What do you mean “cannot”?

Sen. Chris Coons has been on CNN this morning, suggesting that in private Republican senators are asking him to convey best wishes to president-elect Joe Biden while stating that they cannot yet say that in public because of Trump’s insistence on not conceding defeat.

I’m not seeing the insurmountable obstacle.

Of course they can say that in public despite Trump’s grotesque rude authoritarian disruptive refusal to concede – they can and they absolutely should, in order to shine a harsher light on Trump’s authoritarian flouting of the norms. What they mean is that they don’t want to, and that’s contemptible.

Coons also said “This is an uncertain time these next 71 days. I think

Trump’s lawyers are starting to sweat.

Jones Day is the most prominent firm representing President Trump and the Republican Party as they prepare to wage a legal war challenging the results of the election. The work is intensifying concerns inside the firm about the propriety and wisdom of working for Mr. Trump, according to lawyers at the firm.

Doing business with Mr. Trump — with his history of inflammatory rhetoric, meritless lawsuits and refusal to pay what he owes — has long induced heartburn among lawyers, contractors, suppliers and lenders. But the concerns are taking on new urgency as the president seeks to raise doubts about the election results.

Aka “do we really want to be the lawyers … Read the rest

From Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, 10 seconds, Laurie. Today, the Supreme Court takes up the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of people, if they vote to eviscerate it, to take it down, could lose their healthcare in the midst of this pandemic. Your comment?

LAURIE GARRETT: Well, obviously, that would be dreadful, horrible, awful. And none of those people would have the financial wherewithal to turn to another source to get healthcare. This has implications not just for them, the individuals and their families, but for everybody they have contact with. And so, in a way, we’re committing mass suicide. This is an incredibly self-destructive thing for American people to do, to deny healthcare to millions of

Barr is helping Trump violate all the norms, as usual.

Ellen Weintraub, the Federal Election Commissioner told CNN on Saturday that “there really has been no evidence of fraud” this election. “Very few substantiated complaints, let me put it that way. There is no evidence of any kind of voter fraud,” she said. “There is no evidence of illegal votes being cast.”

But in Barr’s memo, the attorney general tells prosecutors that, “although the States have the primary responsibility to conduct and supervise elections under our constitution and the laws enacted by Congress, the United States Department of Justice has an obligation to ensure that federal elections are conducted in such a way that the American people can have

Why Loser Don fired Mark Esper:

Esper had been at odds with Trump on a number of issues, most importantly his insistence at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer that there were no legal grounds to deploy active-service troops on the streets of US cities.

He was also working with Congress on legislation to rename US army bases named after Confederate generals. In a final interview Esper predicted that he would be followed by a “yes man”, adding “And then God help us.”

We can all hold our breath until January 20, right?

In the face of Trump’s widely reported fury of his intransigence, Esper stopped giving press briefings in the Pentagon in July.

I guess beheadings are the hot new thing.

More than 50 people have been beheaded in northern Mozambique by militant Islamists, state media report. The militants turned a football pitch in a village into an “execution ground”, where they decapitated and chopped bodies, other reports said.

Several people were also beheaded in another village, state media reported.The beheadings are the latest in a series of gruesome attacks that the militants have carried out in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province since 2017.

Not a very nice religion then.

The BBC’s Jose Tembe reports from the capital, Maputo, that the latest attack was probably the worst carried out by the militants. Many people are shocked, and they are calling for a peaceful

The Trump people are putting sugar in the gas tanks, because they can.

The Center for Presidential Transition, a nonpartisan advisory board, urged the Trump administration on Sunday to begin the handoff to staff supporting Joe Biden, whose victory continued to grow in magnitude as states completed their ballot counts.

…

A Trump appointee named Emily Murphy, who is administrator of the General Services Administration, has refused to sign a letter allowing the Biden team to formally begin its work, the Washington Post first reported. The paperwork would release millions of dollars for use in the transition process and give Biden’s team access to government officials and office space and equipment.

Make America Dysfunctional Again!

Members of Trump’s

Ulster peer finds new way to insult Kamala Harris:

A former deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist party and member of the House of Lords has been called on to apologise after referring to the US vice-president-elect as “the Indian” in a tweet.

He…what???

The 82-year-old peer was widely criticised after tweeting: “What happens if Biden moves on and the Indian becomes President. Who then becomes Vice President?”

He’s saying he didn’t know her name, that’s all. That’s all! What’s the big deal?! It’s totally normal to refer to her as “the Indian” if you don’t know her name. The fact that it would take two seconds to find out her name via Google is neither here nor there.… Read the rest

Trump graceful and judicious as ever:

…Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020

BREAKING: Pres. Trump fires Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a tweet. https://t.co/7FNnG0gHVI

— ABC News (@ABC) November 9, 2020

Soon (but not soon enough) the firings-by-tweet will be a thing of the past.… Read the rest

Trevor Phillips on wokeism:

It is two centuries since this country abolished the Test Acts under which people were required to make a pledge of religious observance to qualify for public office or the civil service. But once again employees are being required to sign up to statements of belief or face denunciation, demotion and dismissal. Arcane arguments about white privilege and Pythonesque disputes about whether men can be women are no longer confined to warring left-wing sects or social media; they are eating away at the heart of leading institutions, corporations and government itself.

“Say that men can be women or you’re fired.”

Much of this turmoil began with the best of intentions: a long overdue focus on

Originally a comment by As The Smoke Rises Upward on Very precise indeed.

I take all the sanctimonious defenses of the (uncontested) personhood of trans people as a kind of tacit admission. Atwood can’t engage with actual gender-critical arguments because then she would have to respond with the party-sanctioned genderist dogma, and she can’t do that without making some readers wonder if maybe the terves do have a point after all.

“Lesbians are morally deficient if they don’t want to sexually engage with male genitals.” Well, that’ll go over just fine with cultural conservatives, but it might raise an a few eyebrows among the liberals who still believe that “trans” simply means “super mega gay” and imagine the LGBT … Read the rest

This is how Ireland ended its newscast tonight pic.twitter.com/Izi14NxnUh

— Harry Alford (@HarryAlford3) November 7, 2020

Georgia, thank you. Together, we have changed the course of our state for the better. But our work is not done.

Join me in supporting @ReverendWarnock and @ossoff so we can keep up the fight and win the U.S. Senate➡️https://t.co/JTyH1UVEtd #LetsGetItDoneAgain #gapol pic.twitter.com/qH5ZfmsgI7

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) November 7, 2020

I work at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in PA pic.twitter.com/cX6bIMkag8

— Christine Nangle (@nanglish) November 8, 2020

This shapeshifting creep weighs in. We will never forget your racist comments about Obama and slavish devotion to Trump but neat Instagram graphic. https://t.co/aXga8j5Jpv

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) November 7, 2020

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on All he’s got now is breaking stuff.

But there is some poetic justice here because he has been cheating for months. Now his tactics are coming back to bite him. He told Republicans not to vote by mail and they didn’t, but the result is he has been experiencing this slow drip-drip of disaster over the past few days.

I know it wouldn’t be a good look for the Biden Administration to go after Trump, (though it looks like there are plenty of other entities lined up to have a go at him for quite some time), however much he desrves it, but I do hope they investigate his interference … Read the rest

Margaret Atwood interviewed in the Times:

The Handmaid’s Tale made her not only a famous writer, but also a public figure. The oppressed class of women in the book bore a clear feminist message. Opinions were expected of her. But she was, and remains, too meticulous to give easy answers.

“Look up kinds of feminism, and you’ll find 75 of them. So when people ask me about feminism, I ask them which type and they never know.”

Fair enough. It’s a good plan to be precise about what one thinks, what one endorses, what one signs up to.

On the subject of trans rights she is very precise indeed. After our conversation she emails me a video attacking JK

There’s also this.

If you’ve seen this iconic image of Kamala Harris, first Black VP, & Ruby Bridges, first child to desegregate an all white school—think about this

Ms Bridges is alive & well & only 10 years older than VP Harris🤯

This isn’t ancient history—It’s now

[Image credit—Bria Goeller] pic.twitter.com/0gxFj0kwv8

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) November 8, 2020

I had seen it but I hadn’t realized it was Ruby Bridges. I’m more familiar with this one, which gets me by the throat every time.

The silhouette in the Kamala Harris one is from the Norman Rockwell painting.… Read the rest

Comic interlude:

Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate bid to hang on to the White House crossed into abject farce on Saturday, after his campaign staged a purportedly major press conference at a Philadelphia landscaping business situated between a crematorium and sex shop.

All your needs catered for in one quick stop.

On Saturday morning, as Trump played golf and continued to baselessly accuse the Democrats of stealing the election for Joe Biden, the president announced, in a tweet that was subsequently deleted, a “big press conference” at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia.

That’s the downside to tweeting while driving a golf cart.

Trump quickly altered his statement, revealing that the press conference venue was not a Four Seasons hotel, but

Mary Trump tells us what to expect from her evil uncle:

This is what Donald’s going to do: he’s not going to concede, although who cares. What’s worse is he’s not going to engage in the normal activities that guarantee a peaceful transition. All he’s got now is breaking stuff, and he’s going to do that with a vengeance…

He’ll be having meltdowns upon meltdowns right now. He has never been in a situation like this before. What’s interesting is that Donald has never won anything legitimately in his entire life, but because he has been so enabled by people along the way, he has never lost anything either. He’s the kind of person who thinks that even if

Interesting.

This will be important! pic.twitter.com/BXoXiF8OKA

— Joan Donovan, PhD (@BostonJoan) November 8, 2020

The full passage reads:

Establish a new Task Force on Online Harassment and Abuse to focus on the connection between mass shootings, online harassment, extremism, and violence against women. As highlighted above, Biden will convene a national Task Force with federal agencies, state leaders, advocates, law enforcement, and technology experts to study rampant online sexual harassment, stalking, and threats, including revenge porn and deepfakes — and the connection between this harassment, mass shootings, extremism and violence against women. The Task Force will be charged with developing cutting-edge strategies and recommendations for how federal and state governments, social media companies, schools, and other public and private entities

Trump intends to sulk as long as he can get away with it.

The president, who has spent months trying to undermine the election results with unproven allegations of fraud, pledged on Saturday to go forward with a legal strategy that he hopes will overturn state results that gave Biden the win in Tuesday’s vote.

Not gonna happen.

The president’s allies and advisers privately admitted that the former New York businessman’s chances of overturning the election results and staying in the White House were slim. While preparing for an eventual concession, they called for time to let the legal challenges run their course.

…

Republicans are trying to raise at least $60 million to fund legal challenges in several states,

More congratulatings.

Chancellor #Merkel congratulates @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris. #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/A9Vwy1XYAR

— Steffen Seibert (@RegSprecher) November 7, 2020

They won’t be throwing candies in her face.

The Americans have chosen their President. Congratulations @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris! We have a lot to do to overcome today’s challenges. Let's work together!

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) November 7, 2020

Allons-y!

Congratulations President-elect @JoeBiden & @KamalaHarris on your victory in the US Presidential election. With so many issues facing the international community, your message of unity is one we share. New Zealand looks forward to working with you both! https://t.co/VTGRM4mHEK

— Jacinda Ardern (@jacindaardern) November 7, 2020

I want to congratulate the new President Elect of the USA @JoeBiden Joe Biden has been