Posted inDonald Trump Salem Police Department

The Proud Boys hate group is coming to Salem — five times

This time of year we like to hear "Santa Claus is coming to town." Such is happening on December 25, but it looks like Salem also is going to be visited by the Proud Boys, who are much more naughty than nice. And not just once, but up to five times.  The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Proud Boys a hate group. Here's a report on the upcoming visits to Salem of the Proud Boys, courtesy of an alert shared today by a local activist who goes by Concerned Citizen. I've boldfaced parts of the message to highlight the…
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Posted inCoronavirus Donald Trump

Lie of the Year is denial and deception about COVID-19

I agree with PolitiFact that the Lie of the Year is denial and deception about COVID-19. A runner-up must have been Trump's lie about the presidential election being fraudulent. Which means the President of the United States is at the heart of two massive lies that have caused great harm to our country, leaving aside the many thousands of lies that Trump has spewed every day before and after his inauguration in 2017. Here's an excerpt from PolitiFact's Lie of the Year story. President Donald J. Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic. He…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Trump’s last-ditch attempt to steal the election is disgusting

Trump's final attempt to steal the presidential election from Biden is based on an absurd legal suit by the Attorney General of Texas that asks the Supreme Court to not accept the electoral votes from Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia that Biden won. There's essentially zero chance that the Supreme Court will agree to this, since the suit has no basis in either facts or the law . So Biden will be sworn in on January 20. That's the good news. But the bad news is that -- as shown in the tweets below -- attorneys general in 17 other…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Biden beat Trump by a lot in every part of Salem

lt's always a pleasure for me to get local presidential election results from a fellow political junkie. This person figures out how the candidates did in each ward of Salem. There are eight wards. Scroll down to see a map of them. In 2020 Joe Biden whipped Trump's ass (to use a non-political science term) in every ward, including Ward 4, South Salem, and Ward 8, West Salem -- which traditionally are the most conservative areas of Salem. Here's the results for Salem as a whole, plus Marion and Polk counties, and Oregon as a whole. The county-level results for…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Feeling bad, Trump voters? I’m here to help.

In the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy used to offer psychiatric help to Charlie Brown for 5 cents. Knowing how bad Trump voters must feel right now, I'm undercutting Lucy by offering my therapeutic advice for absolutely free.  l even have some qualifications, having earned a Master's Degree in Social Work back in 1973, a mere 47 years ago. Sure, after becoming a MSW I quickly decided that I wasn't all that social, so went into health services research and planning.  But somewhere in the recesses of my mind there's remnants of what I learned about counseling. So read on, Trump…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Trump ramps up effort to steal election from Biden

Donald Trump has crossed the line from lying about Biden not winning the election to actively trying to subvert the will of the voters. That's sedition, which is illegal. Here's the definition of sedition. That's exactly what Trump is trying to do. Incite his followers to overturn the lawful results of the election.  This is beyond outrageous. Trump is behaving like a third-world dictator, the only difference being that the United States, thankfully, still has enough judges who believe in the rule of law -- not Trumpism -- to stop this coup attempt. Journalists and other informed observers of Trump's…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

What the hell is wrong with Trump voters?

I've been seeing post-election discussions where some say that Democrats need to do a better job of understanding those who voted for Donald Trump, a group that currently stands at 47% of the electorate, about 73,100,000 voters. OK. That's a laudable goal, so long as Republicans make an comparable effort to better understand those of us who voted for Joe Biden, 51% of the electorate, about 78,700,000 voters. Since I voted for Biden, I'll help Republicans out by sharing my current state of mind about the election. I'm really happy that Biden won. What concerns me is that more than 73…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Speak out about Trump’s attempt to steal the election

I'm an optimist. Usually. After Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election on November 7, I figured that it was time to relax, chill out, and watch the peaceful transition of power from Trump to Biden that would take place between then and Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021. Sure, I knew that Trump wouldn't concede gracefully. Maybe not at all. No big deal, I thought. There's no way Trump could succeed in overturning the will of the voters.  But after looking at my Twitter feed this morning, and reading a bunch of "red alert" warnings from knowledgeable…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Trump may never concede, but Biden has whipped his ass

Last Tuesday was tough for progressives like me. Sure, I knew that mail-in ballots, largely from Democrats, were going to take a while to count, and in-person voting on election day would be dominated by Republicans. But knowing is one thing. Emotions are a whole other thing.  I worried that somehow Trump would pull out another close victory like he did in 2016. Wednesday I felt better as Trump's lead in battleground states began to shrink. Thursday, even better.  And today, Friday, I'm feeling damn fine!  Now starts the fun part -- basking in the warm glow of Biden's almost…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Why I’m feeling post-election progressive joy

Tuesday's election could have been better, but it also could have been a whole lot worse from my progressive point of view. So I'm feeling fine right now, for these reasons. Biden appears to have defeated Trump. This is the biggest contributor to my positive mood, since another four years of Trump would have thrown me into a serious depression. Last night I was anxious, but as I checked election results throughout today, I started feeling better and better. At the moment it looks like Biden has a good chance of winning Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Coupled with the…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Trump is out to steal the election, but he will fail

Next week, I hope and expect, Donald Trump will become a one-term president. Given how outrageously authoritarian Trump has been since he was inaugurated in January 2017, it's fitting -- though disturbing -- that currently he is trying to steal the election in a way that might work if he was the strongman of, say, Russia, but will fail big-time in our still democratic United States. Trump's scheme is described in an Axios piece today, "Trump's plan to declare premature victory." President Trump has told confidants he'll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he's "ahead," according to…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

My not-so-surprising presidential election prediction

With six days to go, it seems like the right time for me to make a presidential election prediction. Close enough to feel confident in the prediction, not so close as to be accused of waiting until the last moment when the pre-election cards have all been dealt face up. But I'm going farther, into a prediction of not only what will happen, but how the post-election period will go -- with a bang or a whimper? As a progressive, I understand why many in my political tribe are agonizing over all sorts of dire election possibilities. Some of this…
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Posted inDonald Trump Humor

Borat 2 movie shows the funny side of right-wing politics

Humor is subversive. Lenny Bruce knew that. Other comedians throughout the ages, including ancient Greece, also have known that. To mock a political stance is to show how absurd it is, how open to ridicule it is. Sacha Baron Cohen's new Borat movie, creatively titled Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, may not be a comedic masterpiece, but it is damn funny.  Laurel, my wife, and I rarely laugh out loud during movies, even when we are watching them at home. But last night we fired up the Amazon…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Trump lost tonight’s debate because he is Trump

The real winner of tonight's Trump-Biden debate is everyone who's glad there's no more debates. Which definitely includes me.  Sure, I enjoy debates. But I'm ready for the election. This debate marks the beginning of the home stretch toward November 3. I'm eager for that day to come, especially if, as I both suspect and hope, Biden defeats Trump. Nothing I saw tonight changes my opinion about Biden being the clear favorite to become the next president. Currently FiveThirtyEight places the odds of this happening at 87%.  It's hard to see how Trump's non-disastrous performance in this second debate, a…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Biden was warmly welcoming. Trump was coldly corrosive.

It wasn't a mistake for ABC and NBC to hold town halls with Joe Biden and Donald Trump on the same night, at the same time. I thought it would be, but thanks to my DVR, I was able to watch the hour with Trump, then the hour and a half with Biden. I appreciated the immediate stark contrast. Once again, Biden was the clear winner of the debate that wasn't, yet in a a way, was. The most obvious way Biden won was that he made no glaring mistakes, whereas Trump did. Supposedly Biden is the one who makes verbal…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Reality is the big winner in Trump’s COVID-19 infection

I'm deeply political, so naturally I find opinions about how Trump coming down with COVID-19 will affect the November 3 election highly interesting. My bet is that this increases Biden's odds, but no bet is absolutely certain, including mine. When I first heard the news about this last night, my snap reaction was This will really help the fight against the coronavirus. I thought this because Trump has been the biggest super spreader of covid misinformation about masks, social distancing, hand washing, and other public health measures called for by scientific experts. He also has touted unproven remedies, none of…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Here’s my five takeaways from the ghastly Biden-Trump debate

There isn't anything good to say about how Donald Trump acted in the first 2020 presidential debate last night. So if you're a Trump fan who is in deep denial about what a horrible person your Dear Leader is, prepare to be faced with some uncomfortable truths about the debate. Here's five takeaways regarding the debate. I've backed up my opinions with views from knowledgeable political observers. (1) This was the worst presidential debate ever, because of Trump. Being a progressive who strongly favors Biden, my biggest pre-debate fear was that Trump would do the smart thing for him politically…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Sixteen deliciously snarky tweets about Trump’s tax returns

Today the New York Times released a blockbuster story about Trump's failure to pay federal taxes for 11 of the 18 years that the newspaper was able to examine his tax returns for. In 2017 his tax bill was just $750. (Related NYT stories are here, here, and here.) And Trump's businesses have lost a lot of money, demolishing his oft-repeated claim that he's an amazing businessman. It appears that his most successful "business" was appearing on the reality TV show, The Apprentice. Trump is personally responsible for $421 million in loans that are mostly coming due in four years. Naturally…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

“Good news, bad news” story offers solace to those distressed about Trump

If there's one thing we can be sure about, it's that there's nothing to be sure about. The world is unpredictable, at least the world of human events. (Physics and chemistry, along with other areas of science, are wonderfully predictable.) Small happenings can lead to large changes.  To offer a personal example, near the end of my senior year at San Jose State College back in 1970, I was unsure about what I was going to do with my next-to-worthless, job wise, B.A. in psychology. Applying for a post office job was running through my head. Then, as I was…
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