George Packer

  The U.S. reported 108,389 new cases of COVID today-- and another 1,201 deaths. Early tomorrow the U.S. will cross the 240,000 deaths mark, a memorial to the worst president in history, soon to be the ex-president. You know how sometimes the living presidents all get together for something or other? Do you think Carter, Clinton, Bush and Obama would ever invite Trump to one of those?

 Slimeball by Nancy OhanianI have no idea if George Packer knew he was comparing democracy to religion in his Atlantic essay Trump Is Trying to Trick Americans Into Giving Up on Democracy... but that's how I read it.

The GOP is making a bad bet on Vote By Mail. The public likes it, especially during the pandemic and many people see right through the Republican Party's motives.

On Sunday, Selma "Bloody Sunday" veteran, John Lewis (D-GA) unexpectedtly showed up at the annual commemorative march and delivered an impassioned plea to voters to use the ballot box as "a nonviolent instrument or tool to redeem the soul of America." Is America still redeemable after just 3 years of Trump and the ascendancy of Trumpism?

Posted in a MAGA/GOP corner of Reddit yesterdayDon't bet on anything more coming out of this beyond what came out of the no-follow-through-kvetching we got from Flake, Sasse and Corker but on New Year's Day the Washington Post published an OpEd by Senator-elect Mitt Romney (R-UT) reminding readers that "Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination" and that "on balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions this

In a wave election-- with a DCCC recruiting some real garbage, dumb-as-a-brick candidates to run-- you get some really ignorant freshmen in Congress. And we do. So some of them might not know who Kevin McCarthy is... let alone what his role has been and what his likely intentions are.

-- from the Resources for Life blogby KenThe question of President Trump's mental fitness for the office dates back at least to some of his wilder ravings during the campaign, and less than a month into his tenure is being discussed more widely.

Yeah, theze guyz wuz really gonna do a heapa cooperatin' with Ooh That Damn Obama."[Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell's conciliatory statements are encouraging, but he's about to discover that he cannot persuade Republican Senators and Congressmen to cooperate on anything constructive. We're about to get two years of intense, horrifying stupidity.

What most "real" Americans "know," as they've "known" since the days of St. Ronald of Reagan, is that government is the enemy, and anything that's bad for the government is good for "real" Americans."The government shutdown is over. National default has been averted, for now. According to an estimate by Standard and Poor's, the Tea Party's brinkmanship cost the American economy twenty-four billion dollars -- more than half a percentage point of quarterly growth.