Watching VP Biden's speech and press conference right now and I noticed something.

He took a question from a reporter.

And when he took it, he smiled.

A real smile.

Not a smirk.

Not a grimace.

Not a scowl.

But a genuine, heartfelt smile.

To a member of the press, who presumably will be as tough on him as they would be on any other President, because that's just the nature of the job.

But it was just a simple human moment that before 2016 probably wouldn't have gotten any attention.

But the feeling that we might have a person back in the White House who can show genuine, positive, graceful emotion again....

All I am saying is we better win this.

Here's my prediction of how November and beyond might end up playing out.

November 3rd is Election Day. Due to lingering (or perhaps full on) coronavirus effects, many states will see massive vote-by-mail numbers.

Even before midnight on November 3rd, all exit polls and early returns are pointing towards a massive Biden landslide and clear loss for Trump. Joe Biden will take the stage and address his supporters and the nation as the presumptive President-Elect.

However, because there will be far more mail-in ballots than usual, Trump will refuse to concede that night. He will insist he will stay in until "the very last vote is counted."

That will probably take up to two weeks. During those two weeks, Trump will begin raising questions about the fairness of the vote. He'll start throwing out all sorts of baseless claims of voter fraud and conspiracy theories. The more time goes on, the more unhinged he'll become.

During this time, there will be no attempt whatsoever to facilitate any sort of transition period between the administrations, so our entire government will remain in limbo.

Finally, the vote tallies are done and they are certified and ready to be sent to the Electoral College. At this point, Trump will file a lawsuit in desperation hoping to enjoin the Electoral College from finalizing the vote.

I predict he will not have much success at all in the courts. It will rapidly move all the way up to the Supreme Court, who will refuse to entertain the case, effectively confirming the will of the people and various states in electing Biden.

Now, that is as far as I am confident in predicting. What comes after that I'm far less certain of.

Here is the "best" case scenario: Trump, feeling angry, bitter and defeated, chooses to resign sometime in December. Mike Pence is sworn in as the nation's 46th President. Trump will have demanded that he be given a Nixon-like blanket pardon, and Pence, being the spineless lapdog that he is, will oblige. Pence will, however, facilitate a half-assed, hurried transition period, and on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden is sworn in as the nation's 47th President. (The next day, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg will announce a very well-earned retirement.)

As for the "worst" case scenario...well, I'd rather not go there quite yet. All I say is that it would probably look a lot like Ukraine in 2014.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump campaign releases list of pre-approved debate moderators.

Yesterday, the Donald Trump presidential campaign announced that Trump would be willing to appear for four separate debates between him and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. If Trump follows through, this would represent an increase of the typical three head-to-head Presidential debates that have taken place in recent election years past.

However, this offer by the Trump campaign was made subject to several conditions. The most notable was that the moderators of these debates had to be agreed upon from a pre-approved lists. The Trump campaign did not immediately make public their list of these proposed moderators. However, in a DU exclusive, we have obtained a copy of the list and for the first time ever, will be sharing these names in the interests of consideration.

So, without further adieu, the proposed moderators from the Trump campaign include (in no particular order):

Sean Hannity
Tucker Carlson
Laura Ingrham
Mark Levin
Dan Bongino
"Judge" Jeaninne Pirro*
Rudy Giuliani
Chanel Rion
Chanel Rion's twin sister
Chanel Rion and her twin sister, together
James Woods
Natalia Veselnitskaya
A peacefully sleeping Ben Carson ("Shh! Don't wake him!" )
Cesar Sayoc a.k.a. "The MAGAbomber"
Roger Stone**
The Ghost of Rush Limbaugh
Ivanka Trump!
Donald Trump Jr.
...Eric Trump***
Those other Trump children...you know, What's-Her-Face and/or Who's-His-Name
Jared Kushner, fresh off of having read a "Debate Moderation for Dummies" handbook
Melanie Trump
Carpe Donktum
That "Blacks for Trump" Cult Leader dude
Mr. Magorium and his Wondrous Emporium
The musical duo of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman
Tom Fitton, wearing a most dazzling golf shirt!
The human incarnation of a Ben Garrison cartoon
A bald eagle wearing an American Flag bandana
Any member of the Duggar family, even that one really creepy one
Glenn Beck's blackboard from 2010 (minus Glenn Beck)
An entire webpage comprised entirely of Taboola clickbait advertisements
Canadian rap sensation Chuggo
A bottle of hydroxychlorquine
An entire rack of MAGA hats with a sign reading, "CLEARANCE!!! MUST GO!!! 85% off!!!"

..And finally...

John Barron****!

*Please refer to the approved beverage list in the attached rider
**Pardon pending
***Reserved sighing
****Please allow for additional two hours of debate time to account for necessary pauses between all questions and answers.

I really do have to hand it to John Bolton.

He has managed to provide us with some stunning and invaluable inside information, while still managing to remain the selfish, stubborn and otherwise useless asshole that we had all known him to be.

And with this gesture, he has spared us all having to take the time to wring our hands and debate furiously with one another, "Is John Bolton actually a good person? Is he a changed man? Is he now admirable? Do we need to speak positively of him now?"

No--no such debate is necessary, and with that time freed up, we can all go back to doing much more valuable and useful things.

John Bolton has provided us a great service, and also remains the same insufferable person we have always known him to be.

So with that, I say: Thank you, John Bolton. And also fuck you, John Bolton.

And as a measure of appreciation, I suggest we all go down to our local bookstore, pick up a copy of John Bolton's book, read it thoroughly, and then place it right back on the shelf, not spending a single penny on it.

BREAKING NEWS: Trump decries Seattle-area senior home as "dangerous Antifa no-go zone."

President Donald Trump today spoke out against a SeaTac, Washington nursing home and senior citizen residential community which he claimed was a "breeding ground for radical Antifa terrorists" who were "seeking to destabilize the nation and subvert civil order."

In a press event accompanied by Attorney General William Barr, Trump and Barr described the Comfort Pines Assisted Living Facility as a "hotbed" for "lawless anarchists" who used the confines of the facility, guarded under the watchful protection of a single 52 year-old unarmed doorman named "Frank," to plot "activities meant to promote a ideology based in a deadly mixture of anarchy, Marxism, and idyllic sepia-colored nostalgia."

Attorney General Barr then delved into what he deemed as "intelligence reports" that laid out the details of the purported activities within the facility. Barr claimed that those residents of the facility who were designated for assignments in instigating chaos were chosen through a rather complex process wherein a vast amount of numbered balls were placed within a spinning container. Those balls were chosen at random with the number on the ball then announced to the entire group; the resident who had a card with a sufficient amount of the numbers arranged in a proper linear order was then dispatched out to the public, presumably to monitor police movements and disrupt communications.

Barr also claimed that residents were being fed a large quantity of high sugar, easily digestible foods such as pudding and gelatin, presumably to provide the residents a supercharged energy rush that was necessary to sustain a stealthy sneak bodily attack against uniformed riot police. He also mentioned that a few of the individuals at Comfort Pines had obtained the use of technologically advanced motorized scooters that were capable of reaching speeds up to 5 miles per hour.

"We are very concerned about the capabilities of what has been termed the Hoveround Brigade," Barr said.

However, that was not the most dire allegation made by the Attorney General.

"Our embedded sources have told us that some of the residents have taken to collecting their own feces and urine overnight in special receptacles in their bed," Barr claimed. "We believe they may be doing this for the purposes of creating some sort of crude biological weapon to be used against the public at large."

When asked for what measures he might be consider taking against Comfort Pines, Trump replied that he was "not ruling anything out," but that he was leaning heavily towards calling in the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, currently stationed at Fort Bliss.

"They call them 'Old Ironsides,'" said Trump. "Old Ironsides. So if these guys, these Antifa radicals, want 'old,' we'll give them 'old.'"

Details at Eleven.

Can we talk for a moment about something? I'm referring to the bizarre spectacle that is Trump flags

The idea of a flag is an interesting concept.

First and foremost, they are best known as a symbol of a country. They also can relate to a state, a county, a city or some other governmental entity.

Flags aren't exclusive to countries and governments, however. If you go to a tailgate event at any given sporting event, you will frequently see flags flying containing the logo of the teams playing.

And flags need not represent positive ideals. The Nazis had flags, as do the KKK.

But even at their most repulsive, or their most benign, it seems like the common denominator behind flags is that they are meant to symbolize a group of people or idea that is larger than just the one individual flying the flag.

Except for one odd exception, and that of course is the Trump Flag.

There's no one uniform version of the Trump Flag, but most of them look something like this:



There's also one with some slightly more colorful--and blatantly ironic--language like this:



Trumpists love to display their Trump flags. Especially popular, for whatever reason, is during boat parades. But you'll see them in any number of settings, including behind these two illustrious members of society who felt it prudent to recreate the murder of George Floyd in front of peaceful protesters:



The existence of the Trump Flag is truly baffling, because it's a flag, but instead of representing a country, a group of people, a movement or an ideal, it's a flag dedicated to a person. A single person.

What sort of person deserves a flag with nothing more than his name on it? I mean, even in most despotic regimes, the flags flown didn't just read "Hitler" or "Stalin."

It speaks to a double phenomenon. First, a growing cult of personality in this country around the supposed President, which is something we have never, ever seen before. (I mean, I remember a lot of nonsense from the right in the 00s around the time of the Iraq War, nonsense about how criticizing the president was somehow "unpatriotic", but I never actually saw anyone flying Bush flags).

And second, it speaks to the narcissism and insatiable ego of the man who currently occupies the White House, a man so consumed with himself that he demands flags with his name be flown by his supporters. And that is certainly terrifying in its own right.

The closest thing we have to this are the MAGA hats, which have grown to become emblematic of a movement on their own. But even those tacky pieces of red headgear don't spell out Trump's own name on them. And had their popularity simply ended with the 2016 campaign itself, you might be tempted to say that they were nothing more than a campaign relic along the line of "I Like Ike" pins or the Obama "Hope" poster, historical pieces that tie into specific election memorabilia and little more. Of course, the MAGA hats have not subsided, and are the new brownshirt of our day.

But for the life of me, I do not remember anything so remotely crass, unprecedented and abnormal as the Trump Flag itself.

Thoughts?

Welcome to your dystopia, America.