Democratic Candidates' "Debate"?

Conan O'Brien parodied the closed captioning of the tumultuous Democratic debate:

Frightening Video Graphic: Coronavirus vs. Other Epidemics

I can't seem to save this video graphic. You'll have to copy and paste the following into your address bar:

https://twitter.com/WelshGasDoc/status/1232208118899257344

I'd recommend when you play it that you stop it, make it full screen, mute the sound (it's just annoying music), and restart it to play from the beginning. Keep your eye on the turquoise Coronavirus line.

The graphic starts with Day 4 Since Outbreak, and tracks the spread of Coronavirus compared to SARS (Asia, 2003), Swine Flu (Mexico, 2009), MERS (Middle East, 2012), and Ebola (West Africa, 2014.

Skydive! Seoul Olympics, 1988

Opening ceremonies, Seoul, Korea, 1988 (an old friend of mine, Mike Zahar, is one of the jumpers):

Trump: Copied From The Young Turks

People with empathy and humane values are disgusted by trump. And here’s why...

Direct Quotes from trump...

”Part of the problem is nobody wants to hurt anybody anymore."

“If you don't support me, you're going to be so god-damn poor.”

"Knock the crap out of them."

"Maybe he should have been roughed up."

"He should be carried out on a stretcher."

“Any guy that can do a body slam...he’s my guy.”

"The audience should hit people. That's what we need a little bit more of."

"I'd like to punch them in the face."

"In the good old days this doesn't happen because they used to treat them very, very rough."

"If you hurt him, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it."

"I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will."

“Hundreds and hundreds of buses full of illegal immigrants were shipped up from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.” (to skew the election)

“They are going to take away everything. They are going to take away your guns. They are going to take away your wealth. They are going to take away everything.”

Trump said that “Jewish people who vote for democrats are either ignorant or disloyal.” (note: approximately 79% of Jews vote Democratic)

Trump has used the words ‘predator,’ ‘invasion,’ ‘alien,’ and ‘animal’ at his rallies while discussing immigration more than 500 times. -USA Today

“The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too Bad!”

"I did try to f*ck her. She was married. And I moved on her very heavily...like a bitch. She’s got the big phony tits and everything. I’ve gotta use some tic tacs, just in case I start kissing her. I just start kissing them. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p*ssy. You can do anything.”

While speaking to a crowd in Florida, Trump asked how to stop migrants from coming to America. A woman in the crowd yelled “Shoot them!” Trump laughed...then said, “Only in the Panhandle, you can get away with that. Only in the Panhandle!”

“I don’t do coverups.” But he is on tape impersonating at least 3 different people to inflate his wealth to newspapers: John Barron, John Miller, and David Dennison (all fakes)

“I have the support of bikers and the tough people...but they don’t play it tough until they get pushed to a certain point...and then it gets bad...very bad."

“I’m an extremely stable genius.” 05/23/19

“I know words, I have the best words.” 12/30/15

“I have great and unmatched wisdom." 09/10/19

“I am The Chosen One.” 08/21/19

“Justin Trudeau (prime minister of Canada) is two-faced.”

“Emmanuel Macron (prime minister of France) is very nasty.”

“The mayor of London reminds me of our very dumb Mayor of NYC...but he’s only half his height. He’s a stone cold loser.”

Trump said that four black congresswomen should "go back to the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." However, the Congresswomen are Americans and all but one were born in America.

“Where’s My African American.”

“I am very rich. I’m funding my own campaign.” (His campaign was funded by several billionaire donors)

His Disgraceful Rhetoric:

Lyin Ted, Low Energy Jeb, Low-Life Amarosa, Little Rocket Man, Psycho Joe, Little Marco, Low IQ Maxine, Dumb As A Rock Mika, Pocahontas, Sloppy Steve, Crazy Megyn, Al Frankenstein, Wacky Wilson, Jeff Flakey, Dicky Durbin, Liddle Bob, Da Nang Dick, Moonbeam Brown, Slimeball Comey, Puppet Jones, Lamb the Sham, Deranged Omarosa, McMuffin McMullin, Fat Jerry, Wacky Jackie, Mr Peepers, Pencil Neck Schiff, Shifty Schiff, Mr Magoo Sessions, Dumb Southerner, Dumb As A Rock Tillerson, No Talent Samantha, Flunky Begala, Sloppy Carl, Marbles Brokaw, Nut Job Coulter, Sour Lemon, The Dumbest Man On TV, Shorty Bloomberg, Minnie Mike, and dozens more...

Donald inherited $413 Million in cash, assets, and an established business from his father...plus rental income from his father’s buildings. All Donald had to do was slap his gold-plated name on buildings and pretend he earned it...and low-info #Foxwashed consumers would believe it. Meanwhile, he piled up 6 bankruptcies...but he still collects rental income from his father’s business...while no other banks (except Deutsche) will loan him a penny. He owes Deutsche Bank over $300 Million.

“Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the emails that are missing."

“The media is the enemy of the people.”

“I prefer soldiers who don’t get captured.” (Referring to John McCain)

“I love the poorly educated.”

Flopping and flailing around, mocking a disabled person: “Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember. I don’t remember.”

He called a woman “Horseface” after it was revealed that he paid her hush-money (for sex after his 5th child was born from his 3rd wife) 3 weeks before the election...AND...after the election...AND...as ‘president’.

“She had blood coming out of her eyes....and blood coming out of her whatever.” (Assuming a woman on television was menstruating)

“What you are hearing and seeing is not what’s happening.”

“She wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, for the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.”

He sent a violent tweet (video) with one of his golf balls hitting the former Secretary of State in the back.

"If we have so many nuclear weapons, why can't we use them?"

“She is a fat ugly slob.” (Referring to a successful actor)

When accused by the 22nd woman of sexual assault or rape, he said “She’s not my type".

“We have a representative in Congress who has been here a long time. I call her Pocahontas.” (Referring to a Senator who has some proof-positive Native American heritage)

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

“3,000 people did not die by the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico.” [they did]

“I call her Maxine ‘Low-IQ’ Waters’.

“Be prepared for violence in the streets, if we don’t win the midterms.”

"If the Democrats are successful in removing me from office, it will cause a Civil War in this Nation from which our Country will never heal."

“I don’t like people who say ‘I pray for you.’”

Since she spoke out about corruption, “Marie Yovanovitch (American Ambassador to the Ukraine) is going to go through some things.”

He denied knowing Lev Parnas. Then an audio surfaced with Trump telling Parnas to "take her out"...in reference to former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

🚩”I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody...and I wouldn't lose voters."

ps...trump said EVERY SINGLE ONE of these vulgar rotten comments...verbatim🤦🏻‍♂️ ps...An amoral leader has a way of revealing the character of his supporters while dragging them into the deepest furrow of the inferno

Flynn's New MAGA Lawyer - Sidney Powell

Click here for an article at Politico by Keith Kloor entitled "The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn's Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy."

"Flynn fired his team at Covington & Burling [a well-respected world-class law firm] and hired Powell as his lead attorney. It was a striking turnabout: Flynn went from seeming to take the high road, by cooperating with the Mueller investigation, to seeking legal counsel from a Fox News pundit who thought Mueller was the perpetrator and Flynn the victim."

Flynn seemed to be meekly cooperating, and Mueller recommended that he receive no prison time because of the substantial help he had provided to the prosecutors.

"In August, she moved to have Flynn’s case dismissed for what she called “pernicious” prosecutorial misconduct, and requested that Emmet Sullivan, the presiding District Court judge, hold prosecutors in contempt for allegedly hiding FBI documents and communications that she said proved Flynn was pressured to plead guilty. In a court brief filed in October, she asserted that Flynn had been “deliberately targeted for destruction” by the intelligence community. The government countered that it had already relinquished any relevant material and that Powell was advancing “conspiracy theories” to fish for evidence that did not exist."

“'I don’t know how, but I can read the way these particular government lawyers say things to know that they are lying and hiding things,' she explained, referring to the prosecutors in the Flynn case. 'And I knew as soon as I started hearing and seeing what was going on with General Flynn that he had been set up'"

She wasn't initially successful: "Sullivan unequivocally rejected Powell’s requests for additional government documents and for the case to be dismissed. He also spurned her argument that Flynn had been framed, writing in an icy 92-page opinion that the retired general’s false statements to the FBI were 'undisputed.' Sullivan set January 28 as Flynn’s new sentencing date. Shortly afterward, government prosecutors recommended that Flynn receive up to six months in prison -- a reversal of the earlier recommendation that he not be incarcerated. 'Maybe Hiring Sidney Powell Was a Huge, Monstrous Mistake for Michael Flynn,' one headline suggested."

Powell is more than just a right-wing crank: She was a successful federal prosecutor for years, working in the Western District of Texas at the height of the drug wars, when judges were being assassinated and federal prosecutors wore bullet-proof vests, accompanied by armed guards. She went on her own and had good success as a defense lawyer, culminating in nearly a decade of work on the Enron case. She felt that Enron had been victimized:

"Powell, for her part, came away from the experience believing the prosecutors had bent the law to unfairly prosecute her clients and were never held to account for their actions. She became convinced that “prosecutorial misconduct,” in the form of suppression of evidence favorable to the defense, was a widespread problem in the judicial system."

She started crusading against prosecutorial overreach, and in 2014 she self-published a book entitled "License to Lie -- Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice." The book, Powell says, "'reveals the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power to the highest halls of our government.'"

Largely apolitical, she eagerly jumped on the Trump train in 2016. Her book, which had received very little attention, caught fire in sales when the Mueller team appointed to his prosecutorial team a number of people Powell had mentioned in her book. She tweeted that Mueller was "hiring out of my book!" Conservatives like Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity started to take notice, and "Powell rode her sudden wave of celebrity to political relevance and began appearing on the shows that had previously ignored her, embracing Trumpian talking points about not only the Mueller report but other issues, too. On Dobbs’ show, to take one example, Powell suggested that 'the continued invasion of this country' by immigrants might be the cause of 'diseases spreading across the country that are causing polio-like paralysis of our children.'”

One of her supporters and fundraisers, John B. Wells, "... appeared on Alex Jones’ show, 'Infowars,' in 2013 and talked about how 'it’s been pretty much established that the CIA and al Qaeda are almost one.' In his opening remarks at 'Operation Classified [a fundraising event he put on],' he spoke of the 'criminal cabal we refer to as government,' and he praised QAnon, the conspiracy movement that seems to believe a global gang of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in the media, Hollywood and the political establishment is secretly running the world. 'Q is a real thing,' Wells said to cheers in the audience."

She thought she had found a kindred spirit in the judge on the case: "Sullivan actually is known for bringing the hammer down on overreaching prosecutors, as in the trial of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. 'Emmet G. Sullivan is one judge who knows a cover-up when he sees one,' she wrote in a 2014 Observer column. 'I love this man!' Powell has exclaimed in some of her public talks."

"Her conviction was bolstered by the release, in early December, of the long-awaited report by the inspector general for the Justice Department, which found that the FBI’s initial investigation into possible ties between Russia and Trump campaign officials (the precursor to the Mueller probe) was marred by sloppy and improper methods. Powell felt that the IG findings lent weight to a key component of her argument: that FBI agents manipulated the notes from their interview with Flynn to make him look guilty.

But in mid-December, Sullivan rejected the idea that the original FBI counterintelligence investigation of former Trump officials—Flynn included—was a deep state plot against Trump, and that Flynn had been tricked into his perjury by unscrupulous FBI agents. At the close of his ruling, Sullivan wrote: 'the Court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI conducted an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false statements and that the government pressured him to enter a guilty plea. The record proves otherwise.'”

Yes, They Really Were Watching You

Click here for an article at The Washington Post by Greg Miller, entitled "The intelligence coup of the century," subtitled "For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries."

The CIA, in partnership with the BND (West German spy agency), ran a company called Crypto AG which had its roots in programs similar to Enigma. Crypto got its start encoding transmissions by U.S. troops in WWII. Secretly taken over by the CIA, it spent decades selling encryption hardware, software, and techniques to foreign governments and businesses. Then the CIA and the BND sat back and read what everybody was saying -- secretly, they thought. "... the United States and its allies exploited other nations’ gullibility for years, taking their money and stealing their secrets."

“It was the intelligence coup of the century,” the CIA report concludes. “Foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.”

"They monitored Iran’s mullahs during the 1979 hostage crisis, fed intelligence about Argentina’s military to Britain during the Falklands War, tracked the assassination campaigns of South American dictators and caught Libyan officials congratulating themselves on the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco."

Consider Trump's bumbling release of intelligence secrets: "Foreign targets were tipped off by the careless statements of public officials including President Ronald Reagan."

"The German spy agency, the BND, came to believe the risk of exposure was too great and left the operation in the early 1990s. But the CIA bought the Germans’ stake and simply kept going, wringing Crypto for all its espionage worth until 2018, when the agency sold off the company’s assets, according to current and former officials."

"The company’s importance to the global security market had fallen by then, squeezed by the spread of online encryption technology. Once the province of governments and major corporations, strong encryption is now as ubiquitous as apps on cellphones."

Who Are You, And What Have You Done With Marco Rubio?

Excerpts from an interview of Marco Rubio by Jake Tapper, Mar 13, 2016:

Look, I think people have to make up their minds -- I can tell you this, no matter what happens in this election for years to come there are many people on the right, in the media, and voters at large that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because this is not going to end well one way or the other. He's going to be the nominee and he's going to lose. Or he'll have thrown this party into its most chaotic and divisive period of and that's unfortunate because the Republican Party is the home of the limited government, free enterprise movement in America. And if it crumbles or divide or it splits apart, it will be very difficult to elect candidates that hold those views at any level of the government until we can bring the party back together.

*****

You see images of Americans now at -- literally at each other's throats, pointing fingers in each other's face. Look, some of these protesters that you saw in Chicago apparently, obviously, were organized, maybe even paid to disrupt an event, so I'm not excusing their behavior.

But this not just the protesters in Chicago. These is now multiple rallies where people are assaulted and beat up, where a guy gets sucker-punched by one of the Trump supporters. And then, instead of condemning it, Trump is silent. When the guy is released from jail, he says, the next time, we -- maybe we should kill the protester against -- again, there is silence.

Then he goes on stage and makes -- just makes things up. He keeps telling the story about general -- a general who dipped bullets in the pig blood and shot a bunch of prisoners of -- Muslim prisoners up. Not only is it outrageous. It's a lie. And then he claims that the guy that stormed the stage was linked to ISIS.

He has turned the most important election in a generation into a circus, into a complete fiasco and a carnival. And it's -- this country deserves better. I mean, we -- at some point, people have to wake up here. This is really going to do damage to America.

*****

Here is the bottom line. He has said to people, why don't we basically beat up the protesters and beat up the hecklers, and I will pay your legal bills?

And here is what people have to understand. Maybe you think it's a joke, but there are people out there that are not balanced. There are people out there that -- that are not completely in control of themselves. And they hear something like this from a leader, you don't know what they're going to do next.

And when someone is seeking a position of leadership and is already in a position of influence, you speak responsibly. This notion that a president can just say anything they want, or even a presidential candidate can say anything they want, whatever comes to mind, it's just not true, and it's reckless, and it's dangerous.

And I -- look, I hope people wake up on time and realize what's happening here, because, if we reach a point in this country where we can't have a debate about politics without it getting to levels of violence and anger, where people think that just because you're angry, you can say and almost do anything you want, we're going to lose our republic.

*****

But, look, this is an ongoing thing, OK? So, every day, something new comes up, and I try not to escalate things, because you don't want to exaggerate them, and you don't want to make something bigger than it really is.

But just in the last, you know, five days, we he have had stories about the guy getting sucker-punched at the Trump rally. You have supporters basically -- you have a campaign employee now allegedly assaulted a reporter at an event.

So, every day, it's something new. And so there comes a point here where there's a tipping point, right? And you look at it and say enough is enough. So, I think, at the end of the day, we should all examine our behavior moving -- over the last year on this issue. We should all examine whether we have been quick enough.

*****

I'm very concerned. We don't know what's going to happen next here. I know that we have reached the point now where people in American politics have decided that, if they don't agree with you, that they can get angry at you, that you're a bad and evil person, that they can say anything they want about you.

I think that the -- all the gates of civility have been blown apart, and we have now reached a point where, on both sides, everyone is just saying or doing whatever they want. And, you know, you can't just say or do whatever you want. This is not about political correctness. This is about rules of civility and a way a society talks to each other.

And let me ask everybody this. Do we really want to live a -- in a country where everybody hates each other, where everybody is at each other's throat, where, because we disagree on the role of government or the tax rate or Obamacare or foreign policy, we now in this nation cannot have a discourse or agree on any other issue and end up hating each other?

Because that's what it feels like. It feels like we're reaching a point now where, in America, everyone hates each other. I'm so tired of arguing and fighting with other Americans.

Yes, we have serious disagreements, and let's debate those through our republic, but we have reached a point now where, if I don't agree with you on something, it's not just that you're wrong, but you're a bad person, you're an evil person, you deserve nothing.

I mean, we -- all the gates of -- all the rules that once governed our discourse have been blown away. And we're headed in a very dangerous direction. And, yes, there are people out there that are unbalanced. There are people out there that do not have control of themselves. We don't know what they will do.

*****

You know, he's running for president so no matter what he won't be a dictator unless our republic completely crumbles which I don't anticipate it will. But yes, here's what happens in many countries around the world. You have a leader that emerges and basically says, don't put your faith in yourselves. Don't put your faith in society. Put your faith in me, I'm a strong leader, and I'm going to make things better all by myself.

This is very typical. You see it in the third world. You see it a lot in Latin America for decades. It's basically the argument that he's making that he single handedly is going to turn the country around. We've never been that kind of country. We have a president.

The president is an American citizen who serves for a period of time, constrained by the constitutions and the powers vested in that office. The president works for the people. Not the people for the president.

And if you listen to the way he describes himself of what he's going to do he's going to single handedly do this and do that without regard for whether it's legal or not. Ah, poor little Marco. When Romney lost in 2012 and Reince Preibus led the Republicans in thsir inward-gazing, self-described "autopsy" which determined that to win the presidency in the future, the Republican party would have to be more inclusive -- more friendly to women and minorities -- poor little Marco thught he had a good thing going, and as a fresh new Latino face, he would ride the wave to the presidency by championing and spearheading a drive to liberalize the Republican approach to immigration. He sponsored such a bill in the Senate which won widespread bipartisan approval -- and then it went to the House, which had been captured by the Tea Party, and defeated the liberal bill in a humiliating defeat for young Marco, who has never really recovered his rising-star status with Republicans. *****

Character And Decency? No: Trump.

Click here for another article by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post, entitled "This vulgar man has squandered our decency."

“Character is the only secure foundation of the state.”

— President Calvin Coolidge, addressing the National Republican Club in New York, 1924.

“It was all bullshit.”

— President Trump, addressing Republicans in the White House and a national television audience on Thursday after his acquittal.

Trump Speaks, Post Impeachment

Click here for an article in The Washington Post by Dana Milbank entitled "Trump learned his lesson. He’s going to be even more vulgar."

The morning after his acquittal in the Senate, Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast, where political opponents have always set aside their differences. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged the assembled to “raise our voices in prayer as one.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) prayed for his colleagues, including Pelosi, and said God couldn’t have “picked a better day to bring us all together.”

And then there was Trump. He complained that he was “put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people.”

Referring to Mitt Romney, the lone Republican to support impeachment, Trump said, “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” Referring to Pelosi, just a few feet away, he added: “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you’ when they know that’s not so.”

Later, in a gathering of his strongest supporters at the White House:

He described his political opponents and government bureaucrats as “bad,” “dirty,” “horrible,” “evil,” “sick,” “corrupt,” “scum,” “leakers,” “liars,” “vicious,” “mean,” “lowlifes,” “non-people,” “stone-cold crazy” and “the crookedest, most dishonest, dirtiest people I’ve ever seen.”

In what was billed as an address to the nation, Trump declared to every American man, woman and child: “It was all bullshit.”

The Republicans laughed.