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Michael McLeod

Actually, John, this is nothing new. It's been in the republican playbook for years.

From the Times five-month investigation. Let's hope history does not repeat.

On an October morning four years ago, eight young staff members at the Indiana Voter Registration Project in Indianapolis were planning their final steps before a closely contested presidential election. In recent weeks they had registered 45,000 new voters, most of whom were Black and Latino, and they were on track to enlist 10,000 more before Election Day. Their work had gone smoothly for the most part, but several canvassers had submitted applications with names that appeared to have been made up or drawn from the phone book, most likely to create the appearance that they were doing more work than they had actually done. That was illegal — submitting a false registration is a felony under Indiana law — and also frustrating. A made-up name was not going to help anyone vote. The staff members stopped using the suspect canvassers, but they couldn’t simply trash the faulty registrations: State law required them to file every application they collected, even if they had false names or serious mistakes. So they carefully identified all the applications with potentially false names, along with several hundred more with incorrect addresses or other simple errors, so that local election clerks would know they might present a problem.

Despite their efforts at transparency, though, Indiana’s secretary of state, Connie Lawson, used these faulty registrations as evidence of wrongdoing. She warned all the state’s county elections clerks that a group of “nefarious actors” who were going “by the name of the Indiana Voter Registration Project” had “forged voter registrations.” It was a gross exaggeration, but the project hired a lawyer to visit local election board offices and assure registrars that they were following the proper procedures. Craig Varoga, a longtime Democratic operative who runs Patriot Majority USA, which funded the Indiana project, told reporters that the fraud claims were false. Lawson was a close ally of Mike Pence, the state’s former governor who was then Donald Trump’s running mate. “We believe she is using government resources,” Varoga said, “to discredit and impugn the entire process.”

But the staff members did not expect anything like what came that October morning. Around 10:45, five unmarked state police cars and a mobile cybercrimes unit quietly approached their building. A staff member heard a knock on the back door. Within minutes, troopers were rounding up the staff members inside the office, announcing that they had a warrant to search all their computers, cellphones and records. When one staff member, a young Black man, refused to give up his phone, the troopers handcuffed him — for “acting like a hoodlum,” he later said in a sworn affidavit. Within a couple of hours, the police were heading out the door with computers and phones as a television news crew captured the scene.

Pence seized on the investigation in interviews. “Voter fraud, Dana, is real,” he told the CNN correspondent Dana Bash. “We’re dealing with it in the state of Indiana right now. We have literally thousands of instances of fraudulent voter registration.” This claim was a misrepresentation, but it was of a piece with similar claims circulating around the country. The Pennsylvania State Police raided a Democratic firm that it said was suspected of producing fraudulent registrations. Conservative activists released a report titled “Alien Invasion in Virginia,” claiming that more than a thousand “noncitizens” there were poised to vote illegally. A video from Project Veritas’s right-wing video ambush artist James O’Keefe III caught a Democratic operative seemingly discussing a hypothetical “huge, massive voter-fraud scheme” in Wisconsin, as Sean Hannity described it. Some of the claims were simply nonsensical. Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime adviser, tweeted a fictitious document that purported to reveal a Democratic plan to attack American voters with mind-controlling “pulsed ELF electromagnetic emissions” and impose martial law, adding only, “If this is real: OMG!!!”

None of these stories held up under examination: The Pennsylvania authorities never followed the raid with a case; there were no official findings of illegal voting by noncitizens in Virginia; a Wisconsin attorney general’s investigation failed to uncover a “massive voter-fraud scheme.” In Indiana, a judge dismissed charges against a manager at the Indiana Voter Registration Project, and prosecutors dropped the cases against nine of its former canvassers after they agreed to pay fines and confirm as true the charges against them. Two of the former canvassers did plead guilty to making false statements on government forms and received sentences of community service and probation.

But all those headlines about voter fraud — amplified daily on Facebook and Twitter — served a purpose: They laid the groundwork for a legal challenge. The Trump campaign had a team of election lawyers standing by to dispute election results throughout the country, and the Republican National Lawyers Association had readied a self-described “Navy SEAL-type” operation to fight similar cases. In the event of a Republican loss, they would need a story, and fraud was it. The truth appeared to be a secondary concern at best.

Victory did little to change their stance. Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump told a bipartisan group of senators that his narrow loss in New Hampshire was due to voter fraud. Thousands of out-of-state voters apparently voted illegally, he said, after they were bused in to New Hampshire from Massachusetts. After Trump’s rant was leaked to reporters, the ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos asked the senior presidential adviser Stephen Miller if he really believed that to be the case. The practice of busing in illegal, out-of-state voters was “widely known” in New Hampshire, he said. But he declined to provide evidence, adding that “voter fraud is something we’re going to be looking at very seriously.”

As the 2020 presidential election nears, it is becoming clear that the Trump administration and the Republican Party are not just looking at but heavily investing in the largely nonexistent problem of voter fraud. A New York Times Magazine investigation, based on a review of thousands of pages of court records and interviews with more than 100 key players — lawyers, activists and current and former government officials — found an extensive effort to gain partisan advantage by aggressively promoting the false claim that voter fraud is a pervasive problem. The effort takes its most prominent form in the president’s own public statements, which relentlessly promote the false notion that voter fraud is rampant.

This story did not originate with Trump. It has its roots in Reconstruction-era efforts to suppress the votes of newly freed slaves and came roaring back to life after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. But it is reaching an apex now, as a president who lost the popular vote in 2016 and is currently trailing in the polls harnesses the reality-warping powers of social media and the resources of at least four federal agencies to undermine faith in an election he could very well lose.

Voter fraud is an adaptable fiction, and the president has tailored it to the moment. Even as the coronavirus pandemic poses a grave obstacle to his re-election, the crisis is providing him an opportunity to do what no other president has done before him: use the full force of the federal government to attack the democratic process, suppress the votes of American citizens and spread grievance and suspicion among his followers. Recently, perhaps predictably, the president has begun to suggest that because of his professed distrust in the election process, he will not agree to a peaceful transition of power.

It is remarkable, but not at all accidental, that a narrative built from minor incidents, gross exaggeration and outright fabrication is now at the center of the effort to re-elect the president. As we approach an election in which the threat of voter fraud is being used as a justification for unprecedented legal and political interventions in our democratic process, it is important to understand what this claim actually represents: It is nothing short of a decades-long disinformation campaign — sloppy, cynical and brazen, but often quite effective — carried out by a consistent cast of characters with a consistent story line. Even the Indiana Voter Registration Project remains in play. “In my own state of Indiana in 2012,” Pence said on Fox News in July, “literally, there was a group of people that were prosecuted for falsifying ballots.” He had the year wrong and the facts wrong. But the Indiana case was nevertheless proof, he said, that “the reality of voter fraud is undeniable.”

The modern era of voter-fraud claims began on a November morning in 2000, inside a drab office building in downtown Miami — home of the Miami-Dade County election supervisor. Al Gore was contesting the results of the Florida presidential vote count, which showed a very small margin in favor of George W. Bush. Up against a court-imposed deadline, the Miami-Dade canvassing board voted to recount 10,750 ballots that had been rejected by its electronic machines, letting the 643,250 others stand, a decision that, at the time, seemed as though it could tip the vote to Gore.

With a Republican protest growing inside and around the building, the election board had moved its counting to a room on the 19th floor, away from the crowd. Stone, who helped guide Trump’s first, short-lived bid for the presidency during the 2000 primaries, has proudly promoted himself as an organizer of the demonstration, which involved several young white male rising stars of the conservative-operative ranks. The group stormed the counting room in a crashing human wave of clenched fists, pleated khakis and button-down shirt collars. Banging on doors and walls, they chanted, “Stop the fraud!”

The effort was obviously in bad faith — reporters called it the Blue Blazer Riot, the Bourgeois Riot and the Brooks Brothers Riot — but the board was sufficiently intimidated. It suspended the count less than a quarter of the way through, when it had shown a net gain of nearly 160 votes for Gore. It would never resume. If the rest of the ballots had broken the same way, Gore would have gained more votes than Bush’s final winning margin in Florida of 537. The success of the Brooks Brothers Riot confirmed that a fraud claim — even an unconvincing one — could help determine a chaotic, contested election.

Timothy Lavelle

Just thinking...The benefit of this forum to me is special to me. Since the reunion and with this method I have been able to hear from people privately that otherwise I would have lived out my life without hearing from again.

 To all of you, the answer is still "no". Stop asking.

Still thinking...Lastly, you don't think a political season could be more insane...I offer you a mini view. If the much fantasized Independent Party could have put a knowledgeable candidate up, the political scene would be more chaotic than anything we've seen. Just imagine...

We're good. We'll get through this.

Frank Ganley

Tim does that mean I'm out as far as talking , texting as I said no politics, or because I like the one you hate ! If I'm out let me know if I'm in say yes , I am hoping I'm still in. Rather disappointing to lose a friend over a difference of political opinion. Frank

David Mitchell

First of all, I am NOT a liberal. And I also prefer think for myself. And I beleive I do have a right to express an opinion.

I watched every moment (except for one quick dash to the refigerator) of the "debacle". I thought Trump's behavior during the debate was absolutely atrocious - childish - shamefully low and spiteful - like the spoiled child that he is. And so do some other Conservatives. At times he was utterly out of control.  One of the Republican commentaters immediately following the event said so also. Several GOP senators have expresed their shock that he doesn't have the gumption to condemn racist militant groups such as the "Proud Boys" - a dangerous and well-known group who beleive in white male supremacy. I hope you saw some of the articles the next day about how they cheered and celibrated his enocuraging comments "stand down". (I have kids in Portland and I have been hearing about them for several years now)

Doesn't any of that frighten you!

He never shut up, refused to follow the rules of the debate, interupted Biden over and over and over again, and told several lies. He lied about his taxes, lied about the Porltand chief of police, and lied when he said he "didn't know the Proud Boys".  (Well, I guess he does now.)

But I thought his worst comment was when he said "I don't know Beau." Only a sociopathic, childish, draft-dodging, coward would take such a chep shot at a man's patriotic, deceased son. How disgusting!

If he isn't the textbook example of a sociopath I would like to hear your own medical diagnosis of what is.

(I look forward to the next few years (in or out of office) as we watch his creditors call his hundreds of millions of dollars of loans. "Successful businesman - who's kidding who? More like master con-man.)

David Mitchell

p.s. You may have caught my spelling of the word "commentaters" in the post above, and thought it to be another of my many spelling errors.

Rather than correct it, I thought I would explain that it is a word - at least down here it is. 

"Commentaters" are "taters" that are in frequent supply and are "commenly" available to all who enjoy them.

Michael McLeod

Yeah the labels are interesting, Dave. 

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase.

That's from TS Eliot.

I see things from the point of view of 40 years of teaching writing and as many years of writing for American newspapers and magazines.

If all that did was turn me into somebody who sees things through a single lense that you can describe with one word that sure was a waste of time and money. 

So I am changing my tune.

Maybe there is something to this voter fraud thing after all.

"Two right-wing political operatives were charged Thursday with a series of felonies in connection with a robocall scheme that Michigan’s attorney general said was part of a broad effort intended to intimidate minority voters from casting mail-in ballots.

The operatives, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, made automated calls to around 12,000 Michigan residents in August, warning them that their personal information from mail-in ballots could be used to execute outstanding arrest warrants or by credit card companies to collect unpaid debts, the authorities said.

Many of the residents who were targeted live in Detroit and other cities, said Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general.

The calls — believed to be among 85,000 made nationally by the operatives — also claimed that mail-in voting information could be used by the government to track people for mandatory vaccination programs, the attorney general’s office said.

Both men have drawn attention for their efforts to smear opponents of President Trump.

“This effort specifically targeted minority voters in an attempt to deter them from voting in the November election,” Ms. Nessel said in a statement. “We’re all well aware of the frustrations caused by the millions of nuisance robocalls flooding our cellphones and landlines each day, but this particular message poses grave consequences for our democracy and the principles upon which it was built. Michigan voters are entitled to a full, free and fair election in November and my office will not hesitate to pursue those who jeopardize that.”

Mr. Burkman, 54, of Arlington, Va., and Mr. Wohl, 22, of Los Angeles, were each charged with intimidating voters, conspiracy to intimidate voters, using a computer to intimidate voters and conspiracy to use a computer to intimidate voters, according to a criminal complaint.

Mr. Burkman, who is well known for peddling right-wing conspiracy theories and who has tried to smear public figures that included the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III with fabricated sexual misconduct allegations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

Timothy Lavelle

I remember hoping for an interesting life...

Secret parties of Dems in closed room with no microphones or cameras doing the Snoopy Happy Dance while practicing their "Gee, this is sooo sad" face.

Repubs is closed door sessions trying to figure out the best ways to spin this most recent challenge, to keep their jobs.

While I don't believe the same way many of you do, I can't help but imagine the meeting in heaven where god decided to have some wicked fun..."First I call my Notorious Girl home to give the rednecks a little hope and sadden the socialists...then I wait while things cook...then I give Trump the corona virus to bum out the rednecks and hearten the commies...O My Me, wait'll you see what I throw in next"!

But, you know, I can also hear Big Sally from memory using those same words your own Mother used when you refused to listen and wound up getting hurt..."What did you expect". So, Donny, what did you expect?   

I continue to believe we should do what we can to enjoy the ride and stay sane. Assuming I'm sane...

Wash, mask up, vote. Throw the bum and his cohorts to the curb.   

Frank Ganley

I guess I got my answer fromMr LaVelle

John Jackson

There’s a lot of low-hanging “I told you so” fruit from the last 24 hours that I’ll ignore and instead focus on some real voter fraud (aka voter suppression)  which is far more widespread.  Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, has decreed that each county in Texas can have only one drop-off box for mail-in ballots.  This means, for example, that Harris County (which includes heavily-Democratic Houston with a population of more than 5 million and an area of 1600 square miles) has a single place to drop off ballots. 

I can only assume Gov. Abbot did this since Trump a few days ago was up only 2% in an average of half a dozen polls in bright red Texas.  Is  Abbot worried that Trump's weekend (or longer) sojourn at Walter Reed might cause some of Trump's mask-averse cult to start to re-think and tip the balance?

David Mitchell

Bob Gibson, Hall of Fame ace for Cardinals, dies at 84

I pitched in 8th grade - quite poorly I might add. Tom litzinger, Kevin ryan, and joe royce could attest to that - ALTHOUGH KENNY GRIMES - AHEM, FATHER GRIMES LIKED MY CURVE BALL - WHICH WORKED WELL ON the fifth tuesday after EVERY OTHER LUNAR ECLIPSE - sort of.

I loved pitching and I loved TO WATCH GOOD pitChers. two of my favorite players of all time were pitchers - sandy koufax of the dodgers, and bob gibson of the cardinals. Man were they fun to watch - faster than anything i ever saw. Bob gibson would simply blow it by the hitters. I used to WISH that i could throw as fast as he did. One year hIs e.r.a. WAS ONLY 1.12 PER GAME,,,,, FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON - RIDICULOUS!

He died tonight.

If I EVER get to heaven, maybe I'll get to SEE that fast ball again.

 

. SPORTS

by: The Associated Press

Posted: Oct 2, 2020 / 09:08 PM PDT / Updated: Oct 2, 2020 / 09:08 PM PDT

David Mitchell

ditto what John said just about the Governor of Texas. Begs the question - WHY?

Bonnie Jonas (Jonas-Boggioni)

Before the rest of the Forum land goes apoplectic over the mis-information that John is spreading, the "pick" up is for those who want to DELIVER - IN PERSON their ballots.  It is not being done for voter supression.  You can still drop your absentte ballot in any mail box/post office.

As for me, even though I did an absentee ballot in 2018 (three weeks after my Bone Marrow Transplant), I am going to go - in person - to vote early this year.

There arenot many times I risk myself like this, but there are sometimes when my rightous Irish goes off!  I can hear my Mother's voice in my head!

John Jackson

Bonnie is absolutely correct  but I never meant to suggest the single drop-off box per county was the only way to vote with mail-in ballots in Texas - I think it’s pretty obvious to most people that “mail-in ballots” (as I referred to them) can always be mailed.  

But after Trump's new Postmaster General's efforts to slow down postal deliveries, I'd prefer not to count on the Postal Service to deliver my ballot in time to be counted.  

And if Governor Abbott's policy is so innocent, what's the purpose in having only one box?

Michael McLeod

Here's the run-down on this Texas thing. 

You certainly can read it as being connected to the republican effort to supress. Whether that's out of calculation or paranoia depends upon your own intrpretation and pov. And it bear remember that this happens against the backdrop of the virus, and the reticence of everyone, particularly people our age, to go out and face crowds. Everyone should have every opportunity to vote and both parties ought to be making that as easy and safe - and, yes, free of manipulation of any sort - as possible. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Voting rights advocates have filed suit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, contending that his new order limiting mail-ballot drop-off locations to one per county burdens voters and “undermines the public’s confidence in the election itself.”

The complaint, filed late Thursday in federal court, seeks to block enforcement of an order Abbott (R) issued Thursday and to allow counties to offer multiple ballot drop-off locations ahead of a projected rise in mail voting during the general election.

The increase is expected despite state GOP officials’ success in maintaining strict eligibility limits on mail voting during the coronavirus pandemic. The state is one of only five that is prohibiting voters fearful of exposure to the virus from casting mail ballots this fall.

“The impact of this eleventh-hour decisions is momentous, targets Texas’ most vulnerable voters — older voters, and voters with disabilities — and results in wild variations in access to absentee voting drop-off locations depending on the county a voter resides in,” the lawsuit stated. “It also results in predictable disproportionate impacts on minority communities . . . already hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis.”

It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center on behalf of the Texas and national League of United Latin American Citizens groups, as well as the state chapter of the League of Women Voters and two individual voters.

The legal action came hours after Abbott issued his order, a move that Democrats and voting rights advocates decried, saying it was aimed at suppressing the vote and warning it could hurt populous cities that are Democratic strongholds.

Abbott said having a single drop-off location per county is necessary for “ballot security,” echoing unfounded claims by President Trump about the risks of voting by mail.

“The State of Texas has a duty to voters to maintain the integrity of our elections,” the governor said in a statement Thursday, adding, “These enhanced security protocols will ensure greater transparency and will help stop attempts at illegal voting.”

Texas governor’s limit on drop-off sites for mail-in ballots criticized as voter suppression

John Wittman, a spokesman for Abbott, declined to comment on why the governor considers multiple drop-off locations to be less secure. Experts say there is no evidence that mail voting will lead to widespread election fraud, as Trump as repeatedly asserted.

AD

In a statement, Wittman also asserted that Abbott “has not limited voting — instead he has expanded access to voting.” He argued that the governor’s executive order allowed voters to turn in their mail ballot anytime leading up to Election Day, claiming this was not previously allowed under Texas law.

Abbott’s order states that voters casting mail ballots can return them to a “single early voting clerk’s office location.” That meant election officials in several heavily populated Texas counties had to shutter existing drop-off locations that had been opened to make it easier for voters to cast mail ballots.

The order also allows poll watchers to observe the drop-off process.

The clerk of Harris County — the state’s most populous county, with more than 4.7 million residents — said the governor’s order “is confusing to voters and will serve to suppress Texas votes, plain and simple.”

AD

“Make no mistake, this is intentional,” Democrat Chris Hollins said at a news conference Friday. “This is being done to make it more difficult for you to vote. But I urge you — do not be discouraged. If every voter only takes away one thing from today, I want it to be that your vote is your voice in our democracy.”

Comprising 254 counties and more than 260,000 square miles of land, area-wise Texas is the largest of the Lower 48 states. More than 70 of its counties exceed 1,000 square miles; the largest, Brewster County, contains roughly 6,200 square miles.

Courts view GOP fraud claims skeptically as Democrats score key legal victories over mail voting

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, said in a statement that in Harris County, “reducing 11 drop off locations to only 1 severely limits voting access and forces people to choose between voting and their health.” The county, which includes Houston, comprises 1,777 square miles.

AD

He called Abbott’s order “blatant voter suppression and yet another way the politicians in charge are putting barriers between Texans and the ballot box.”

“With last-minute changes and pending litigation, it is increasingly clear that confusion in Texas elections is part of a pattern of voter suppression,” he said.

Under Texas law, only a limited number of voters can vote by mail this fall — those who are 65 or older, disabled, in jail or traveling outside their county of residence during early voting and on Election Day.

The suit filed Thursday is the latest development in a broader legal conflict between Republicans and voting rights advocates, who have partnered with Democrats in Texas and throughout the country in efforts to loosen restrictions on mail voting during the pandemic.

Other legal challenges to Abbott’s order may follow. Republicans for the Rule of Law, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, is also interested in joining the battle against the order, the group told The Washington Post on Thursday.

David Mitchell

as I asked before - Why?

What is the correleation between the number of "drop boxes" and "voter security"? I don't see any - other than to make it more or less difficult on voters. Is anyone suggesting that the burden (or cost) of more boxes is so great that they cannot afford them? Oh, maybe a bit of extra driving to collect them. I hardy think that argument justifies this odd decision. 

So maybe they compromise on the number of drop points - say, from eleven, down to five or six. But to go to one single box for a whole county seems to make their intentions so suspect that it naturally raises qustions. I mean, who would not be suspsicious of such a strange and shallow argument - espeially during this election?

---------- I got distracted and forgot my last question. If any mailbox is okay then why even have these special voter boxes? I'm asking that question sincerely - not rhetorically.

Michael McLeod

When Former NJ Governor Chris Christie, who helped Trump prepare for that debate debacle, has also tested positive, and after hearing the news Stephen King texted him: "You're a dipshit for not taking precautions, but I wish you well."

Michael McLeod

Mark:

Check this out if you haven't seen it already. Probably way too raw/racy/real for the more delicate souls among out classmates but a really fabulous project to my eyes. Reminded me of some of the characters I ran into during my days on the police beat.

Tangerine is a 2015 American comedy-drama film directed by Sean Baker, and written by Baker and Chris Bergoch, starring Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, and James Ransone. The story follows a transgender sex worker who discovers her boyfriend and pimp has been cheating on her. The film was shot with three iPhone 5S smartphones.^[4]

Tangerine premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2015. It had a limited release on July 10, 2015, through Magnolia Pictures.^[5] It received critical acclaim for its screenplay, direction, performances and portrayal of transgender individuals.

James Hamilton, M. D.

For those interested, I posted on the "General Discussion" of the "User Forum" a topic I called "A Tale of Two Viruses".

Jim

David Barbour

Thank you Mike, you are a hero defending sanity and honesty in our press which literaly protects

our nation against lying, cheating dirtbags like the orange dirtbag.

DB

Lawrence Foster

I found Jim Hamilton's post "A Tale of Two Viruses" over on the User Forum an interesting read. 

Below is a link to the "Select Subcommittee on the Coronovirus Crisis" released on October 2,  Yes, it is written by Republicans so don't start yelling right away that it is fake news.  

If interested you can look at the supporting documents in this report.  Some are listed as footnotes but there are also active links on pages 42-47 to scientific reports.  This is where the facts are and they are not slanted by main stream news media outlets.

Copy and paste this link into your browser for the pdf file of the report:

https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/SSOCC-Report-10-2-20.pdf

Michael McLeod

Thanks for the link Larry. It makes the prez look good but actions speak louder than words. And thanks for the support, Dave. The demonization and unreasoned, whole-cloth dismissal of the country's journalists is a big part of the reason our country is so sick  - both literally and figuratively - right now. 

Michael McLeod

And here's a lovely piece that Maureen Dowd wrote that ran yesterday.

So nicely written it qualifies as literary journalism in my book.

WASHINGTON — Fate leads the willing, Seneca said, while the unwilling get dragged.

For his entire life, Donald Trump has stayed one step ahead of disaster, plying his gift for holding reality at bay.

He conjured his own threadbare reality, about success, about virility, about imbroglios with women, even about the height of Trump Tower.

As president, he has created a bubble within his bubble, keeping out science and anything that made him look bad. He has played a dangerous game of alchemizing wishes to facts, pretending that he was a strong leader, pretending that the virus will magically disappear and that it “affects virtually nobody,’’ pretending that we don’t have to wear masks, pretending that dicey remedies could work, pretending that the vaccine is right around the corner.

Now, in a moment that feels biblical, the implacable virus has come to his door.

This was the week when many of the president’s pernicious deceptions boomeranged on him. It was redolent of the “Night on Bald Mountain” scene in “Fantasia,’’ when all the bad spirits come out in a dark swarm.

The man whose father told him there are only killers and zeros, the man who cruelly castigated others as losers, the man who was taught to fear losing above all else, has been doing some very public losing of his own.

Upsetting as it is to see the president and first lady facing a mortal threat — and the glee and memes from some on the left were vulgar — it was undeniable that reality was crashing in on the former reality star.

Remarkable new reporting in The New York Times exposed the hoax of Trump, master businessman. Even as he was beginning to swagger around “The Apprentice” to the tune of “For the Love of Money” by The O’Jays in 2004, he was filing a tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses. The gilt barely covered the rot.

“The red ink spilled from everywhere, even as American television audiences saw him as a savvy business mogul with the Midas touch,’’ the Times reported, adding: “the show’s big ratings meant that everyone wanted a piece of the Trump brand, and he grabbed at the opportunity to rent it out. There was $500,000 to pitch Double Stuf Oreos, another half-million to sell Domino’s Pizza and $850,000 to push laundry detergent.’’

There were Trump seminars on wealth, and that Midas myth propelled the coarse political neophyte into the White House. But the year Trump won the presidency and his first year as president, he paid only $750 in federal income taxes.

Tuesday’s debate pierced another reality that Trump had been hawking on Fox for months — that his opponent was an addled husk who would need performance drugs to stand at the podium, and that Trump would stride in like a colossus and clobber him in a trice.

Instead, the ugly reality was there for all to see: Trump was truculent, whiny and nasty, and Joe Biden was fine. Trump was indecent, on everything from white supremacists to Hunter Biden’s addiction, and Biden was decent.

And, in the end, the con man in the Oval Office could not con the virus. He was a perverse Pied Piper of contagion, luring crowds to his rallies and events on the White House lawn, even as he mocked the safety measures recommended by his own government, sidelined and undermined Dr. Anthony Fauci, and turned the mask into a symbol of blue-state wimpiness.

“I don’t wear masks like him,’’ Trump sneered about Biden, at the obstreperous Cleveland debate. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask.

“He could be speaking 200 feet away,’’ the president continued, “and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Members of the Trump family, sitting in the front row, followed the patriarch’s example. They ditched their masks during the debate, ignoring the requirements that they keep them on.

It seemed inevitable that Trump would get infected, given his insouciance on the issue of protective measures combined with his age, weight and ambitious travel schedule. He seemed oddly intent on tempting fate. Certainly, he put a lot of his fans, especially older ones in the most vulnerable demographic (like Herman Cain, who died of Covid after attending a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla.), at risk with his dismissiveness about the virus, laxity on testing and tracing, and his insistence on continuing rallies.

Even for Trump, it was an astonishing act of hubris, asking his base to choose between paying homage to him or protecting their own lives.

As Nancy Pelosi told Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC Friday morning, “Going into crowds unmasked and all the rest was sort of a brazen invitation for something like this to happen, sad that it did, but nonetheless, hopeful that it will be a transition to a saner approach to what this virus is all about.”

But now that it has happened, it creates an alarming situation. How will a White House shrouded in secrecy and lies deal with a sick president who specializes in secrecy and lies?

The public never found out what happened that Saturday last year when the president was whisked off to Walter Reed medical center, a visit that was raised again this weekend, as reporters noted that we might not even know all Trump’s underlying conditions.

White House officials tried to be reassuring on Friday, saying that the president’s symptoms were “mild,’’ but it was clear that things could be serious when the White House doctor, Sean Conley, put out a statement in the late afternoon saying that Trump was taking an experimental antibody cocktail.

There was also an eerie silence all day from the president’s usually rambunctious Twitter account. Then, Marine One landed on the South Lawn in the evening to take him to Walter Reed for a few days. At 6:31 p.m., the president tweeted a video saying that Melania was “doing very well” and that he thought he was doing “very well,” but that he was going to hospital to “make sure that things work out.” And at 11:31 p.m., he tweeted: “Going well, I think! Thank you to all. LOVE!!!”

Democrats tried to be nice. On Friday, the Biden campaign paused their negative ads, and Barack Obama said at a virtual fund-raiser that despite being in a fight “with issues that have a lot at stake,’’ we’re still Americans and “we want to make sure everybody is healthy.” (At the same moment, the Trump campaign issued an attack on “lyin’ Obama.”)

I have long marveled that Donald Trump never seemed to get sick, either during the campaign or in office, and had an extraordinary amount of energy for a man of 74 who binged junk food and skipped the gym. He has been a great advertisement for not smoking and drinking. So it was stunning to see Trump walk out, finally wearing a mask, waving as he took off for Walter Reed, with the election only a month away and the next scheduled presidential debate two weeks from now.

With the West Wing in a panic, and with Republicans feeling the White House and Senate slipping away, the Democrats made moves on two fronts.

Pelosi thought the Republicans might be more amenable to the bigger aid package that she has been pushing, now that Covid had become scarily real to them.

As she pointed out, if the president could get infected — “with all the protection that he has”— think of how vulnerable ordinary people are, “if you’ve lost your job and lost your health care and you’re food insecure and you’re on the verge of eviction.’’ Trump’s diagnosis should be, she said, “a learning experience.”

It also could change the dynamic of Mitch McConnell’s hypocritical push to get Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination crammed through the Senate, because she will have to do more of her meetings with lawmakers virtually. The Democrats now hope to slow down the rush to appoint the conservative judge who, according to news reports this week, signed a newspaper ad in 2006 that called Roe v. Wade “a barbaric legacy” and supported overturning it.

As Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein said in a joint statement, Democrats need to “ensure a full and fair hearing that is not rushed, not truncated and not virtual.”

The pictures from the Rose Garden last Saturday, where President Trump nominated Judge Barrett, scream superspreader. There’s a maskless Trump and maskless Republican lawmakers and a maskless president of the University of Notre Dame and lots of hugs, kisses and handshakes. Mike Lee and Thom Tillis, both Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, were there; on Friday they said they had tested positive for the virus, as did John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, and Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former top aide who was also in the Rose Garden that day. (Judge Barrett, who recovered from the virus this summer, graduated from the law school and became a professor there.) Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, also tested positive. Three White House reporters have also reported testing positive this past week.

After Britain’s leader, Boris Johnson, had a life-or-death fight with Covid earlier this year, he came out of the hospital a bit more inclined to take scientific advice and more ready to put restrictive measures in place than he had been at the start of the pandemic. He was still torn, though, between his medical advisers and the Tories in his Cabinet, who were deeply opposed to another lockdown because they feared it could shatter the economy.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported that Trump was “spooked” and “alarmed” at having the virus.

It’s impossible to know how — or even whether — this illness will change the president. But hopefully it will change his skeptical followers and make them realize that this vicious microbe really is contagious, that President Trump is not invulnerable and that therefore they are not either, that crowding together at rallies is not smart, that wearing a mask is important, and that it’s not all going to disappear like a miracle.

Joseph D. McCarthy

Dear Dr. Hamilton,

As an agent for thee estate of one Charles Dickens, we ask you to immediately cease and decist with your plagarism of the title to Mr. Dicken's book "A Tale of Two Cities."  And forwith please be notified that we are sending you are bill for two cases of twinkies for your attempt to destroy the title to Mr. Dicken's classic.

Yours,

Joe

P.S.  I promise to eat only half a twinkie a month.

Joseph D. McCarthy

For those interested.  Our local paper, Sunday edition, reported that the grape crop loss to vineyard owners is expected to be at least one-half of a billion dollars this year.  For you in South Carolina that is the equivalent of the years peanut crop, or $500 Million.

Better stock up on wine now.

Joe

Michael McLeod

Seriously. I mean seriously if the price of wine goes up. Of all the depressing things we've contended with this year that is surely one of the most sobering -- and no that is not meant as a play on words -- one of the most sobering craptastic occurrences of an utterly craptastic year.  The two glasses of wine I share with my significant other is equivalent to the joy I get from watching the evening sky turn pink or wandering out into my back yard a few hours later to discover that one of my night blooming cereus vines has produced another outlandish and subtly fragrant bloom. It's the little things in life. Only they're not so little now that we are old enough to know better.