Trump Is A Severe Public Health Danger

Badge of Honor by Nancy Ohanian

The Washington Post's Josh Dawson and Lena Sun reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suddenly and inexplicably removed specifics on choirs in its guidelines for houses of worship to reopen. Trump had been pestering them to do so for two weeks. After thousands of church-goers around the world contracted COVID-19 during services, the CDC had included "The act of singing may contribute to transmission of Covid-19, possibly through emission of aerosols" in their guidelines and Trump got that removed. That's just one of many examples of how the Republican Party Death Cult is trying every which way to politicize the pandemic and continue spiking the death rates.

Yesterday, Bob Egelko reported for the San Francisco Chronicle on the surprise Supreme Court ruling against Trump and others rushing to open everything up too soon and without precautions. "With a deciding vote from Chief Justice John Roberts," wrote Egelko, "the Supreme Court late Friday allowed Gov. Gavin Newsom to restrict attendance at religious services in California to 25% of the capacity of a house of worship because of the coronavirus. The justices voted 5-4 to reject a challenge by a Pentecostal church in Chula Vista (San Diego County) and its bishop, who claimed the state was discriminating against religious institutions by setting undue limits on attendance."

In his first round of reopenings in early May, Newsom allowed some previously closed businesses to resume limited operations, such as curbside pickups, but refused to allow in-person religious services. After a divided federal appeals court upheld his decision on May 22, the governor announced new rules three days later allowing congregations to meet in person but limiting attendance to 25% of the building’s capacity, with a maximum gathering of 100.

The standards, in effect for 21 days, discourage such activities as sharing prayer books and ritual items as well as personal contact and congregational singing, all of which can spread the coronavirus.

President Trump has denounced such restrictions in California and elsewhere and ordered governors to rescind them, though he has not cited any federal law authorizing him to overrule state officials’ decisions on which institutions to reopen.

Roberts joined the court’s more liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, in denying an injunction sought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church. Writing only for himself, the chief justice said detailed decisions on health-related issues should generally be left to “politically accountable” state officials unless they clearly violate a constitutional right such as religious freedom.

“Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time,” Roberts said. He said Newsom’s order “exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks, and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.”

Dissenting Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected Roberts’ comparison and said Newsom was restricting houses of worship more severely than businesses, in violation of religious freedom.

“Comparable secular businesses are not subject to a 25% occupancy cap, including factories, offices, supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores, pharmacies, shopping malls, pet grooming shops, bookstores, florists, hair salons, and cannabis dispensaries,” Kavanaugh said.

Noting that the church had agreed to require social distancing and hygiene measures if allowed to fully open its doors, Kavanaugh asked, “Why can someone safely walk down a grocery store aisle but not a pew?” Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined his dissent, while Justice Samuel Alito dissented for unstated reasons.

Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX) was one of many people begging Trumpanzee to reverse his insane decision Friday to severe U.S. ties with the World Health Organization-- one of the scapegoats for his own incompetence and the dysfunction of his regime. Hurd wrote that "leaving the WHO sends the message that the world cannot count on the United States" and that while WHO made mistakes in its response to the coronavirus spread, walking away from the organization will make it much harder to prevent the spread of future disease across the globe. Hurd, who is leaving Congress primarily because he can't stand dealing with Trump any longer: "International coalitions are essential to fighting global challenges; we should be strengthening our alliances, not dismantling them... President Trump's recent decision to terminate America's role in the World Health Organization will have devastating effects on global health, and it will benefit the Chinese Communist Party."

Meanwhile, the European Union also called on the swinish, pig-headed orange monstrosity to reconsider. Yesterday, in a joint statement, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell made it clear that, once again, the psychotic Trump is on his own:

As the world continues to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the main task for everyone is to save lives and contain and mitigate this pandemic. The European Union continues to support the WHO in this regard and has already provided additional funding.

In an EU-led resolution adopted by consensus on 19 May at the World Health Assembly, all WHO Member States agreed to initiate, at the earliest appropriate moment, an impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation to review lessons learnt from the international health response to the coronavirus, notably with the objective of strengthening future global health security preparedness.

Evaluating our global response is necessary as there are lessons to be learnt from this pandemic, its outbreak and response to it. The evaluation of our collective performance at international level is only a necessary process, aiming at strengthening health security.

Global cooperation and solidarity through multilateral efforts are the only effective and viable avenues to win this battle the world is facing. The WHO needs to continue being able to lead the international response to pandemics, current and future. For this, the participation and support of all is required and very much needed. In the face of this global threat, now is the time for enhanced cooperation and common solutions. Actions that weaken international results must be avoided. In this context, we urge the US to reconsider its announced decision.

The Cure by Nancy Ohanian

American public health officials have also reacted with alarm to Pig-Man's horrific decision-- another in a long list of wrong and catastrophic decisions he has made in regard to national security and the health of the American people. Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "We helped create the W.H.O. Turning our back on the W.H.O. makes us and the world less safe." That's a Trump specialty-- making us and the world less safe... and he's been doing it for decades, as if Satan had sent him up to do exactly that. CNN reported yesterday that the monster "has spent decades spreading and sowing dangerous misinformation about disease outbreaks-- from falsely suggesting AIDS can be transmitted through kissing to warning Americans not to get vaccinated and falsely suggesting vaccines can cause autism. Long before advising Americans to ingest disinfectant to treat the coronavirus as President, Trump demonstrated a pattern of spreading unsupported medical claims that preyed on the public's fears of getting sick, a CNN KFile review of the President's statements on past epidemics and pandemics found."

On a Howard Stern radio show in 1993 Trump told the audience that "The problem is people that get the [HIV] test, that test positive, they go out on a rampage on purpose. There's anger, there's hatred. I know and what's happening is true. There's anger, there's hatred and it's really dangerous."

In 1993, Trump promoted the widely-debunked claims that AIDS could be spread by kissing and that AIDS patients intentionally spread the virus. As the swine flu pandemic began in 2009, he warned Americans against taking flu vaccines. When the Ebola virus outbreak devastated West Africa in 2014, he disputed guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how it spreads.

Today as the nation's chief executive overseeing his own public health crisis, Trump continues to comprehensively misinform the public about the coronavirus, offering remarks riddled with false, misleading or scientifically questionable claims.

And malevolent lies. They forgot to mention Trump's trademark.

Joe Lockhart Is A Disaster Containment Expert-- And He Has Plenty Of Advice For Status Quo Joe

C'mon, man!

Joe Lockhart's name should sound familiar. He was Bill Clinton's version of Sarah Huckabee Sanders for his final two years in the White House. He had also worked as press secretary for failed establishment candidates Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis and after the Clinton administration ended he worked for John Kerry's campaign. More recently he worked for Facebook and the NFL trying to contain myriad scandals. In 2017 Obama bought his mansion in DC.

I don't know who Lockhart, a Third Way creature, supports for president, but I'd give odds that it's Status Quo Joe. On Friday, CNN published an OpEd by Lockhart, What Kamala Harris and AOC can't make Joe Biden do, about the glories of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, personified by... who else?-- Status Quo Joe. "Anyone expecting to see a major reboot in the Biden campaign or a Joe Biden 2.0," he wrote, admiringly, "just doesn't know the former vice president. He knows what he knows, which isn't everything, and is not likely to refashion his image based on a poll or a debate performance." Lockhart suggests Biden do my interviews like the one he did with Chris Cuomo and spend more time on the campaign trail as he is suddenly doing in Iowa. As a supporter of a Bernie/Warren ticket, I couldn't agree more. The Cuomo interview was a catastrophe as are all of Biden's public appearances. Biden is damaged goods and the campaign was polling in the 40s when they managed to keep him out of sight. Now that voters are seeing who he is, his approvals have sunk into the mid-20s. That was fast!

Lockhart, who is a specialist in containing catastrophes-- like Clinton's impeachment and Facebook's... well Facebook's existence-- and he's offering some advice for the on-going Biden meltdown. It's the opposite of what Biden's campaign is suggesting. Lockhart wants an out-of-touch, tongue-tied, dishonest and increasingly senile old man to do what he's not capable of doing. He wrote that Biden "needs a better pushback to the kinds of charges directed at him in the Democratic presidential xebate (Facebook lingo) by Sen. Kamala Harris... Biden made clear he was surprised not by the attack, but by the way Harris delivered it, in such a personal way. He implicitly charged Harris with a bit of demagoguery-- that she criticized his position while holding essentially the same position herself. But he visibly pulled back from elaborating, saying he is determined to stay above what he calls the scrum. Is this a good strategy? Can he survive in a modern campaign while not going personally after other Democrats? That remains to be seen. What's not in doubt is he's not likely to change his views."

The rest of the [Cuomo] interview was a much clearer expression of how he intends to run this race and where he stands on the issues. Apart from his own personal philosophy and ideology, I know Biden will not lurch to the left to be nominated. He doesn't believe that's where Democratic voters are. He smartly [stupidly, actually] cited the 2018 midterm results. While much of the media focused on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez' victory, Biden's team was watching Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA operative who upset Republican Dave Brat in Virginia's 7th District, which has been reliably Republican for decades.

The Democratic victory in 2018 was the result of center-left Democrats winning against more left-wing opponents in primaries. According to the Third Way think tank, 33 of the 40 Democrats who won in swing districts defeated someone on their left on primary day.

Biden also doesn't want to do anything that will open himself up to Trump-style attacks on election day in November. That's why he'll stick with his version of Medicare for those who want it rather than Medicare for All. Again, from Third Way, no Democratic candidate in a swing district ran an ad touting Medicare for All.

As Ron Brownstein rightly pointed out Friday, Biden is the only top-tier candidate who is for preserving the private insurance market for those who have it and want to keep it. Biden's team believes that is a key element in winning or losing the health care debate next fall.

He also made the point that he believes our system of political asylum works if it is properly administered, following both humane practices and the law. That puts him at odds with many of the candidates running against him and some Democratic party voters. But Biden is betting that a plan to reform immigration policy is both the better approach and inoculates the party from charges that it is for open borders.

On style, this interview was a very good performance by Biden. Make no mistake, he's no Obama or Clinton. His strength is his passion, not his performance skills, so don't expect major changes there.

In the end, some of Biden's tactics will change as the campaign moves forward, but his strategy won't. The voters will decide if he's got it right.

Neoliberals like Joe Lockhart-- and, more so, Joe Biden and the Clintons-- have had their days in the sun and... the result? A contemptible, vulgar reality TV loudmouth and authoritarian ignoramus in the Oval Office.

The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President-- Part III, Michael Bloomberg

The image Democratic primary voters are looking for?

So, we have this series about the worst Democrats who want to be president-- Part I was Tulsi Gabbard and Part II was Kirsten Gillibrand-- and people have been asking me why it's taking so long to include Michael Bloomberg, obviously the worst of all. Well... is he a Democrat? I remember him running as a Republican and then as an independent. Is he pretending to be a Democrat now. His net worth is something between $46.3 and $51 billion-- which everyone knows should be taxed, above the first million, at 90%-- so how can he be a Democrat?

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I noted in a different post, that Bloomberg was strutting around the Bohemian Grove over the summer telling one and all that he's running for president. Kate Albright-Hanna did a terrific essay about his upcoming play to buy the presidency and why Democrats need to stop him. His recent moves," she wrote, "warm the hearts of centrist pundits who believe his orderliness, love of data and great wealth are 'antidotes' to Trump." I was born and raised in New York. It’s my home town. I stopped going there because of what Bloomberg did to it. Did, like in ripping out its soul and making it a Disneyland for the super-rich. But, I know, I know... he deserves a prominent place in the series. But look at it from Wall Street's view; they love him. Does that make you feel like supporting him?

Over the weekend, Vanity Fair published a piece by William Cohan, "I'd Vote For Michael In A Heartbeat": Wall Street's Case For President Bloomberg. First, though, can we all agree he's probably not as bad as Trump?

Cohan noted that Bloomberg donated $100 million to support a host of Democratic candidates in the midterm elections, helping to pick up 40 seats in the House, and purchasing plenty of goodwill in the process." His money was mostly wasted on making corrupt consultants richer. The only congressional candidate who actually won because of him is Kendra Horn, who you-- admit it-- probably never heard of, and is, like Bloomberg himself, a politically pointless, centrist mush likely to do more harm than good.

Like many #NeverTrump Republicans, he's been a good anti-Trump speaker and, in fact, when he made a big show of switching his party registration last month, he said Democrats can "provide the checks and balances our nation so badly needs" but didn't say anything about-- nor give any indication he understood-- Democratic Party values.

A theme you will hearing a lot: "he is the anti-Donald Trump. He is philanthropic, where Trump is not. He is actually very, very rich-- with a net worth of more than $50 billion and counting-- whereas Trump mostly pretends to be. He has meaningful and relevant experience as the chief executive of a global company and an international city, while Trump was woefully unprepared to be president and seems always to be learning on the job, and poorly at that. Unlike Trump, who at 72, claims to be the healthiest person who has ever served as president, Bloomberg, four years older than Trump, may actually be among the healthiest. In any event, he has some serious longevity genes: his mother lived to be 102 years old."

Being the anti-Trump in nearly every way, shape and form [-- because as you know, Michael Bloomberg is really a blue collar black lesbian--] could prove extremely useful politically for Bloomberg should he decide to run in 2020. And there is little doubt that whoever the Democrats nominate to face Trump, the plan will be to draw as sharp a contrast with him as possible, hoping that by then a vast majority of Americans, as well as the Electoral College map, will have had quite enough of Trump and his presidency. The only unanswered question is whether the Democrats will nominate someone from its liberal progressive wing-- in the Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris*, Beto O’Rourke* mold-- or whether the nominee will be from the party’s centrist progressive wing, in the form of, say, Bloomberg or Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts who has been a Bain Capital partner for the past three years.

[moderates but don't tell Cohan who, apparently doesn't know anything about either]

No surprise, on Wall Street, Bloomberg has vast reservoirs of support. “Think he would be great for America, and therefore for Wall Street,” one senior banker e-mailed me the other day. “Can’t think of anybody else I’d rather see win frankly.” Added Christopher Whalen, the founder of Whalen Global Advisors, an investment banking firm, and an astute economic analyst, “Oh, I’d vote for Michael in a heartbeat because he’s competent. In most areas you and I care about, he would do a good job.”

But for both men, the question remains: can Bloomberg win? The senior banker thinks Bloomberg could win the popular vote, although he’s less sure about the Electoral College. “The number of voters who would want almost anybody (except Hillary) over Trump exceeds the number of core Trumpers,” he wrote. “Bloomberg vs. Trump: he gets all of the Democrats and a big slug of Republicans as well.”

[Really? All the Democrats? Maybe not the ones who don't want to vote for conservative multi-billionaires... but the rest.]

Still, what works for Wall Street [see photo] doesn’t necessarily resonate on Main Street. Whalen worries that Bloomberg doesn’t have the “public persona” to run for president-- he’s just not well enough known beyond the Hudson-- and may come off as “preachy,” on such topics as gun control, smoking, and the consumption of sugary drinks. Large swaths of the American electorate obviously don’t like to be told what they can and can’t do and what may or may not be bad for their health, despite the fact that Bloomberg is probably correct about the dangers of smoking and consuming too much sugar, to say nothing about the need for comprehensive gun control.

...The inside word on Wall Street is that Bloomberg will announce his candidacy in February. And that’s when the trouble for him will start, and not just from Trump, who many believe Bloomberg can face down in ways that his rivals for the Democratic nomination cannot. No, the problem for Bloomberg will come from the progressives to his left. “Oh God, please don’t run,” read one characteristic response in the New York Times comment section in September, after the paper ran a piece about the prospects of a Bloomberg presidential bid. “I respect him tremendously on gun violence prevention and on the environment. But this is a man who ran and governed as a Republican. He is not what Democratic progressives want or demand at this time. And let’s not overvalue the middle-- Democrats playing to the middle for too long is partly to blame for two branches of government now being in Republican hands. He will do nothing to inspire people who often don’t vote and help us get out the Democratic vote. Getting out the Democratic vote is what it’s all about.”

Howard Wolfson worked for Hillary's campaigns in 2000 and 2006. Before that he was Schumer's comms guy and worked for the DCCC before that. You can probably deduce some stuff about him from that. He's Bloomberg's chief political advisor now and last night he announced his 76 year old client is going to Des Moines, ostensibly to screen a film about climate change. Bernie's going to have to face some establishment centrist in the primary. I suspect he'd prefer Bloomberg; what progressive wouldn't? Is there a better foil before going on to Trumpanzee? Anyone know if African-Americans, who I hear are important in Democratic primaries, have forgiven Bloomberg for shooting them in the streets of New York while he was mayor?

Prognosticators Have Never Learned How To Rate Races In A Wave Election-- And Pollsters Can't Get Their Models Straight

Polls are all based on "likely voters." A campaign manager I was talking to last week was in a rush because he was still dragging homeless people onto buses to feed them sandwiches, etc and get them to the early voting stations. Over a thousand. Likely voters? Not a chance. Early voting shows "unexpected" upturns for women voters, black voters, Latino voters and millennials voters. How many extra seats is that worth to the Democrats beyond what the pollsters and prognosticators predicted? 10? 20? 30?

Last week Time Magazine warned them: Youth Voter Turnout in the Midterm Elections Could Be Historic, According to a New Poll. "Young voters could turn out to vote at record-breaking levels in the midterm elections next month, according to a new poll. The poll, released Monday by the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, found 40% of 18 to 29-year-olds say they will 'definitely vote' in the midterm elections on Nov. 6. Youth voter turnout has historically been dismal in midterm elections, which tend to draw fewer voters overall than presidential election years. The highest rate of youth voter turnout in past midterm elections was 21% in both 1986 and 1994, according to the Harvard report... In the 2014 midterm elections, 19.9% of adults under 30 voted-- 'the lowest rate of youth turnout recorded in the past 40 years.' In the 2016 presidential election, 46.1% of adults under 30 voted-- an increase from 2012, but still the lowest turnout rate of any age group."

In this year’s poll, a larger percentage of young Democrats (54%) than young Republicans (43%) indicated they were likely to vote.. Overall, 66% of respondents supported Democrats taking back control of Congress, compared to 32% for Republican control.

So how's that working out today? We don't know yet, but what we do know is that millennials turned out big in early voting. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that early voting is pointing to a "Youth Wave."

Youth turnout rates in the midterm early vote are up by 125 percent compared to 2014, according to Catalist, a voter database servicing progressive organizations-- an eye-popping and historically high figure, say strategists on both the left and the right.

Young Americans ages 18 to 29 who say they are definitely voting tilt leftward, according to polls. But the data also shows young Republicans are bubbling with enthusiasm headed into tomorrow.

...2020 implications: Among young people polled, 59 percent said they would “never” vote for President Trump vs. 11 percent who said they'd be “sure to” vote for him.

... GOP pollster Chris Wilson, the CEO of WPA Intelligence, told us he thought it was a “bit too much” to call the turnout “historic.” But he said the electorate is looking younger “than both the 2016 and 2014 general elections. “Voters under 25 are outpacing their vote share from both the 2016 and 2014 general. Proportionately it’s not enough to make a huge difference, but it’s more,” Wilson said.

Nine months after 17 students were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Della Volpe's firm, SocialSphere, found that school shootings are the most worrisome issue to young Americans.

Surge in activism = a surge in voting: Tom Bonier, a Democratic  strategist and head of the firm Targetsmart, told us that skeptics initially cast doubt on the firm's findings that the “share of youth registrants nationwide increased by 2.16 percent” after the Parkland shooting in February.  A September memo showed that turnout among young people increased by an average of 4 percent in the 2018 primaries vs. 2014 primaries-- and doubled in some battleground states compared to 2014. Per Bonier, “Pennsylvania . . . has seen youth voter registration surge by 10 points after [Parkland]. Youth voters make up nearly 60 percent of all new Pennsylvania registrants.”

The mass shooting generation is showing up: We spoke with Jackie Corin, co-founder of March for Our Lives, who voted for the first time last week. Corin, along with a handful of her peers, has been traveling the country, meeting with lawmakers and mass shooting survivors, speaking on college campuses and visiting communities to build what the group calls a “youth infrastructure” to carry over into 2020. 

• Civic engagement is cool: “Activism is becoming more of a normalized activity for teenagers-- they are seeing their friends get involved with campaigns and issues and it’s spreading like wildfire,” Corin added.
• Twitter working against Trump?: Corin also credited the spike in awareness and engagement to Trump's Twitter habits. “The president uses Twitter as main source of communication and that’s something that young people see every single day-- they’re always on Twitter and Instagram so they're more engaged about what's going on.”
• Real progress: Since the Parkland shooting that killed 17, over 60 state laws have been passed tightening gun control. “The constant mass shootings are large motivators … it’s what has activated thousands and thousands of people across this country,” Corin said.

We still don't know if the shift pollsters are seeing in early voting will be reflected at the ballot box.

So far today, it very much looks like it is. Meanwhile, everyone agrees that the likeliest of likely voters are seniors, particularly retirees. It's undeniable that they vote more than any other age group and that in recent decades that have been more prone to vote Republican. That party preference seems to have flipped on its head this cycle. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that campaign donors "who identify their occupation as 'retired' gave 52% of the $326 million they contributed through Oct. 17 to Democrats, compared with 48% to Republicans according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That is a reversal of their split four years ago-- and it’s a record amount of midterm money from retirees. This is the first midterms since the group began keeping donor industry data in 1990 in which retirees favor Democrats over Republicans. That year, retirees gave 76% of their $15 million in contributions to Republicans and 24% to Democrats. As social security and Medicare have become hot-button political issues, retiree donors have steadily crept toward Democrats, the center’s data show. By 2002, the GOP advantage among retiree donors had declined to 63% versus 36%. Eight years later, the split was 55%-44%."

What If Blind People Decided Not To Vote For Trump?

The Dark Triad by Chip Proser

Señor T alienated another group of voters: blind people. There are 7,297,100 blind people living in the U.S. Before we get into how Trump alienated blind people, let's look at a few states. The first number is approximately how many blind people live there. The second number is the margin of Trump's win over Hillary:

• Arizona- 161,400 (91,234)
• Florida 486,400 (112,911)
• Georgia- 262,800 (203,441)
• Michigan- 221,400 (10,704)
• North Carolina- 269,600 (173,315)
• Pennsylvania- 300,000 (44,492)
• Wisconsin- 97,300 (22,748)

That's 117 electoral votes, Trump had 304 electoral votes to Hillary's 227. a 77 vote majority... Just sayin'.



Barbara Res wrote an OpEd for the N.Y. Daily News yesterday. She was the vice president in charge of construction at the Trump Organization until she quit... And this OpEd, Trump and his flunkies: Why aren't staffers standing up to him? explains why she quit. This is how she started the piece:

On this particular day, the architect had come to Donald Trump’s office to show him what the interior of the residential elevator cabs would look like.

Trump looked at the panels where the buttons you push to reach a floor were located. He noticed that next to each number were some little dots.

“What’s this?” Trump asked.

“Braille,” the architect replied.

Trump told the architect to take it off, get rid of it.

“We can’t,” the architect said, “It’s the law.”

“Get rid of the (expletive) braille. No blind people are going to live in Trump Tower. Just do it,” Trump yelled back, calling him weak.

The more the architect protested, the angrier Trump got. Donald liked to pick on this guy. As a general rule, Trump thought architects and engineers were weak as compared to construction people. And he loved to torment weak people.

But did he think the architect would remove the Braille from the panels? Never.

I had seen him do this kind of thing before and would again. He would say whatever came into his head. Ordering an underling to do something that was impossible gave Trump the opportunity to castigate a subordinate and also blame him for anything that “went wrong” in connection with the unperformed order later. A Trump-style win-win.

Trump did this with outrageous or just plain stupid ideas, both legal and illegal. Sometimes those lines were blurred.

Before Trump won the nomination, Rolling Stone ran a story about Res, reminding readers that Trump was always invoking Res as proof that he’s long been a champion of women -- pushback for when his was accused of being a sexist pig. The first question and answer:

Were you surprised by the image Trump retweeted comparing Heidi Cruz’s appearance to Melania Trump’s, or did that seem pretty par for the course given what you saw of his attitudes toward women?


I was not surprised, no. Here’s a story: We were working on this big project on the West Side [the ill-fated Trump City, now known at Riverside South] and there were a lot of influential people opposing the project. We ended up trying to make an agreement with this consortium of people. There was a very, very important woman on the side of the group that was opposing us, and Donald had to have lunch with her. He said she was very, very ugly and he didn’t want to be seen sitting alone with her on his perch at the Plaza Hotel, so he made me go to the meeting with him.

Midnight Meme, Special Edition: The 12 Days Of Christimemes #3

-by Noah

Continuing our examination of this past summer's Chris Christie meme phenomenon...

Your turn, Chris. You're next. Then be gone. You won't fool anyone again, at least I hope not.

Goin' Mobile-- A More Progressive Congress For 2017?

A few years ago, Alan Grayson suggested we use a mobile billboard-- a truck with billboards mounted on them like the ones on this page-- in a campaign we were doing to help defeat Buck McKeon. Grayson was right about the efficacy of the mobile billboards compared to far more expensive TV advertising... and Blue America has been doing it ever since. (The powerful and entrenched McKeon was thought to be invincible and the DCCC refused to work against him, but he nearly lost and got so scared that he would the next time that he unexpectedly retired and started a lobbying firm.) We have 4 trucks on the road now-- for Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, Tom Wakely in Texas, DuWayne Gregory on Long Island and for Ruben Kihuen in Nevada. The only candidate the DCCC is helping at all is Ruben... mostly because Harry Reid and the Nevada unions are forcing them to. If you'd like to help us expand our fleet of trucks-- we're dying to get one up to Zephyr Teachout's district and one down to Doug Applegate's district (the guy running against Issa)-- please contribute to our IE Committee here (that Independent Expenditure).

Yesterday, Grayson sent out an alert to everyone on his mailing list about our efforts. "in key races around the country," he wrote, "Blue America PAC is sponsoring 'mobile billboards' (trucks) to help progressives win. Would you like to pay for the gas money?"

In elections, there are only two things that matter:

(1) What the voters see, and,
(2) What the voters hear.

(Until, of course, television is replaced by smellovision, and the candidates can appeal to that all-important third sense. With cinnamon, perhaps, or in the case of Donald Trump, eau de skunk.)

In advertising, each time a member of the audience sees or hears something, that’s called an impression. Political advertising, like all advertising, tries to maximize impressions.

TV advertising spots-- seeing and hearing, for 30 seconds-- have completely dominated political “messaging” for a generation now. In fact, one very successful Florida elected official told me that TV ads are “the only thing that matters.”

That very likely was true 40 years ago, when there was CBS, NBC, ABC and very little else. But today, a lot of people aren’t watching TV at all, except maybe for news and sports. (“57 channels and nothing on.”- The Boss.) And for those who still do watch TV, the audience is completely fragmented. The most-watched TV series last year drew precisely 6% of all Americans.

So how does a candidate “deliver the message”? Where are those eyes and ears?

Well, people still see billboards.

Blue America PAC is reaching voters where they live, in their neighborhoods, with “mobile billboards” delivering progressive messages for progressive candidates. Please help this unique national effort-- every dollar counts.

Political media consultants won’t quote you prices “per impression.” Because if they did, candidates would run screaming into the night. A 30-second TV spot can cost more than $1 per targeted voter. Billboards? Less than a penny.

But . . . a regular billboard is seen only by the people who drive by it. If you want to reach a good chunk of the 700,000+ people in a congressional district, you have to go to them. And that is exactly what Blue America PAC is doing, with its national mobile billboard program, for progressive candidates only.

And no one else is doing it. Not the Super PACs. Not the political parties. Not even the candidates themselves.

Most progressive candidates start their campaigns with roughly the same name recognition that they had at birth-- their families know who they are, and very few others. In many House races where the Democratic nominee is a progressive, the voters don’t even know that he or she is a progressive. In fact, unless the candidate has $1 million to spend, most voters don’t even know the candidate’s name.

Blue America PAC is changing that, with its mobile billboards. Please pitch in $15, $40, $75 or more, and help elect true progressive all around America

Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson

“I can pull up by the curb.
I can make it on the road.
Goin' mobile.
I can stop in any street,
And talk with people that we meet.
Goin' mobile.
Keep me movin'.
Out in the woods,
Or in the city,
It's all the same to me.
When I'm drivin' free,
The world's my home.
When I'm mobile."

-The Who, “Goin’ Mobile” (1971).