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I ran across it on Facebook. Hope it helps!

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-scare-tactics-havent-worked-against-biden-so-far-could-that-change?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_082920&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5df969e7954fcf1853569dd0&cndid=59415923&hasha=e6d99470f2be9f1757ca234d98420b03&hashb=4ad9e8e0e66f39f3aa67c60b0216b8709ae176b1&hashc=eda1a2e8c8a89ffa7bed84dc538fe3993f6ca3351d3bfdea44755e42f843a2c9&esrc=Auto_Subs&utm_term=TNY_Daily

Campaigning in New Hampshire on Friday, Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, and the protesters demonstrating against police brutality and racism. “Today’s Democrat Party is filled with hate,” he said. “Just look at Joe Biden supporters on the street screaming and shouting at bystanders with unhinged, manic rage.” Referring to protests that took place in New York and Chicago earlier in the summer, he said, “They are not protesters. Those are anarchists, they are agitators, they are rioters, they are looters.”

In the wake of this past week’s Republican National Convention, Trump’s strategy couldn’t be more clear. With the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topping a hundred and eighty thousand in the U.S., and opinion polls showing him running well behind Biden, the President is trying to transform the election from a referendum on his own abject performance to a contest centered on Biden, radical Democrats, and unrest in the streets. That was the central thrust of the four nights of programming at the R.N.C., including the speeches that Trump and Vice- President Mike Pence gave.

It’s no mystery why the Trump campaign has adopted this strategy: desperation. So far, the central fact about the 2020 campaign has been its stability, at least according to the polls. In mid-March, after Joe Biden effectively wrapped up the Democratic nomination, he was leading Trump by 6.4 percentage points in the Real Clear Politics national poll average. Today, the R.C.P. poll average shows Biden ahead by 7.1 percentage points. Although individual polls have zigged up and down quite a bit, the over-all pattern has been remarkably steady.

It’s been so steady, in fact, that The Economist’s Presidential forecasting model, which combines polling results with fundamental factors, such as the state of the economy, now puts the probability of a Biden victory at eighty-eight per cent. FiveThirtyEights’s forecasting model, which is constructed differently and factors in more uncertainty, puts the probability of Biden winning at sixty-nine per cent. Both models indicate that a Trump defeat is by far the most likely outcome. Still, many Democrats are nervous, and for understandable reasons, including skepticism about the polls; concerns about the Republicans’ built-in advantage in the Electoral College; and fears that Trump’s scaremongering could strengthen his position among some key voting groups, particularly seniors and suburban women.

The whole article at the link.

Outside England's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees for cars ($1.40), for buses (about $7).

Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn't show up; so the zoo management called the city council and asked it to send them another parking agent.
The council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the zoo's own responsibility. The zoo advised the council that the attendant was a city employee.

The city council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the city payroll.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain, or France, or Italy, is a man who'd apparently had a ticket booth installed completely on his own and then had simply begun to show up every day, commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about $560 per day -- for 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over $7 million dollars..... And no one even knows his name.

I think this is my favorite e-mail ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=14&v=PEgcKDSJsbk&feature=emb_logo

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-25/op-ed-heres-why-as-a-republican-im-heartened-by-the-convention-so-far

By Scott Jennings

~snip~

Watching the first night of the Republican National Convention had me thinking about Donald Trump’s presidency, a four-year journey by a man who New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman says “spent his career as a salesman concerned about surviving the next ten-minute increment of time in front of him.”

Trump’s tendency to fly by the seat of his pants has left even loyal Republicans exhausted. And it has created a dense political fog, making it hard for Americans to fully comprehend where we are going as a nation.

But after everything that has happened during Trump’s first term, including his administration being unfairly bogged down by a fiercely disloyal opposition, I have been heartened to see Trump and the party focus sharply on the main reason to give the president another four years: that Joe Biden will raise taxes, stand aside for the rioters and open a Pandora’s box of bad, liberal policy.

Unfairly bogged down by a fiercely disloyal opposition? This is BS. Trump’s party are in it only for themselves, and not for the people they supposedly represent. Of course Biden will raise taxes. First of all, the 1% got the majority of those tax breaks, and they do not deserve or need any of that. And Biden will not stand aside for the rioters. The systemic persistence of attacking people of color has brought them to the brink of exhaustion and despair. Rioting is the result.

We know where Trump wants to take us: straight into proto-fascism. He has shown us this by the ways he cozies up to dictators and pushes away the leaders who used to respect us.

Make America Normal Again? Back to the 1950's? The era where white men ruled, women and people of color and the LGBTQ communities were firmly all relegated to second place, at best. Calling this time a normal one is grossly disconnected from the reality of those days. Entitled white men have been running the country right into the ground for at least decades. We are now reaping their mistakes. Normalization is a perverted view from white privileged males who want to stay in power so they can continue to profit hugely at the expense of the rest of the populace.


Trump does an excellent job all by himself of keeping himself bogged down in scandal. He needs no help from us. He is not proceeding towards normalization. His view of that is completely skewed towards white male supremacy.

The post office. The Democrats have not turned this into a conspiracy theory about voter suppression. Trump himself said that voting by mail would hand the victory to the Democrats and would be completely invalid. He claimed there would be rampant cheating. As for out of control costs, those have been promoted by the Republicans hoping to make the Post Office fail so that they can privatize it, thus enriching their already-rich friends and stiffing the American people once again.

He doesn’t know when to shut up, and thank goodness for that. He clearly reveals stuff that a more devious person would have kept hidden. He is is his own worst enemy.


Yes, the Democrats want to raise taxes, because the 1% did not need, and do not deserve the cut they got. We are now over our heads in red ink, because the Republicans are hypocrites on that score.

Scott Jenning’s view of normal is anything but. The hole Trump is in is because of his own extremely abnormal behavior towards our Constitution and the people of America. It is a hole that will prove to be too deep for him.

When I wrote this post, I wove my comments into the text by Jennings. Since we cannot post more than 4 paragraphs, I left those out and wrote my comments into the post itself. I couldn't think of any other way to show my thinking about this insane op-ed.