SAY WHAT?

MEDIA WATCH-The Liberty Counsel, the self-proclaimed Christian defender of Christmas known for using the courts to try to overturn LGBTQ rights, has issued their annual holiday “Naughty or Nice” list. 

While the list is regularly what would technically be described as a “hot mess,” this year’s reckoning is particularly peculiar. When it comes to the War on Christmas, the Liberty Counsel can’t decide where to aim.

MEDIA WATCH-Donald Trump’s efforts to litigate himself to a second term are effectively done. Hastening the end are two things. One, the reality that the voter fraud claims on which he stakes his litigation strategy are baseless. Two, something that every first-year law student knows, the ethical and legal obligations of (Trump’s) attorneys not to press arguments in court which are meritless or frivolous. This includes Rudy Giuliani as Trump’s legal manager. 

There was never much of a chance Trump would succeed in overturning the presidential election results in court. There was a fantasy that the legacy of Bush v. Gore that led to the Supreme Court handing Florida and the 2000 presidential race to George Bush would prevail again. Yet that case was about varying standards to ascertain voter intent in an election in one state where the margin between George Bush and Al Gore was simply a few hundred votes. Bush’s legal team raised legitimate constitutional questions about Equal Protection and treating different voters differently. Winning in court in that one state gave Bush the electoral votes he needed to win the presidency.

MEDIA WATCH--Over the last number of years I have come across a number of people that seem to not only be ill-educated on what activism is, but they seem to think that it has nothing to do with change in our country. A typical response from them usually includes “just vote.” I remind them that if it hadn’t been for activists, women and people of color wouldn’t have the ability to vote. Activism has been at the basis of creating our country, beginning with the Tea Party and moving forward. Activism offers an up front, in your face visual that politics is very personal.

When we gather together to right a wrong, we can move mountains with our collective voice!

MEDIA WATCH--It has become painfully obvious to everyone living in the United States that we have a dirty underbelly of citizens that had remained hidden. These people have a twisted idea that the only Americans that should have the right to live here are white and believe in their cherry-picked Christianity. To achieve those goals they are willing to support an authoritarian dictator, throw all but the 1st two Amendments of the Constitution out the door, and go so far as to enter into violence against all that don’t fall into lockstep with their beliefs. Trump was the one that spoke out loudly to let these losers, whiners, and constantly angry people out and there is no way that they will slither back into the slime from whence they came, without a fight.

MEDIA WATCH--What a day. The triumphal streets filled with singular whooping, honking, dancing, weeping, hugging, pot-banging, flag-waving and soaring, curbside renditions of "America the Beautiful," which finally had something to celebrate.

In Philly, there were dancing mailboxes - or as one giddy enthusiast marveled, "dancing fucking mailboxes!" In Brooklyn, residents and passing USPS trucks exultantly cheered each other. In Atlanta, people paid poignant tribute to Martin Luther King and John Lewis, and assured powerhouse voting rights activist Stacey Abrams that she's earned the right to be "Secretary of Whateverdafukshewants."

MEDIA WATCH--Dwayne Bryant is an internationally renowned speaker, best-selling author, educational consultant, trainer and Alumni of the FBI Citizen’s Academy. Known for his high-energy, unique ability to connect to an audience, keen intellect and wit, Bryant fuels audiences by sharing his credo of hard work, perseverance, integrity, and applied faith, which are the keys to his success. 

Here, Bryant discusses how the presidential race was influenced by POC and how the next president will impact POC, as well as:

MEDIA WATCH--There’s a myth going around these days that’s particularly damaging. The myth of Trump’s demise — and, as they say, it’s greatly exaggerated. In comes in three forms. One, there’s going to be a blow-out, so there’s no need to worry about American democracy. Two, that Trump will concede politely and walk away gently into the good night. Three, that American institutions will force Trump out of power. None of these three things is true, and they are leading to a false sense of confidence just before a crucial election. (Photo above: Jim Watson)

The first myth — there’s going to be a blow-out — is easiest to dispense with. Somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of America still supports Trump — despite the horror freak show of the last four years. The polls register 40 percent, but that number should be taken with a grain of salt: there’s always a secret hate vote when it comes to fascist-authoritarian moments. The evidence is ample — 2016, Brexit, and so on. Some percentage of people always tell pollsters what they want to hear — and then in the heat and silence of the voting booth, choose hate and folly.

MEDIA WATCH--Kamala Harris’s public record on trans rights began the moment she stepped into elected office in 2003 as San Francisco’s District Attorney. One of her first acts as DA was to establish an LGBTQ taskforce, establishing a hate crimes unit to fund the investigations and prosecution of anti-LGBTQ violence. Her office also set up a victim assistance program, creating a two-part approach of prosecution for the offenders and relief for the victims.

MEDIA WATCH--President Donald Trump is losing to former Vice President Joe Biden by more than 10 percentage points in both the Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight national polling averages. This historically large margin suggests that something amazing has happened: Even in our hyperpolarized political environment, a meaningful number of voters have changed their minds about Trump.

Equally amazing: The majority of 2016 Trump voters — despite a mismanaged pandemic, widespread economic fallout, a racial crisis exacerbated by divisive rhetoric, and a debate meltdown — plan to back Trump a second time.

What makes one voter who supported Trump in 2016 decide to support Biden? And what makes another voter — even one who thinks things are going badly — stick around?

MEDIA WATCH-Violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people, particularly Black and Brown transgender women, is an epidemic that needs national leadership.

So far this year, the Human Rights Campaign has tracked 33 transgender or gender non-conforming people who have been violently killed, including the tragic shooting of Sara Blackwood earlier this week in Indiana. This is the highest number on record with more than two months left in the year, and the vast majority are Black and Brown transgender women. It’s unacceptable. 

MEDIA WATCH--President Trump’s recent bout with COVID-19 and increasingly erratic behavior has heightened concerns as to whether the 25^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is up to the task of dealing with issues of presidential succession, especially during a pandemic. Why wasn’t Vice President Mike Pence given temporary presidential powers while Trump was fighting off a life-threatening illness and taking experimental medications known to cause mental confusion and lapses of judgment? White House officials confirmed he had no plans for Pence to assume even temporary authority as president. 

MEDIA WATCH-The old saying about judging people by the company they keep applies equally to ballot measures.

So let’s take a look at who’s spending the most to fight Proposition 15 on next month’s ballot.

That’s the measure that would close a loophole allowing many commercial and industrial property owners to dodge reassessments under Proposition 13 for some four decades.

According to the most recent disclosures filed with state campaign finance authorities, the big spenders on the “No on 15" side include land developers, agricultural interests and golf and country clubs.

DEBATE REVIEW--As soon as Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate ended, like clockwork, cable news pundits and focus groups assessed Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ performance using sexist and racist undertones.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz said his focus group of undecided voters deemed Harris, the first Black and Asian American woman on a major-party presidential ticket, “condescending” and “abrasive.”

Fox News host Bret Baier asked Karl Rove if the California senator was “likeable.”

MEDIA WATCH-resident Donald Trump’s diagnosis with Covid-19 just a month before the presidential election has been the latest shock to the United States in what was already a year marked by uncertainty and instability.

Although modern presidents have had significant health challenges in the recent past — Dwight Eisenhower suffered a major heart attack in 1955, and Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981 — none has occurred so near an election.

While many people with the coronavirus don’t get seriously ill, Trump has a number of major risk factors as an overweight male septuagenarian. If his conditions worsen beyond the mild symptoms already reported, it creates the potential for legal and constitutional crises.

MEDIA WATCH-My daughter, a librarian in Tucson, paid more taxes in 2017 than Donald Trump. So did my neighbor Rita, a teacher, and her son Tony, who stocks grocery shelves in Leland, Michigan

I also pay more in taxes than the president of the United States. And, probably, so do you.

We now understand why Trump was the first presidential candidate since the 1970s not to divulge his tax returns.

In 2016 and 2017, the billionaire paid just $750 each year in taxes to the U.S. Treasury. In 10 out of 15 years between 2001 and 2017, Trump paid zero taxes.

MEDIA WATCH--While President Donald Trump's long-running effort to game the U.S. tax code for his own financial benefit was the central focus of explosive new reporting on the billionaire's tax returns by the New York Times, progressive observers and lawmakers were quick to note that the behaviors revealed by the documents are commonplace among America's wealthy elite—a fact they said is cause for widespread outrage and a renewed push in Congress for transformational change to a system that is fundamentally rotten.

"Donald Trump is a liar, a cheater, and a crooked businessman, yes. But he's also taking advantage of a broken, corrupt, and unequal system that's built for people like him to do what he did."
—Sen. Elizabeth Warren

CORONA WATCH--Front-line care workers have been called heroes throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Many of them don’t feel like it.

Instead, they feel besieged and traumatized not only by the suffering and death they’ve witnessed, but by a health care system they believe is showing it doesn’t value them, a disjointed and ineffective governmental response, and members of the public who deny the reality of all that suffering and death.

Tragedy is part of the job for medical providers, but the relentlessness of the coronavirus outbreak is more than most have ever seen, said Nina Wells, a nurse practitioner and the president of the Service Employees International Union Local 121RN in Pasadena, California.

CORONA WATCH--Michael Caputo, the politically appointed assistant secretary of public affairs for the nation’s health department, has reportedly apologized to the health secretary and his staff after accusing government scientists fighting the coronavirus pandemic of having a “resistance unit” and plotting to undermine President Donald Trump.

Caputo’s apology to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday, as reported by several media outlets citing sources familiar with the situation, followed him spewing disturbing conspiracy theories in a live Facebook video on Sunday about the upcoming presidential election and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to fight COVID-19.

“There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until Joe Biden is president,” he said, without providing any supporting evidence, according to copies of the video shared by various news outlets. 

CORONA WATCH-A public health expert at George Washington University rebuked President Donald Trump's campaign after it argued that Trump had a right to host an estimated 25,000 people at an indoor campaign rally Sunday evening in Nevada because hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken part in racial justice protests in recent months. (Photo above: People cheer as U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for an indoor campaign rally at Xtreme Manufacturing in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, Nevada, on September 13, 2020. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

After receiving harsh criticism for holding its first indoor rally since June in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, the campaign responded by saying, "If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets...or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the 1st Amendment to hear from the president of the United States."

CORONA WATCH--Donald Trump loves parades. In 2018, for no particular reason other than to gratify himself, he organized a military parade in his honor. But as plans for the parade developed, Trump insisted on excluding wounded veterans because “nobody wants to see” amputees, according to an explosive new piece in The Atlantic. In general, Jeffrey Goldberg writes, “Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered.” (Photo above: President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images).

CORONAWATCH--Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many people — including my parents — said they’d rather die than end up in a nursing home. So when my mother suffered a brain aneurysm and became severely disabled at the age of 57, my father and I cared for her at home.

I had two young children and a full-time job, so I would help after work and on the weekends. But when my father also fell ill, we needed more help than I could give.

Like many families with few long-term care options, we were forced to turn to the nursing home system.