Dr. X's Free Associations

The Stupidity Is The Point

Some people say that cruelty is the point for Trump supporters. I'm beginning to think stupidity is the point--that it really is all a troll, because how the hell can Trump supporters be this damn stupid?

Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020

Of course, Biden doesn't have to prove a thing. To the extent, if any, that Trump supporters enjoy this kind of thing as trolling, it further lowers my opinion of them, which is already quite low.

A Covid-Quiet Thanksgiving

The GOP Brand: Class Politics, Class Envy, Hypocrisy

Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools,have strong resumes,attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline

I support American greatness

And I have no interest in returning to the “normal” that left us dependent on China

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 24, 2020

Trump — UPenn
Pompeo — Harvard Law
Mnuchin — Yale
Esper — Harvard
Barr — Columbia
Ross — Yale + Harvard
Acosta — Harvard
Azar — Dartmouth + Yale Law
Carson — Yale
Chao — Harvard
Navarro — Harvard

What's A Guarantee From Ted Cruz Worth?

Nothing. Remember that, Texas.

"I guarantee you..." pic.twitter.com/HRjKjtrziV

— Bad COVID-19 Takes (@BadCOVID19Takes) November 23, 2020

 

Nearly Three Weeks After The Election, Loser Trump Continues The World's Biggest Tantrum

If you had done your job, America's governors wouldn't have been forced to fend for themselves to find tests in the middle of a pandemic, as we successfully did in Maryland.

Stop golfing and concede. https://t.co/tCXO8etxge

— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) November 22, 2020

Trump said the media would stop talking about COVID on November 4th

"On Nov 4 you won't hear about covid anymore."

November 22:

The Fake News is not talking about the fact that “Covid” is running wild all over the World, not just in the U.S. I was at the Virtual G-20 meeting early this morning and the biggest subject was Covid. We will be healing fast, especially with our vaccines!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2020

So the US media didn't stop talking about COVID on November 4th, but at least Trump admits now that COVID is running wild in the US. He's just mad that the US media reports too much about what's happening in the US because let me guess: Americans want to know what's happening in the US.

 

Unexpected

I sold two photos in the past week. When I took up documentary photography several years ago, I did so without a thought that anyone would purchase my work. But, evidently, people need photos. They search for images online and make offers.

I've sold a few of my photos posted in the blog but most sales come from the photo website, flickr, which is odd because I made my images non-searchable through google. I guess people just comb flickr for photos that meet their needs. Most of the sales are for magazines, but I've sold a few for advertising and two for book covers, though one of the latter was an old family photo I own rather than my own work.

I haven't been taking photos seriously for about two years. I got too busy with other things and my desire to do so has waned. I still snap shots with my phone, but I'm committed to cheap androids, so the photo quality isn't good. I also take phone shots as I come upon things I want to show someone. My camera photos in the past were planned to varying extents. That approach typically produces better results, at least for me.

While I am taken by documentary images in and of themselves, my drive to shoot these photos is best characterized by the 1995 film "Smoke," from director Wayne Wang, starring William Hurt and Harvey Keitel. The drive has been largely 'satisfied,' so I don't expect I'll go back to shooting photos in a big way, but I may occasionally dabble. By the way, if you haven't seen Smoke, it's a great film

Trump's outlandish lies about poll watchers

This week:

This was a rigged election. No Republican Poll Watchers allowed, voting machine “glitches” all over the place (meaning they got caught cheating!), voting after election ended, and so much more! https://t.co/YDh7A7wxLW

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2020

Without evidence, Trump throws anything and everything out there to sow chaos and doubt about the election results. There isn't much difference between Trump and chimp flinging scat.

Last week:

Nobody wants to report that Pennsylvania and Michigan didn’t allow our Poll Watchers and/or Vote Observers to Watch or Observe. This is responsible for hundreds of thousands of votes that should not be allowed to count. Therefore, I easily win both states. Report the News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2020

Politifact

Election observers representing the Republican Party and the Trump campaign have been allowed to observe the ballot-counting process alongside Democratic observers in both Pennsylvania and Michigan, despite the president’s repeated claims to the contrary. A Trump campaign attorney conceded in court that the campaign had a "non-zero number" of election observers in Philadelphia. Another federal lawsuit the campaign filed in Michigan includes hundreds of pages of affidavits from people who served as election observers.

"A non-zero number" was what the Trump campaign lawyer said when the judge, smelling the obvious bullsh*t, pinned him down. It's a bad idea to lie to a judge when the lie can easily be proven.

 

Update:

A federal judge just dismissed team Trump's attempt to disenfranchise millions of Pennsylvania voters in an opinion that could be reasonably characterized as an absolutely scathing rebuke.

Another Election Fraud Accusation Debunked

CNN:

One of the supposed pieces of evidence was a list that circulated on Twitter Thursday evening allegedly containing names, birth dates, and zip codes for registered voters in Michigan. The origin of the list and the identity of the person who first made it public are not known.

CNN examined 50 of the more than 14,000 names on the list by taking the first 25 names on the list and then 25 more picked at random. We ran the names through Michigan's Voter Information database to see if they requested or returned a ballot. We then checked the names against publicly available records to see if they were indeed dead.

My CNN colleagues looked into 50 of the names on a viral MAGA list supposedly showing 14,000 Michigan cases of ballots being cast in the name of dead people.

Result:
- 37 are dead, no vote cast
- 5 are alive and voted
- 8 are alive and didn’t vote https://t.co/2qvoVmRI3N

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 10, 2020

It's going to take years to unravel the crazy Trump has wrought in this nation.

Fox News Boosts Donald Trump's Lies

Brian Williams mocked Geraldo Rivera's false claim that Trump deserves credit for the rapid development of the COVID vaccine.

Soooo, Brian Williams has run out of fucks to give 😂 pic.twitter.com/vh2xXABreI

— Charlotte Clymer 🏳️‍🌈 (@cmclymer) November 21, 2020

After Pfizer explained that Trump had nothing to do with the vaccine's development, Trump lied and claimed that Pfizer received $1.95bn in government money to develop the vaccine as part of Operation Warp Speed. Fact-checkers subsequently confirmed that Pfizer was not part of Warp Speed nor did they take any government money to fund the development of the vaccine.

I suppose none of this matters to deluded Trump supporters who live in a political fantasy world.

Senior Advisor To RNC Makes False Claims About HIPAA And Trump, Jr Coronavirus Report

Donald Trump, Jr's spokesperson is the one who publicly announced the diagnosis, and, in any case, reporters are not HIPAA-covered entities. Not that the facts stopped lots of other Trumpsters from airing the same groundless complaint. These are people whose minds reside in an alternative-fact universe.

Tucker Carlson (of all people) Blasts Trump Campaign Attorney

WaPo:

As Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted on Thursday night, he’s more than willing to give airtime to outlandish claims. “We literally do UFO segments,” he said.

But even Carlson said he was fed up with the total lack of evidence produced by Sidney Powell, one of the Trump campaign’s attorneys, for her unfounded allegation that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots to favor President-elect Joe Biden.

“We invited Sidney Powell on the show. We would have given her the whole hour,” Carlson said. “But she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”

Carlson also noted: “She never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one.”

Sidney Powel is a reckless liar and a disgrace to the legal profession. IANAL, but I've heard some claims about these voting machine companies that may be actionable. I hope they pursue defamation suits.

COVID-19 is Raging

We had 190,000 new cases diagnosed on Thursday, 1900 deaths, testing facilities are completely overwhelmed and the president is doing nothing while also refusing to share information with the incoming administration.

Trump and many GOP pols ridiculed Dr. Fauci and others who warned that the virus would come roaring back in the fall. They said the virus would disappear on November 4th. And now that Trump and his band of useful idiot deniers have been proven utterly wrong, it doesn't occur to Trump supporters that their party leader is an incompetent clown and a congenital liar.

My concern at this point has shifted to those who care about the truth. The two vaccines nearing approval appear to be 95% effective, so anyone who wants to protect themselves should be able to do so within the next several months. Those who want to take a pass on the vaccine can do so while presenting relatively little risk to those who choose to vaccinate. If a couple of hundred thousand Trump supporters insist on dying or becoming permanently damaged as an expression of their devotion to a con man, I'm not going to waste any more energy trying to persuade them to protect themselves.

The Election:

By the way, the courts have rejected 29 of 30 claims by Trump and GOP attorneys trying to overturn the election results. They are making claims at press conferences that they don't dare make in court because they don't want to be sanctioned for filing frivolous lawsuits, or worse, charged with perjury.

Liar

Trump is again making the absurd false claim that Republican poll watchers weren't allowed into counting rooms.

THEY WOULD’NT LET REPUBLICAN POLL WATCHERS INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2020

Wrong. His own lawyers conceded as much in court because they're unwilling to jeopardize their careers by lying to a judge who asked point-blank if they have any evidence at all that this actually occurred.

Trump is a compulsive liar who doesn't care one bit if he shreds this nation to pieces. It's all about him and only him because that's how psychopaths are and that's what psychopaths do.

Donald Trump Proves Again That He's Full Of It

That's all I hear about now. That's all I hear. Turn on television—'Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.' A plane goes down. 500 people dead, they don't talk about it," Trump told his supporters at a campaign rally in Lumberton, North Carolina, on October 24th. "Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.' By the way, on November 4, you won't hear about it anymore," --Donald Trump, Oct 24, 2020

How many times does Donald Trump have to fake-claim persecution and prove that he's full of s**** before his supporters recognize that he's full of s***?