The Death Is Real

 

This past Thursday morning, my father died of Covid-19.

Now, he would not want me to politicize his death. In fact, he went out of his way to make sure people didn't make a fuss about him. But for me, now, the Novel Coronavirus is not some philosophical or academic debate anymore.

It's real. It's personal.

It's analogous to what might have happened back during the Vietnam War, when some Hawk having strong feelings about the war suddenly sees his brother or his son come back from Vietnam in a body bag.

It can be a seismic shift.

So you were in favor of the war, huh? How do ya feel now?

Now, I didn't like Trump before. I was already on a quest to beat Trumpism. Now I'm on a rampage.

So let me simply say, for any who might still be doubting, the concerns about the virus are real. There is real death and real consequences for people spreading the disease around. And that's not me politicizing my father's death so much as me politicizing ALL the deaths which have occurred so far thanks to idiots not taking Covid-19 seriously.

229,190 as of Thursday, October 29th.

Plus my father, bringing it to 229,191. And 231,427 as of today.

I know those deaths are out there, and I know they're real, from more than merely the numbers being reported. I know it because when he was taken to St. Luke's, the place was packed. There were no rooms for him, no hospice beds available. West Allis Memorial was called to see if they had any room to take him. They did not.

So I don't have to imagine how bad it is for everyone else out there. I already know.

Why are masks important? This is why. Why is social distancing important? This is why. Why is taking this seriously important? This is why. Real. World. Death.

Meanwhile, the Trumpism that led to this and many other tragedies goes on, crazier than ever. At a recent Trump rally, people were literally chanting, "Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!" Vehicles, including a Biden Bus, are being run off the road by Trump thugs. The people at the Trump rallies have been cheering this, not decrying it as exactly the same sort of looting and terrorism they attack the Left for.

So, now there's one more day until the election. One more day of this Trumpist bullshit.

If I take one piece of solace, it's this:

My dad voted for Biden by absentee ballot just before he died.

Trumpism may have claimed my dad. It didn't claim his vote.

Eric

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The Shooting of Walter Wallace, Jr

 

It's happened again, this time in Philadelphia. By now, we know the script.

Black male, no angel but undeserving of a death sentence, gets shot by police in some conspicuously trigger-happy manner. The video of the Philadelphia shooting can be seen here, unedited (of course). The city understandably goes into an uproar that this nonsense has happened yet again, and protests take place. Looting and destruction takes place thanks to some fringe opportunists, possibly egged on by a couple of well-placed right-wing agitators. The Left-wing assumes everything good and just about the victim. The Right-wing assumes that the police were justified and rallies to its defense. The media turns its cameras and microphones to the family of the victim. The Right-Wing Media Cult then puts every crime the victim ever did on a loop.

We've seen it so often it's passed beyond cliche and gone over into the gloomy realm of monotony. Yet there are a few particulars which make this case extra-noteworthy.

The family seems to have called for an ambulance. Instead they got police. Three calls were made to authorities, and it still isn't clear whether the police were called directly or not, but at least one request for an ambulance was made.

No ambulance arrived until AFTER Walter Wallace was shot.

Once again, we have a situation where police fired WAY too many shots. The camera footage shows that Wallace did not charge at the officers. And he literally brought a knife to a gun-fight. But the officers not only fired at his torso when firing at his legs would have sufficed, they fired no fewer than 11 rounds into the man. One bystander was even heard shouting, "Did you need to fire that many shots?!"

And Wallace apparently was not mentally stable. He was a newlywed, so he was at least sane or crazy enough to say legal vows, but was either off meds that day, or was mentally off for some other reason. Police decided to treat him with a lead injection.

All this is bad enough, but it isn't my main thought regarding this. My main thought is:

YES, there needs to be police accountability for this.

YES, people need to peaceably protest the incident.

NO, PEOPLE SHOULD NOT RIOT! AT LEAST, NOT NOW!

Soooo close to the election's end, the very LAST thing we need is an excuse by some over-zealous chief of police to shut down polling places out of "concern for public safety." And I know, that's paranoia on a House of Cards level, but we're dealing with Donald Trump, not Kevin Spacey, and Trump's followers are capable of anything!

So please, Philly! I'm begging you! STOP RIOTING! The governor of Pennsylvania happens to be a Democrat, Tom Wolfe, but I wouldn't put it past Republicans to see what's happening in Philly and start getting ideas! Imagine if there were suddenly a deliberate police shooting in Atlanta, and polls were closed there in the days leading up to, and beyond, the election! Then suddenly, Georgia does not flip blue, as many people are expecting it might. What about Miami? Or Houston?

So CALM THE FUCK DOWN! Yes, we need to protest, but no window is so important that it can't wait to be broken until after November 4th. Walter Wallace Sr., the father of the victim, is calling for peace. Let's listen to him.

Don't give them ANY excuse!

Eric

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More Obvious Belling Madness

Just when I think Mark Belling can't get any crazier or more insane, he ups the ante once again. Here's what his broadcast on October 21st had to reveal:

"Obama gets in," says Belling, "the IRS is suddenly corrupt. Again, all of this was before Trump, so it's not like any of us were all that naive when Trump came in that there wasn't going to be a morass that he'd have to wade through. But look what it's been: Every time Trump talked over the last two or three or four years in which he said they're doing this or they're doing that, people would roll their eyes thinking that Trump was paranoid or Trump was lying just to fire up his base, turned out to be true. As it turns out - now think about this - when Trump was being impeached, over asking the Ukranians to re-open an investigation into corruption, the FBI knew that there actually was corruption in Ukraine. In other words, Trump was asking them to re-open an investigation into something which was real! And the FBI knew it was real! Because they had the Hunter Biden laptops at the time! Yet you didn't get a peep out of anybody in the FBI saying, hey, maybe you ought to know this, when Trump asked them to do... there actually is crimes there, we've got the goods on it. They all kept their mouths shut! So tell me the FBI isn't truly rotten! And again, I'm not implicating here a local agent who works in a field office in Burlington, Iowa, or wherever. I'm saying at the headquarters level, at the high level of decision-making. But not just the top one or two. There had to be quite a few people who would have known about that laptop. It's not like something can come in from Wilmington, Delaware, it doesn't go straight to Ray, the head of the FBI."

Incredible! When Belling is confronted with the contradiction that the FBI must have had the alleged Hunter Biden laptops during Trump's impeachment hearing, Belling concludes that the FBI is corrupt rather than think that the laptop story is concocted! Even though the likelihood is clearly the latter rather than the former, objectively! Belling is so desperate for the laptop story to be true, that he regards everything contrary to it as automatically false! And he includes among this, the IRS! (Which is what he was leading up to beforehand. He was referencing the fact that, in the wake of hundreds of new "non-profits" arising out of the Tea Party movement, that the IRS focused its investigations into those new, shady-seeming groups. This, Belling thinks, is Obama-led corruption rather than simple prudence.)

Just imagine! Rather than an obvious bullshit story being false, Belling would rather it be that the entire FBI, and the entire IRS be corrupt! That the whole, goddamned machine would somehow be in the back pocket of Obama and the Bidens!

It must be one hell of a surreal-looking world inside Belling's delusional head.

Just one more example of why Belling needs a padded cell rather than a radio booth, and why WISN is committing elder abuse by allowing this raving lunatic to have a continued platform.

"Now one of the things that I've always said is that truth always comes out, sometimes it just takes a long time. And the truth is coming out about the Ukraine and Hunter Biden. They'll keep the truth from the American public until it serves their purpose to have it come out, but it'll come out. Eventually we learn about all these things, sometimes it's decades later, sometimes it's relatively soon, but the damage is done in the process. I know when the media is going to discover the corruption in the Ukraine and how dirty the Bidens are. If Biden wins it will be about three weeks after the election. OH! Will the thing turn! Will their tone change! When it is in their interest to get rid of Joe Biden so Kamala Harris can be the President, it's going to be remarkable. The media... the media and the Democrats are suddenly gonna stumble on that... 'ol Joe is a) is senile and b) a crook! But one of the points that I make all the time is we conservatives are right we have to do a better job of saying 'I told you so,' while it's not polite to gloat. We have to do this so that we can reinforce here, that when the experts, when the media, when the Left keeps saying these things and say this is it, the... the... the right wingers are lying, they're lying they're lying, in fact... they were the ones that were lying all along. They were the ones that were not to be believed."

You're ON, Belling! Let's see if this actually happens a few weeks after Biden is elected! Hell, let's see if it happens at ALL!

Belling is not exactly one to predict correctly, even in football. But let's see if he's right about THIS one!

I can virtually guarantee you that he's not.

Eric

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Who Sells More Newspapers?

Quick hit:

One of the most powerful predictors of any presidential election is simply this: which candidate sells more newspapers?

At least, I used to think that was the standard.

The actual standard, I've come to realize, is: which outcome sells more newspapers?

The news media loves a candidate who will make them more money, and so it naturally gravitates towards the candidate who will generate bigger headlines. That means that reporters, consciously or unconsciously (usually the latter), tend to slant their coverage in favor of the candidate who will provide bigger news stories. Even the so-called "liberal" media sided with Donald Trump last time, in large part because it knew, intrinsically, that Trump would make them a lot more money than President Hillary Clinton would have.

But it's not that simple this time around, is it?

I think it is beyond obvious that Donald Trump gets more headlines than Joe Biden - meaning he sells way more newspapers. So from that standpoint, one might think Trump would win the election. But it's not the candidate that's really the issue. It's the outcome. President Biden may be pretty boring, and he'll make a refreshingly dull president, but Donald Trump no longer having the protection of the Presidency? That's a HUGE news generator! Because without the Presidency to protect him, Trump becomes vulnerable to huge lawsuits and possible arrest warrants. That's BIG news! And it's big news that could continue for a long, long time!

Some in the press clearly want to see this. Others, not so much. But everyone intrinsically knows it will be likely to happen. That generates more newsprint than four more years of Trump himself.

And, to be honest, maybe having the first ever female vice president will be a pretty big story, too.

Eric

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The Fakest Fake News Story

 

The Right-Wing Media Cult, and in particular Fox News, seems to be making itself absolutely breathless about the recent "news story" (perhaps I should say, fairy-tale) regarding Hunter Biden's supposed laptop and the alleged emails found therein. For those unaware, here's a synopsis of the claim:

It all started with an article in the New York Post, which is essentially the Fox News of newspapers in New York City. You can read the original article here. According to that article, Hunter Biden dropped off his personal laptop for repair at a computer repair shop in Delaware in April of 2019. The laptop allegedly had water damage. The shop owner, who is legally blind, could not identify whether the individual who dropped the computer off was Hunter Biden, but said there was a sticker on it from the Beau Biden foundation. When repeated attempts to return the laptop went ignored, the shop owner decided to look through the laptop's hard-drive. Why? No reason is given. Since the laptop had a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, he might have simply contacted that foundation in a good faith and due diligence effort to return property and receive payment. He did not. Why? Again, we don't know. Instead, this store owner, after violating ethics and looking through the hard-drive, discovered sensitive emails pertaining to Burisma, and private videos showing Hunter engaging in drug use and lewd sex acts. At this point, the Post says, the store owner contacted the FBI, and turned over the laptop. But for some strange reason yet to be explained, he decided to make a copy of the hard-drive first. When it became clear to the shop owner that the FBI was not doing anything with the discovery, he shared the information with Robert Costello, who happened to be Rudy Giuliani's lawyer. Costello, in turn, gave it to Giuliani, who gave it to the New York Post. How did the shop owner, in Delaware, happen to know a lawyer in New York? The Post does not say. Why did the shop owner not contact his own lawyer? Or perhaps turn everything over to a Republican official in the State of Delaware? Again, no explanation.

The laptop's emails allegedly contain a "thank you" letter from Burisma official, Vadym Pozharskyi, saying how much he appreciated the opportunity to meet Hunter's father, Joe. And an earlier email from the same man asks for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf. This seems to contradict Joe Biden's assertion that Hunter didn't provide any contact between himself and Burisma officials. It also implies that Hunter's influence may have contributed to the firing of Alexander Shokin, who was purportedly investigating Burisma at the time.

When the New York Post broke the story, Facebook and Twitter banned it. Not because of the story's actual content, but because of a standing policy that hacked information is not to be transmitted over their social media platforms. Naturally, the Right-Wing Media Machine cried "censorship!" and pushed the story any way they could. President Trump  himself relayed the story, which ended up getting passed along through Babylon Bee - which is the Alt-Right version of The Onion.

So what's wrong with this?

Plenty. And lots of other news outlets are pointing out the flaws. But I don't believe those efforts are being thorough enough. So here's my breakdown on all the problems with this particular story-line:

1) The FBI is investigating this, not as a matter pertaining to Joe Biden exerting undue influence in Ukraine, but as a potential attempt by a foreign government at influencing the election. This from The Daily Beast and other sources. The FBI itself is declining comment, but if there were anything to this, there would be a James Comey type of investigation into Hunter's emails. There is apparently not. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It is Giuliani and his role which are being investigated.

2)  Vadym Pozharskyi seems to have never officially met Joe Biden. Oh, there's a remote possibility that he may have met Joe at a public event and shaken hands with him, but there was never a formal meeting. Biden's foreign policy and energy advisers have no knowledge of the man, and they're the ones who would have vetted and scheduled any such meeting. So, outside of a possible handshake, this Burisma official never met with Biden. That means the email linking Hunter Biden with Vadym Pozharskyi is fake. Furthermore, the email the Post cites does not actually show that Hunter Biden “introduced” Joe Biden to the Burisma executive at all. In the email, Pozharskyi thanks Hunter Biden for “giving an opportunity to meet your father.” That might may just as easily have meant Hunter promised a meeting in the future - a meeting which may never have occurred! The Post does not appear to have produced any other reporting indicating such a meeting took place. And what does Pozharskyi have to say for himself? So far, nothing.

3) The story itself is highly unlikely. Hunter Biden lives in L.A. He would have taken his computer to a Los Angeles computer store. Could he have brought the computer all the way over to Delaware while on a visit to see his father? Probably not, since his father was spending most of his time campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire at the time.

4) The shop owner keeps changing his story. The owner is John Paul MacIsaac of Wilmington. He is an avid Trump supporter. He initially said that he wasn’t able to identify who dropped off the laptop because he is “legally blind.” He only says that the customer had identified himself as Hunter Biden. Convenient. But what about his store's security cameras? Can't they show whether it was Hunter or not? The shop does have two cameras, but MacIsaac claimed the footage from that day was automatically deleted before he realized how important it was. What about the invoice? It's mad out to the name of "Hunter Biden," together with an address and a signature. Doesn't THAT prove it was Hunter? MacIsaac won't say. He’s given conflicting accounts of how he came into contact with the FBI. He says he initially made a copy of the hard drive for personal protection, Hillary Clinton purportedly once killed a DNC staffer for leaking information. MacIsaac has generally been sketchy with reporters regarding his dealings with Giuliani, and hard-drive in question.

5) The story is remarkably un-confirmable. There are photos of an FBI subpoena, but it has been redacted, so it could apply to anyone. There is a separate page showing Hunter Biden's address and what looks like his signature, but it is separate, and could easily be either forged, unrelated, or both. The hard-drive's contents are in the hands of the New York Post. But what's on that hard-drive? We don't know. The Post has only released certain photos which purportedly came from the hard-drive, but no one else has been allowed to examine it, or receive a copy. This means that we have only the Post's word for it, and that's not acceptable. Steve Bannon claims to have the copy of the hard-drive lately, but he, too, has been jealously guarding it.

6) The timing is suspect. If this laptop had been dropped off in April of 2019, then Giuliani probably already had the hard drive in his hands during the time of Trump's impeachment trial. Does anyone truly believe that Giuliani would have held on to this all through that crucial time for Donald Trump? This story should have broken back in January at the very latest. Instead it appears three weeks before the election? Yeah, riiiiiight.

7) The messenger is suspect. Rudy Giuliani has not only lost his marbles as of late, he has been red-flagged for months as a target for foreign influence from Russia. And now that very guy is the guy who gave the story to the New York Post? Couldn't Russia have found someone more credible? Like L. Ron Hubbard?

8) Even the reporters at the New York Post found the article suspect. The person who actually wrote most of the piece refused to sign her name to it out of fear that it wasn't true, according to an article by the New York Times. 

9) For the millionth time, Alexander Shokin was fired for NOT investigating Burisma! That's why Joe Biden was so proud of getting him fired! Shokin was then replaced with Yuriy Lutsenko, who completed the investigation into Burisma. So saying that Hunter influenced his father to pressure the Ukranian government to stop investigating Burisma is ludicrous!

As you can see, the story has as many holes as a sieve, and holds water about as equally well. Meanwhile, the lackeys at Fox News are treating the story as though it were the second coming of Jesus Christ.

I'll wait for the second coming of sanity.

Eric

*

A Day In The Life Of The Right-Wing Media Cult

 

I have said recently that the Right-Wing Media has become a cult, and in case you somehow don't believe me, here's what hit the news just yesterday that totally makes my point regarding this:

Trump begged for women to vote for him at a rally, saying, "So I ask you to do me a favor. Suburban women: will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK? The other thing: I don't have that much time to be that nice. You know, I can do it, but I gotta go quickly."

Sounds a bit like that bad first date who says, "You know, I sprung for a nice dinner for you, and I don't have all night, so can we just get right to it, please?" Yeah, he's that guy.

And there was a time when no politician would say anything that bluntly racist. Really? "I saved your damn neighborhood?" From what, pray tell? Why, from those silly black people who want to move to your upper middle-class neighborhood, that's what! Now, point this out to a Trump supporter, and they will say, "That's not racist!"

Yeah. Cult.

Then there's this one: Olivia Nuzzi reported in the Intelligencer that Rudy Giuliani had this particular meltdown:

“I took one this morning,” Giuliani said of hydroxychloroquine. “I was exposed four days ago. Four negatives. My doctor makes me take hydroxychloroquine because he believes it’s a prophylactic. Not only that — my doctor has treated 2,000 patients. Two people died. One was 87. The other was 79. Both of them had very serious diabetes.” He called the drug “a great pill if you take it at the early stages.”

Later on, after claiming that Democrats used the pandemic to take away gun rights (which did not happen) he mentioned the McCloskeys, the couple who wielded guns on the porch of their St. Louis mansion in front of Black Lives Matter demonstrators who were passing by. Giuliani said (no, I'm not making this up) that the protesters had yelled, “’We want to rape your wife! We want to rape your wife! We want this for reparations! This is number one for reparations! Biggest house here! Reparations!’ Nobody knows this, but at the time, their daughter was upstairs under the bed because she was afraid they’re going to come in and they’re talking about rape and they’re going to rape the wife and they’re going to find the daughter.”

How much of this was true? Exactly zero percent!

Yeah. Cult.

In a normal administration, with a normal electorate, Giulianni would be quietly fired and brought to a psychiatrist. Probably in a strait-jacket. How far we have come from the days when John McCain yanked the microphone away from a crazy woman who insisted that Barack Obama was a Muslim.

Then there's this one:

When Senator Corey Booker asked Amy Comey Barrett if a president should commit himself to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses an election, Barrett said this:

“Well, Senator, that seems to me to be pulling me in a little bit into this question of whether the president has said that he would not peacefully leave office, and so to the extent this is a political controversy right now, as a judge I want to stay out of it.”

No it's not a "political controversy!" It is basic jurisprudence 101! If a president refuses to leave after losing an election, that's called a dictatorship, and it's just not done! But this woman was so over-coached to avoid saying anything controversial that she dodged even that softball question! And in so doing, looked to the whole world as though she were the most incompetent judge on the planet! I doubt she's quite that bad, but if she wouldn't even answer that one, it's close!

Like I said, cult.

Or there was the news story about Trump considering wearing a Superman t-shirt underneath his regular clothes and then ripping off his button-down shirt to reveal it. Because that's a sane president, right? Or the one where Trump re-Tweeted a conspiracy theory that says Obama and Biden may have had Seal Team 6 murdered. In what universe is this not grounds for immediate impeachment?

It won't be considered, and not just because the election is 20 days away. It won't be considered because 52 Senators just won't grow enough of a backbone to restore some small shred of dignity to their party.

'Nuff said.

Eric

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They Don't Believe The Polls!

 By any measure, Joe Biden has a commanding lead right now.

The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Biden with a 10-point lead. Biden has had a roughly 7-point lead ever since July. And this steadiness is one of the biggest aberrations of any set of polling data we have seen in the modern era. Even Rasmussen, Right-leaning Rasmussen, gave Biden a 12- point lead in its most recent poll. Ordinarily, there are huge swings and much narrower margins. In 2012, Mitt Romney was occasionally seen with a 2-point edge over Obama. In 2016 at this time, Hillary's lead over Trump was only 3 or 4 points. It grew to 6 points after the release of the Access Hollywood Tape, but then crashed down to negative numbers after James Comey announced his re-opening of the email investigation, only 11 days out. States which might never have been dreamed to be in play are potential wins for Biden. Georgia? Iowa? Even Texas is a potential flip for the Democrats now! Biden's lead is so large and so steady, that any sane person on the Republican side should be worried sick.

Instead, what I see is complete denial.

I saw one conservative post an election map which showed his projections for Trump winning big. I shit you not, this clown had Trump Winning not only in various swing states like Arizona, but also solidly blue states like Minnesota and New York! Never mind that polls are showing Biden with a solid lead in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Arizona. Check this stupid shit out:

The post references the "Helmut Norpoth Model." Basically, the Helmut Norpoth Model assumes that if a primary candidate did better in a particular state than the opponent did in his/her primary, that meant the enthusiasm would carry the state for that particular candidate. In other words, better primary numbers mean a better chance at winning. Of course, that's pure horse-shit when one political party already has an incumbent candidate. So projections like the one above, where New York State, of all places, shows red, are completely baseless.

I chimed in, saying that whoever did this particular Electoral College map was smoking crack, and that projections showed both Arizona and my home state of Wisconsin as likely blue.

Believe it or not, I actually got blowback on this! One guy told me that Wisconsin was not even close to being blue because both legislative bodies were Republican. As a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, I told this idiot to not presume what I saw in my own damned back yard, and pointed out that the legislature was still Republican only due to extreme gerrymandering. Another person who was a resident of Arizona was adamant that Arizona would not go blue, and called me an ignorant neanderthal for suggesting otherwise. I hit her with a link to the Real Clear Politics polling average which showed Biden with a clear and steady lead in AZ and nationwide. A bunch more people then jumped on the thread and told me those polls were fake! No joke! They posted links to conservative articles that claimed the polls were being skewed in favor of Democrats in order to discourage people from getting out to vote for Trump. I faithfully read the articles, saw that they had zero evidence to present, and said so! They still refused to accept it.

Okay, I get that the polls shifted so radically in 2016, and so quickly towards the end, that many people believed Hillary had a lead right up to election day. But she did not! Her lead evaporated days before, and polls were showing her behind by 2 or 3 points! James Comey's re-instituion of an investigation into Hillary's emails turned her chances at victory to ash! When James Comey concluded his re-investigation on the Sunday before Election Day and found, yet again, that Hillary was in the clear, I expected a last-minute bounce of 2 or 3 points. But it never came.

Fast forward to today. These people believe that, because they didn't see the actual shift in the polls beforehand last time, that the earlier polls which showed Hillary in the lead must have been fake. They believe this same sort of thing is happening now.

Um, no.

The Helmut Norpoth Model is based on wishful thinking at best. But it's not really about that. The reason so many people are doubting the polls is because the Right-Wing Media Cult is declaring the polls to be fake. This sets the stage for Trump to claim, as we all expect him to, that the election results are invalid, and that he should not leave office. Trump's followers, having been primed to disbelieve the polls for months and months, will buy this garbage and believe Trump won.

Even though every single poll has shown Biden with an incredibly solid lead for almost the entire goddamned year!

A more realistic map emerges when you take the Real Clear Politics average and use that to make a "no toss-up state" election model. This shows Trump losing in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, and even Iowa - all states where Trump is polling behind.

Such an outcome might bitch-slap Trump voters back into reality. But in truth, if reality hasn't bitch-slapped them enough by now, I doubt it will do so again this time.

Which means, after Trump loses, we must vigilantly busy ourselves with making sure he leaves, making sure his supporters do not trash the goddamned place (because they might), and making sure Trump is dragged out by his stupid hair after Biden is sworn in.

Eric

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