“Big, beautiful, Straight Orange Male with history of adultery seeks white housewives for Big Macs and friendship with political benefits. Enjoys QAnon pedophile conspiracies and armed intimidation of civil rights demonstrators. Turnoffs: science, fitness, manners. Prefers that women sign NDAs and answer to ‘pig,’ ‘dog,’ ‘monster’ and ‘nasty.’” —Tongue-in-cheek (I think) online dating profile for Donald J. Trump, by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank.
“Brace yourself while I paint a picture of a nightmarish future. It’s one in which every American gets to vote without impediment or inconvenience. Where the presidential candidate who gets the most votes actually moves into the Oval Office. Where bills in Congress are debated and then voted on, the side with more votes prevails, then those laws take effect and the public can judge the results. This is the terrifying political hellscape the Republican Party is determined to prevent. For a party with a dwindling base and a broadly unpopular agenda, there is no more profound threat than democracy.” —Columnist Paul Waldman, writing in the Washington Post.
“The metadata in the PDF files published by the Post, which supposedly contain (Hunter) Biden’s emails, show that the files were created in September and October of 2019 — months after MacIsaac said the laptops were dropped off and a full year before the Post story dropped. Disinformation experts warned that the timing of emails’ release, the way they became public, and the lack of forensic evidence are all signs that the material could be the result of forgery, a hack, or a combination of the two. The Russian GRU unit responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016 hacked Burisma, The New York Times reported earlier this year, prompting fears that material from the hack would be leaked near the election in an effort to hurt Biden’s campaign.” —Writers Jesselyn Cook, Jessica Schulberg and Nick Robins-Early, pointing out major flaws in Hunter Biden laptop story. [Twitter has banned New York Post articles about Hunter Biden because of the obvious inconsistencies.]
“Nice job on that one. How could NY Post miss that? A profound embarrassment to a paper founded by Alexander Hamilton.” —Tweet by L. Steven Goldblatt.
“Er, pdfs of emails? That would be deliberate conversion of the original data, wouldn’t it? —Tweet by Stephen A. Loeb.
“We certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020 through what I would call more the maligned foreign influence side of things ― social media, use of proxies, state media, online journals, etc. ― in an effort to both sow divisiveness and discord and … primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment.” —FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday. [Another FBI Director bites the dust.]
“Watching Joe Biden for a few minutes while I’ve been watching this Trump town Hall is like taking a cool drink of water after standing in front of a fan blowing a blast furnace in my face. The only good thing about these two competing town hall events is that they show how much Biden is held to a different standard as an actual rational human being while Trump just has to get through an hour without lighting a bucket of mice on fire.” —Tweet by Tom Nichols, on the contrast between the town hall meetings of Biden and Trump on Thursday.
“Flipping back and forth, you see a decent, compassionate, knowledgeable public servant and a psychopath. —Tweet by Richard Stengel.
“Watching Biden inspires calm and lowers blood pressure. Watching psycho Trump inspires asking how did this mental patient abscond the asylum?” —Tweet by Genuine Ersatz.
NOT A TRUMP QUOTE, but it should be (with apologies to Cavin & Hobbes)
Trump: I just read this great science-fiction story. It’s about how machines take control of humans and turn them into zombie slaves.”
McConnell: So instead of us controlling machines, they control us? Pretty scary idea.”
Trump: I’ll say…HEY, what time is it? Fox and Friends is on.”
Louisiana Voice 
Remember when tRump first became president? People wanted and were expecting him to change and start acting more presidential. It never happened. And we all know his pathetic track record. Now, today, we want him to continue being a spiraling wreck. He is the best free advertisement for Biden’s presidential campaign.
Yep, his campaign has to absolutely cringe every time he speaks.
I just remembered this “acting presidential” bit during the Jimmy Kimmel monologue the other night: https://youtu.be/ip8Q1kzDKl4?t=75
Yes, Kimmel is more sardonic than Colbert and, for that reason, slightly more effective in his comic criticism of DJT. I like them both, though and did catch this one the other night. It was excellent.
I watched (mostly) the Biden TH and was delighted to see reports that far more chose his venue over the orange idiot. I’m sure trump was absolutely livid since he didn’t retweet any ratings garbage to claim victory via twitter. Based on the clips I’ve seen from the trump venue, it was the right choice to skip it… and besides, who really needs that negativity in their lives. Though, my hat is off to that moderator for taking him to task. He keeps claiming that everyone treats him more harshly than Biden and he’s right. But, just like my late father would say, you get what you give. I wonder if trump will ever figure out that you can’t call down the thunder and then bitch about the rain.
Now, just about 17 more days to see what kind of trash that trump and his foreign social media operatives throw against the wall to see what sticks.
And here’s more from Dana Millbank on tRump and women voters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/16/why-would-any-woman-swipe-right-this-man/
This story on Yahoo News is certainly timely. I had never heard the term “Truth Decay”, but it was apparently coined by the Rand Corporation a couple of years ago:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/america-truth-decay-experts-134729786.html
Very interesting. People are too easily accepting of information from any source. Too uninformed to even stop for a second and think “wait a minute, this doesn’t sound right” and then check it out. For years we’ve been hearing that this country has a problem with students not learning enough math. Immigration from India has solved that problem. Now, we need to bring back old fashioned social studies, civics, and history. So, so sad that our citizens are so uneducated on issues.
I just heard an interview with true Qanon believers. It was chilling to hear two people, a man and a woman, declare that they honestly believed the most horrible of the conspiracy theories from this “whatever it is”. The man even declared that he believed that John F. Kennedy, Jr. was not killed in the plane crash and started Qanon. Nothing that the interviewer told him about the facts, swayed him. He just kept saying that “it could be true and in his heart, he believed that JFK,jr. was alive and leading Qanon”. The woman declared that Trump was fighting against pedophiles and she knew this to be true and she would vote for him because of this. When the interviewer asked her what Trump had done/was doing that made her believe this and she just said “everything that he can!” Has America always had these total crackpots and has social media helped them to grow? I know that Trump’s support has helped them and maybe I have just never heard crackpots speak so calmly about their beliefs. This scared me bigly!
I think they were always there, but have just now been given free rein by none other than the POTUS to express and receive acceptance of their ideas in the information marketplace. Maybe they were a little reticent to do so before because, at least at the subconscious level, they were afraid to admit their ideas and beliefs might cause them to be labeled crackpots if they gave them free vent. Then they saw the POTUS retweeting and originating crackpot and said to themselves, “Hey, I was right all along and the POTUS knows it and values my beliefs.”
I again say the only good thing about this presidency is that it has revealed what was previously largely hidden about our society. Now, what to do about it? Electing people who denounce, at the least, the most ridiculous things floating around out there rather than encouraging them would be a good start.