Pope Francis says Christians 'must apologize' to gay people
Pope Francis has said that gays deserve an apology from Christians for the way they have been treated. He also said apologies were owed to other groups marginalized by the church, such as women and the poor.
Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say
More than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story on the former vice president's son.
Leaked Reports Show White House Knew Of COVID-19 Spike As Trump Downplayed Crisis
SCOTUS mail-in voting ruling raises alarm: Democrats may “never win another national election"
Excerpt Ignore the bullshit story below left:
It is karmically fitting, not to mention metaphorically apt, that Donald Trump’s last stand is beginning right now in a hotel room in Las Vegas, where many a desperate man, way behind the game, plots one last grand scheme, not only to recoup vast losses, but to win big. This is the place for that kind of thinking.
Trump is at his hotel, in full histrionic melt down mode, where he did a conference call with campaign staff and media Monday morning. The steroids must be kicking in, because he’s declaring that he’s the only one who’s on top of it, and he’s on a roll, and he’s going to win reelection. Right-o. The ghosts of gamblers past are soaking it all in. They know narcissism and grandiosity when they see it. They’ve seen better men than Donald Trump crash and burn — Elvis Presley being one of them.
Admiral McRaven, In Charge Of Bin Laden Raid, Endorses Biden In Stinging Trump Rebuke
From The Bulwark: I once went hunting with my uncle as a young man. During our walk through the woods we encountered a raccoon that had become enmeshed in a small length of rusty barbed wire. The raccoon was trying to gnaw off its own leg while also alternately furiously attacking the barbed wire. The results were bloody and unsuccessful.
The image forever seared in my mind from that occasion reminds me now of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
In one of Trump’s potential superspreader rallies in the South over the weekend, he stunned no one by suggesting that his political opponent should be locked upfor fictional criminal offenses. After all, he suggested the same thing for his opponent in 2016.
Donald Trump has little original programming left. He’s playing his “Best Of” reruns. The base is buying, but the base is dwindling and the president is floundering in a cesspool of tautologies and twisted, self-negating sentences.
2 More Funny Feelings About 2020 Politico
Whatever appeal his unfiltered thoughts once held has now worn off. Americans are tired of having beers with Trump. His own supporters are tired of having beers with Trump. In hundreds of interviews this year with MAGA loyalists, I have noted only a handful in which the person did not, unsolicited, point to the president’s behavior as exhausting and inappropriate. Strip away all the policy fights, all the administrative action (or inaction), all the culture war politics, and the decision for many people comes down to a basic conclusion: They just do not approve of the president as a human being.
I’m reminded of a recent conversation I had with Dan Crenshaw, the Republican congressman from Texas. He shared how in Harris County—particularly in some of the affluent suburbs—many voters he encountered, including center-right Republicans, are refusing to support Trump’s reelection. I asked him why.
“They have a personal dislike for him. It’s just that simple,” Crenshaw said.
Crenshaw is right. If Trump loses, history will record any number of contributing factors to his political demise. But it should place them all in the context of that “simple” underlying reality.
Pompeo reportedly ignored outraged employees to address group that supports 'ex-gay' therapy
Local Portland: As if our protests haven't been disturbing enough, watch this video.
Will Trump get away with this? Trump Blames ‘Fauci And These Idiots’ For His Own Coronavirus Ineptitude or this? Trump administration facing new investigation over political interference at the CDC and FDA
Trump launches a frenzied effort to save his brand
“‘I am not a sick person, ever’ is how he sees himself,” said one longtime Trump chronicler. “He has always defined every outcome as a victory even when it wasn’t.”
Trump is falling way behind with female voters. His response? "Lock her up!"
Misogyny helped Trump in 2016, and he wants to repeat by attacking Gretchen Whitmer — but so far it's not working
Summary of Jennifer Rubin's Wash. Post column on John Cornyn and Republicans like him who ‘deserve to lose’ for fear of standing up to Trump
A Long List of Shady Financial Mysteries Trump Still Refuses to Explain
If Trump is going to ask Biden to reveal info about his family…
Another surprise victory is unlikely to happen again if this election is looked at from the same perspective of neuroscience that I used to account for the surprising outcome in 2016. Briefly, that article explained how our brain provides two different mechanisms of decision-making; one is conscious and deliberative, and the other is automatic, driven by emotion and especially by fear. Trump’s strategy does not target the neural circuitry of reason in the cerebral cortex; it provokes the limbic system. In the 2016 election, undecided voters were influenced by the brain’s fear-driven impulses—more simply, gut instinct—once they arrived inside the voting booth, even though they were unable to explain their decision to pre-election pollsters in a carefully reasoned manner.
In 2020, Trump continues to use the same strategy of appealing to the brain’s threat-detection circuitry and emotion-based decision process to attract votes and vilify opponents.
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But fear-driven appeals will likely persuade fewer voters this time, because we overcome fear in two ways: by reason and experience. Inhibitory neural pathways from the prefrontal cortex to the limbic system will enable reason to quash fear if the dangers are not grounded in fact. The type of street violence Trump rails against now was not the norm during the Obama and Biden years. Nor was fear that Biden would turn the U.S. into a socialist state an issue even a year ago. On the contrary, Biden defeated the self-described “democratic socialist” candidate Bernie Sanders in the presidential primaries.
A psychology- and neuroscience-based perspective also illuminates Trump’s constant interruptions and insults during the first presidential debate, steamrolling over the moderator’s futile efforts to have a reasoned airing of facts and positions. The structure of a debate is designed to engage the deliberative reasoning in the brain’s cerebral cortex, so Trump annihilated the format to inflame emotion in the limbic system.
Some reporters withheld their bylines and questioned the credibility of an article that made the tabloid’s front page on Wednesday.
Excerpt:
The New York Post’s front-page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said.
Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
Coming late in a heated presidential campaign, the article suggested that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had used his position to enrich his son Hunter when he was vice president. The Post based the story on photos and documents the paper said it had taken from the hard drive of a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive’s contents, said five people with knowledge of the tabloid’s inner workings. Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing, the people said.
The article named two sources: Stephen K. Bannon, the former adviser to President Trump now facing federal fraud charges, who was said to have made the paper aware of the hard drive last month; and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who was said to have given the paper “a copy” of the hard drive on Oct. 11.
Mr. Giuliani said he chose The Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”
Paranoid Trump compiling enemies list of conservatives who are turning on him: Summary of Daily Beast report This will be a diversion until he loses. After that we may look back and think that we thought he was off-the-rails cray-cray then but he could end up so unmoored from reality Pence will have to initiate the 25th Amendment.
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Trump continues bizarre appeals to suburban women as he campaigns in Covid hotspots
If President Donald Trump loses his reelection bid in November, it will be in part because of his fundamental misunderstanding of the beliefs of "suburban women," whom he has tried to win back with a series of bizarre and racist appeals that seem more targeted to a stereotype from the 1950s and 1960s than the American women who actually live in those areas today.
Many of the female voters who have abandoned Trump recoil from his divisive language and disapprove of both his handling of race relations and the pandemic. But he has tried to convince them to support him through a campaign of fear and xenophobia, with claims about the Democratic agenda that plunge deep into the realm of the ridiculous and would be believed only by the most naïve, low-information voters.
The history of prophetic movements tells us that if Trump fails to secure a second term, a variety of reactions are possible. Some will blame him and begin to withdraw their identification. Others will fight the cognitive dissonance and blame dark powers. The prophets will develop a new timeline for the restoration. Some Christian nationalists may for a time refuse to "stand down," but eventually they will develop other perspectives. There is no one-size-fits-all method of de-conversion from a religious or ideological position. The best way to limit post-election violence would be to give his supporters a face-saving way to back down from their prophecy-inflated reality. It may not work all at once, but it's the first step in beginning to heal the schisms upon which Trump has so cannily capitalized.
Watchdog group accuses Amy Coney Barrett of “unconscionable cruelty” in teen rape case - she is truly Aunt Lydia from Handmaid's Tale
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has been accused of "unconscionable cruelty" by a watchdog group over her role in an appellate court decision overturning a district court which found a Wisconsin county liable for millions in damages to a woman who alleged she had been repeatedly raped by a jail guard.
"After a 19-year old pregnant prison inmate was repeatedly raped by a prison guard, Amy Coney Barrett ruled that the county responsible for the prison could not be held liable because the sexual assaults fell outside of the guard's official duties. Her judgment demonstrates a level of unconscionable cruelty that has no place on the high court," Kyle Herrig, president of the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, told Salon. "The only thing more concerning than the rush to confirm by Senate Republicans is what we are learning about Amy Coney Barrett's extremist record. It is hardly surprising that she has dodged question after question during her testimony."
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| Link above, Photo adapted by HB |
‘Worst American President’: New York Times Flames ‘Racist Demagogue’ Trump Summary from Huffpost.
Above images from The NY Times
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.
Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.
The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.
Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country’s future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.
Pfizer delivers final blow to Trump's hope for preelection vaccine
There won’t be a coronavirus vaccine ready before Election Day, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated promises and vaccine makers’ breakneck speed.
A dueling town halls upside: Media finally focuses on the wide gulf between Biden and Trump
The nation's top political reporters actually focused on the extreme contrast between the candidates, not spectacle
Breaking news: Trump claims that his $421 million debt is “tiny.” He apparently owes more than twice that amount
WASHINGTON – NBC moderator Savannah Guthrie prodded President Donald Trump Thursday during his town hall when talking about him retweeting conspiracy theories, saying he's not just "someone's crazy uncle."
Guthrie pressed Trump on his penchant for tweets that spread disinformation, including one post he retweeted that contained a conspiracy theory that former Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama orchestrated a cover-up that included the Navy SEAL Team Six faking the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden.
"That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody and that was a retweet. I'll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don't take a position," Trump said in defending his tweet.
"You're the president," Guthrie responded. "You're not someone's crazy uncle who can retweet whatever. USA Today
Six takeaways from Trump and Biden's dueling town halls - they are really false equivalents - The Hill
5 takeaways from the dueling Trump and Biden town halls, Wash. Post
1. Trump’s smorgasbord of misinformation and false choices — deftly called out
2. Biden had the steady showing he needed with the clock ticking down
3. Trump steps into another non-denouncing minefield — on QAnon
4. Biden opens the door further on court-packing and says he’ll confirm a stance soon
5. Trump’s last negative test before his coronavirus diagnosis: Still clear as mud
President Trump spoke positively about an extremist conspiracy-theory group, expressed skepticism about mask-wearing, rebuked his own F.B.I. director and attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a televised town hall forum on Thursday, veering far away from a focused campaign appeal. Instead, he further stoked the country’s political rifts as his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., pushed a deliberate message anchored in concerns over public health and promises to restore political norms.
Mr. Trump’s defensive and combative performance came on a night that was supposed to feature a debate between him and Mr. Biden, but that morphed into a long-distance study in contrasts on different television networks after the president declined to participate in a virtual debate.
On the central issue of the election, the coronavirus pandemic, the two candidates appeared to inhabit not just different television sets but different universes. Mr. Biden has made the full embrace of strict public health guidelines the centerpiece of his candidacy, while Mr. Trump has continued to defy even the recommendations of his own government on matters as basic as the use of masks — a pattern that persisted in their opposing events on Thursday.
Mr. Biden lashed virtually every aspect of the president’s handling of the health crisis, including his language on masks.
“The words of a president matter,” Mr. Biden said. “When a president doesn’t wear a mask or makes fun of folks like me when I was wearing a mask for a long time, then, you know, people say, ‘Well, it mustn’t be that important.’”
In perhaps his most incendiary remarks, Mr. Trump repeatedly declined to disavow QAnon, a pro-Trump internet community that has been described by law enforcement as a potential domestic terrorism threat. The president professed to have no knowledge of the group, and as a result could not disavow it, but then demonstrated specific knowledge of one of its core conspiracy theories involving pedophilia that is entirely false.
Savannah Guthrie Compared Trump To A "Crazy Uncle" For Sharing False Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories
"You're the president," the Today show anchor told Trump about his false Osama bin Laden tweets. "You're not someone's crazy uncle who can retweet whatever."
As the report notes, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows a dramatic drop in support for the president “among white male voters without college degrees …. from an enormous 35 points to a significant but narrowing 19 points.”
According to Nick Stevens, 30, a Texas small-business owner, he is a Republican who is holding his nose and voting for Democratic challenger Joe Biden because he can’t handle Trump any longer. Rawstory
WHO Study Finds Remdesivir Has ‘Little Or No Effect’ On Preventing Deaths — 10/16/20, 6:15 a.m. ET
The World Health Organization said the antiviral drug remdesivir — one of the many drugs President Donald Trump was given to treat his coronavirus infection — has “little to no effect” on mortality for patients hospitalized with the coronavirus, CNN reported.
The WHO looked at four therapeutics in a study covering more than 11,000 coronavirus patients in 30 countries. Along with remdesivir, the study analyzed the use of hydroxychloroquine; a combination of the anti-HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir; and interferon.
“For each drug in the study, the effect on mortality was disappointingly unpromising,” WHO said. The study hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal but the WHO published the results themselves.
The disappointing result differs from an earlier study in the U.S. that found that remdesivir shortens recovery time by about a third in those hospitalized with serious illness.
— Liza Hearon
