The Atlantic, August 7, 2020: Trump Has Launched a Three-Pronged Attack on the Election

This is a good article in the sense that it describes the Trump tactics to "steal" the election, but also provides recommendations on how Democrats and voters can fight back. More specifically any delays in voter ballots caused by the post office must be counted, not by December 8th but rather January 6th, the last drop dead day. Trump will attempt to close up vote counting on December 8th. States need to make provisions now for the possibility of votes coming in well beyond December 8th.

There are other recommendations, and if state legislatures act now in anticipation of the "mayhem" then it could be a non-event.

One of the reasons Nancy Pelosi has not caved on the second Covid-19 relief bill is that she wants money for the post office to carry out their mandate. Republicans want to starve the post office of money so they can let the mail pile up before election day.

Reuters: Trump to attend Paris conference to help support Lebanon

"CAIRO (Reuters) - United States President Donald Trump told his Lebanese counterpart, Michel Aoun, in a phone call that he will be at Paris conference called for by French President Emmanuel Macron to support Lebanon and provide aid, Lebanese presidency announced on Twitter on Friday."

What's in it for Trump? Publicity and photo ops, and then go home and not follow through.

I watched Attorney General Letitia James on the Rachel Maddow show last night. It sure appears to me that James has an air tight case against the NRA, Wayne La Pierre and his direct reports. Her summary to Rachel was damning, and I would expect her to provide solid evidence of the corruption in court. But this will drag on for a while. She wants to dissolve the NRA in its entirety and any remaining monies (??) after sale of assets would be distributed to real charities.

They can start up again in Texas from scratch, but they cannot walk away from New York until the paperwork is finished. Ha.

La Pierre has shown he is more powerful than Oliver North, but a black woman attorney general will take him down for good. That must be humiliating.

Barr's testimony to the Judiciary Committee on July 28th will be another non-event with Barr obfuscating and ducking questions. He will sit there with that glum look on his face and authoritatively make "believable lies".

Or maybe he will find an excuse to not attend at all. He's done that before.

Trump's solo daily briefings on the coronavirus are all scripted except for the Q/A afterward. The scripts seem to acknowledge the problems, something that hasn't been a part of Trump's unscripted mutterings in the past. It seems his campaign managers are trying to pivot him as his poll numbers are tanking.

Still Trump will be Trump when he doesn't have a script in front of him to read like a 5th grader, head down pronouncing each word deliberately, like perhaps: "person...woman...man...camera...TV". Wow that was tough to get those words out in sequence. Give him an "A" for the dementia test.

Meanwhile in Europe and other parts of the world, school children are returning to school. My grandchildren live in Cape Town, South Africa and both have returned to school full time, although the number of cases is rising there too. They both wear masks at school all day without difficulty. However, their parents are anxious about the rising number of cases as people just don't seem to appreciate the importance of masks and social distancing. The country has shut down alcohol sales as the numbers of domestic violence have likewise increased.

The question of school re-openings is a difficult one for parents. It would be helpful if we had someone competent besides Betsy Devos at the helm. Like others in the Trump administration she is woefully incompetent for the task at hand. We've talked about this before, but until you can solve the school and childcare problem, you cannot solve the economic problem.