, women's rights, healthcare and economic inequality. (Photo by Brittany Greeson/Getty Images)

 "Eugene V. Debs is Bernie Sanders' political hero," the Washington Post reported with evident distaste while the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination was raging in early 2016. "A picture of the socialist union organizer hung in city hall when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. A plaque honoring Debs is now by the window in Sanders' Senate office."

Now, as Bernie's last presidential campaign fades into history, it's appropriate to consider this statement from Eugene Debs, whose dedication to the working class was matched by his eloquence and courage: "I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out."

Bless Bernie. Read the item. Senator Amy has proven herself as not one of US. She needs to be primaried. Exited to the same scrap heap as Trump.

Primary Amy.

Primary Tina.

Primary Walz.

Primary CD2 and CD3, with progressives. Fight the entrenchment of policy mediocrity among Minnesota's DFL. Fight that same entrenchment at the federal level. Fight for what's right.

Oppose big donor control of the two party stranglehold imprisoning our nation. 

Fight for US. Fight to keep Ellison in office. 

Fight to take over the DNC, from big money, to people.

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Election Day. Woo woo. We can't breathe. If Trump loses, however long it takes to reach that point, may he go into obscurity facing his mountain of debt, should it be real and not solely a lie of an income tax dodge. The $750 man - he's not even worth that.

 The headline is Almost enough. 

Awful Joe Biden IS the alternative and that sorrow has to be highlighted. We The People have taken great insult from the two party system, year in, year out. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

We The People were mocked, 2016, again 2020, and history suggests it will be so again and again in our future. In 2008 we were mocked with CHANGE and HOPE. When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are dead, their successors will be no better.  


We The People suffer: Because everyone has a vote, many voting crazy, while not everyone has a party. With only two of them, each is owned by the same sleazy set of crony rich asshole donors dead set on fucking the people. Fucking labor. Putting mediocre doctrinaire cronies on courts. Enjoying spoils.

SO - Have a nice day. Wall Street will. 

Kapital loves elections, the ruse boosting portfolios of the donors and acceptors and hanger-on campaign consultants. Everyone owns a share. But Daddy will tell you, not everyone owns politicians. They cost too much and the worse of them - the most dishonest - will not stay bought. They're rentals.

Monday, November 02, 2020

It lools like quack, quack, quack. Millions of tax dollars down quackery rat holes, politically connected to be sure, but rats can be social animals.

Quackery and Trump are like hand in glove, the AP reporting, Strib carrying the feed: 

WASHINGTON — When the Trump administration gave a well-connected Republican donor seed money to test a possible COVID-19-fighting blood plasma technology, it noted the company’s “manufacturing facilities” in Charleston, South Carolina.

Plasma Technologies LLC is indeed based in the stately waterfront city. But there are no manufacturing facilities. Instead, the company exists within the luxury condo of its majority owner, Eugene Zurlo.

 Zurlo's company may be in line for as much as $65 million in taxpayer dollars; enough to start building an actual production plant, according to internal government records and other documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The story of how a tiny business that exists only on paper has managed to snare attention from the highest reaches of the U.S. military and government is emblematic of the Trump administration’s frenetic response to the coronavirus pandemic.

It's also another in a series of contracts awarded to people with close political ties to key officials despite concerns voiced by government scientists.[...]

 In one government email obtained by the AP, an official said Kadlec, whose job as assistant secretary for preparedness and response is to help guide the nation through public health emergencies, was “all in” on Plasma Technologies.

This was the case despite misgivings from the scientists he oversees. One of them said the company would be just another “mouth to feed” that would distract from other important work on the pandemic. [...]

The AP reached out to more than a dozen blood plasma industry leaders and medical experts. Few had heard of Zurlo’s company or its technology, and would not comment.

Zurlo, the company’s founder and a former pharmaceutical industry executive, told the AP in an email that the renewed interest in his company is being driven by COVID and other diseases.

[...] Top government officials began to take notice of Plasma Technologies after Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania and two-time presidential candidate, became part-owner, according to the records and AP interviews.

[...]  Santorum, who’s held no elective office since 2007, remains influential among social conservatives, a key part of President Donald Trump’s political base. Santorum has extolled the president’s handling of the pandemic on national television in his job as a CNN commentator, arguing that the nation’s response would have been worse under a Democratic administration.

Trump "didn’t botch it,” Santorum said recently in response to charges that the president had done a poor job leading the country through COVID-19. “I mean you guys keep blaming Trump. This is a local decision.”

HHS would not comment when asked whether Santorum’s public backing of the president led to a company he has a financial stake in getting a government contract.

Zurlo has deep ties to the Republican Party. He has contributed thousands of dollars to Santorum’s campaigns and to other GOP campaigns and political action committees. He entertained Santorum and his family at the mansion Zurlo used to own on Kiawah Island, an exclusive golf resort in South Carolina. They would play golf during the day and enjoy evenings overlooking the Atlantic, according to Michel “Mitch” LaPlante, a former business associate of Zurlo’s who attended several dinners with Santorum and Zurlo.

The business relationship between Zurlo and LaPlante turned ugly after those days of hobnobbing on Kiawah. A real estate deal they had invested in together fell into foreclosure, leading to a suit seeking more than $700 million by their mortgage lender. Each man sued the other for fraud and severed their business ties acrimoniously.

Zurlo founded Plasma Technologies in 2003, according to articles of organization and other records filed with South Carolina’s secretary of state. The company’s most recently listed address is Zurlo’s condominium in Charleston’s French Quarter.

The company has no other presence in South Carolina — or any other state — even though a U.S. government spokeswoman told the AP that Plasma Technologies has “manufacturing facilities” in Charleston.

Any crony of Rick Santorum is suspect, and a plasma company with no facilities seems to quack like a quack operation - Santorum a part owner making the quacking louder and more suspect and abject!

THE MESSAGE IS SIMPLE:  VOTE TRUMP, THE WASTEFUL CRONY-SERVING RACIST BASTARD-SNAKE-ENABLER, OUT! 

 

---------------------------------- Hat tip ---------

image is from DownWithTyranny.blogspot.com - by  Nancy Ohanian, who in 2019 was awarded the National Press Foundations' Clifford K. & James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons. Other Ohanian political art has been "fair use" used by Crabgrass - including in the sidebar

___________UPDATE___________

The Santorum related ghost operation gaining tax money from the Trump administration is mirrored in part by another ghost operation Dan Burns highlighted, per original reporting by CREW. Too many ghosts having more ties to Trump than to Halloween. Burns' website https://mnppannex.blogspot.com/  currently has much recent interesting posting, tightly written and worth checking out today.

________FURTHER UPPDATE_________

Mail-in ballot mania is the topic of recent left.mn posting. My recollection is that ballots postmarked before the election but received later were counted back in the Franken-Coleman recount days. Also, I recall a story of a ballot package back whenever which was allowed to languish at an Anoka County post office dock, before the Franken-Coleman recount; with it found after the election and with the ballots counted. This is a hearsay story, and may be apocryphal. 

With the Trump flying monkey crowd now running and ruining the USPO via decommissioning a substantial part of its mail sorting equipment a reality, the reliability of postmarks will be uncertain, although postmarking is early in the process of receiving, sorting, and delivering. We shall see.

Voting is over tomorrow. Comparing Obama and Biden, Biden is running the more honest of slogans.

 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.fWhE_99JwFEirPg6SLzwRgHaLJ%26pid%3DApi&f=1

 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.PLZueVkiuAToIPCx9vUQKgHaJQ%26pid%3DApi&f=1

 Obama ginning up false impressions, CHANGE not happening. 

Biden laying his major appeal on the line, honestly. So hope it happens.