Hunter

In The New York Times, Neil Irwin points out that there’s a straightforward way a new Biden administration could begin clawing back some of the outrageous gains made by the wealthy even if Republicans remain bent on keeping taxes on the wealthy at budget-busting new lows: enforce the existing tax laws. Identify the wealthy tax cheats who, like a certain orange-hued someone, have been abusing tax laws for years and end their cheating.

Earlier in the week voting machine manufacturers Smartmatic and Dominion let it be known to conservative conspiracy peddlers Fox News and Newsmax that they would likely be filing lawsuits after the “news” outlets promoted 100% fake, and known fake, claims about the voting machine companies somehow being in cahoots to cheat Donald Trump out of an election win.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced late Sunday that congressional leaders have now reached agreement on an end-of-year pandemic relief package. While the details are still being inked, the agreement will reportedly include $600 per person stimulus checks, extended unemployment benefits of up to $300 per week, and an extension of small business loans aimed at keeping payrolls intact despite pandemic restrictions.

While the rest of the Senate trundles on in various experiments to see how aggressively they can institutionalize futility and vacuousness, Senator Elizabeth Warren continues to weirdly use the resources that come with being a United States senator to uncover corruption, scandal, and government neglect. This has made her very unpopular with her Republican peers, who instead appear to believe that their offices are best used for trading stocks. Go figure.

While the rest of the Senate trundles on in various experiments to see how aggressively they can institutionalize futility and vacuousness, Senator Elizabeth Warren continues to weirdly use the resources that come with being a United States senator to uncover corruption, scandal, and government neglect. This has made her very unpopular with her Republican peers, who instead appear to believe that their offices are best used for trading stocks. Go figure.

In yet another demonstration of Russia’s sophisticated and extensive online espionage efforts, The Washington Post reports that the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, National Institutes of Health, Treasury Department, and Department of Commerce were among the targets in a massive breach of U.S. government networks successfully engineered by Russian state hackers. It seems almost certain that other agencies will still join that list.

Avid Donald Trump backer Jerry Falwell Jr. was booted from his position as head of Liberty University this summer after the board of the white conservative evangelical “university” finally had enough of him.

The Detroit Free Press reports that the Michigan House and Senate buildings will be closed both to staffers and the public on Monday as the state’s electors to the Electoral College meet to cast their votes for the state’s presidential winner, Joe Biden. The Capitol was already expected to be closed to the public during the Electoral College meeting; this new, expanded closure also includes the building’s legislative staff.

The notion of Donald Trump “creating” a new “news network,” as his allies keep vaguely threatening, is a pipe dream. It’s not going to happen. It would require enormous amounts of money he doesn’t have, and it would require work. If the so-called Trump administration has taught us anything, it is that Donald Trump cannot stand doing work. He likes people praising him, and he likes golf.

As Donald Trump’s “legal” team loses flimsy lawsuit after flimsy lawsuit and (ahem) that team’s top spokescreatures begin to turn increasingly feral, in front of the television cameras, Donald Trump himself appears to be genuinely pondering what to do with himself after being turned out of office in January.

The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump has invited “leaders” of the Republican-controlled Michigan state legislature to meet with him on Friday to discuss the state’s election results. Trump publicly celebrated the resistance of two Republican members of the state’s Wayne County canvassing board who briefly refused to certify the results of the election in their county unless the votes of majority-black Detroit precincts were removed.

The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump has invited “leaders” of the Republican-controlled Michigan state legislature to meet with him on Friday to discuss the state’s election results. Trump publicly celebrated the resistance of two Republican members of the state’s Wayne County canvassing board who briefly refused to certify the results of the election in their county unless the votes of majority-black Detroit precincts were removed.

The Trump administration did not have a particular ideology, per se. On Donald Trump’s level, the singular goal was to do as little as possible. If there was time left over after doing nothing, go golfing. If both nothing and golf were unavailable, undo something his “maybe not a real American” predecessor did.

Vice President Mike Pence, who may or may not be the actual Antichrist, has played a long, patient game these last four years. He has embraced Donald Trump’s every white nationalist act. He has slathered Trump with praise at every possible opportunity, and has aggressively declared himself to have never seen any of Trump’s buffooneries, incompetence, or crimes. He protected Trump through impeachable acts.

On Monday, Trump Attorney General William Barr distributed a memo to federal prosecutors “authorizing” them to pursue any “apparently-credible allegations” of voting fraud in the 2020 elections. There currently are zero credible claims of such fraud, and it seems obvious that Barr was responding to pressure from delusional fascist Donald Trump to provide backup to Trump’s false claims of fraud.

It is going to take approximately half of forever to sort out the corruption of the Trump years—presuming we eventually get to that point. A new scandal of the sort that would in past years result in weeks of televised outrage seems to crop up every few days.

The Associated Press brings us yet another.

Democratic candidate and retired astronaut Mark Kelly has defeated incumbent Sen. Martha McSally in the Arizona Senate race.

As a direct result of being a Trump-backing toady, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a hack during the best of times, is in serious danger of losing his seat to Democratic opponent MJ Hegar in the November elections. In an attempt to stanch the bleeding, Cornyn met with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s editorial board to (ahem) explain himself.

During a mostly maskless Michigan rally, malevolent blowhard Donald Trump once again attacked Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over the state’s pandemic restrictions, despite Whitmer recently being revealed as the primary target of a domestic terrorism plot after Trump’s previous tweeted demands that his followers “LIBERATE” the state. This is because Trump is a malignant grotesquery of a man.

The lengths that this nation’s most loved and famous people are going to get your behinds to the polls, America, cannot be overstated. You want Michelle Obama? You got it. You want LeBron James? He’s on it. Whatever it takes to drag voters to the polls, or at least to their mailboxes.

Yet again, a pro-Trump group has been caught using images of Russia in their ads about the purported greatness and/or scary not-greatness of America.

Top Republicans are beginning to genuinely believe the Democratic Party is going to take the House, Senate and presidency in a rout in November’s elections.

Donald Trump has always been a game show kind of guy, so it’s maybe not a surprise that his first public rally after his hospitalization for COVID-19 symptoms turned into a game show itself, of sorts.

Donald Trump’s remaking of the federal government into a fascist personality cult continues apace. Surprising exactly no one, NPR reports that two of Trump’s new political hires have compiled a confidential “report” on Voice of America’s (VoA) White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman, accusing him of being unfair to Donald Dear Leader in his reporting. They presented their report to VoA acting director Elez Biberaj “for action.

Well, it’s what we expected. The New York Times reports that the Trump team “has decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members” at the superspreading White House Rose Garden celebration for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, the apparent source of infection for at least three Republican senators and numerous other people.

Last week, a White House celebration for Amy Coney Barrett was followed by numerous Rose Garden participants testing positive for COVID-19, including several senators and Donald Trump himself. Despite this, there has still been no apparent effort to do contact tracing to determine the true extent of the resulting disease outbreak.

That’s the implication of this New York Times report, which backs up a Washington Post story published Saturday.

Last week, a White House celebration for Amy Coney Barrett was followed by numerous Rose Garden participants testing positive for COVID-19, including several senators and Donald Trump himself. Despite this, there has still been no apparent effort to do contact tracing to determine the true extent of the resulting disease outbreak.

That’s the implication of this New York Times report, which backs up a Washington Post story published Saturday.

In an oddly subdued Sunday evening Donald Trump press conference dedicated mostly to repeating a laundry list of alleged voting conspiracies and crimes, Trump was asked about the new New York Times story revealing that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017—largely due to ongoing, massive business failures.

His response? Total denial. “It’s fake news. It’s totally fake news.  Made up, fake.

There is no point in accusing Republican senators of hypocrisy. Absolutely none. Only hours after the death of Supreme Court icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Republicans—who had previously gnashed their teeth at the audacity of the suggestion that the nation’s first nonwhite president had the constitutional power to make nominations to the court at any point during the final year of his term—began declaring that this time around, obviously that new rule no longer applies.

If you have at some point stumbled across a political group on Facebook (of course) calling itself “Democrat Voters Against Joe Biden,” you probably noticed a few things that made the group sound … suspicious.