Joe Biden isn't Bill Clinton. Not really the Sister Soulja moment some have urged.

More like praising with faint damns, as Wilde put it.

Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on the deadly violence in Portland

He blames Trump for inciting hatred and fear, not MSNBC, CNN, BBC, the NYT, and the Democratic propagandists and commentariat, generally.

He condemns violence "of left and right".

He focuses on killings.

And the rioting in general, the destruction of property, the economic and social damage, and the people hurt but not killed?

More than three months of riots by antifa, anarchists, BLM, racist radicals, and others of the idiot left in numerous cities across the country.

And it's been a long time since Charlottesville.

Biden Emerges From Basement, Sees Violence, and Makes This Unbelievable Statement

Snark? Scorn? This, too, is propaganda.

All the same.

It appears a Trump supporter was murdered by a leftist in Portland last night, but details are still emerging. 

Regardless of what happened, the shooting has finally prompted Joe Biden to denounce the violence in Portland that's been occurring on a nightly basis for three months now. 

"The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable. Shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable. I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by any one, whether on the left or the right," Biden said in a statement. 

. . . .

Oh yes, I remember now. It was President Trump who encouraged chaos in the streets when he accused cops of being murderous racists, or when he said America was founded on white supremacy, or when he endorsed the vandalism of historic statues, or when he referred to looters and thugs as "peaceful" protesters as a violent mob raged out of control for months. 

That was all "fanning the flames of hate and division" all, right? But President Trump wasn't the one doing it. 

That was Joe Biden, the media, and the far-left radicals who will be running the government if Trojan horse Biden fools the American people into electing him president. 

Gaslighting: Blaming Left-Wing Violence and Rioting on Trump Is Brazenly Ludicrous

Once the violence spilled over into a small city in a swing state and public opinion started to shift, the Biden campaign finally rolled Biden out to condemn non-peaceful actions, which he's occasionally done with perfunctory statements. 

But his party ignored the issue in their four-night infomercial, elected officials have been bullied by the hard Left into deleting social media posts disavowing violence, and top Biden surrogates have contorted themselves to avoid saying anything too harshly negative about the rioters.

. . . .

As I wrote on Twitter, "there has been violence from the radical right in some cases, which is egregious, appalling and indefensible. Still, bothsidesing the violence & unrest is a form of gaslighting. The mayhem/rioting/looting/assaults has been profoundly asymmetric, and driven by the hard left." 

That's a fact.

Not a lot of social distancing at riots, either. Super-spreaders?

How far will this hurt Joe B in crucial swing states?

Will it even cost him Wisconsin?

538 says the polls there still look good for Joe B.

They think he has a 69% shot at an EC victory, with Trump trailing at 31%.

Maybe the "ride it out" strategy will work.

But nobody knows how to factor in the expected big increase in mail in and absentee voting 

A Fair and Balanced story at Fox News

So, the Democrats are running these riots to destroy the American middle class?

Tucker Carlson: Kenosha riots prove urban unrest is 'class war masquerading as a race conflict'

Carlson pointed out that Kenosha is home to a large Hispanic immigrant population whose members were not seen rioting because working people are meant to work, he said, not start riots.

“As if we needed more evidence that this is actually a class war masquerading as a race conflict,” he said. 

“That's exactly what it is designed to [do]: crush America's middle class. And it's working.”

Kenosha storeowners woke up Tuesday morning to their livelihoods destroyed, with one owner saying how “wrong” it is since her business services everyone, regardless of race.

“You can hear the confusion in her voice [asking] 'Why did they do this to me?'” Carlson said. 

“And the short answer is because they could. Nobody stopped them from burning down her business or burning down the city. 

"The Kenosha County Democratic Party didn't stop them. The Democratic Party of Kenosha decided to embrace the mob.”

Is there rioting in any city controlled by local Republicans?

Are there any cities controlled by local Republicans?

Larry Kudlow: Covid-19 is pretty much behind us, thanks to Trump.

'It was awful': Top Trump adviser Larry Kudlow referred to the pandemic in the past tense on a day the US recorded 1,147 COVID-19 deaths

One of President Donald Trump's top advisers referred to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in the past tense Tuesday during the second night of the Republican National Convention, appearing to suggest that the worst was behind the US on a day it recorded more than 1,100 deaths from COVID-19.

Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House National Economic Council, touted the strong economy during the first three years of the Trump presidency before describing the recession caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

"Then came a once-in-100-year pandemic," he said. 

"It was awful. Health and economic impacts were tragic. Hardship and heartbreak were everywhere. But presidential leadership came swiftly and effectively with an extraordinary rescue for health and safety to successfully fight the COVID virus."

Andrea Mitchell is being slapped around by Peter Navarro on plasma and a rushed vaccine

He's brushing off all worries about proper testing as mere Democrat talking points, bragging they will have a vaccine in a third the time it has taken in the past.

Hurray for Trump!

He has no clue how terrifying he and his idiot boss are.

I may just hunker down until March.

Flag on the play. Liar tweets about ballot drop boxes.

Not secure, not virus safe, vulnerable to multiple ballots from same person, blah, blah.

Fake virus news from Fat Orange Liar

Plasma bullshit. And rushing the vaccine so they can claim it before the election. FDA totally bullied.

White House fuckers just can't keep their corrupt gangster idiot hands off.

CNN this morning.

An exceptionally vicious attack on his own health authorities.

Trump Accuses FDA of Sabotaging Vaccine Trials

This is a viciously crazy attack on his own chosen guy.

This is a new level of destructive attack on the credibility and integrity of the health authorities and researchers who are the best and best informed judges of how to get a safe and effective vaccine, as quickly as they can safely do that.

This is a new and dangerous attack as well on the integrity and credibility of what Republicans used to call "Big Government" but now instead more profoundly demonize as Pubic Enemy Number One, the "Deep State".

This is the Duce, the Champion Liar of White House History, subjecting his party and American politics ever more completely to the truth, science, and government wrecking conspiracy theory mentality.

All of a piece with his welcome of QAnon and his open love affair with the most lunatic of lying right wing fake news sources.

Trump accused the FDA of hindering coronavirus vaccine and drug trials so they would not be developed until after the election.

Trump wrote: "The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics."

Trump uses the term "deep state" to describe those at government agencies he believes are working against his interests.

Trump added: "Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd," he wrote referring to the U.S. election date. "Must focus on speed, and saving lives," he added, tagging FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn.

Trump's suggestion that that research was being deliberately slowed to hurt him at the ballot box comes amid concerns that his administration might pressure the FDA to authorize a vaccine in time for the election, even if its safety and efficacy were not backed by clinical trials.

Trump has said a vaccine could be approved before November but Hahn has repeatedly said that would only happen if clinical trials proved it to be safe and effective.

FDA research chief Peter Marks also said this week that he would resign if an unsafe vaccine was rushed out, according to Reuters.

"I could not stand by and see something that was unsafe or ineffective that was being put through," Marks said.

At the same time, CNN reports a new report on chloroquine says it should never be used for treatment of the virus at all because it does no good and some cardiac harm, and no further studies on whether it could somehow be used should be done.

Apples and oranges

Twice on Fox I have heard GOP pols insist that if it's safe to wait on line at the grocery then it's safe to do so for in person voting.

When I shop there is never more than the person being rung up and one other ahead of me in line and there is almost always no one behind me.

And there is an express lane for people with 12 items or less that does move notably more quickly.

Almost always as I shop there is no one within ten or fifteen feet of me as I wheel my cart through the store, though I do now and then have to pass within two feet, very briefly, of another person.

Even in Mount Lebanon, Pa., and even mid-day, voting lines are longer, sometimes much, much longer.

At the grocery, everybody wears a mask but as many as a third, even of the employees, leave their noses exposed so they can breathe through them, thus wholly defeating the masks they wear.

Voting lines won't be better in that regard.

In many parts of the country voters stand waiting for hours with hundreds ahead and behind.

I guess the good news is they extend for blocks outdoors.

Ferocity, hate, and hypocrisy

Election season is when the propagandists who deplore divisiveness, extremism, and partisan ferocity the rest of the year most viciously display and fanatically deepen all three.

Piling it on for the election

To its regularly scheduled shows encouraging blacks to see racism in the clouds, on slices of toast, and in tree rings CNN will add regularly scheduled programming to encourage women to see sexism in all the same places.

In both cases, of course, it will go with much saying that the solution - the only solution - is to vote to put Democrats in power.

Update 8/22/20.

BBC News is running a beautifully photographed, brilliantly produced series on African history emphasizing the achievements of sub-Saharan civilization and the beastly horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and European imperialism/colonialism.

BBC's 1619 project.

Deeply biased history as justification for racism against whites and a deeply racist political agenda.

CNN blasts out using the virus for race propaganda, again

The explanation for racial and ethnic disparities in infection rates, severity of infection, and death from infection is the accompanying disparities in relative wealth or relative poverty.

And it is by no means as if only nonwhites in America are poor.

There are far more poor whites than nonwhites in this country, and this means they are in the same ways disproportionately victims of the virus, too.

This is certainly an argument for public action to ensure every American has good quality health insurance and everyone in America has good quality medical care.

Not a peep about that on any "news" network.

Not on Fox since it would put their idiot viewers on notice.

Not on CNN, MSNBC, or BBC because howling about race works so much better for today's Democrats and the Democratic racist/racial left.

This is much worse than spinning.

CNN has turned what could and should have been a news-rich story revealing the stunning difference relative wealth or poverty makes regarding virus risk of infection, severity, and death in the US and indeed the world as a whole into a blistering attack of racist/racial vitriol.

An attack on America and an attack on white America.

To them, there is only one explanation and you know what it is, "systemic racism", "a history of racism", "the legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism".

These variables affect whether you live, die or get help during the pandemic

Still, the disparities are indeed stunning.

Black, Latino and Native American people are nearly three times as likely to  ebe infected with Covid-19 than their White counterparts. Those three groups are about five times as likely to be hospitalized. And people of color across the board are more likely to die of the virus.

. . . .

Race affects who is able to flee from a viral hotspot to a second home and who shares a roof with family members across generations. It affects who is able to work remotely and who has to leave home to keep society afloat. It affects who has easy access to testing and who puts off treatment because they're worried about the costs.

In other words, as the US approaches six million confirmed coronavirus cases, race plays a major role in who lives, who dies and who gets help.

Meanwhile, Sharon Stone shares sister's battle with COVID-19, blaming "non-mask wearers" and urging followers to "vote to live"

Instagram.

She tells an awful story.

She says "they're lying" a lot, and is right.

Weird sexist bit at the end about women, protecting families, and the virus.

GOP Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, tests positive for COVID-19

Shameless bullshit on the left

Frances Langum is the author.

This is the headline.

Tucker Rolls Out Sarah Palin To Say The Word 'Prostitute' About Kamala Harris

These are the quoted remarks in the story.

TUCKER CARLSON: Looking back, is there anything you could have done to get the kind of coverage that Kamala Harris is getting now? Like you care about equality deep within your soul, that you’re a rockstar, a celebrity, you’re the Dalai Lama reincarnated. Could you have done anything to get that kind of coverage? 

SARAH PALIN: I would not have prosituted [sic] myself in terms of changing any of my positions, in order to garner better press. For instance, I’m all about all of our freedoms, including the 2nd Amendment. And I would not, for instance, say mandatory gun confiscation which the Democrats are, umm, rooting for.

Not even close to using "prostitute" about KH.

Trump pleased QAnon says he's secretly saving the world from pedophile cannibals. QAnon a terrorist threat per FBI. Bannon arrested for fraud by FBI.

MSNBC said all this just now.

Oh, and that KH made black women, "the backbone of the Democratic Party", cry with her wooden acceptance speech.

They just said.

KH rather woodenly says Joe B "had the audacity to choose a black woman." And she asks "How amazing is that?"

Not at all.

It would have been amazing if he hadn't.

His handlers made him promise that way back during the Democratic debates.

When elites want something the newsies tell you it's the only decent and just thing in about a hundred different ways.

Reparations.

CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and almost all Democratic media.

Wait for some anti-Trump Republicans to get on board.

Joe B is on board.

The only way it doesn't happen in the next president's first term is the Great Fat Orange Klansman wins another term.

When elites don't want something the newsies tell you it's impossible.

Peter Jennings told Americans very firmly, decades ago, that the browning of America is utterly inevitable and there's nothing they can do to prevent it.

CNN has been saying all day and for days the Electoral College can't and will never be abolished.

KH says talking about systemic racism and pointing to racism on the other ticket will bring out the black vote and thus win the election.

The lying and delusional racial left has possessed not only the Democratic media but the bottom of the top of the Democratic ticket.

They are selling the idea the Democrats can't win except by going way out left on race, relying on that as the only way to get more black votes and believing reliance on black votes is their only path to the White House.

Exactly as Fox says.

In tones of horror, of course.

But their ticket has Joe Biden at the top.

A guy who already had the black vote without all the racial and racist lies and is beating Trump even now by taking his white votes all over the country and crucially in battleground states.

The truth is the election is all about the safety, sanity, honesty, and normalcy of old nice white guy Joe B beating out the crazy, stupid, lunatic, pathological liar and utterly incompetent Trump.

The virus more than anything has highlighted that same contrast.

All the race bullshit of the racial/racist left is just bullshitters taking advantage of an almost certain victory they do nothing to help.

Like the noisy rooster trying to convince you his racket made the sun rise.

Except they might diminished or even prevent Joe's victory by driving away moderates and white voters.

Just as the Trumpists hope.

Harris "birtherism" appearing, say CNN and BBC. "Racism, racism!" they scream, as does every Democrat they interview on the subject, lawyers included.

Well, not racism, and not the same as the baseless conspiracy theories about O being born in Kenya that doubtless gained currency largely because of white racism.

Instead, an accurate allusion by some conservatives to a lacuna in the settled understanding of the rarely self-explanatory US constitution and the federal law regarding US citizenship, to which Trump referred to broadcast media.

The claim is not that she wasn't born in the US but that the then immigration status of her parents makes her qualification questionable.

Similar questions, you may recall, were raised during the campaign of 2016 by some Republicans about Ted Cruz because he was born in Canada.

(John McCain was born at a naval air station in the then US Panama Canal Zone.)

Of course, this is Trump, the King of Chaos, trolling KH and the Democrats.

Trump stokes 'birther' conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris

After a conservative law professor questioned Ms Harris' eligibility based on her parents' immigration status at the time of her birth, Mr Trump was asked about the argument at a press conference on Thursday.

The president said: "I just heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements and by the way the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer.

"I have no idea if that's right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice-president.

"But that's a very serious, you're saying that, they're saying that she doesn't qualify because she wasn't born in this country."

The reporter replied there was no question that Ms Harris was born in the US, simply that her parents might not have been permanent US residents at the time.

Earlier on Thursday, a Trump campaign adviser, Jenna Ellis, reposted a tweet from the head of conservative group Judicial Watch, Tim Fitton.

In that tweet, Mr Fitton questioned whether Ms Harris was "ineligible to be vice-president under the US constitution's 'citizenship clause'".

He also shared the opinion piece published in Newsweek magazine by John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in California, that Mr Trump was asked about.

Prof Eastman's argument, which he claims is also being made by other "commentators", hinges on the idea that Ms Harris may not have been subject to US jurisdiction if her parents were, for example, on student visas at the time of their daughter's birth in California.

"Her father was (and is) a Jamaican national, her mother was from India, and neither was a naturalized US citizen at the time of Harris' birth in 1964. 

That, according to these commentators, makes her not a 'natural born citizen' - and therefore ineligible for the office of the president and, hence, ineligible for the office of the vice president."

In 2010, Prof Eastman ran to be the Republican candidate for California attorney general. He lost to Steve Cooley, who went on to be defeated by Ms Harris, the Democratic candidate, in the general election.

Following furious backlash to the Newsweek op-ed, its editor-in-chief Nancy Cooper stood by the decision to publish, arguing on Thursday that Prof Eastman's article had "nothing to do with racist birtherism" and was instead "focusing on a long-standing, somewhat arcane legal debate".

BBC and every Democratic news source are denouncing this as racist garbage, but it is true that not just everyone born here is a citizen on that account, at all.

And even generally liberal Wikipedia reports there are areas of unclarity in the law where there are competing theories about who, born here, is automatically a citizen and the Supremes have never ruled in such a way as to cover all questions.

On the other hand, if immigration authorities at the time did not require her naturalization but accepted her birthright, would a court balk now?

And, personally, I would favor a generous reading of the constitution on this matter, even allowing birthright citizenship and qualification for the presidency to children born here to illegals.

And KH's parents were not illegals, but legal immigrants not yet granted permanent residency when she was born in Oakland, reportedly.

As I have suggested more than once, it is a flaw in our constitutional arrangements that we do not have a clear account of citizenship settling all questions of eligibility and no formal authority conducting formal reviews of persons coming forward as candidates whose OK is legally necessary to even being a candidate.

<Update>

BBC just now indicated on the air the lawyer who brought up the issue in Newsweek sees daylight between being a birthright citizen under the 14th Amendment and relevant US law on the one side and being "a natural born citizen" in whatever is the sense required by Article II, Section 1. 

He did not question, as I took the article above to indicate, whether KH is a birthright citizen under the 14th Amendment but whether she is a natural born citizen. 

The article above cited and quoted has the two questions rather muddled. 

Cruz and McCain were not even born here but were accepted by most people as natural born.

Why really should we accept that someone who was born here and is a citizen on that account is not natural born? 

Has any court ruled on the general question?

Could anyone seek a ruling?  

I personally would have thought anyone who did not need to be naturalized is natural born.

This is Article II, Section 1. 

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States 

 </Update>

Smerconish predicts a FUBAR election

Talking about a mail in election necessitated by the virus.

Alluding only briefly to voter suppression through hours long waits in lines made outright dangerous by the virus, and recognizing the virus requires a major national effort to enable a safe, fair, orderly, and trustworthy process.

An effort that's not happening and Trump is resisting and even sabotaging.

Voter error, postal delay, and administrative confusion resulting in days of delay in getting a result, with counts contested all over the place.

I say, make that all epic in scale.

And there will be fraud, with organized fraud mostly Republican, according to me.

And there will be foreign meddling greater than ever, Russian meddling welcomed by Trump.

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, mostly ignores all that and darkly warns of vast fraud deliberately enabled by Democrats.

"Brutus is an honorable man."

Ari Velshi insists he is "a capitalist" - meaning he favors capitalism over alternatives - even as he vigorously attacks capitalism in America with a fury to make any Marxist proud.

Speaking of capitalism the way Mark Antony speaks of Brutus.