“#Russian Orthodox #Church’s council dismissed the head of Belarusian exarchate (branch of the ROC in #Belarus), Metropolitan Pavel – and moved him to Krasnodar in southern Russia. He was the top Orthodox cleric in Belarus since December 2013:…”
The president [sic] promised uplifting and positive, but what viewers got was a dystopian vision under Biden — with racist overtones
There was once a theory that Donald Trump’s first run for president was a merely a stunt to help him launch his own TV network. On Monday the world finally got two and a half ghoulish hours of Trump TV. It was a lesson in the medium’s power in the art of make-believe, especially of the Soviet kind.
The first night of the Trump national convention — sorry, Republican national convention — was proof how the 166-year-old party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan has become a personality cult. Speaker after speaker paid homage to the absolute monarch as if competing to outdo one another for obsequious sycophancy.
There is no Republican policy platform this year other than the party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his administration.
Trump TV had two other crucial components. One was the type of propaganda that would make Fox News blush and had factcheckers scrambling, for example a selectively edited video segment on the coronavirus pandemic that trashed Democrats, claimed, One leader took decisive action to save lives, and made no reference to Trump’s repeated predictions that the virus will just disappear nor his suggestion that patients be injected with disinfectant.
Only on the upside-down Trump TV channel could a Covid-19 death toll of more than 175,000 — far higher than any other country in the world — be an argument for re-election.
The other predictable theme was pornographic scaremongering about the Democratic candidate Joe Biden and — in an endlessly repeated phrase — the radical left. Despite Trump’s promise that the evening’s programming would contain something very uplifting and positive, speakers portrayed the prospect of a Biden victory as the stuff of dystopian nightmares, sometimes with racist overtones.
[… I]t was Kimberly Guilfoyle, partner of Trump’s son Don Jr and a former Fox News host, who stole the show with a high-octane audition for Evita — without an audience.
At this point, I fell over laughing. I saw very competent production of Evita in London last millennium, and whilst my specific memories are a bit vague, she, as presented in the show, would fit right in with hair furor’s dysfunctional family / mafia and teh fox & Putin / thug enablers.
Standing in Washington’s cavernous Andrew W Mellon Auditorium, scene of the treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin’s wedding in 2018, Guilfoyle screamed into the void about Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris: They want to destroy this country and everything we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live.
They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal victim ideology to the point where you will not recognize this country or yourself.
It was about as different as could be imagined from Michelle Obama’s calm, intimate address exactly one week earlier at the Democratic address. But it had a similarly dramatic message: whereas Obama and her husband framed the election as Trump versus democracy, the Republican pitch this week is America versus socialism.
[…] Nikki Haley, the former ambassador [sic] to the UN, told how she was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. In much of the Democratic party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country.
Such efforts were undermined, however, by Mark and Patty McCloskey, a white couple who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their home in St Louis, Missouri. Their job was to voice Trump’s racist obsession with America’s suburbs, supposedly being under threat of invasion, violent crime and total destruction.
Sitting in a faux European medieval mansion, they knew how to push buttons. Mark warned: The radicals are not content just marching in the streets. They want to walk the halls of Congress. They want power. This is Joe Biden’s party. These are the people who will be in charge.
Patty addded: They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities, they want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods. President [sic] Trump smartly ended this government overreach, but Joe Biden wants to bring it back.
These are the policies that are coming to a neighborhood near you. So make no mistake: no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.
As a reminder, these two loons are “lawyers” who have had felony chargers filed against them.
Republicans struggled with the pandemic-enforced virtual format more than Democrats. Shots of Trump supporters in every state had a rushed look as if hastily commissioned in response to the Democrats’ moving roll call last week.
There was soaring music and clips of monuments and memorials glowing at sunset and yet more Stars and Stripes. Whereas Biden was seen last week at virtual roundtables with guests on TV screens, Trump was able to host Covid-19 frontline workers and freed hostages in the grand setting of the White House (they did not wear masks and barely physically distanced).
[…]
Trump Jr, who feeds off crowd adulation like his father, struggled to throw red meat to an empty room. He accused the left of trying to cancel the founding fathers, adding: Joe Biden and the radical left are also now coming for our freedom of speech and want to bully us into submission. If they get their way, it will no longer be the ‘silent majority’, it will be the ‘silenced majority’ — a comment met with deafening silence. [ROTFL]
None of it was likely to win over wavering independents. This was a festival of fear aimed squarely at the base. It’s Trump’s party now: Republicans just happen to be living in it.
Former Formula 1 team boss and Italian businessman, Flavio Briatore, has been hospitalised, in Milan after contracting coronavirus.
Briatore, owner of the Sardinian ‘Billlionaire’s’ nightclub, has been taken to the San Raffaele Hospital, in the Lombardy capital, and his condition is ‘serious’, according to the Italian magazine l’Espresso.
Briatore has reportedly been admitted to hospital in Milan with coronavirus. Yhere has been no official statement from the hospital but multiple reports say Briatore’s condition is serious but he is not in intensive care.
A few days ago, Briatore attacked the government which, in mid-August, introduced a new decree imposing the closure of all discos in Italy, due to the increase in new cases of Covid-19.
“This new decree was written by a madman”, Briatore said.
However, a few days later, over 50 people tested positive for Covid-19 at Billionaire’s, including Briatore.
Meanwhile, former footballer and coach of the Seria A Bologna team, Sinisa Mihajlovic, has also tested positive. Mihahilovic had socialised with Briatore, in Sardinia, a few days before.
On 12 August, Briatore met the former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, at his house, on the Costa Smeralda, in Sardinia. “I came to visit my friend, the President: I love him so much and find him in good shape. Bravo Silvio,” Briatore said in a short video posted on Instagram.
“The criminal information filed in Hawaii implicating but not charging RNC Finance Elliott Broidy (Person B) with FARA violations in connection with lobbying Trump to squash the 1MDB investigation and to remove Guo Wengui to China–first reported by WSJ….”
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn conceded on Monday night that he had exaggerated the effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy as treatment for COVID-19 the day before.
“I have been criticized for remarks I made Sunday night about the benefits of convalescent plasma. The criticism is entirely justified,” Hahn tweeted. “What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction.”
The official clarified that the agency’s emergency approval of the treatment “is not a final approval” and that FDA scientists will “continue to monitor its use and will revoke authorization if needed.”
“We feel broader use of plasma will truly benefit many patients but will require further study,” he tweeted.
Hahn also denied that the authorization, which had been touted by President Donald Trump in his desperate efforts to bolster his reelection chances, was motivated by politics even as Trump pressures the FDA to approve treatment by November.
…
During a press briefing with Trump on Sunday, Hahn had heaped praise upon convalescent plasma therapy, claiming it had reduced the mortality rate among COVID-19 by as much as 35 percent.
“We dream in drug development of something like a 35 percent mortality reduction,” the FDA official said. “This is a major advance in the treatment of patients. This is a major advance.”
I was just overwhelmed by all of the irresponsible errors Hahn made in that presentation. It was like something Ben Goldacre would use to illustrate how not to interpret data.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 2
None of it was likely to win over wavering independents.
I don’t know. Never underestimate the fickle stupidity of the “independent” voter.
I’d love for people in the media to start asking Trumpublicans to describe specifically what they mean by “Western civilization,” “the values our country was founded on,” and the like.
SC @7, me too. Young conservative organizer Charlie Kirk called Trump the “bodyguard of Western civilization” battling “vengeful activists.” What “Western civilization”? That’s a racist dogwhistle.
There was a lot more where that came from, including Representative Matt Gaetz saying that Democrats want to “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren’t on their way.” Only Trump can protect you.
It all sounded like a violent game was being played in which a weak, small-minded, posturing bully-boy named Trump had assumed an avatar that was the opposite of what he really is. All the other players pretended that Warrior Trump was real.
The crucial thing to understand, above all else, about the Republican Party is that it is, at its core, The Party of the Boss’ Son. Trump and his son *are* the living embodiment of the whole ethos.
Nikki Haley was particularly good at presenting lies. During her speech at the Republican Convention she claimed that North Korea was no longer a problem, was no longer threatening anyone, (all thanks to Trump). That’s not true at all. How could she say all that with a straight face? It’s a mystery.
No one on Team Trump thought it might be unwise to show a clip of Trump praising Erdogan to an American pastor who was unjustly imprisoned by Erdogan?
In the United States, norms dictate that presidents don’t try to politicize freed hostages or the process in which they’re brought home. Of course, we’ve all come to learn how much use Donald Trump has for norms.
With this in mind, the first night of the Republican National Convention featured a first-of-its-kind video: a sitting American president, hanging out in the White House with freed hostages as part of a roundtable chat. The clip was then added to the convention presentation as a way for Trump to pat himself on the back.
But it included a strange moment that stood out for a reason.
In a recorded segment at Monday night’s RNC, […] Trump praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan while speaking with rescued American hostages, including Andrew Brunson, a pastor who was detained in Turkey — by Erdogan — several years. “I have to say, to me, President Erdogan was very good,” Trump said at a meeting with hostages released under his administration.
Well, no, the point is that Erdogan wasn’t very good. In this case, Trump was talking directly to an American who’d been unnecessarily detained for two years by Erdogan — which as even Trump should know, is the opposite of being “very good.”
Part of the problem, of course, is that [Trump] has an unnerving fondness for authoritarian leaders. Another aspect of this is the fact that Trump seems to have a special affinity for Erdogan in particular, calling the Turkish leader a “great ally,” a “strong man,” and saying he’s a “big fan” of Erdogan.
[…] it was just last fall when Trump cleared the way for a Turkish military offensive against our Kurdish allies, having reached a “deal” with Turkey in which Erdogan got everything he wanted, including gushing praise from the American president.
But there was just one other nagging detail that stood out for me: why didn’t Team Trump edit this out? The video that aired during the convention last night wasn’t live; it was filmed and then added to the party’s broadcast.
Neither the president nor any of his aides thought it might not be wise to show a clip of Trump praising Erdogan to an American pastor who was unjustly imprisoned by Erdogan?
Today, I’m introducing a bipartisan resolution with @RepRiggleman condemning QAnon.
Our aim is a fully bipartisan Congressional repudiation of this dangerous, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-mongering cult that the FBI says is radicalizing Americans to violence.
Deceptions are necessary to prevent Trump’s defeat.
To hear Republicans tell it, the 2020 presidential election is effectively a no-brainer: Donald Trump has been a great success, the argument goes, and Joe Biden is a failure pushing ideas that would take the country backward. The choice, from a GOP perspective, couldn’t be clearer.
Of course, if this were accurate, all Republicans would need to do is tell the public the truth. There’d be no need to mislead anyone, since the facts would serve as a boon to the incumbent president and his party, and prove devastating to his Democratic rivals.
And yet, on the first night of the Republican National Convention, the party made one thing painfully clear: the truth would not be good enough. The New York Times reported overnight:
President Trump and his political allies mounted a fierce and misleading defense of his political record on the first night of the Republican convention on Monday, while unleashing a barrage of attacks on Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party that were unrelenting in their bleakness…. At times, the speakers and prerecorded videos appeared to be describing an alternate reality….
The exasperated tone of leading fact-checkers helps capture the scope of the problem. A Washington Post report, for example, explained that the first night of the convention featured “a fire hose of false or misleading” claims. CNN’s Daniel Dale described the evening as “a parade of dishonesty,” adding, “We had false claims. We had misleading claims. We had major strategic omissions. We had up-is-down revisionist history on the coronavirus and other matters. I think it veered at times into the realm of disinformation even more than mere dishonesty.”
It’s unrealistic to think I could highlight every uttered falsehood in a single blog post, and there are plenty of detailed fact-check reports available from major news organizations, including a gem from NBC News. That said, among the most glaring claims came from several Republicans who insisted that Joe Biden supports defunding the police (that’s the opposite of the truth); the idea that Donald Trump is an opponent of “cancel culture” (he actually loves “cancel culture,” as evidenced by his Goodyear boycott); and repeated claims that Trump is responsible for having created the strongest economy in U.S. history, which is obviously ridiculous now, and wasn’t even true before the coronavirus pandemic.
I also found it extraordinary when Donald Trump Jr. said Biden described riots as “peaceful protests” (that never happened), when Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said the 2017 GOP tax gambit increased government revenue (it didn’t), and when former Ambassador Nikki Haley insisted that Trump rejected “weakness” toward North Korea (Trump actually said he “fell in love” with Kim Jong-un).
And I could hardly believe my eyes when Georgia’s Vernon Jones said with a straight face that Trump “ended, once and for all, the policy of mass incarceration of Black people.”
Perhaps most importantly, Trump Jr. told the public that as the coronavirus “began to spread, the president acted quickly and ensured ventilators got to hospitals that needed them most.” He claimed that his father “delivered PP&E to our brave front-line workers” and that “he rallied the mighty American private sector to tackle this new challenge.”
Putting aside the fact that he added an unnecessary “and” to “PPE,” the truth is that providing medical teams with this equipment has been a problem from the outset — a problem that still hasn’t gone away — which the president and his team hasn’t come close to addressing well.
But as important as the individual falsehoods are, there’s a larger arc that voters should recognize: every lie was a subtle concession that the truth about Trump and Biden isn’t good enough. The more Republicans found it necessary to mislead, the more they implicitly acknowledged that deceptions are necessary to prevent the president’s defeat.
The news that the Republican National Committee no longer intends to write a policy platform, as in at all, is not surprising. […] would have required a Republican convention committee to determine just what the party actually stood for in the year 2020, and there was not a chance in hell that was going to happen.
It is literally impossible for the party to write down, on paper, a list of policy stances it intends to take when each and every stance might be summarily erased by the buffoonish Donald Trump declaring on camera that actually he strongly believes the opposite thing—upon which declaration Republican lawmakers will immediately fall in line to declare that they, too, support the new thing and not the old thing. It would be a recipe for future humiliation, nothing more.
It only stands to reason, then, that the party would choose to abandon policy stances to instead declare that they are now officially for Whatever Donald Trump Says On Any Given Day.
The official Republican reason for abandoning the party platform is that the pandemic, which Donald Trump is handling just fine thank you very much, has made such a clusterfuck out of the nation that they could not manage to gather more than a “small contingent of delegates” to debate the platform. Now, one might think that with maaaany months of preparation available beforehand […] that there would be a means by which delegates could meet and discuss a new proposed platform using some of this newfangled technology we keep hearing about these days, but no. That would require some bare minimum level of competence […]
If Trump couldn’t handle any pandemic preparation beyond “have Jared Kushner do it, then give up after Kushner screws it up,” was there even the slightest chance the Republican Party as a whole could manage a pandemic Zoom meeting? […]
“WHEREAS, The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump,” declares the party, “RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” And that’s it. That’s the only policy stance. […] that is a statement Dear Leader’s least significant toadies can make without having to bother with debating it.
Republicanism has had a great many heroes, and tends to worship anyone who can string three words together in service of thinly veiled greed or racism (see: Reagan, both counts), but the idea of the party going all-in for the Trump Steaks guy, as advised by the My Pillow guy, as also advised by everyone who never saw the last major recession coming, and only getting more vigorous in their praise as a literal pandemic tears through the nation as direct result of Dear Leader’s bungling—I mean, come on.
The fealty isn’t funny, though, because it is a genuine threat. The fealty has included the United States Senate blocking investigations into some criminal acts and abetting others. It includes the Department of Justice doing the same, and making no particular effort to hide that it is doing so. It includes having trade wars on a whim, insulting allies for a momentary thrill, and systemically undermining the free press day in and day out in an effort to damage the ability of the public to even differentiate between fact and convenient fiction. The fealty has, now, a running death count.
[…] The extent to which the convention is a haphazard wreck is already evident from Trump’s first-day takeover and ramblefest, premised on no greater strategy than he felt like it. But the internal destruction of the party of greed and racism isn’t even something that its enemies can celebrate, because they managed to glide effortlessly into the only agenda that would be worse.
President Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he will nominate acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to be the permanent head of the agency.
It’s been more than 500 days since a Senate-confirmed secretary led the Department of Homeland Security — a record for any administration.
Wolf himself has served in an acting role since November 2019.
Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office found that Wolf and his acting deputy Ken Cuccinelli are ineligible to serve in their position because they did not follow federal law governing how certain leadership vacancies can be filled.
In a convention where a genuine fact might die of loneliness, the biggest lies are all about COVID-19. That’s quite a claim at an event where a parade of wealthy Republicans is taking the stand to claim different varieties of victimhood, and where speakers are painting a vision of what will happen when Trump departs the White House that would make Hieronymus Bosch run screaming. However, while lying about the economy is bad, and lying about Donald Trump being a “uniter” is simply ridiculous, lying about how we ended up as the worst of the worst when it comes to reacting to COVID-19 is dangerous.
It’s dangerous not just because Trump continues to promote quack “cures,” continues to override experts on both policy and treatment, and continues to undercut the need for action. It’s dangerous because the way the RNC is presenting Trump as someone who “understood the threat” while Democrats and the media “downplayed the danger” is such an obvious 180-degree inversion of reality that just presenting it displays an amazing contempt for facts, science, and history that isn’t even history yet. It’s not just that Donald Trump is covering up failure. He’s covering up genocide.
[…] Far from taking COVID-19 seriously, Trump was playing golf, making flu jokes with Sean Hannity, and generally basking in the warm afterglow of Republicans handing him a free pass by not calling so much as a single witness to his impeachment hearing.
[…]t Trump showed up in the (then unmutilated) Rose Garden with an array of Big-Box CEOs to announce a national testing strategy that would involve tens of thousands of parking lot testing centers coordinated by a website to route patients and provide results. The website was a lie. Those centers never appeared. And it wasn’t until July that we learned that Trump killed the whole idea of having coordinated testing as attempted genocide against states governed by Democrats. […] let citizens of Blue states simply die.
It wasn’t difficult to see the impact that a national program of testing and case tracing could have. Not only did South Korea use that strategy to wrangle an early epidemic there into one of the great success stories of the pandemic, but even nations as hard hit as Italy were able to use testing in conjunction with a tough national lockdown to stop the virus in its tracks. At one point, Italy had far more cases and far more deaths than the United States. Now it has a fraction of either, and the rate of new cases there is lower than many individual states.
Donald Trump’s response to COVID-19 wasn’t just the worst on the planet. It wasn’t just malignant incompetence. It was intentionally bad. Trump did less than he could have done on purpose, in the hopes that he could make political gains by pointing fingers at Democratic governors as Americans died. […] refused to centralize purchases of protective gear and medications, and actually confiscated materials purchased by blue states to send to his favored red states.
[…] It’s been murder. It’s been deliberate. It’s been death-as-a-political-strategy. And now the Trump convention is running film clips from Thailand as part of a propaganda piece claiming it was Trump who took the virus seriously, Trump who took action […]
This level of propaganda might not quite match that of the Nazis … but it’s getting damn close. Not only should Trump’s actions in canceling a national testing strategy be the subject of a second impeachment, they are crimes against humanity deserving of a trial before the world. […]
From the Trumpublican resolution quoted in Lynna’s #17 above:
RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.
This is a minor point in my criticism of the disgrace that is this document, but it is one of my biggest pet peeves and I see it almost every day. “The Republican Party has support the President’s…” is wrong, so they can’t use this construction. They would need to say “the Republican Party has supported and will continue to enthusiastically support…”
You do know what’s going to happen? The Republicans will starting screaming and bellyaching “What about Antifa!” as if anti-fascist activists and right-wing conspiracy kooks were somehow comparable.
NBA star LeBron James is speaking out about the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin, saying Black people in the United States are “terrified.”
“It’s just quite frankly f—ed up in our community,” James, who has been outspoken about racial injustice and police brutality, said during a news conference following the Los Angeles Lakers’ playoff win over the Portland Trail Blazers late Monday. “I know people get tired of hearing me say it, but we are scared as Black people in America. Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrified.”
…
Speaking a day after the incident, James expressed frustration over the officer’s use of a firearm, saying officers could have tackled or grabbed Blake.
“If you’re sitting here and telling me that there was no way to subdue that gentleman or detain him, before the firing of guns, then you’re sitting here and you’re not only lying to me, but you’re lying to every African American, every Black person in the community, because we see it over and over,” James said.
“Why does it always have to get to a point where we see the guns firing?” he asked. “His family is there, his kids are there, it’s in broad daylight.”
James has repeatedly decried police violence and other racial justice issues during his NBA career….
In recent months, James has been vocal about the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor….
James helped create the group More Than a Vote earlier this summer, which he said is designed to motivate Black people to use their voice and cast their ballots this year.
“Because of everything that’s going on, people are finally starting to listen to us — we feel like we’re finally getting a foot in the door,” James told The New York Times at the time. “How long is up to us. We don’t know. But we feel like we’re getting some ears and some attention, and this is the time for us to finally make a difference.”
[…]
Jerry Falwell Jr, an evangelical leader whose endorsement helped power Donald Trump to the White House but who is now embroiled in a sex scandal involving his wife and a business partner, agreed to resign as head of Liberty University on Monday. But he then withdrew his resignation, the school said.
The statement from the Lynchburg, Virginia, school, where Falwell has been president for more than a decade, capped a day of back-and-forth reports.
Politico quoted Falwell as saying I have not resigned, in response to reports in the Washington Post and other media that he had. ABC News and the Wall Street Journal also reported Falwell told them he had submitted his resignation.
[… lots of backstory…]
Nothing(?) about why teh rat is now trying to climb back aboard.
Brazilian senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of president Jair Bolsonaro, has tested positive for coronavirus, according to a statement by Flavio’s spokesman.
Flavio has no symptoms of Covid-19 and is at home, it said, adding he has started taking chloroquine and azithromycin as part of a treatment against the virus.
President Bolsonaro is a big supporter of chloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, despite the lack of solid evidence it works against the disease. [There is solid evidence that it does NOT work against the disease and can be dangerous. – SC]
Bolsonaro himself caught the virus earlier, as well as his wife Michelle Bolsonaro and his youngest son, Jair Renan.
Flavio Bolsonaro is the subject of multiple investigations. He’s 39. Bolsonaro’s wife’s grandmother died from the coronavirus recently.
tomhsays
@ #24
Lebron also said, “Guns are a huge issue in America. They’re not just used for hunting, like a lot of people do for sport. For Black people right now, when you’re hunting, we think you’re hunting us.”
“#Belarus. On this day in 1991, independence of Belarus was restored – the declaration of sovereignty of Belarus was given the constitutional status. Several thousands gathered outside the parliament again. This time, I’d call it not a protest, but celebration of independence
And so they came out again. The people are chanting ‘Long Live Belarus!’ Your everyday dose of Belarusians self-organising on the #Minsk streets”
Achievement comes following Nigeria vaccination drive, with last cases of wild virus recorded four years ago
[…]
Four years after the last recorded cases of wild polio in northern Nigeria, the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) on Tuesday certified that the continent is now free of the virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis and in some cases death.
The achievement is the result of a campaign to vaccinate and monitor children in Borno State, the final front of polio eradication efforts on the continent, and the heart of the jihadist insurgency in Nigeria.
[…]
The WHO, she said, had played a central coordinating role within the Global Polio Eradication Initiative — a coalition of national governments and local leaders working with Unicef, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary International and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with millions of community volunteers across the continent.
Improved surveillance, tackling violent levels of vaccine scepticism that fuelled deadly attacks on health workers, and the inclusion of polio survivors within eradication teams were key factors in wiping out the virus, said [WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso] Moeti.
“I would really like to pay tribute to polio survivors, who have joined in the fight, who have helped in sharing their experiences of disability with polio and the impact this has had on their lives,” she said.
In 1996, 75,000 children in Africa were paralysed by polio.
The fight now is to improve the lives of survivors, said Moeti.
[…]
Despite the progress, however, 16 countries in the region are currently experiencing small outbreaks of vaccine-derived polio, which can occur among underimmunised communities.
[…]
At least 67 frontline health workers involved in polio eradication efforts in the region have been killed, with others attacked and abducted. Several violent incidents were spurred by a rejection of vaccinations by local communities, said Dr Tunji Funsho, head of Rotary International’s Nigeria polio committee.
[… A] big effort to appeal to political, community and religious leaders, along with public campaigns and town hall meetings began a gradual turnaround.
In 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari was televised personally administering oral vaccine drops to one of his grandchildren.
[…]
The increased involvement of polio survivors over the past decade was crucial to addressing the concerns from local communities, said Lawan Didi, who was diagnosed with polio when he was two. “People saw us, and communicated with us. We could explain to them this is not a spiritual thing, but can be prevented with vaccines. It gave them a change of heart.”
[…] Jerry Falwell Jr confirmed on Tuesday he has resigned as president of Liberty University, news outlets including the Washington Post reported.
[…]
A reporter for the News & Advance, a Lynchburg [Virginia] paper, quoted Falwell as saying: It’s a relief. The quote that keeps going through my mind this morning is Martin Luther Ling Jr: ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last.
Falwell agreed to resign on Monday but then withdrew his resignation, the school said late that night, capping a day of back-and-forth reports.
NEWS: A postal employee provides NBC News with exclusive images of dismantled mail sorting machines in a Dallas facility. Workers attempted to repair and reinstall them but found critical parts were trashed.
These bar code sorters process letter mail, including ballots.
Yared Wonde, president of the Dallas postal workers union, tells us the sorting machines were in working condition at the time of their removal in July and that workers have “been told not to put it back in operation.” He says they will likely be sold for scrap metal.
At Monday’s #USPSHearing, Rep. @DWStweets asked DeJoy if he would authorize postal plant managers to turn sorting machines back on if local officials deemed it necessary.
Rep. DWS: “Those things are decided locally. Will you let them decide that locally?”
DeJoy: “No.”
(As an aside, Bennett has really come into his own, as have Jacob Soboroff, Julia Ainsley, and Heidi Przybyla, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some others.)
Decision to rename Squaw Valley ski resort reached after consulting with Native American groups and research on the term
[…]
The decision was reached after consulting with local Native American groups and extensive research into the etymology and history of the term “squaw”, said Ron Cohen, president and COO of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows.
Regional California tribes had long asked for the name of the resort to be changed, up until now with little success.
The word “squaw”, derived from the Algonquin language, may have once simply meant “woman”, but over generations, the word morphed into a misogynist and racist term to disparage indigenous women.
When settlers arrived in the 1850s in the area where the Sierra Nevada resort is now located, they first saw only Native American women working in a meadow. The land near Lake Tahoe was believed to have been given the name Squaw Valley by those early settlers.
“While we love our local history and the memories we all associate with this place as it has been named for so long, we are confronted with the overwhelming evidence that the term ‘squaw’ is considered offensive,” Cohen said.
Work to find a new name for the site […] will start immediately and is expected to be announced next year, Cohen added.
A reporter for the News & Advance, a Lynchburg [Virginia] paper, quoted Falwell as saying: “It’s a relief. The quote that keeps going through my mind this morning is Martin Luther Ling Jr: ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last.”
Well, that’s aggressively offensive.
I honestly think he believed he was entitled to retain his position and all its perks at the school (where students aren’t allowed to watch R-rated movies) and still maintain his lifestyle, even brazenly combining the two. He’s thoroughly aggrieved that they put a stop to it.
At least 67 frontline health workers involved in polio eradication efforts in the region have been killed, with others attacked and abducted. Several violent incidents were spurred by a rejection of vaccinations by local communities […]
[…]
The 74-year-old Northern Irish singer launched a campaign to save live music on his website, saying socially distanced gigs were not economically viable. I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up, he said.
[… He asserted] Andrew Lloyd Webber appeared to be the only other person in the music business trying to get it back up and running.
[…]
No prominent artists or musicians have publicly backed his call to lift restrictions on concerts, which he posted last Friday. […]
On the singer’s Facebook page, self-professed Morrison fans gave a largely scathing response to his appeal for full-capacity audiences. “This is madness. The science is real,” said one. “We love you, Van, but calling pandemic management protocols pseudo-science is probably the dumbest and certainly the most dangerous idea you’ve ever put your name to,” wrote another.
[…]
Until now, the most prominent Irish musician to challenge coronavirus rules was Jim Corr of the Corrs. He joined hundreds of people in a protest against lockdowns and masks in Dublin last Saturday. He became engaged in a social media spat with the Irish singing duo Jedward after they mocked him on Twitter as a “covidiot”.
[… He] has become known more as a conspiracy theorist than a musician in recent years, claiming that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job and coming out in support of the anti-vaxx movement.
His latest crusade is that coronavirus is a hoax and has been exaggerated, and has been urging people to watch a documentary [sic] called Plandemic, which shares widely debunked conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic.
[…]
The [anti-mask] protest in Dublin […] was attended by hundreds, and heard speakers claim that there was no evidence masks protected people from coronavirus and that the Covid-19 restrictions in Ireland were unconstitutional and unnecessary.
New measures introduced last week in Ireland have limited indoor gatherings to six people and outdoor gatherings to 15, while Kildare has reverted into lockdown after an increase in cases.
There have been over 27,900 cases of Covid-19 in Ireland, with 1,777 deaths.
Van teh Murderer has been preforming since the 1960s and has a string of prestigious awards. He is estimated to be “worth” multiple tens of millions of USD. He is often described as not a very nice person (No guru, no method, no manners) — “Scrooge”, “shite”, and similar are frequently(?) used.
SC @32, yes, Geoff Bennett is nailing this. His dogged pursuit of the Postal Service story is partially responsible for putting DeJoy in the hot seat, and for revealing lies coming from the Trump administration.
The parts of the sorting machines that were trashed beyond repair were the barcode readers. I’m hoping that some tech-savvy company offers to fix them.
…But in many ways, Falwell’s departure from Liberty only accentuates the long-lingering questions around his behavior.
Take the mystery around the role of former personal attorney to President Trump Michael Cohen.
Cohen appeared in the scandal last year, recorded telling actor Tom Arnold that he had helped resolve a situation around supposedly racy photographs of Falwell’s wife, Becki.
That revelation came amid lingering questions over Falwell’s support for President Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, which helped the New York City real estate developer appeal to the evangelicals that would go on to form part of the Republican base. The question since has been whether Cohen’s help for Falwell in destroying the racy photos was somehow linked to the longtime Liberty University president’s endorsement.
But Politico reported on Monday night that Granda knows more about Cohen’s involvement.
After a lawsuit was filed against the Falwells in 2014 over a real estate deal gone bad, Granda said that Becki Falwell believed Cohen would “take care of those guys that are suing us.”
“Those guys,” Granda told Politico, were the ones who had the compromising photos.
“Michael is well-connected in Miami. He will get this buried and will make those photos go away,” Granda reportedly recalled Becki Falwell saying.
That conversation came months before Falwell offered to buy Granda out of his stake in the same real estate deal, telling him in May 2015 that Donald Trump was planning a presidential campaign.
Granda told Politico that he believed the events were connected, and that Falwell sought to cut ties with the pool boy before taking on a bigger role in the national political scene.
Jerry Falwell has denied Granda’s allegations, saying that the pool boy had an affair with his wife but that he was uninvolved. Falwell has also accused Granda of using the information to extort him, a charge that Granda denies.
A person close to Falwell, however, did tell the New York Times last year that Falwell decided to support Trump after consulting “with other individuals whose opinions he respects.”
At that point, Falwell was denying the existence of the photographs, and the person close to the Falwells told the New York Times that they knew nothing of “Cohen’s alleged efforts.”…
More commentary on the Republican National Prevarication show:
As expected, the Republican version of “optimism” turned out to be apocalyptic ravings about the inevitable destruction of America, many of them at a volume that appeared not to recognize the existence of microphones. Highlights, if that’s the right word, included Donald Trump Jr. sweating his way through a addled presentation that left “cocaine” trending on Twitter, Kimberly Guilfoyle waving her arms during a high volume frenzy … something, and gun-waving “Karen” Patricia McCloskey warning that Democrats would “abolish suburbs.”
Though Trump had made a point of sneering at the use of recorded speeches at the Democratic convention, all of the above were also pre-taped. That includes Guilfoyle screaming at an empty room and Trump Jr. appearing to deliver a speech from Mt. Baked. Proof that Trump’s convention was stitched together in such a hurry, or with such little concern, that no one ever thought to say “great, now let’s do it again, but without making it seem like you’re summoning Cthulhu.” But if there was any real uniting theme for the convention of what the GOP is it was this: Lying our ass off for Trump.
[…] They hit both of the main categories of lies—both omission and commission. […] the economy actually grew more slowly under Trump than under Obama. […] the nation was already moving toward recession before the pandemic struck. Absolutely no one mentioned that Trump had also set the record for all-time high unemployment dating back to when the statistics began in the Great Depression. […]
Most amazingly, yet another canned video attempted to present Trump as the “decisive leader” who made the tough decisions on COVID-19 while Democratic leaders “got it wrong.” Coming straight from Upsidedownsia, the video made it Democrats and news outlets who “downplayed” the surging pandemic, while Trump was the guy who stepped into the breach. Somehow, the video left out the fact that Trump had golfed his way through January, and February, and into March before seeming to realize that a disease threatening the death of millions might be something about which he was supposed to express a modicum of concern. The video surprisingly left out Trump repeatedly describing coronavirus as nothing more than the flu, support for quack cures, attacks on governors who attempted to save their citizens, threats to withhold drugs and equipment from Democratic states, and unending claims that the virus would just “go away … like magic.” The video did make sure to include Trump calling COVID-19 the “China Virus.”
[…] There was a parade of Republicans who presented themselves as victims in one way or another, screaming about how Trump’s short-finger in the dike was the only thing holding back the horde. There was all the dog-whistling about suburbia that Trump feels will net him women who secretly (or not so secretly) are still concerned about the idea of keeping their neighborhoods snow white. There was a speech claiming that “bitter, deceitful, vengeful activists” are “locking up pastors,” which is quite a trick. [WTF!?]
And on COVID-19, there was the concerted effort to prove that Trump was never wrong—even when his error is visible in the form of 175,000 dead and counting.
This should create a pretty good barometer for which congresspeople believe they need Q support in the future.
It will also be immediately be followed by the What About Antifa Act, but that’s to be expected.
That [the Ilhan Omar tweet] was fast.
Can’t stress enough how flagrantly antisemitic QAnon is, by the way. There are the common tropes, like repeatedly insisting the Rothschilds run the world, the persistent blood libel references, the idea the Pope is run by Jewish world leaders.
“In a deleted video obtained by VICE News, RNC speaker Abby Johnson says ‘statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons’.”
blfsays
Lynna@42 quotes (about the thugs’s ongoing covidkookathon), “There was a speech claiming that bitter, deceitful, vengeful activists are locking up pastors, which is quite a trick.”
I haven’t tried to track it down, but there is a possibility a meme to that effect is circulating in the kooksphere. One reason for suspecting so is Black Lives Matter at odds with my religious beliefs, says Billy Vunipola. Mr Vunipola, a talented Rugby player in the UK of Tonga ancestry, is a magic sky faerie fundamentalist and known to be anti-LGBT, and is quoted in that article as saying [BLM] were burning churches and Bibles. I can’t support that. Even though I am a person of colour, I’m still more a person of, I guess, Jesus.
I am unawares of any genuine BLM protestors attacking any religious, well, anything… The closest might be a small fire near(? at?) the church around the time hair furor used teh gestapo to clear a path through DC so he could pose holding that book (allegedly upside down, as I recall) at that church. Mr Vunipola is either making things up, or there is something going around teh nutter’s echo chambers to the effect that (BLM) protestors are attacking religious whatevers.
The payroll tax termination is just about the only policy issue that made an appearance at the Trumpian Prevarication Show. Donald Junior brought it up.
Joan McCarter analyzed this issue, and the inevitable effects if Trump carries out this plan.
The chief actuary for Social Security has grim news for Trump supporters on Social Security: There wouldn’t be any more of it before his second term ended if he gets his way on the payroll tax. His plan to eliminate payroll taxes would deplete the Social Security Trust Fund by 2023, “with no ability to pay benefits thereafter.” That’s the “Old Age and Survivors Insurance” portion of the fund. The Disability Insurance Trust Fund would be gone next year.
[…] This is what would happen in Trump’s plan to “terminate” payroll taxes permanently in his second term. Trump announced this plan when he signed his executive order to allow employers to suspend taking payroll taxes out of employees’ pay. That order was so poorly conceived and executed that employers are having a hard time figuring out whether or not to do it, […]
CNBC reports: “Payroll companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business associations say it would be difficult to implement the deferral. They’re concerned about the liability employers and employees may face.” […] Legislation could create some kind of funding stream for the programs, but that part of it clearly hasn’t been figured out by team Trump, which hasn’t even figured out how to explain what Trump actually means when he says “terminate” the payroll tax.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, makes a key point. While analysis is based on hypothetical legislation that would do what Trump says he wants to do, which is get rid of the payroll tax, “in fact, Trump is claiming the authority to defund Social Security with no action from Congress whatsoever.” Trump is exerting the power, and believes he has the power, to do this on his own.
[…] “The law permits deferral for up to a year,” Altman explains, “long enough to defund and destroy Social Security disability insurance. If he declared additional emergencies through 2023, he could, on his own, end all of Social Security.”
Given Trump’s willingness to destroy the U.S. Postal Service, an institution that predates the Constitution and even predates American independence, he’s not going to hold Social Security sacred. He holds nothing sacred—not even human life, as his response to the pandemic has made abundantly clear.
So when the chief actuary of Social Security tells us that Social Security would be dead and gone before the end of Trump’s second term, it’s not alarmist. It’s a statement of fact.
blf @45, I think you are right. I have seen that small fire, which was quickly extinguished, blown out of proportion in a lot of rightwing media outlets, and on rightwing online forums. They did the same thing with what was basically a trash receptacle fire in Portland: the claim is now that radical activists burned down a church in Washington DC; and that they burned down a federal building in Portland.
In more RNC news, Madison Pauly commented on Trump’s appearance in pre-taped video last night:
[…] Trump doubled down on xenophobia and misinformation about the coronavirus during his first appearance during the Monday night broadcast of the Republican National Convention. During the short, stilted interaction filmed at the White House, Trump, surrounded by seven unmasked people with their hands clasped in front of them, attempted to talk to ordinary people.
“These are my friends,” he said, as one does. “These are the incredible workers who helped us so much with the COVID.”
He then asked asking the group to tell “their stories,” which mainly meant listing their professions: postal worker, post office custodian, nurse.
“How about you?” he said, turning to a goateed man.
“I’m a trucker.”
“Good!” the president exclaimed.
Throughout the appearance, Trump referred to the coronavirus using a racist term: “We can call it many different things, from China virus, I don’t want to go through all the different names, because some people might get insulted, but that’s the way it is.”
After a registered nurse thanked Trump for his leadership and added, unironically, that she admired him for “not [being] offended by all the words being said” about his coronavirus response, Trump replied “I’m for the nurses, I’m for the doctors, I’m for everybody—we just have to make this China virus go away, and it’s happening.” More than 177,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19 so far, and the number of new deaths per day are still climbing in some places.
When a sheriff’s deputy who works in a California jail mentioned he had recovered from COVID-19, Trump asked what had been done for him.
“They gave me Zpacks, medication, cough syrup,” the deputy replied.
“And I won’t even ask you about the hydroxychloroquine—it’s a shame what they’ve done to that one—but I took it. I took the z pack also. And zinc!” the president replies.
Well, this will certainly hit Trump where it hurts: “GOP convention’s first night draws fewer viewers than Democratic kickoff.” TV ratings are one of the few things Trump understands.
The Republican National Convention averaged 15.9 million viewers on its opening night, falling short of the 18.7 million who tuned in for the beginning of last week’s Democratic convention, according to Nielsen Media Research figures released Tuesday. […]
However, Fox News racked up more viewers than CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC combined. So, I guess Trump’s base of cult members watched.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday panned Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Republican National Convention speaker who on Monday implied her Puerto Rican mother was an immigrant.
“The woman the GOP picked as their ‘proud’ Latina to tout ‘immigrant experience’ didn’t seem to know that Puerto Rico is already part of the United States,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.
In her speech Monday, Guilfoyle called herself a first-generation American, referencing her parents’ places of origin.
“My mother Mercedes was a special education teacher from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. My father, also an immigrant, came to this nation in pursuit of the American dream,” said Guilfoyle.
The comment was poorly received among many Puerto Ricans and mainland residents of Puerto Rican origin, as the territory’s inhabitants are U.S. citizens.
Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory after the 1898 Spanish-American War; its residents have been U.S. citizens since 1917. […]
DeJoy claimed he didn’t know about some steps taken by middle management, but I think he did know … or he should have known. Some of those steps were taken as part of middle management’s efforts to follow his directives.
So, DeJoy is ignorant, incompetent, and probably a liar as well. All the best people.
Boris Johnson drops advice against face mask use in English schools
Pupils in England will no longer be advised against using face masks in schools after prime minister Boris Johnson made an 11th-hour U-turn days before students head back to the classroom.
In lockdown areas such as Greater Manchester, which have greater restrictions to stop the spread of the virus, wearing face coverings will become mandatory in school corridors where social distancing is more difficult.
In areas of England not subject to tighter restrictions, headteachers will have discretion over whether to require face masks, but the government will no longer advise against their use, a senior government source said.
The prime minister bowed to pressure and changed the guidance late on Tuesday after scores of headteachers broke ranks to urge their use, backed by Labour and trade unions.
Johnson told reporters earlier in the day he would “look at the changing medical evidence as we go on” but insisted schools would be safe regardless.
Yes, this was literally a change from this morning.
blfsays
Lynna@50, I cannot recall, but it would not surprise me if hair furor does not know (or has forgotten (again?)) Puerto Ricans are States citizens — and the on-going thugs’s covidkookthron is all about him… So I’m not too surprised the other speakersbellowers are “toeing the line”, so to speak, of his fantasies. Hence, perhaps, Guilfoyle insults & seeming-confusion.
ACLU: “BREAKING: In response to our class-action lawsuit, a federal court has ruled the Trump administration cannot deny thousands of US military service members the right to citizenship that Congress has long promised them.”
Trump has repeatedly denied reports that he offered senior aides pardons to stop undocumented immigrants from coming into the United States or to expedite construction of a border wall.
But a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security — who has become a Trump critic trying to derail his reelection — says Trump did offer pardons to immigration officials in a new advertisement designed to offer counter-messaging to the Republican National Convention.
“It was April of 2019. We were down at the border, and the president said to the senior leadership of the Homeland Security Department behind the scenes we should not let anyone else into the United States,” Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at DHS, said. “Even though he’d been told on repeated occasions that the way he wanted to do it was illegal, his response was to say, do it. If you get in trouble, I’ll pardon you.”
[…] “The president offered to pardon U.S. government officials for breaking the law to implement his immigration policy,” Taylor said in the new ad.
[…] The president has said he does not know Taylor, who was in a number of Oval Office meetings, according to other officials. Other administration officials said the president’s offer caused a ruckus at the time even as the president denied the story […]
“Another Fake Story on @NBCNews that I offered Pardons to Homeland Securiy personnel in case they broke the law regarding illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. Of course this is not true. Mainstream Media is corrupt and getting worse, if that is possible, every day!” Trump wrote at the time.
Taylor is seeking to recruit other former Trump administration officials to come forward and tell damaging stories about the president and campaign against him. One of Taylor’s goals is to win over swing voters by telling in-the-room stories about the president, hoping that will be more effective than aggressive invective.
He has launched a site called Repair45.org and says he has current administration officials helping him, though he declined to name them. A number of former Trump administration officials hold dim views of the president, but most of them have not come forward publicly.
For months, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s foremost demand in coronavirus relief, one of his hostage demands, has been lifting the threat of liability for schools and businesses when they put people in danger of coronavirus infection. It’s also been clear for months that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had this at the top of their wish list.
It turns out they didn’t just tell McConnell what they wanted, they handed him the draft bill for it […] the Chamber’s “Institute for Legal Reform wrote draft legislation designed to shield companies from liability related to the pandemic and distributed it to state and federal lawmakers, according to a top executive.” […] undoubtedly inspired McConnell’s rhetoric that there will be an “epidemic of lawsuits” in the wake of the pandemic, an assertion that so far has no basis in reality.
On the broadcast teleconference, Webb boasts that they have worked “very closely” with McConnell and with Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn to draft the legislation […]
McConnell has made the liability reforms the single thing he refuses to negotiate. No bill, he has said numerous times, will reach the Senate floor without it. That might be because the Chamber has coughed up more than $31,000 so far to McConnell’s reelection campaign, through its employees, members, and affiliated political action groups. That’s the largest contribution they’ve made this year, “and the most the group has given in recent years to a single candidate not running for president,” the Post reports. Cornyn’s received $10,000. Clearly keeping McConnell around is their highest priority.
The USA is all alone, isolated in a display of ignorance and stupidity.
The president of the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Trump administration’s demand to snap back sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.
The U.N. ambassador from Indonesia, which holds the council’s rotating presidency this month, announced the rejection Tuesday in response to questions from Russia and China on the issue
“It is clear to me that there is one member which has a particular position on the issues, while there are significant numbers of members who have contesting views,” Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesia ambassador to the U.N., said during a virtual Security Council meeting on the Middle East. […]
Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to New York to formally notify the United Nations that the United States was initiating the process to reinstate all U.N. sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the Obama-era nuclear deal.
Pompeo’s move came after the Security Council resoundly rejected a U.S. resolution to extend a conventional arms embargo on Iran that is expiring in October. Restoring the pre-nuclear deal sanctions would extend the arms embargo.
But the Trump administration’s move relies on an argument that it is still a participant in the nuclear deal as defined by a Security Council resolution that backed the deal, even though […] Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
Because the United States has withdrawn from the nuclear deal, other members of the Security Council argued Pompeo’s move last week was illegal.
Despite Tuesday’s announcement, the U.S. mission to the U.N. maintained that the United States is “is on firm legal ground to initiate the restoration of sanctions.” […]
MSNBC and CNN, the ratings leaders during last week’s Democratic convention, were again the two commercial networks that covered the convention most thoroughly.
But unlike last week, they interrupted the Republicans for real-time fact-checks and analysis. In one case, MSNBC interrupted a speech from a nurse who had praised Trump’s response to Covid-19 for saving lives.
“It’s all propaganda,” said contributor Dr Vin Gupta. “There’s no truth to it.”
MSNBC also broke into a speech by the Missouri couple who stood outside of their house with guns as a Black Lives Matter protest march went by, noting in an onscreen chyron that the duo had been charged with unlawful use of a weapon.
The usually Trump-friendly Fox network had its own issues during the first 90 minutes of its coverage, when viewers noticed they could see more of the actual proceedings on either CNN and MSNBC.
This despite criticisms from pro-Trump media personalities even before the convention got under way.
The mob, the media — they won’t be showing large parts of the RNC that we’ll be showing, Sean Hannity promised at the opening of his eponymous show.
And yet that turned out not to be true, with Fox often choosing coverage of its own TV personalities over that of the actual convention. Hannity himself talked over a speech by a Georgia state legislator, a Democrat who supports Trump, while CNN and MSNBC aired it. Fox also broadcast a conversation in which analyst Brit Hume told fellow Fox personality Tucker Carlson that the convention was trying to feature more women — while at the same moment the other two networks were actually listening to a speech by the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel.
The dearth of actual coverage on Fox led Trump campaign aide Brad Parscale to complain on Twitter: Can’t believe I have to watch the convention on CNN. Unbelievable.
Trump himself complained about spotty coverage of the roll call vote that officially renominated him as the Republican candidate for president [sic]. Some networks abandoned the president’s [sic] informal acceptance speech in a Charlotte, North Carolina, arena for fact-checking.
CNN’s [John] King corrected Trump’s statements calling voting by mail into question, as did Major Garrett of CBS News when that network stopped showing the president [sic]. Potential problems with mail-in voting claimed by Trump are “highly, highly unlikely” to happen, Garrett said.
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, host of the popular Sunday political show Meet the Press, lit into Trump and the Republicans.
“We were told this convention would be upbeat, optimistic,” Todd said. “Well, what we have just heard from the president [sic] was a grievance-filled informal acceptance speech that was filled with so many made-up problems about mail-in voting that if we were to air just the truthful parts, we probably could only air maybe a sentence.”
“Yandex is evacuating employees from Belarus after searches in the company’s office. Viber has closed its office in Belarus. High-tech giants are considering moving operations to other countries. Even if Lukashenka survives, Belarus IT-industry will likely not.”
blf @ #60, that’s good to know. During the convention hours, I was cooking and watching the season finale of Endeavour, which was intense. In general, if anyone’s looking for something to watch during the remaining RNC nights, I would recommend watching the whole season (also entertaining: Imposters and High Seas, both on Netflix).
“HFAC oversight & investigations subcomm chair @JoaquinCastrotx writes DepSecState Biegun requesting @StateDept legal opinion & any dissents on Pompeo violating Hatch Act & other dept regulations to address RNC from foreign soil while on taxpayer funded foreign travel, by Sept 10….”
Letter and more atl.
blfsays
The other day I stumbled on a video which had me ROTFL (not a good idea when wearing headphones!). It is “political” — or actually, more a sly commentary — but perhaps requires a bit of a backstory.
It starts with the pandemic. Assorted people have been producing what is called “Bardcore” music during lockdown. Bardcore is described by the Grauniad (Never mind the ballads! How bardcore took over pop music) as “Modern hit songs played on medieval instruments, often with medievalised lyrics”. That’s a bit fanciful, most of it is faux-medieval, both in the instrumentation and lyrics. It’s a bit of fun, rarely anything authentic.
Much of Bardcore is just actually instrumentals. I find that if you don’t know the actual modern song, it’s difficult to appreciate the creativity that’s gone into the faux-medieval version. (But that could just be me.)
This particular example does have lyrics, in a very much faux-Olde Englishe. The artist admits that only one of the instruments is potentially authentic. Whilst the lyrics are (very!) loosely-based on the modern version, it is not at all a cover in any sense of the modern song.
It’s hilarious. The ending of the chorus, “With thy might we shall reclaim the kingdom we never had” cracks me up every time. (The lyrics are included in the video, which may help until your ear “tunes in”, so to speak.)
The far right in Idaho—which seemingly now includes its state Legislature—has a rule: Free speech for me, none for thee. Protesters from the right are welcome with open arms, but protesters from the left get thrown in jail.
That became manifest Monday in Boise when a horde of anti-COVID-19 restriction activists led by antigovernment figure Ammon Bundy broke into the chambers of the Statehouse, shoving their way past state troopers, pounding on doors, shouting and breaking doors and windows along the way, and then invading committee hearing rooms. But not only was no one arrested, state officials decided to accommodate them. It starkly contrasted with the scene a few years ago, when peaceful protesters seeking equal rights for LGBTQ people were arrested en masse for standing silently in the halls of the building.
Monday marked the opening day of the special legislative session called by Gov. Brad Little to deal with complications created by the pandemic—mainly civil liability issues and concerns raised by county clerks about absentee ballots and a lack of polling workers. However, those were picayune affairs compared to the agenda of the protesters, who demanded an end to the state of emergency declared by Little in March.
Bundy—who has been the primary figure in the far-right resistance in Idaho to pandemic-related measures—led the crowd of entirely maskless protesters at the Statehouse steps, who began chanting “Let us in!” after access to the gallery seating in both Senate and House chambers was restricted to half-capacity and seats quickly filled up. First they shoved their way past Idaho State Police troopers standing guard, then they banged on doors and windows demanding entry past the gallery doors on the fourth floor. One of the men, according to the Associated Press, was carrying an assault-style rifle.
Rather than enforce the rules and eject the protesters, Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke chose to allow the gallery to fully open. Lawmakers on the floor pleaded with the protesters to stop the chants and be respectful. Eventually, the crowd quieted down after all the seats had filled to capacity. […]
That was hardly the end of it. As NPR’s James Dawson reported, the protesters eventually made their way into committee rooms, where they similarly ignored distancing rules and filled the rooms to capacity. They defaced signs designating empty seats, and mocked a Democratic legislator who chose to leave the meeting because of the violations.
No citations were issued by Idaho State Police, nor are any arrest warrants planned for the property destruction and vandalism.
Gov. Little tweeted out his thanks to the State Patrol, Boise Police, and Capitol security forces afterward “for their efforts in preserving a safe and productive special legislative session.” […]
Idaho is currently experiencing an ongoing wave of COVID-19 infections, and currently has one of the highest rates of infections per capita […]
Bundy boasted on Facebook afterwards: “They would not let us in to attend the legislative session. So we did what all people must do. We pushed our way in!”
Extra thickheadedness, stupidity on steroids. All of it dangerous.
This might be less news worthy but for the fact that Republican legislators and law enforcement personnel cooperated to some degree with the rightwing extremists.
From comments posted by readers:
Just more proof that if you are white and spout second amendment BS you can get away with disobeying an officers commands, assaulting an officer, consciously disregarding the law in front of officers and then expect special treatment in the end. If this would have been BLM the protesters would have been beaten and arrested.
I will add that Bundy and his crew actually destroyed property! No arrests.
(CNN)The Montana secretary of state is asking the Supreme Court to intervene in a fight over whether the Green Party can be on the state ballot this fall — a decision that could have a major impact on a key US Senate race between Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Daines and Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock.
Secretary of State Cory Stapleton, a Republican, filed an emergency request Monday urging the high court to place a hold on proceedings pending further legal action after lower courts had approved the Green Party absence from the ballot.
[…]
Montana Republicans earlier this year backed an effort to qualify the Green Party, which has traditionally drawn some liberal voters from the Democrats, for the ballot. But after that was revealed, state Democrats urged enough people who signed petitions to disavow their support.
The secretary of state’s office, however, did not accept requests to remove their support, and so the state Democrats and several people sued. A lower court judge and the state Supreme Court sided with the Democrats, saying the Green Party no longer qualified for November’s contest.
[…]
The Montana Senate race is expected to be a tight contest, garnering national attention as a potential part of Democrats’ efforts to retake the Senate. Labeled a toss-up race by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, who is a CNN contributor, it is among half a dozen such seats that Democrats are targeting in hopes of netting four seats they would need to ensure control of the chamber if they don’t win the White House.
And it isn’t the only competitive Montana campaign that could be affected by a Green Party presence, or lack thereof. The race for Montana’s at-large House seat was decided by fewer than five points in 2018, and is again competitive this year.
blfsays
Lynna@67, According to the Griffords Law Center, Location Restrictions, both Open- and Concealed-carry are “prohibited” in Idaho’s capital building.
Months after Donald Trump’s suggestion that disinfectants could be a possible treatment for the novel coronavirus was found false, some people are still ingesting disinfectants, including bleach. […] officials with the North Texas Poison Center at Parkland Hospital had to remind people in the area not to drink bleach following an increase in cases.
At least 46 cases of bleach ingestion were reported in North Texas since Aug. 1 […]
The Texas Poison Center Network has seen a significant increase in calls related to ingesting cleaning products. […] the Texas Poison Center Network has seen a 71% increase in cases involving bleach and a 63% increase involving other household cleaners from the start of the pandemic compared to the same time period in 2019.
[…] many callers referenced COVID-19 as to why they ingested disinfectant, strengthening the center’s suspicion on misinformation.
[…] While household cleaners, like bleach, can potentially reduce the spread of coronavirus on surfaces like tables, doorknobs, desks, countertops—they are not to be ingested. Hours after Trump’s comments in April, at least five states across the country saw an increase in calls to poison control prompting popular disinfectant companies, like The Clorox Company and Reckitt Benckiser, the parent company of both Lysol and Dettol, to quickly release statements confirming that their products should not be consumed.
As always, Trump refused to take responsibility for people acting upon his statements and [claimed] his comment was sarcastic. [bullshit]
While it is sad that poison control centers across the country must remind us of the obvious—what’s even sadder is how the Trump administration continues to ignore the severity of this virus and encourage such dangerous actions.
[…] When it came to the border wall, Trump would dream up “sickening” medieval plots “to pierce the flesh” of migrants, rip all the families apart, “maim,” and gas them, Taylor claims. “This was a man with no humanity whatsoever,” Taylor says. “He says, we got to do this, this, this, and this, all of which are probably impossible, illegal unethical,” Taylor recalls, but he was writing them down as the president spoke. “And he looks over me and he goes, ‘you fucking taking notes?’ […]
That’s the president of the United States, talking about humans. Children, babies, mommies, daddies. “Maim” them. “Pierce the flesh.” Shoot them. In the podcast, Taylor recounted one time when Trump just furiously [B-word-ed] that the spikes on top of the planned border wall weren’t sharp enough. “I want them SO SHARP that I want it to pierce human flesh so it’ll go right through their hands or their arms if they try to climb it,” Taylor recounts Trump saying.
And yeah, Taylor talked about the alligators and the snakes Trump wanted in the moat […]
Point is, if you still think we’re exaggerating when we say Trump would go from zero to Hitler in 14 words or less if he ever felt like that’s the only way he could retain power, get out of this blog post and go punch yourself in the face until you wake up.
Also, to be clear, when Trump asked “You fucking taking notes?” Taylor explained that Trump was mad, and that he always asks that, because he loathes it when people take notes. Taylor added, “Can you imagine if like your ninth grade English teacher is like expecting you to do well on the test, and says YOU FUCKIN’ TAKIN’ NOTES RIGHT NOW?” (Remember how mad Trump was at former White House counsel Don McGahn, for taking notes about the crimes he was committing? Trump doesn’t like normal lawyers who take copious notes.)
Taylor also spilled more beans about just how stupid and easily distracted Trump is […]
The national security official couldn’t get through a meeting “without [Trump] doing 20 tangents, becoming irascible, turning red in the face, demanding a diet Coke, spewing spit,” Taylor explained. “Literally out of goddamn nowhere, he’d be like, ‘You know, who’s just my favorite guy? The MyPillow guy. Do any of you have those pillows?'” […]
Applauding the soon-to-be bereaved widows and orphans for their profound sacrifices, the Republican National Convention kicked off Monday evening with a tribute from family members of Americans who will die if Donald Trump wins a second term. “Above all else, we wanted to use the convention to honor these brave citizens and all that they will suffer if we succeed in getting President Trump back into office,” said RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, touting the primetime slot of brief speeches from the potentially beleaguered parents and siblings as a chance to raise the profile of “true patriots” who will endure the unimaginable should the policies of the current White House remain in place for four more years. […] At press time, the RNC was airing a short sentimental tribute set to “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” dedicated to all 1,500,000 future victims of the pandemic after a 2020 Trump victory.
Trump takes incrementally good news and lies about it:
I’ve heard fantastic things about convalescent plasma. And I’ve heard numbers way over 50 percent success. And people are dying, and we should have it approved if it’s good. And I’m hearing it’s good. I heard from people at the FDA that it’s good. So we’ll see.
Trump trade adviser, hydroxychloroquine hawk and Deep State conspiracy theory propagator Peter Navarro had a tetchy exchange earlier with Andrea Mitchell of NBC, about the administration’s move to approve convalescent plasma therapy for the coronavirus, despite its efficacy being very much in doubt.
On air, the veteran host of Andrea Mitchell Reports said to Navarro: “FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn has now apologised. He, along with the president, {Health secretary Alex} Azar, on Sunday night, said that, out of 100 people with Covid-19, 35 were saved by convalescent plasma in a study.
“He now says that the criticism of those false claims, exaggerated claims, was entirely justified, and that he should have said there is a relative risk reduction, not an absolute reduction. And, in fact, the study was only a subset of a subset, not a randomized study.
“You are a PhD economist. You’re an expert. You know statistics inside and out. Emergency approval of using plasma this way reduces the possibility of having a proper randomized study, and it falsely inflates hopes.”
Navarro — in fact a China trade hawk who has published books in which he extensively quoted an expert by the name Ron Vara, an anagram of “Navarro” — said he did not accept that premise, which was like a crazy talking point, and added: On the issue of … not being able to do randomized trials, I mean, what is the calculus here?
Are we going to wait to use something that can save thousands of lives, just so we can have a study that tells us what we already know, which is that plasma works?
Mitchell replied: “Yes, that is scientific practice, sir.”
And it carried on from there.
Talking of “crazy talking points”, Axios reported at the weekend that during attempts by the Trump White House to get Hahn and the FDA to hurry up on vaccines and therapeutics, Navarro aggressively confronted FDA officials, saying: You are all deep state and you need to get on Trump Time.
Here’s a paragraph I’ve written before: The “deep state” conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats exists to thwart the president’s agenda. Former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser Steve Bannon, an enthusiastic propagator of the theory, has also said it is “for nut cases” and “none of this is true”.
“Boris Johnson: ‘I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness [?], I wanted to get that off my chest’.”
This is all that this government was elected to do – posture about traditions, feed and validate fake persecution complexes, affirm people’s status against ‘the other’. Running the country well is irrelevant.
Boris Johnson won’t make a statement about A levels or address the Covid bereaved, but he’ll turn up pronto for culture war crap. Because that is the job he ran for, and the one he was elected to do.
It’s also tragic because the story told by people like Priyamvada Gopal in Insurgent Empire (which I still haven’t finished, because it’s very long and my Kindle died :( and I can’t afford to replace it) is the UK’s history/traditions/culture, too, and so are the movements against slavery and for women’s rights and for immigrants’ rights and a thousand others. How sad and debilitating to limit your vision of your nation’s history to one category of people and to feel like you have to defend the indefensible or lose your identity.
[…] Authors’ conclusions: We are very uncertain whether convalescent plasma is beneficial for people admitted to hospital with COVID-19. For safety outcomes we also included non-controlled NRSIs. There was limited information regarding adverse events. Of the controlled studies, none reported on this outcome in the control group. There is only very low-certainty evidence for safety of convalescent plasma for COVID-19.
[…]
QAnon followers have for years used a wide range of online tactics to achieve virality and garner mainstream media coverage, including […] hijacking trending hashtags with QAnon messaging […].
A very potent iteration of this tactic emerged this summer with the #SaveTheChildren or #SaveOurChildren campaign. The innocuous sounding hashtag, which had previously been used by anti-child-trafficking NGOs, has been flooded with emotive content by QAnon adherents hinting at the broader QAnon narrative. (It doesn’t help that the debate around human trafficking is already full of bogus statistics.)
[…]
Hundreds of real-life Save Our Children protests have been organized on Facebook in communities across the US (and around the world). These small rallies are in turn driving local news coverage by outlets who don’t realize that by publishing news designed to raise awareness about child trafficking, they are encouraging their readers or viewers to head to the internet, where a search for “save our children” could send them straight down the QAnon rabbit hole.
Just hours before she is scheduled to address the Republican National Convention, Mary Ann Mendoza urged her Twitter followers to read a virulently anti-Semitic Twitter thread about a Jewish plot to take over the world, the Daily Beast reported.
The thread is from a QAnon conspiracy theorist, the Daily Beast reported. Mendoza is slated to speak about her son, who was killed in 2014 in a drunk driving accident that involved an undocumented immigrant.
“A chunk of the country is on fire, a hurricane is about the hit the gulf states, another tropical storm has formed, a pandemic has claimed 178k lives and we are on the brink of a major spread of race riots. Quite the backdrop for the convention.”
This was the quote he just read, and it’s the closing lines from Reagan’s 1961 address denouncing the Kennedy proposal that became Medicare….
Seems like if you’re going to make the case that Democrats are going to enact policies that destroy America, maybe you shouldn’t invoke one of the most popular programs of the last half-century and show that past claims about socialist nightmares were extremely overblown?”
“The anti-Semitic conspiracy theory lady that got cancelled from the #GOPConvention [Mary Ann Mendoza] is also on the board of the Build the Wall scam. The one involved in an apparent criminal conspiracy.”
CNN is reporting that two people have died and one is injured after people they’re describing as “armed vigilantes” and “militias” attacked protesters in Kenosha.
There’s a link here to a usefu interview with Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny about QAnon.
From the discussion:
…Mathew Ingram:
…When it comes to mainstreaming Q and some of its beliefs, I know there is a lot of debate about how to cover the movement responsibly, whether covering it inevitably legitimizes it, etc. Could both of you comment on that and how you approach it? As an example, do you think asking Trump about Q was a good thing or a bad thing?
Ben Collins:
I don’t think people really understand how sweeping and huge this thing is, including OG QAnon influencers, who don’t even recognize the people who are now being redpilled. It’s completely out of hand. It’s all over private Facebook groups, specifically alternative health, religious, parenting, and healing groups.
Every day I hear a new story about how people are radicalized into QAnon, and every day it’s a different online community that’s been recently brigaded by evangelists trying to spread the truth about how Donald Trump is singlehandedly stopping the baby eaters.
The most recent one was the Peloton forums. Peloton. Most new Q followers I see recently are new moms.
That’s why I don’t even understand the controversy over asking the question to the president. Why is this weird? We have to get out of the mindset that if it’s on the internet it’s not important.
Millions of people were in QAnon Facebook groups, according to a leaked internal Facebook memo that Brandy reported on this month. Millions of people! It is growing by the day due to an algorithm gone haywire and deliberate recruiting tools perfected by cults and militia movements. And the very crux of the group is focused on rounding up the president’s personal political opponents.
So many people text me or call me or DM me, every single day, without fail, and they ask what they can do about a family member who is unrecognizble from a few months ago. They sit on the computer all day and try to figure out the puzzle about how the president is saving the world, and dream about a day in the near future where all of the bad guys are going to be executed and life is going to be normal again.
It’s devastating to hear these stories because I don’t have answers. I’m a reporter. All I can do is ask questions about why this is happening, who is in favor of it, and who’s benefiting from it.
That is our mission, generally: Whose lives have been upended by these dangerous lies? And who is benefiting at the cost of those relationships and lives?
I don’t need to guess if this stuff is important. I hear it from people every day, anxious for a vocabulary to deal with it, begging for ways to get their friends and family members back.
So, of course, we should ask Donald Trump about something that is tearing families apart, and that he can personally stop instantly. What kind of reporter wouldn’t?
Brandy Zadrozny:
I’ve gotten some pushback on this but I think it’s fine to ask the president about Q, probably good even to try and get him on the record. I wish the framing of the question would have focused on the harm that the QAnon cult has caused so many people and the danger that it poses. Because QAnon is sort of new on the radar for most reporters, there’s a tendency to think of it and talk about it like some kooky conspiracy (because it is!) but it’s also cost people their lives, their families, their minds. And it’s a real threat to businesses, celebrities, politicians and journalists who have all been labeled as Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Front load the question like that so that the president and Republican politicians have to give their answer the weight it deserves.
I’m sure Ben and I will parrot each other here but we talk with lots of experts on extremism and media manipulation and out of those talks have tried to focus our reporting on QAnon in two ways: the profiteers and the victims.
For profit: How does Facebook—which pivoted to “community” and groups in 2017— profit off an engaged and growing QAnon community (which for years, they pushed people into through the recommendation engine)? Why does Amazon continue to sell QAnon merchandise? Who were the small-time influencers who brought QAnon across platforms, helping it go mainstream, and building real businesses along the way? Who are the popup clout chasers planning QAnon rallies across the country and how can local media not fall for their attempts to fool them?
And victims: How are young women in the wellness communities being sucked into the QAnon community? Why are “Karens” live-streaming their QAnon-inspired breakdowns? What’s happening to friends and family of QAnon believers when they fall down the rabbithole? What is it like to be in the middle of a swarm of harassment from QAnon folks because you posted a photo of your kid in a pizza onesie? Those are stories worth telling….
(One counterpoint: Regardless of how the question was or is framed, Trump was never going to and will never give the answer “the weight it deserves.” He’s a sociopath. None of it means anything to him aside from what he thinks he can get out of it.)
Here’s a link to the August 26 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Lebanon could ‘lose control’ of coronavirus outbreak, says Diab
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab, said the country was at risk of losing its control over its coronavirus outbreak after a surge in the number of cases in the wake of the massive explosion in Beirut on 4 August.
“The number of cases is increasing greatly, and if this continues, we will lose control of this epidemic,” Diab was cited as saying in a statement issued by the supreme defence council….
The city of Berlin has banned demonstrations planned for this weekend to oppose measures imposed to stem the coronavirus pandemic, after organisers of a rally earlier this month failed to ensure marchers wore masks and kept their distance.
Andreas Geisel, the Berlin interior senator, said the authorities had to strike a balance between the right to freedom of assembly and the need to protect people against infection. He said:
We are still in the middle of a pandemic with rising infection figures.
Germany has managed to keep the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths relatively low compared with some other large European countries, but the number of new daily cases has been rising steadily since early July and has accelerated in recent weeks.
About 20,000 people, included libertarians, constitutional loyalists, far-right supporters and anti-vaccination activists, marched in the capital on 1 August.
Geisel said the organisers of that protest had deliberately broken the rules they had previously accepted in talks with police, including the wearing of masks and maintaining social distancing.
“Such behaviour is not acceptable. The state cannot be given the runaround,” he said, adding he did not want Berlin to be a stage for conspiracy theorists and rightwing extremists.
If crowds still gather despite the ban, the police will intervene, he said.
Ukraine has imposed a temporary ban on most foreigners from entering the country until 28 September and extended lockdown measures until the end of October to contain a recent surge in coronavirus cases, Reuters reports.
Speaking at a televised cabinet meeting, the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, also said the government would need to take a decision on Thursday on whether to ban major public events in September.
Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who’s 59, is in intensive care in critical condition with COVID-19.
(CN) —The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request by the Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton to place Green Party candidates back on state ballots this November…
The decision follows an Aug. 19 ruling by the Montana Supreme Court upholding a state district court judge’s decision to strike Green Party candidates from the ballot due to a signature-gathering scandal. More than 560 people asked for their names to be removed from ballot petitions after they learned the Republican Party funded the $100,000 signature-gathering effort and failed to disclose the spending in violation of campaign finance laws…The ruling left the Green Party without enough signatures to qualify for the ballot…
The Montana Democratic Party sued Stapleton over his refusal to honor the requests of 560 people that asked to be removed from the petitions to get candidates’ names on the ballot after they learned the Montana Green Party never supported the effort.
“A scoop by me: Yale Law prof Jed Rubenfeld (aka Mr. Tiger Mom) has been banned from teaching for two years after Yale found he had sexually harassed multiple students. Allegations spanned decades. He told me he’s a ‘target’ for his views on Title IX.
Rubenfeld denies the allegations, which include verbal harassment, unwanted touching, and attempted kissing, both on campus and at parties at Rubenfeld/Chua’s home, over decades. He claims ‘identities were not revealed to me’, but that’s not true….”
A slam dunk victory for Gavin Grimm in the Fourth Circuit today, which holds:
Schools must let transgender students use the right bathroom
They must also use the right gender on official documents
Anti-trans laws are subject to heightened scrutiny
The Fourth Circuit further holds:
Transgender people are a quasi-suspect class
Anti-trans discrimination is sex discrimination and receives heightened constitutional scrutiny
Judge Wynn, concurring, finds the school board acted out of unconstitutional anti-trans animus.
@JoshABlock and @chasestrangio have represented @GavinGrimmVA for approximately 100 years, and today’s decision from the Fourth Circuit vindicates pretty much every legal argument they’ve made from the start. An extraordinary victory for trans equality.
What happens next?
The left-leaning Fourth Circuit will not rehear this case en banc. So the Gloucester County School Board may appeal to the Supreme Court. But that might be unwise in light of Bostock, which affirmed that anti-trans discrimination is sex discrimination.
“BREAKING: Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, Alex Vindman’s twin brother who served as a senior NSC ethics official, has filed a complaint w/DoD IG raising concerns that he was retaliated against for reporting ‘ethics and legal compliance violations’ by NSA O’Brien”
Unsurvivable storm surge with large, destructive waves will cause catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park, TX, to Intracoastal City, LA. Surge could penetrate up to 30 miles inland.
If you need to evacuate, do so NOW. Surge will begin today, well ahead of the strongest winds
“Belarusian state TV switched the audio of protesters chanting to make it appear that the crowd was heckling an opposition leader, instead of Lukashenka. We compare the TV report with the original footage to document how the facts were faked:…”
Video report atl. The guy in this video is like a cartoon character.
Italy reported 1,367 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its highest daily tally since May when the country was still in lockdown, bringing the total number to 262,540.
Authorities have also registered the highest number of tests: 93,529, almost 20,000 more than Tuesday and a record since the beginning of the pandemic.
Thirteen more people have died with the virus in the last 24 hours, and the death toll now stands at 35.458.
Despite the surge in infections, the government insists there are no plans for a new lockdown.
Health authorities are particularly concerned about a cluster that emerged in the Sardinian ‘Billionaire’ nightclub, owned by former Formula 1 team boss and Italian businessman, Flavio Briatore, who has been hospitalised in Milan after contracting coronavirus.
More than 60 people tested positive for Covid-19 at Billionaire’s, as authorities are struggling to find and test thousands of customers who have been at the Briatore’s nightclub in the last weeks.
A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN.
“It’s coming from the top down,” the official said of the new directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new guidelines raise the bar on who should get tested, advising that some people without symptoms probably don’t need it — even if they’ve been in close contact with an infected person.
Previously, the CDC said viral testing was appropriate for people with recent or suspected exposure, even if they were asymptomatic.
CDC would not comment on questions about its own policy change. A CDC spokesperson referred all questions to the Department of Health and Human Services.
In a statement to CNN, HHS Assistant Secretary Brett Giroir said: “This Guidance has been updated to reflect current evidence and best public health practices, and to further emphasize using CDC-approved prevention strategies to protect yourself, your family, and the most vulnerable of all ages.” [This is blather. – SC]
HHS has not specified what change in “current evidence” may have driven the change. Giroir is expected to address these issues at a briefing Wednesday afternoon.
But the new directive also lines up with a trend in policy and rhetoric from the White House. President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested the US should do less testing.
Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease specialist and associate dean of Emory University School of Medicine, said on CNN Newsroom on Wednesday that the CDC has not provided evidence to explain the changes.
“I mean, the evidence that I’m aware of as of today is that close to 40% of the cases of the infections are asymptomatic and asymptomatic people transmit the infection,” Del Rio said.
“So, not testing — I mean, if you have been in contact with somebody for a few minutes, that’s okay. But if you have been in contact for 50 minutes and that people doesn’t have a mask, I think you need to be tested regardless if you have symptoms or not. We know especially young people going into the house and then transmit inside the household. So, the guidelines baffle me and I really don’t understand them.”
The doctors on the news earlier, who are generally very measured, were flummoxed by and suspicious of this change. Sanjay Gupta called it “ridiculous.” Neither they nor any of the journalists working on this have been able to get any real explanation. I honestly don’t think Trump understands the point of testing. I’m sure they’ve tried to explain it to him, but he’s incapable of seeing anything beyond the level of competition and PR and image.
“#US Deputy Secretary of State Biegun said that if the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexey @Navalny will be proven as such, the US would introduce harsh new #sanctions against #Russia’s leadership:…”
Their attacks on our elections have been proven many times over and Trump continues to deny it, and Biegun also wrote the memo about not participating in political campaigns that Pompeo just spat on, so…
“More than 600 complaints were filed by peaceful Belarusian protesters beaten or tortured by security forces. ZERO cases have been instituted. Instead, huge propaganda campaign on TV to justify police violence.”
“New: Four House chairs are asking the Acting DOD IG to open an investigation into a possible ‘concerted effort by the Trump Administration to retaliate against U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonels (LTC) Alexander S. Vindman and Yevgeny Vindman’.”
Laws are no more powerful than norms if there’s no one to enforce them. So don’t dismiss norms. The people who would enforce the laws are the same people who would honor norms. The fascist norm breaking should alarm you because it reflects their willingness to break laws.
Jerry Falwell Jr tells CNN he will get a total of $10.5 million from Liberty University after resigning as President and Chancellor. It’s $2.5M over the next two years as part of his departure, which is about 2 years of his salary and around $8M after that.”
“It would be a mistake to see Trump’s convention abuses as some kind of aberration born of desperation. They’ve actually been ongoing since January 2017.”
[…] Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, he’s seen the levers of government power as tools he can exploit at will to serve his interests.
[Trump is indifferent] to laws, norms, and institutional limits. […] the United States government isn’t ours, it’s his, and he can do with it as he pleases.
The second night of the Republican National Convention drove the point home in sharp relief.
It wasn’t just Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaking to the convention from Jerusalem, in defiance of the precedent set by his predecessors and seemingly of his own department’s ethics policy. It wasn’t just Melania Trump speaking from the Rose Garden. And it wasn’t just Trump casting the White House Marine guards as extras in a segment of the convention, despite Pentagon rules. All of that happened Tuesday night, but Trump did more than use his taxpayer-funded office and residence as a backdrop. He employed the official powers of the presidency for partisan politics, first by granting a pardon, then by hosting a naturalization ceremony at the White House, all part of his televised GOP convention. […]
I’ve seen plenty of commentary reflecting on the president using our resources as props in a production of political theater, which he clearly did, but I also think Trump sees government resources as swords and shields — to be weaponized as part of a cynical campaign to gain advantage in a race he’s losing.
[…] There is only Trump, leveraging and exploiting everything he can — without regard for what’s legal, ethical, or in line with American traditions — to advance his interests.
[…] “If all the president has is a desire to hold onto power, everything looks like a campaign tool.”
[…] this week’s abuses are an exclamation point at the end of a run-on sentence that began in January 2017.
Last week, Miles Taylor, a Republican and a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security, explained in an op-ed, “The president has tried to turn DHS, the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, into a tool used for his political benefit.” This, of course, was very easy to believe, largely because it’s hard to think of a government entity Trump hasn’t tried to use for his political benefit.
The Census Bureau. The U.S. Postal Service. The Justice Department. The State Department. The Pentagon. The Food & Drug Administration. Voice of America. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The president sees these agencies and asks himself, not what they can do for us, but what they can do for him.
This is how authoritarians operate, and as Trump’s celebration of himself has already made clear this week, it’s how he prefers to use the power a minority of voters afforded him.
it was a mixed bag yesterday for GOP operatives trying to get Kanye West’s name onto the 2020 ballot as a presidential candidate. Republican efforts in Missouri fell short, but the party succeeded in getting the entertainer onto the statewide ballot in Minnesota. Trump lost Minnesota in 2016 by less than 2 percentage points, making it his narrowest defeat.
As one observer put it, “The Republican National Convention should have come with a safety warning — beware of whiplash.”
When it became clear in the spring that Joe Biden would win the Democratic nomination, Donald Trump called the former vice president a “moderate.” Four days later, [Trump]t added that Biden is “left wing.” How did [Trump] reconcile the contradiction? By ignoring it.
When Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was added to the Democratic ticket a few weeks ago, leading GOP voices told voters that the senator is both too far to the left and too centrist to be trusted by those on the far-left. Soon after, Republicans accused Harris of being both a socialist and the choice of Wall Street.
This week, as the L.A. Times noted, the contradictions are coming at a dizzying clip.
The Republican National Convention should have come with a safety warning — beware of whiplash. Throughout the opening of their party extravaganza, Republicans zigzagged between conflicting messages in a frantic effort to bruise Joe Biden […]
[…] Is Joe Biden too tough on criminals or too weak? Is Donald Trump eager to appeal to Black voters or eager to keep Black families out of American suburbs? Is “cancel culture” a Trump favorite or a national scourge?
Does [Trump] support increased immigration or decreased? It was hard to tell last night when Trump oversaw a naturalization ceremony that was largely at odds with his own White House policy demands.
Does [Trump] support using American military might or is he determined to bring U.S. troops home and keep them out of foreign entanglements? We’ve heard both messages this week, and when the president’s campaign released a series of bulleted second-term priorities, it said Trump intends to “stop endless wars” while simultaneously vowing to “expand America’s unrivaled military strength.”
[…] Trump and his team don’t appear to be executing some kind of broad-based strategy, but rather, they appear to be just throwing assorted ideas at a wall, hoping something will stick.
They don’t seem to mind the contradictions, and by all appearances, Republicans don’t even seem to notice their existence. […]
SC @115, Melania dressed as Commander in Chief of a Russian force invading Ukraine. Meanwhile, Trump squatted in the audience, with a look on his face that said, “Why is this taking so long?”
I wondered why the teleprompter was so socially distanced from Melania that she looked like she was stargazing when she read her speech.
For three and a half years now, impeached president Donald Trump has carried out a constant, brutal, and frequently unlawful war on our legal immigration system. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency that processes paperwork like naturalization forms, nearly became his latest victim and was headed for an intentional near-shutdown until public pressure forced the administration to pull it back. Had that plan gone through, USCIS would have furloughed nearly 70% of its workforce in just a matter of days. Unless they’re from Norway, this administration does not want immigrants here, period.
But in one of the most grotesque and surreal moments of this entire godforsaken presidency, the administration at the very least violated USCIS rules forbidding displays of partisanship to use a group of immigrants as human props in a naturalization ceremony staged at the White House as part of the Republican National Convention. The purpose wasn’t to weave these men and women into the American fabric but to deceive us about the past several years, because among these immigrants was a man from Ghana—you know, from one of those African nations Trump once infamously derided as a “shithole” country.
The political appointee helping Trump carry out this shameless reelection stunt was unconfirmed acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Chad Wolf […] a shameless reelection stunt “horrifying in context,” tweeted Immigrant Defenders Law Center co-founder Lindsay Toczylowski. “1000s of asylum seekers in grave danger tonight at our border, children being sent to their deaths, families separated, communities ripped apart, babies held in ICE prisons.” Much of this has happened with Wolf playing the eager foot soldier […]
Adding more shame on top of this shame sandwich is that while carrying out a naturalization ceremony at the White House for the president’s reelection campaign is apparently just fine and dandy, immigrants who had their naturalization process derailed by the novel coronavirus pandemic have had to sue in order to be allowed to complete their process, having been told they couldn’t even take their oaths virtually when former USCIS officials said they absolutely could. Some immigrants have now been able to take their oaths thanks to court action and office reopenings, but thousands of immigrants may still not be able to vote come November. […]
[…] tired of this pack of white supremacist criminals masquerading as public servants […]
[Trump is] still using the pandemic to make slashes to legal immigration, to the glee of racist anti-immigrant groups. He’s still violating anti-trafficking law to quickly and unlawfully expel migrant children back to the dangers they fled from in the first place. […]
Trump is just hoping enough folks are foolish enough to fall for the theatrics […] Our job is to make sure it doesn’t work. ”While Trump uses the White House for a citizenship ceremony, thousands of asylum seekers are in camps at the border due to his sabotaging of our immigration system,” tweeted former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Housing and Urban Development Sec. Julián Castro. “He’s spent four years using immigrants as pawns in a political game. Americans see through his illegal charade.”
As Donald Trump conditions his cultists to reject any election result that doesn’t include him winning, he has also continued to erect a multi-layered barricade around the White House. Or as a Washingtonian headline observed earlier this month, “The White House has become a militarized Island in Downtown D.C.”
The writer of that article, Andrew Beaujon, reports that pedestrian access north of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue has been blocked ever since the night Park Police gassed protesters so Trump could walk across the street to hoist an upside-down Bible over his head. Beaujon has gotten varying answers from Park Police and Secret Service about why it continues to be barricaded and when the blockade will end
[…] South of the White House, a barricade now blocks almost the entire sightline of The People’s House from Constitution Avenue. Here’s what it currently looks like. [Image available at the link.]
[…] No one is as big a coward as Donald Trump. Not George W. Bush in the age of terror. And not Franklin D. Roosevelt at the outset of World War II. When the Secret Service suggested ringing the White House with sandbags stacked 15-feet high, Roosevelt declined.
Some sort of wrought-iron fence has been the fixture surrounding the White House for more than a century. Part of the point was to maintain some semblance of public access. But Trump has now fortified the fencing with barricades around much of the perimeter […]
“The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” Trump said Monday, addressing a crowd shortly after the opening of the GOP convention.
“This is Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, an Illinois resident who was just charged with first-degree murder of two people last night in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This teen, whose social media history is full of misogyny and white supremacy, had easy access to an AR-15.
In recent months, gun violence has broken out at protests against violence against Black Americans by police. In Albuquerque, a man was shot and wounded in June during a protest. In Portland, protests were escalated this weekend by white supremacists with rifles and handguns.
Armed insurrectionists and white supremacists are exploiting America’s dangerous and unpopular ‘open carry loophole’, which enables them to open carry military-style firearms in most states with little to no regulation.
Easy access to guns combined with racism, bigotry and misogyny is killing Americans and undermining democracy. Male supremacists used guns in 70% of domestic terror attacks and are responsible for the most deaths by domestic extremists.”
About the shooter in Kenosha, Wisconsin last night … more details:
An armed white man, identified as part of a group of vigilante militiamen who claimed to be protecting businesses from damage by people rioting, shot three people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night—two of them fatally. The man was later seen in video walking past police vehicles with arms raised in surrender, but he was not arrested and kept walking. However, on Wednesday morning, he was charged with first-degree murder.
The shootings occurred during the third night of protests in Kenosha, following the Sunday shooting of an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, by Kenosha police. Kenosha police later issued a statement that they had tentatively identified the gunman, and then announced that the man—a 17-year-old from Antioch, Illinois—had been charged with first-degree murder, and was being sought as a fugitive.
The complaint identifies the shooter as Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch. It also names him as a “fugitive from justice,” having “fled the state of Wisconsin with intent to avoid prosecution for that offense.”
Captured on multiple videos, the shootings apparently began in the parking lot of a gas station/repair shop at about 11:45 PM. Witnesses said the shooter, who was carrying a semi-automatic rifle and wearing a green T-shirt, got into a confrontation with a protester at whom he then fired multiple rounds. One of these apparently hit the protester in the head.
Video shows the shooter surveying the body of the victim while talking on a cell phone and telling someone that “I just shot someone,” then fleeing the scene.
Subsequent videos shot by other witnesses show a number of protesters following the shooter, who at one point stumbles and falls to the street without having been contacted. As he tries to recover himself, three other protesters approach him and try to take his gun away, at which he opens fire on them as well. One of his victims, shot in the arm, shouts for a medic.
The man then gets back on his feet and continues down the street until he encounters arriving police vehicles. Although he puts his hands up, the police apparently ignore him, and the man then continues walking away.
According to police, one of the people killed was shot in the head, and the other was shot in the chest. The third victim was shot in the arm.
A militia group calling itself the Kenosha Guard had organized on Facebook, ostensibly to prevent violence at the protests. On Monday, it had published a post calling for “Armed Citizens to Protect Our Lives and Property,” with text reading: “Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from the evil thugs? No doubt they are currently planning on the next part of the city to burn tonight.”
After the shooting, the Facebook page featured a post reading: “We are unaware if the armed citizen was answering the Kenosha Guard Militia’s call to arms. Just like the shooting of Jacob Blake, we need all the facts and evidence to come out before we make a judgement.” The Kenosha Guard’s Facebook page was subsequently taken down.
Rittenhouse was captured in video taken earlier in the evening in which he and several militiamen appeared to be getting water bottles handed to them by Kenosha police. In that video, he says: “By the way, I’m Kyle.”
Several antifascist social media accounts identified the man as Rittenhouse, noting that he has a history of associations with police, including enrolling in a local “police cadet” program. Rittenhouse’s Facebook was also festooned with “Blue Lives Matter” material and logos.
On Monday, Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth had publicly refused to deputize citizens to patrol the city’s streets. After the shootings Tuesday, he reiterated that position.
“I’ve had people saying, ‘Why don’t you deputize citizens?’” he said. “This is why you don’t deputize citizens with guns to protect Kenosha.”
Trump seems determined to make things worse in Kenosha:
Trump announced Wednesday he will order additional federal forces to tamp down violence in Kenosha, Wis., that has arisen in the wake of a police shooting that left a Black man paralyzed.
“TODAY, I will be sending federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER!” he wrote on Twitter. […]
Trump’s children are using the framework of the Republican National Convention to stoke grievance and resentment.
[…] in this election the GOP has found a different avenue to promote resentment and anger. Liberals, they say, are silencing you, making you a victim of “cancel culture.”
And the Trump children are here to tell you that the thought police are coming for you.
“The Democrats want an America where your thoughts and opinions are censored when they do not align with their own,” said Eric Trump on Tuesday night. “To the voiceless, shamed, censored and canceled, my father will fight for you.”
Does anyone recognize the Donald Trump that Eric described?
Joining the de-silencing and un-canceling was Eric’s half-sister, Tiffany, who exposed the dark forces tampering with Americans’ minds. “This manipulation of what information we receive impedes our freedoms. Rather than allowing Americans the right to form our own beliefs, this misinformation system keeps people mentally enslaved to the ideas they deem correct,” she said.
“Ask yourselves, why are we prevented from seeing certain information?” Tiffany Trump continued. “Why is one viewpoint promoted while others are hidden? The answer is control, because division and controversy breed profit.”
Fox News! One America News Network (OANN)!
So we’re all forced to adhere to one set of beliefs, because the media want division and controversy. See if you can spot the logical problem there.
“If you care about living your life without restraints, about rebelling against those who would suppress your voice,” Tiffany Trump concluded, you must vote for her father.
Tuesday’s presentation also featured Nick Sandmann, the young man who became famous after a confrontation on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Sandmann described how his voice had been snuffed out: “I learned what was happening to me had a name. It was called being canceled, as in annulled, as in revoked, as in made void. Canceled is what’s happening to people around this country who refuse to be silenced by the far left.”
So Sandmann explained how he had been silenced while addressing a national televised audience, as every silenced person does.
The night before Donald Trump Jr. sounded the same notes: “Joe Biden and the radical left are now coming for our freedom of speech. They want to bully us into submission. If they get their way, it will no longer be the silent majority. It will be the silenced majority.”
[…] As American society has become more inclusive, certain groups have felt their loss of cultural hegemony as a kind of oppression, as though, to take just one example, if everyone isn’t forced to honor Christian holidays in all public spaces to the exclusion of every other religion, that means Christians are being persecuted.
[…] just as they equate any exercise of authority by a duly elected Democrat with “tyranny,” they’ve convinced themselves that being criticized for something they do or say is the same thing as being censored and canceled.
This is all right out of the rhetoric of Fox News and conservative talk radio, where tales of oppressed conservatives are a part of everyday’s menu, meant to keep the audience enraged and fearful.
To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t, shall we say, excesses of censoriousness in our contemporary debates. But for a group of people constantly wailing that they’ve been silenced, Republicans are awfully loud.
If there’s anything that the RNC convention has been about it’s been telling the story of how Donald Trump personally stepped in front of the coronavirus and saved America from even getting so much as a sniffle. If there’s anything else it’s been about, it’s been demonstrating just how much Trump, other people also named Trump, and everyone working for Trump, just doesn’t give a monkey’s ass about violating the Hatch Act. And if there’s anything else it’s been about, it’s been about glossy infomercials with lots of brass in the music, designed to sell the idea that Donald Trump created every job on his way to saving the world.
The only truthful part of any of that is that it is “the world.” Because it’s certainly not the United States. The videos promoting Trump have included healthcare workers in Thailand and factories in Ukraine. […] The idea that Trump is promoting his MAGAgenda with images from overseas is amusing, […]
Trump may occasionally mount a mini-rally in the parking lot of a factory, but after making claims about saving the air conditioners, or washing machines, or Oreos, he prefers to retreat to a comfortable place—one with a cart, a buffet line, and a decided lack of working-class people.
The reason that the RNC is running ads copy-pasted together from collections of international clip art, rather than showing real images of real U.S. healthcare workers or real new U.S. factories is that those things don’t exist. […]Trump lied about the impact of those factories to begin with, lied about being able to save them, and now he’s lying about them again … even though they’re gone.
The game of “spot the stock footage” may seem trivial, but it’s emblematic of what Trump really has to show for four years in office—a record so spotty that it has to be pasted over with images from elsewhere. Including, appropriately enough, Russia.
[…] The RNC might consider interviewing some real healthcare workers who were forced to use garbage bags as personal protective equipment. They might show some video of children in cages, […] or white supremacists waving torches. Because all those things aren’t horror stories of “what will happen if Trump loses.” They’re what happened because Trump won.
They might consider mentioning that the United States plunged into a recession in February, at a time when the number of known cases of COVID-19 in the nation was less than 100.
In their revisionist history efforts, Trump’s followers have been claiming that Obama left Trump a recession that he turned into the “greatest economy in history.” The truth is exactly the opposite: Barack Obama handed over to Donald Trump a nation that was strong and an economy that had been steadily growing for eight years. Trump took that economy and sent it into recession, and he took that nation and crushed it.
But that probably doesn’t generate very inspiring clips.
“this guy [Kenosha Chief of Police] is like: look the victims shouldn’t have been out there, and the guy who killed them ‘was involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place’.”
Video atl. And it took them forever to get to even talking about the murders of two people by a white supremacist. I had to go out before this guy came on, but the press conference was jawdropping. There are serious fucking problems with this police department.
From an article written by Doreen St. Félix for The New Yorker:
[…] In conjuring the image of herself as charitable First Lady, hopping the African continent to learn about the slave trade, Melania is […] mirroring exactly her husband’s farce of magnanimity. As she tentatively maneuvered the topic of the nation’s unavoidable racism, proclaiming that our “diverse and storied history is what makes our country strong,” pundits online immediately produced the infamous interview, from 2011, of Melania questioning the birthplace of Barack Obama. It is easy, and also morally correct, to call out the First Lady’s special hypocrisy. […]
MSNBC is reporting that both teams scheduled to be playing in the playoff game today between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Orlando Magic are boycotting the game in protest against racial injustice.
Joy Reid pointing out to the AP that their tweet isn’t conveying that the violence at the Kanosha protests was against the protesters. You really wouldn’t know this from most of the news coverage. The way Kenosha is being covered is bizarre, surreal.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
SC#125 Kenosha is part of the district that elected former Speaker Paul Ryan to congress. Full of folks fleeing over the IL border to avoid the POC who live in Lake County, IL, where I live. The alleged killer comes a very reactionary area here in Lake County, so not surprised. While IL has some strict gun laws, they aren’t real effective as the state is not walled off from the rest of the country. Say like WI. A 10 minute drive from Antioch.
“You know, back when Trump first took office and people kept saying, ‘Don’t normalize this’, they were talking about this exact situation we’re in now where the administration blatantly breaks the law, but the DC media dinner party crew goes, ‘Yes, but who really cares?'”
“The NBA, owners and front offices didn’t see this wave of player boycotts coming today. Hours ago, they all expected to be playing these games tonight. This is a pivot point for the NBA and professional sports in North America.”
‘Grayslake Police Department confirmed that Rittenhouse was a former member of the Lindenhurst, Grayslake, Hainesville Police Department’s Public Safety Cadet Program’.”
The Trump administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to reimpose a rule governing a pill commonly used in medication abortions.
Since 2000, the Food and Drug Administration has established rules for Mifeprex, a drug used during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The regulations say it must be administered by a health care professional in a clinic, hospital or doctor’s office and the patient must sign a form acknowledging that she has been counseled about the drug’s possible risks.
But a group of doctors, led by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, filed a lawsuit seeking to have the restrictions relaxed during the coronavirus pandemic. Medical offices and clinics have either closed their doors or restricted appointments, they said, and requiring pregnant women to make in-person visits exposed them to the risk of infection.
Federal District Court Judge Theodore Chuang agreed, ruling that keeping the FDA rule during the pandemic would “place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a medication abortion and that may delay or preclude a medication abortion and thus may necessitate a more invasive procedure.” Instead, he said, the pills could be sent by mail.
His injunction stopped enforcement of the FDA rule nationwide…
Urging the Supreme Court to put a hold on that order, the Justice Department said Wednesday…As a legal matter, the government said, the FDA rules do not amount to an undue burden on the right of access to abortion, given that surgical methods of abortion remain widely available.
The government’s plea for a stay of the judge’s order was addressed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who will probably refer it to the full court.
As a legal matter, the government said, the FDA rules do not amount to an undue burden on the right of access to abortion, given that surgical methods of abortion remain widely available.
WTF? They’re far less available and riskier in terms of coronavirus than a drug.
Smoke from deforestation-related fires in the Brazilian Amazon last year hospitalised more than 2,000 people and led to a “significant negative impact on public health” in the region, researchers have said.
With similar serious fires expected this year, on top of a deadly Covid-19 pandemic, heavily hospitalisations are likely to be repeated, “potentially collapsing” an already overburdened health system in the region, they said in a report.
“We are watching a situation similar, or even worse, than last year,” said Ane Alencar, director of science at IPAM, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, one of the institutions behind the study.
More than 4,500 square kilometres of Amazon land deforested this year or cleared but not burned last year could be set on fire during this year’s dry season, which normally runs from July to September, according to the new study.
In July, the Amazon region saw a 28% increase in fires compared to the same period last year, it said.
Miguel Lago, executive director of IEPS, Brazil’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, called the north of Brazil the largest area of “clinic deserts” – areas of limited healthcare availability – in the country.
The Amazonian region around Manaus, for instance, has only 8.8 intensive care hospital beds per 100,000 people, below the Brazilian health ministry’s recommendation of 10 beds, Lago said.
The Amazon has seen the worst outbreak of Covid-19 in Brazil, itself one of the countries most heavily impacted by the virus.
“We have a very fragile health system in the Amazon, that has had a hard time facing the pandemic. So the coincidence of fires and the pandemic is very, very bad,” Lago said.
More needs to be done to limit forest fires in the region this year, with the healthcare system already struggling to deal with coronavirus cases, he said.
“We should be doing everything we can to avoid hospitalisation – and in this case fires are totally avoidable,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Two of the immigrants who participated in the naturalization ceremony at the WH that was later aired during the GOP convention said they were not told they would be part of the convention.”
I spoke today with a #USPS employee in Wheeling, West Virginia — a town where Trump has repeatedly campaigned, in a state he won by 42 points. The employee says residents now get mail “three times a week, if that” and complaints are growing about delayed checks and medicine.
I asked the Wheeling, WV #USPS employee if there have been any improvements since DeJoy announced he’s suspending some operational changes. “No, it’s still happening,” the employee said. “The damage is done. Some trucks leave empty, and mail is still sitting on docks.”
“Fauci tells @drsanjaygupta he was under anesthesia when task force met to discuss changing testing guidance. ‘I am concerned about the interpretation of these recs & worried it will give people the incorrect assumption asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is’.”
“NEW AD: Elizabeth Neumann – the former Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention in Trump’s DHS – says that the U.S. is ‘less safe today’ because of Trump’s actions.
In 2016 she supported Trump but based on what she saw inside his administration, she’s voting for Joe Biden.”
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from making seven states and five cities send millions of dollars in pandemic relief aid from public to private schools.
U.S. District Judge James Donato found the Education Department’s July 1 rule that directs public school districts to share emergency coronavirus relief grants with private schools under a more generous formula than what is required under Title I undermines the will of Congress.
“An executive agency like the Department has no authority to rewrite Congress’s plain and unambiguous commands under the guise of interpretation,” Donato wrote in a 15-page ruling Wednesday night.
[…]
Donato rejected the department’s argument that it needed to issue a rule to clear up a “critical ambiguity” in the CARES Act, which states that emergency funds should be allocated “in the same manner” as Title 1 formula grants.
“The Department’s conclusion that ‘in the same manner’ does not mean ‘in the same manner’ invites immediate doubts,” Donato wrote…Donato dismissed the Education Department’s reading of the CARES Act as “’interpretive jiggery-pokery’ in the extreme.’”
[…]
The preliminary injunction will only apply to plaintiffs who sued DeVos over the policy.
The plaintiffs include California, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., the New York City Board of Education, Chicago Board of Education, Cleveland Board of Education and San Francisco Unified School District.
blfsays
SC@127 & others, In addition to the NBA (basketball), some MLS (soccer), MLB (baseball), and Tennis games in the States were postponed in protest & solidarity & all in the States. I don’t know if any games outsides the States (e.g., here in Europe) were — or will be — postponed, but it’s not all unlikely…
[…]
The Washington Post has published fresh allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct at Washington’s NFL team, this time directly involving the franchise’s owner, Dan Snyder.
One former team employee said that a video was made of Washington cheerleaders accidentally exposing their breasts during a film shoot in 2008.
“Larry {Michael, the team’s former head of media} said something to the effect of, We have a special project that we need to get done for the owner today: He needs us to get the good bits of the behind-the-scenes video from the cheerleader shoot onto a DVD for him,” Brad Baker, a former Washington team employee told the Post.
Baker said he helped edit the video, which was burned on to a DVD labelled For Executive Meeting. The Post said it has a copy of the film. Michael, who resigned from the team last month, denies the allegations while Snyder is yet to comment.
“I feel betrayed and violated,” said Heather Tran, one of the cheerleaders who took part in the 2008 shoot.
Another former Washington cheerleader, Tiffany Bacon Scourby, told the Post that Snyder encouraged her to sleep with Tony Roberts, a childhood friend of Snyder.
Scourby alleged Snyder told her at an event in 2004: We have a hotel room. Why don’t you and Tony go upstairs and get to know each other better?
Other female employees told the Post they were banned from mixing with players in case they were a distraction, and that harassment was widespread at the franchise. “It was like fresh meat to a pack of wolves every time a new pack of interns would come in,” one woman said.
[…]
Veteran Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins offered a withering assessment of Snyder’s legacy on Wednesday. “This is what the NFL gets for not scraping Daniel Snyder off its shoe before now,” she wrote. “They’re partners with a man who sank a flagship organization, leaving behind a smutty storefront.”
blfsays
me@154, Oops! The strikeout was only supposed to be for the Redskins part of the handegg team’s (former) name — I accidently clicked Post Comment rather than Preview. (Also, the {curly braces} are Grauniad edits.)
[… T]he bookshelves behind him [were] lined with titles like The Twits, Betrayed and The Subtle Knife.
[…]
“Whichever librarian managed to get not just the ‘The Twits’ but also ‘Betrayed’; ‘Resistance’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in the shot behind Johnson has my admiration,” tweeted Sam Freedman, a former senior policy advisor at the DfE [Education Ministry]. […]
Freedman continued: “It has been noted that the Subtle Knife; Glass Houses; The Toll (about a monstrous dictator); and Guards Guards (about a shady villain installing a puppet king) are all there too. It looks like it’s been carefully curated!”
The thread that followed included much praise for librarians.
In the image at the link, I can also see “Bad Guys”, “Corpse Talk”, several editions of the How It Works magazine, something about “Scientists”, and others that I cannot decipher or recognize. In other images (and as that thead notes) show “Lord of the Rings”. Supposedly, “Oliver Twist” and “1984” are there… and others are mentioned in the thread, including “Exodus” (a story about people abandoning an island due to the Climate Catastrophe). As several twitterings have noted, there is also a sign “Will You Take on the Challenge?”
Never annoy a librarian! Ook.
blfsays
SC@78 quotes, “Boris Johnson: I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness [?], I wanted to get that off my chest.” The Grauniad explains that mysterious wetness, Stop this wetness!: the roots of Boris Johnson’s watery contempt:
[…]
It’s the word “wetness” that jumps out. A strange choice, redolent of playing field taunts, though perhaps not unexpected from the man who seems to view running the country as an only slightly elevated form of class clownery, and who once used an official document to label David Cameron a girly swot.
But reflexive silliness aside, Johnson seems to be saying that self-examination, stopping to consider the implications of our symbols or actions, is “wet”. He’s using the sense described in the Oxford English Dictionary as “inept, ineffectual, effete”. As with “girly swot”, there’s a definite current of what you might call “toxic masculinity” here. One of the earliest citations of this usage is from a 1924 novel by Percy Marks, called The Plastic Age: “A man is wet if he isn’t a ‘regular guy’; he is wet if he isn’t ‘smooth’; he is wet if he has intellectual interests; and he is wet if he is utterly stupid.”
The OED says “wet” is also used “quasi-adverbially” (as in “don’t act wet”), “and in the combination wet fish. A wet individual, a ‘drip’. Also specifically in politics.”
That political definition probably has the most resonance for any Conservative, and may be why Johnson instinctively reached for it. The OED expands on it as follows: “A politician with liberal or middle-of-the-road views on controversial issues (often applied to members of the Conservative party opposed to the monetarist policies of Margaret Thatcher).” […]
[… more about “wets” and “dries” during handbag’s regime…]
The irony being, of course, that Johnson now finds himself presiding over the economically wettest Tory administration for decades. But if its meaning has become untethered from the intra-party battles of the 1980s, its symbolism is still potent: to be “wet” in the Tory lexicon is to be snivelling, cowardly, afraid to take tough decisions. In the current climate, this appears to mean seeing nuance, pausing to reflect and considering consequences. Johnson’s penchant for vague but emotionally loaded language may fire up those who respond to this kind of manipulation, but it certainly doesn’t make for good government.
Thanks so much, blf @ #157! No one else seemed to be commenting on it, so I partially assumed it must be a British thing, but I’d never seen it before so I had my doubts. Explained!
The compulsory wearing of facemasks outdoors in Paris to curb the spread of Covid-19 is set to be broadened further, the French prime minister, Jean Castex, said, amid concern over an “undeniable” trend of increasing infections in France.
Castex said 19 more departments have been added to a map with “red” zones of active virus circulation, meaning 21 of the country’s 94 departments are classified as such.
Official figures released on 26 August also showed more than 5,400 confirmed new cases in just 24 hours, with admissions to hospital and intensive care units on the rise.
Castex said the final details on how this would take effect would follow a consultation with the Paris local government and police force.
At the moment, the wearing of face masks outdoors is compulsory in much of Paris but is not obligatory in certain parts, such as public parks or some of the less busy streets of the capital.
In the past, people were more likely to turn to religion during times of crisis than look to other sources of guidance. But there has always been an alternative: the humanist approach. And in today’s UK, where most people are now not religious, that alternative is more relevant than ever.
Now, with the fragility of life so clear to us all, we’re all emerging from a crisis with a desire for a new social morality – one that recognises our interdependence in this world and provides guidance, comfort and inspiration even during times like these.
For the majority of Brits – more than 52% of whom identify as non-religious – this is the first time in living history that a crisis has been met without religion. In reaction to chaos, uncertainty and great loss, society faced the coronavirus pandemic with reason and science. It has rejected historical explanations involving deities and the supernatural, and condemned those that spread damaging conspiracy theories, fake news and quack cures….
This is a very rosy view of things, but the broader phenomenon deserves attention.
The German government has rejected calls for a relaxation of its measures to tackle the coronavirus crisis, and is instead seeking countrywide consensus for stricter regulations, according to media reports.
A draft proposal, dubbed ‘Merkel’s secret plan’ by national media, after the chancellor Angela Merkel signalled she wanted a nationwide strategy, would foresee the banning of large gatherings at least until the end of the year, the restriction of private gatherings and the introduction of a countrywide fine for those refusing to wear face coverings.
The draft was leaked to several news outlets on Thursday morning ahead of a much anticipated video conference between Merkel and the leaders of the country’s 16 states at which she will urge them to adopt regulations which would apply nationwide.
So far Germany’s approach to the crisis has been very much state-driven, with a high degree of disagreement over the prevention measures according to how badly an individual state had been hit by the pandemic, resulting in confusion and constant bickering between regions.
Since the daily infection rate has been on the rise for the past month, with winter approaching, and the infection expected to continue to spread, there has been a growing consensus that Germany needs a unified approach, not least for citizens moving from one state to another.
…
By lunchtime it was reported that most state leaders agreed to back the fine for non-wearers of masks, but that other proposals were being strenuously argued against.
[…]
It was a venture born of desperation. Four months into quarantine, Yohana Agurto, an unemployed teacher in Chile, was scrolling through social media to take her mind off her dwindling savings and the four children she had to feed. Inspiration struck when she and her boyfriend came across a post with a photo of the American actor Mel Gibson. Agurto remembered she had a large stash of organic honey in the pantry. Mel sounds quite similar to the Spanish word for honey, miel. So on a whim, Agurto had a graphic designer friend sketch out a logo with a scene from the movie Braveheart, printed a handful at home and glued them onto glass jars.
That was the origin of Miel Gibson, the tiniest and scrappiest of businesses, which catered, according to the label, “Only to the brave.” She advertised on social media and by word-of-mouth, picking up enough orders to keep her reasonably busy and the family’s bills paid. Then last week a most unwelcome email popped into Agurto’s inbox with the subject line: “Cease and Desist / Miel Gibson.”
[…]
At first Agurto entertained the possibility the whole thing could be a cruel joke, but when it became clear it was a real legal threat, she panicked. […]
After a couple sleepless nights, Agurto decided she had invested too much time and effort in her artisanal honey brand to simply shut it down. She reflected on how much she admired William Wallace, the Scottish warrior Gibson played in Braveheart, and decided to go public about the legal threat.
Her plight got plenty of sympathetic press coverage in Chile and beyond, free legal advice and a torrent of new orders. On Monday, Agurto said messages from would-be customers were streaming in by text message and on her social media accounts faster than she could read them.
[…]
Regardless of how the matter gets resolved, Agurto said she would love to send a courtesy sample of Miel Gibson to Mel Gibson. She wants him to know, she added, that the ordeal has not made her any less of a fan. “My motivation was not to profit by using the image of a famous person,” she said. “I was selling honey to survive.”
The image used on Miel Gibson’s label (see image at the link) — which Ms Agurto apparently is planning to replace — is of William Wallace as played by Mr Gibson. That and the second part of the name are the only explicit “uses” of Mr Gibson’s name and/or likeness and/or biography, as that ridiculous threat put it. (Think Andy Warhol’s Campbells Soup Cans art for an analogy.) Her slogan should perhaps bee “So good the lawyers tried to ban it!”
blfsays
Update to @162, Multiple reports indicate Ms Agurto has reached an ageement with Mr Gibson’s lawyers: Just change the image. The name and current slogan is fine, but not an artwork based on a real-life character played by Mr Gibson. (There are quite a number of public domain images of Mr Wallace she could use, albeit none — that I can recall or quickly find — that are as dramatic (fictionalised) as Mr Gibson’s likeness.)
On Wednesday, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested in Illinois on charges of first-degree murder after allegedly shooting and killing two protesters the night before during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake earlier this week.
During the Kenosha Police Department’s first press conference in response to the Blake shooting and subsequent protests, Chief Daniel Miskinis blamed the unidentified victims in Tuesday night’s shooting for their own deaths, saying the violence was the result of the “persons” involved violating curfew:
Persons who were out after the curfew became engaged in some type of disturbance, and persons were shot. Everybody involved was out after the curfew. I’m not going to make a great deal of that, but the point is the curfew is in place to protect. Had persons not been out involved in violation of that, perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened.
“It is the persons who were involved after the legal time, involved in illegal activity, that brought violence to this community,” Miskinis added later, seeming to blame protesters who were on the streets because a member of Miskinis’ department, who was identified late on Wednesday as Officer Rusten Sheskey, shot Blake seven times in the back as his children watched.
Miskinis would not give the names of the “persons” who were the victims of Wednesday’s murders, but did say they were “a 26-year-old Silver Lake resident and a 36-year-old Kenosha resident.”
In describing the shooting of two protesters, Miskinis also declined to call it a homicide and instead referred to it by various euphemisms often used to describe killings by a police officer, which Rittenhouse is not. He said that the shooter “was involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place” and that there was a “disturbance that led to the use of deadly force.”
Additionally, Miskinis refused to comment on the video of Blake’s shooting, but offered that there may have been a reasonable explanation for the man being shot seven times in the back, which has reportedly left him paralyzed and in critical condition. (The officer has been put on administrative leave and has not been fired or arrested.)
“I’m not going to address that [video] because it is one snippet of a very large situation and much as what’s happened across this nation for a long period of time, it’s focused on what you see in this much of an incident,” Miskinis said, apparently alluding to other police shootings of unarmed Black men. “It’s unfair to everybody involved, whether you’re the person using force or the person being arrested that the picture isn’t painted.”
Video taken on Tuesday before the shooting showed Rittenhouse gathered with what appeared to be members of armed militia groups. Those vigilante groups had gathered on Tuesday night, it was reported by CNN and the Verge, in response to calls on Facebook for “any patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from the evil thugs.”
When asked about the vigilante groups, Miskinis defended them as civilians out to protect property and “exercise their constitutional right.”
“Across this nation there have been armed civilians who have come out to exercise their constitutional right and to potentially protect property,” he said. “Am I aware that groups exist? Yes, but they weren’t invited to come.”
Miskinis’ views of the gathering of vigilante groups that reportedly led to the killing of two local men appears to be very much in line with those of his department. Before the shooting, officers in armored vehicles could be seen giving water to armed men gathered with the alleged shooter and telling them, “We appreciate you guys, we really do.” After the killings, the alleged shooter walked slowly past a series of police vehicles with his arms raised and was allowed to simply walk away. (It’s not yet clear what the officers knew about the shooting at the time, but the shots were audible in nearby footage.)
When asked why his officers had given the armed men water and thanked them, Miskinis said, “Our deputies would toss a water to anybody” and “You’re asking me to tell you what one person did. I can’t tell you that.” In explaining why his officers were able to show such restraint with Tuesday’s shooter, he blamed the “high stress” situation on the scene and possible “tunnel vision” on the part of his officers.
“I’m not making an excuse. I’m just telling you from personal experience what could have done that,” he said.
Toward the end of his comments, Miskinis was asked about the vigilante groups and again compared them to the protesters who had violated curfew, saying both sides were to blame.
“It’s no different than those on the protesters’ side who are walking around armed and those who are counterprotesters, or those who are just witnessing, to be armed, so I’m not going to address any more issues relative to that,” he said.
When asked if he wanted the vigilante groups to be present again after Wednesday night’s curfew, Miskinis refused to reply….
This man should not be in this job. This police department needs a complete overhaul.
Anyone questioning why a report highlighting the disconnect between how our world is and how we often think it is goes under the title “the Perils of Perception” need look no further than slightly east and further west towards Brexit and Donald Trump.
“One type of bias that is not usually referenced in these studies but is hugely influential is the change bias,” [one of the architects of the survey Damien] Loscher says. “Where there is genuine social change happening, people tend to exaggerate the rate or extent of this change.
“We see this in the public’s overestimation of immigration, social media usage, urbanisation or the proportion of young people still living at home with their parents. Probably this perception reality-gap is driven by a combination of social change being especially newsworthy or interesting, and our primitive programming that sensitises us to any changes in our environment.”
One area where there is a lower gap between the perception and the reality is the gender divide. When asked how much of every €100 men earn do women earn, the perception was €74.70 compared with a reality of €73. When asked how many out of every 100 graduates in Ireland are women, people guessed 53.6 per cent on average — which was almost exactly right. The correct figure is 53 per cent.
Loscher says that if the last century was about state-sponsored propaganda artfully delivered via central channels, this one is about “scrolling your smartphone and picking out the juiciest headlines which can often see people drifting further away from the truth”.
[… People in Ireland] still get most of our news from established media brands, albeit via a wider selection of channels, including digital. The Reuters Institute 2020 Digital News Report confirms big screen brands such as RTÉ [Ireland’s “BBC”], Sky and BBC still dominate, with the growing online news market led by familiar names wearing new digital clothes: you may be reading this on your smartphone, but you are still reading The Irish Times.
There is a growing perception that social media now dominates as a source of news, but perception is not reality. [Ireland], as a nation, spend more time listening to the radio than we spend on social media. We spend more hours each day watching the big screen than we do watching our small screens.
There is a lot of comfort to be taken from this, because people trust the news they get from TV, radio and newspapers much more than they trust social media news. When asked specifically about information on the Covid-19 crisis, new media (Facebook, Twitter, etc) were given a trust rating of less than half that awarded to TV, radio or to newspapers.
[… G]aps between perception and reality are not always the result of misinformation. Much of the population are simply not comfortable with numbers and struggle to understand even simple mathematical concepts. In fact, when it comes to perceptions, we are more likely to trick ourselves than be tricked.
[…] Bobby Duffy noted that countless experiments had shown that around 10 percent of the public don’t understand simple percentages, never mind more complex maths. The likelihood is that many, if not most, of today’s population are not equipped to navigate the oceans of data we all must swim through every day.
Even if we understand the numbers, human beings can be irrational in our interpretation. Perceptions are formed in a petri dish of human biases and animal instincts. We screen out, consciously and unconsciously, information that is not aligned with our world view, creating the oft-cited echo chamber. […]
How we react to protect and promote news and data integrity is something that should concern us all. Media literacy initiatives such as the Be Media Smart campaign, organised by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and supported by almost all Irish media outlets, are to be welcomed. Long reads and slow journalism are gaining traction. But so much more needs to be done.
Ultimately, there is no reliable data to confirm or deny that the gaps between perception and reality are growing, but the anecdotal evidence is compelling. We only know, confirmed by the latest Perils of Perceptions study, that significant gaps exist.
Whilst the data and examples are very specifically Irish, the entire article is worth a read. It’s in two sections; the first is the data for Ireland, the second is on why people get things wrong (“Analysis: How we react to protect and promote news and data integrity should concern us all […]”).
johnson catmansays
re SC @164: Someone should have asked Miskinis if being out after curfew was a capital crime worthy of being killed. Not that he would have answered.
For Belarus’s thriving tech industry, it didn’t matter much that the country’s president referred to the internet as “garbage” and state factories as the engine of economic success. Until now.
The sector could become a casualty of weeks of violent political crisis in the east European country, putting at risk a source of foreign income that is worth 5% of exports.
The staff of international IT companies have joined mass protests and are threatening to quit Belarus after the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko on August 9 that his opponents say was rigged.
Stories of tortured detainees and the sight of plainclothes officers grabbing protesters off the street made working life difficult for the Minsk employees of the California-based software-maker PandaDoc, its chief executive Mikita Mikado said.
“Everyone in the IT community, all Belarusians inside the country and outside the country were shocked. They were shocked by how blatantly the elections were rigged and by how much violence was applied afterwards,” said Mikado.
An internal survey showed 83% of PandaDoc’s employees in the country want to relocate. “If this government stays, there will be no PandaDoc in Belarus,” Mikado added.
At least three protesters have been killed and thousands, including PandaDoc employees, were detained.
…
The Belarus Hi-Tech Park, a hub on the eastern outskirts of Minsk, has grown to 750 companies since its launch in 2006, employing 58,000 people and earning $2 billion in exports, according to government figures from 2019-end.
Wargaming, which created the globally popular World of Tanks game, has a major operation in Minsk, as does U.S.-based EPAM Systems…, founded by two Belarusians in 1993.
Belarusian software engineers are also behind Japanese-controlled Viber messenger.
The park benefited from tax breaks and the ability to tap an educated local workforce. Belarus has a strong tradition of science and engineering education, as do many other former Soviet states. As protests broke out, IT workers formed human chains on the street in solidarity. They created platforms for tracing people who went missing during the crackdown and collecting funds for the victims.
EPAM launched a retraining programme for people to start a career in IT if they were fired for supporting the opposition.
EPAM’s founder Arkady Dobkin was a signatory to an open letter calling for the release of prisoners and new elections.
“Start-ups are not born in an atmosphere of fear and violence,” the letter said. “In the near future, we will begin to observe a massive outflow of specialists abroad.”
The chief executive of Rakuten Viber, Djamel Agaoua, told Forbes[dot]ru the company may halt investments. Agaoua said two of Viber’s employees were detained during the crackdown, one of whom ended up in hospital.
As the protests gathered steam, internet outages hit Belarus over several days, disrupting the flow of messages, news and videos shared on social media by the demonstrators. The government blamed the internet shutdown on outside interference.
“Not even the police brutality was the most surprising event in Belarus, but the fact that internet has been shut off completely,” said Michael Rumiantsau, the Belarusian co-founder of the software company FriendlyData, which was sold to ServiceNow[dot]Inc.
“It’s just unbelievable for the U.S. partners, for the U.S. clients who think this can be compared to the situation in North Korea or some other countries with totalitarian regimes,” he told Reuters from Mountain View, California.
Minsk’s IT park was created by former Belarusian ambassador to Washington Valery Tsepkalo, now an opposition figure in exile. He told Reuters the park showed “Belarus can be associated not only with farmers and with potatoes.”
In 2016 the park accounted for 1.5% of gross domestic product. By last year, it shot up to 6.1%, but that growth is now at risk.
“Belarusian tech is going to suffer because talent is going to be seeking ways to escape the country,” Mikado said.
A former FBI agent has documented links between serving officers and racist militant activities in more than a dozen states
[…]
In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content.
The report notes that over the years, police links to militias and white supremacist groups have been uncovered in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
Police in Sacramento, California, in 2018 worked with neo-Nazis to pursue charges against anti-racist activists, including some who had been stabbed, according to records.
And just this summer, German writes, an Orange county sheriff’s deputy and a Chicago policeman were caught wearing far-right militia logos; an Olympia, Washington, officer was photographed posing with a militia group; and Philadelphia police officers were filmed standing by while armed mobs attacked protesters and journalists.
The exact scale of ties between law enforcement and militias is hard to determine, German told the Guardian. “Nobody is collecting the data and nobody is actively looking for these law enforcement officers,” he said.
Officers’ racist activities are often known within their departments and generally result in punishment or termination following public scandals, the report notes. Few police agencies have explicit policies against affiliating with white supremacist groups. […]
[…] Police in states including California, Oregon, Illinois and Washington are now facing investigations for their alleged affinity to far-right groups opposing Black Lives Matter, according to the report.
[…]
There is growing awareness in some parts of the government about the intensifying threat of white supremacy. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have directly identified white supremacists as the most lethal domestic terrorist threat in the country. According to German’s report, the FBI’s own internal documents have directly warned that the militia groups the agency is investigating often have “active links” to law enforcement.
And yet US agencies lack a national strategy to identify white supremacist police and root out this problem, German warned. Meanwhile, popular police reform efforts to address “implicit bias” have done nothing to confront explicit racism.
[…]
As the calls to defund police have grown in recent months, law enforcement alignment with violent and racist groups only adds further fuel to the movement, German said. “In a time when the effort to defund police is getting some salience, the police are behaving in such a way as to justify that argument.”
“Employees of Belarusian cardiology centre, a well-known medical institution,collected signatures in support of fired director Aliaksandr Mrochak. When acting minister of health came to the centre to announce the dismissal of Mrochak,the employees chanted ‘Shame!’ to the official…”
“In #Minsk, women are forming a human chain of solidarity outside the Red Church,where dozens of people where blocked by riot police yesterday. Catholic Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz said he ‘protests against the illegal actions of law enforcement that should be investigated’…”
“#Belarus How fluid these protests and protest locations are. Medical workers and employees ofBelarusian cardiology centre gathered at the centre.They are now marching to the Red Church,where dozens of people were blocked yesterday by riot police.They are chanting Long Live Belarus”
On December 10, 2015, Donald Trump took time off from campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination to spend hours sitting for a videotaped deposition in a lawsuit alleging that he and Trump University had defrauded people who had plunked down thousands of dollars to learn the secrets of his financial success as a developer. During a break in the proceedings, the camera continued to roll. And Trump and his attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, apparently unaware they were being recorded, were captured discussing the case.
In this 13-minute hot-mic video—a copy of which was provided to Mother Jones—Trump boasted about how his company threatened the Better Business Bureau to change the D rating it had assigned Trump University to an A. He complained about the federal judge overseeing the suit, Gonzalo Curiel, elliptically talking about how to challenge him and referring to “the Spanish thing.” Trump also griped that he had been sued personally in this case, and Petrocelli had to explain to Trump that he, not just Trump University itself, was in the legal crosshairs because Trump had been accused of making false statements to promote the venture. And Petrocelli pointed out that the case was not a lock for Trump because some of Trump’s “guys” had been “sloppy.”
This tape shows Trump in the wild, trying to figure out how to contend with a judge who he believed was not on his side (perhaps with the use of a racist attack), bragging about pressuring a group that had given his business a low rating, and grousing that he was being held personally responsible for a Trump enterprise accused of scamming people.
…
Art Cohen, the lead plaintiff in one of two Trump University class-action lawsuits, gave a copy of this recording to Mother Jones. “I wanted to get this out before the election so people better understand how Trump behaves behind the scenes,” Cohen says. “Staying quiet all this time has been frustrating for me, and I wish everybody had gotten the chance to see Trump’s behavior as I did before the 2016 election. With 20/20 vision, we now have the opportunity to better understand his true nature and the gangster persona he shows in this video.” Cohen maintains that Trump’s ability to avoid a trial during the campaign cleared a major political obstacle for him, and he adds, “The Trump University legal saga is a footnote to history, but it helped Trump hone his blueprint for attacking the judiciary by publicly berating judges he deems adversarial.”
Mother Jones sent Petrocelli a list of questions about the conversation, which took place with several other people in the room. In response, Martin Checov, the general counsel of O’Melveny & Myers—the law firm where Petrocelli practices—sent a letter to Mother Jones, “on behalf of Trump University and President Donald J. Trump,” demanding that Mother Jones “not publish the video or any article relating to it and immediately destroy the video.”…
Corn’s video with clips, the full recording, amd more atl. Two side notes: Trump looks remarkably like Boris Johnson in this video. Also, they have it as “[unintelligible],” but I think Trump says it was Michael Cohen who called the BBB threatening to sue over the low rating for his fraudulent “university.”
MANHATTAN — The Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association’s claims that the state’s requirement that anyone who wants to carry a concealed weapon outside the home had to show a “proper cause” to do so [violates the 2nd Amendment]. The requirement does not violate the Second Amendment, the court ruled.
New cases of Covid-19 continue to increase rapidly in Italy, as on Thursday 1,411 have tested positive in the last 24 hours. This is country’s highest daily tally since 6 May.
On Wednesday, Italy reported 1,367 new cases. Five more people have died with the virus in the last 24 hours, and the death toll now stands at 35,463. The total number of cases is now up to 263,949.
One cluster in particular is raising concerns among Italian health authorities as they are trying to trace visitors to former Formula One team boss Flavio Briatore’s Sardinian nightclub, after more than 60 confirmed Covid cases were linked to the venue.
Billionaire, on Sardinia’s Emerald Coast, has hosted thousands of guests in August, including hundreds of Italian and international VIPs. On Tuesday, Briatore was confirmed to have tested positive for Covid-19 after being admitted to hospital in Milan, according to a statement from his staff.
Officials are now facing the challenge of contacting everyone who has been at the club in recent weeks, Italian media reports suggest. Billionaire welcomed between 8,000 and 11,000 guests in the first weeks of August and authorities fear many registered with false names or phone numbers.
[…]
People in Britain have given a worse assessment of their country’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak than the electorates of 13 other leading democracies, according to international research.
Only 46% of the British population believe their country has done a good job handling coronavirus, the Pew Centre has found. By contrast, 71% of people in Sweden think their country has done a good job, and the figures rise to 86% in South Korea, 88% in Germany, 94% in Australia and 95% in Denmark.
In France, which has Europe’s third-highest official death toll after the UK and Italy, 59% think their country has done well.
The only other country rating itself as badly as the UK is the US, where 47% of voters think their country has done a good job. These are the only two in the poll where a majority believe their country has not handled the epidemic well.
[…]
The survey reveals high levels of confidence in democracies, contradicting the common narrative that authoritarian governments have been the great winners in the pandemic. Multilateralists have cause for optimism since a majority of those polled believe greater international cooperation could have reduced the impact of the pandemic.
The poll, the first international comparative poll by Pew on the pandemic, suggests the disease has had a divisive effect on the sense of national unity in many of the countries surveyed.
A median of 46% of voters feel more national unity now than before the outbreak, while 48% think divisions have grown. The polarisation is greatest in the US: 77% of Americans say the country is more divided than before the pandemic, while just 18% believe the country is more united.
[…]
In Europe, those who have favourable opinions of rightwing populist parties such as [Alternative für Deutschland] are more likely than those in the centre and on the left to say division has grown since the outbreak. This may reflect rightwing resentment at what is seen as big government imposing lockdowns and mandating the wearing of masks in public.
[… more details and results…]
The survey also found that in most countries women more than men reported that their lives had changed considerably due to the pandemic. Pew suggests this may be because of a disproportionate loss of part-time jobs, or the closure of schools leading to an increase in domestic pressures.
UK artist finances bright pink motor yacht that set sail in secrecy to avoid being intercepted by authorities
[…]
The vessel, named Louise Michel after a French feminist anarchist, set off in secrecy on 18 August from the Spanish seaport of Burriana, near Valencia, and is now in the central Mediterranean where on Thursday it rescued 89 people in distress, including 14 women and four children.
It is now looking for a safe seaport to disembark the passengers or to transfer them to a European coastguard vessel.
The crew, made up of European activists with long experience in search and rescue operations, had already assisted in two other rescue operations involving a total of 105 people, who are now onboard the NGO vessel Sea-Watch 4.
Painted in bright pink and featuring Banksy artwork depicting a girl in a life vest holding a heart-shaped safety buoy, the Louise Michel sails under a German flag. The 31-metre motor yacht, formerly owned by French customs authorities, is smaller but considerably faster than other NGO rescue vessels.
Banksy’s involvement in the rescue mission goes back to September 2019 when he sent an email to Pia Klemp, the former captain of several NGO boats that have rescued thousands of people over recent years.
“Hello Pia, I’ve read about your story in the papers. You sound like a badass,” he wrote. “I am an artist from the UK and I’ve made some work about the migrant crisis, obviously I can’t keep the money. Could you use it to buy a new boat or something? Please let me know. Well done. Banksy.”
[…]
She [Captain Pia Klemp] has made clear that Banksy’s involvement in the operations is limited to providing financial support. “Banksy won’t pretend that he knows better than us how to run a ship, and we won’t pretend to be artists.”
With a top speed of 27 knots, the Louise Michel would be able to “hopefully outrun the so-called Libyan coastguard before they get to boats with refugees and migrants and pull them back to the detention camps in Libya”, said Klemp.
Non-state sea rescuers have long criticised the mass return of migrants to Libya by the Libyan coastguard in collaboration with EU member states. International organisations have accused the Libyan coastguard of mistreating people at sea or selling them off to militias at Libyan harbours after intercepting them.
[…]
Lea Reisner, a nurse and head of mission for the first rescue operation, said the project was anarchist at its heart, meant to bring together a variety of struggles for social justice, including for women’s and LGBTIQ rights, racial equality, migrants’ rights, environmentalism and animal rights.
[…]
So far in 2020, more than 500 refugees and migrants are known to have died in the Mediterranean sea, and the real number is estimated to be considerably higher. On Wednesday, 45 people — including five children — died when the engine on their boat exploded off Libya, in the country’s deadliest shipwreck this year, the UN said. More than 19,500 migrants have survived the Mediterranean crossing along the central maritime route this year and reached Italy or Malta.
Claire Faggianelli, an activist who prepared the Louise Michel for its first mission, saw the project as a wake-up call for Europe. “We really want to try to awaken the consciousness of Europe and say: ‘Look, we have been yelling at you for years now. There is something that shouldn’t be happening at the very borders of Europe, and you close your eyes to it. Wake up!’” she said.
Face masks have become a key tool in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic but they are also proving a major new source of pollution, with used masks seen littering streets, countryside and waterways across the world. Now, a French start-up believes it has a solution.
Since mid-July, Plaxtil, a firm in Châtellerault, centre-west France, has been recycling thousands of face masks, turning the potentially hazardous waste into useful products.
[… T]he masks are collected and placed in “quarantine” for four days. They are then ground down into small pieces and subjected to ultraviolet light to ensure they are completely decontaminated before the recycling process begins.
“Concretely, we take fabrics, so clothes — or now, masks — we collect them, we grind them down, mix them with a binding material, and we transform them into a material that is called Plaxtil, which can be used in industry and moulded like normal plastic,” said [Plaxtil co-founder Olivier] Civil.
Plaxtil says the masks could be turned into a vast array of different objects, but for the moment it is turning them into products that can be used in the fight against Covid, such as plastic visors.
Plaxtil says it has already recycled more than 50,000 masks, producing between 2,000 and 3,000 recycled products since the end of June.
SC @160, meanwhile, in the USA religion is making the coronavirus pandemic worse. Many religious meetings are still being held with no social distancing, no masks, and in defiance of state regulations.
Some religious organizations back off once the pastor (or equivalent) gets sick, along a good percentage of the worshippers. Some have to be taken to court before they comply with state regulations.
Many religious organizations continue to defy common sense rules when it comes to a contagious disease. Some back Trump and Pence’s “miracle” concept when it comes to ending the COVID-19 infections.
Tonight we were detained by police in the centre of Minsk, held at a police station for two hours for “document checks”. Same thing happened to many other journalists. A clear attempt to interfere with coverage of events in #Belarus
Detaining BBC journalists is an escalation.
lumipunasays
Somewhat comically, trade and travel restrictions seem to have created an illegal cheese smuggling industry from Finland to Russia (link in Finnish):
(Disclaimer: the cheese in question might not impress Mildly Deranged Penguin, since it’s the sort of cheap bland stuff that North Europeans like to eat for breakfast)
Background: Finnish cheese is incredibly popular with Russians who live within shopping distance of the border (mainly St. Petersburg). There’s some quality issues with Russian food products, especially dairy products, that make wealthier people prefer high quality foreign produce. Finnish dairy brands were increasingly exported to Russia by early 2010s, but individual Russians visiting Finland also continued to shop a lot of cheese, among other things. There’s this consumer perception that buying directly from Finnish retail stores is the best guarantee of quality.
Besides, you could import 5 kg of cheese per traveler to Russia duty free, after buying it tax free (Some grocery stores near the southeastern border were allowed to make tax free sale arrangements for people with Russian passports). To increase the import quota, shoppers sometimes recruited old ladies to sit in their car – these are called “kilogram grannies”, or perhaps one might say in English “kilograns”. Sometimes, larger amounts of cheese would be smuggled in cars past the customs.
Then there was the Crimean occupation, and mutual trade sanctions between EU and Russia. The end of official food exports to Russia was a significant hit for Finnish food industry. Dairy companies scrabbled to increase their brand production in Russia, from locally sourced milk, while trying to maintain their reputation for high quality. Meanwhile, individual Russian people continued shopping cheese in Finland “for personal consumption”.
Then there was Covid-19, ending virtually all passenger traffic (but not cargo truck traffic) across the border. Russian epidemic situation being what it is, EU or Finland will likely continue to restrict travel from Russia for a long while. Russia also currently continues to restrict travel from the EU, if only on spite. Since almost no Russians can shop in Finland, sales in grocery stores and many other shops near the southeastern border have collapsed. However, there have been reports of individual Russian nationals asking to buy unusually large amounts of cheese (like, hundreds of kgs) from grocery stores tax free. Finnish authorities presume this cheese is being smuggled in cargo trucks past Russian customs.
(Cue images of Mildly Deranged Penguin trebucheting hundreds of 1 kg consumer packages of bland cheese across the border from Finland to Russia, risking to escalate an armed conflict between the countries)
Excerpts from the Washington Post link to which SC referred in comment 180:
The Secret Service had asked for a room close to [Trump]. But Mar-a-Lago said it was too late. The room was booked. Would agents like a room across the street from [Trump], instead?
“I do have a Beach Cabana available,” a staff member at Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla., wrote in March 2017 to a Secret Service agent seeking rooms for the upcoming weekend. “Across the street at the Beach Club, North end of the pool.”
The next time, the Secret Service didn’t take the same risk. It paid Mar-a-Lago to book rooms for two weeks at a time — locking them up before the club could rent them to others, according to newly released records and emails.
For Trump’s club, it appeared, saying no to the Secret Service had made it a better customer. The agency was paying for rooms on nights when Trump wasn’t even visiting — to be ready just in case Trump decided to go […]
Trump has now visited his own properties 270 times as president […] with another visit planned for Thursday, when he is scheduled to meet GOP donors at his Washington hotel.
Through these trips, Trump has brought the Trump Organization a stream of private revenue from federal agencies and GOP campaign groups. Federal spending records show that taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $900,000 since he took office. At least $570,000 came as a result of the president’s travel […]
new federal spending documents obtained by The Post via a public-records lawsuit give more detail about how the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service […] In addition to the rentals at Mar-a-Lago, the documents show that the Trump Organization charged daily “resort fees” to Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Pence in Las Vegas and in another instance asked agents to pay a $1,300 “furniture removal charge” during a presidential visit to a Trump resort in Scotland.
[…] But the most frequent way Trump is known to have helped his properties has been just to visit them, with the vast, big-spending presidential entourage in tow.
[…] The Trump Organization provided a statement saying that it has complied with promises it made before Trump took office. The company said it has rejected all new foreign deals and donated any profits from doing business with foreign governments.
[…] Eric Trump did not directly address questions about the Trump Organization’s charges to the U.S. government.
[…] Trump chose to keep ownership of his business while in office. […] Trump made two sets of promises.
One set governed the Trump Organization, to keep Trump’s business away from his presidency.
The company, now led by Trump’s two adult sons, said it would exclude the president from decision-making, refuse any new overseas deals and give back any profits it made from doing business with foreign governments.
The other set governed Trump personally: He said he would keep his presidency far away from his business.
[…]
“I may never see these places again,” Trump said during a rally in August 2016. “Because I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf. Believe me.”
In response to questions for this report, White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement that […]
“The Washington Post is blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization, and it must stop. Please be advised that we are building up a very large ‘dossier’ on the many false David Fahrenthold and others stories as they are a disgrace to journalism and the American people.”
[…] recently, The Post received 265 pages of receipts and emails that the Secret Service released this month, in response to The Post’s lawsuit, and that provided new details about previously identified payments to Trump properties.
These show that Trump’s pledge to isolate himself did not survive his first two weeks in office. On his 15th day as president, he went to Mar-a-Lago. And the end of his literal isolation also ended his financial isolation: Trump’s visit brought the club a new, deep-pocketed customer.
[…] The Secret Service paid $10,660 for the weekend, federal records show. […]
Last year, for instance, Eric Trump said that the company charges taxpayers “like 50 bucks” for rooms used by his father’s aides and Secret Service agents.
But The Post has found no evidence to support that assertion. Instead, the Trump Organization charged rates as high as $650 per night for rooms at Mar-a-Lago and $17,000 per month for a cottage at Trump’s club in Bedminster, N.J. […]
The newly obtained federal records showed other instances in which the Trump Organization charged the government rates far above what Eric Trump claimed.
[…] The Trump Organization did not say why it had charged resort fees to working Secret Service agents.
[…]Trump’s children and grandchildren also visited Trump properties repeatedly, bringing their own taxpayer-funded Secret Service details.
In September 2017, for instance, Donald Trump Jr. stayed at the Trump hotel near the White House while in Washington to testify before a Senate committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. His Secret Service detail reported paying the hotel $3,300 for rooms over two days […]
[…] Another former Trump administration official said that Trump’s logic for these trips was one that turned his initial promise — to steer clear of his business interests — on its head. As Trump saw it, the official said, people didn’t expect him to stay away.
[…] The hotel has been a hub of activity all week for top donors and Trump supporters, with panels and private events led by senior Trump administration officials ahead of the Republican National Convention speech […]
[…] It was an unusual thing — a sitting president, taping a White House message meant only for private clients of his company. “So many of my friends are with you tonight. They’re in that beautiful ballroom,” Trump said. “Have an incredible evening. I’ll be there next year.”
That promise, Trump kept.
This January, when the police foundation held another gala in Mar-a-Lago’s huge ballroom, Trump was there in person.
PHILADELPHIA (CN) — An obvious loophole should have doomed Environmental Protection Agency approval of Pennsylvania’s plan to limit air pollutants, the Third Circuit ruled Thursday.
“To receive such deference, the agency cannot reach whatever conclusion it likes and then defend it with vague allusions to its own expertise; instead, the agency must support its conclusion with demonstrable reasoning based on the facts in the record,” U.S. Circuit Judge Theodore McKee wrote for a three-judge panel. “When it fails to do so, an agency action is arbitrary and capricious.”
[…]
Zachary Fabish, attorney for the Sierra Club, lauded the ruling.
“This decision is a strong rebuke to EPA, and a powerful reminder of the obligation EPA has to protect the public from smog-producing pollution from dirty coal-fired power plants,” said Fabish in a statement. “We hope that EPA will now take steps to prevent the harm to public health and the environment that this power plant pollution causes.”
McKee was joined in the opinion by U.S. Circuit Judges Robert Nygaard, a Reagan appointee, and Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee.
“The moment when @RFERL cameraman Andrey Rabchyk was detained. He was livestreaming from the protests – and then the video disappeared. Just a moment ago, BBC, DW, Tut[dot]by, Lenta[dot]ru and other local and international journalists have been detained [in Belarus]”
The best part of Harris’ speech was when she pointed out that the RNC has been about making Trump feel better and guarding his fragile ego when he should be focused on the safety, health, and well-being of the people.
Over the last 22 weeks, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has topped 1 million a total of 21 times.
For 20 consecutive weeks, at least 1 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits — a total vastly higher than anything the nation saw at the height of the Great Recession. Last week, however, brought some heartening news, as initial jobless claims fell below the seven-digit threshold for the first time since March.
As we discussed last week, the good news didn’t last long, and the dip below 1 million lasted just one week. The latest report from the Labor Department shows a modest improvement over the previous report, but the totals remain stubbornly highly.
In the week ending August 22, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,006,000, a decrease of 98,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised down by 2,000 from 1,106,000 to 1,104,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,068,000, a decrease of 107,250 from the previous week’s revised average.
[…] these 1 million Americans who’ve just filed for jobless benefits are in addition to the totals from the last several weeks. In other words, we’ve seen than 58 million initial unemployment claims filed since mid-March — a total unlike anything the country has seen in modern times.
A reader recently asked me a good question about this statistic: if 58 million Americans have sought jobless benefits, why do most reports indicate that roughly 31 million Americans are out of work? The answer is, many of those who were forced from the workforce after the crisis began in earnest were laid off temporarily, and have since either returned to their new jobs or found new ones. That said, the fact that there are roughly 31 million Americans still looking for a job is a brutal total by any fair standard.
This, coupled with today’s discouraging report, reinforce the fact that this is a terrible time to have halted the $600-per-week federal supplement, which expired last month. Nevertheless, the lifeline is gone, unable to overcome Republican opposition. (The $300-per-week stopgap measure recently touted by the Trump White House isn’t yet broadly reaching American households.) […]
“How do Trump aides see Kenosha? Here’s @KellyannePolls to Fox this AM on what they see as political upside: ‘The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety, and law and order’.”
In an interview with Andrea Mitchell earlier, Joe Biden pointed to this quote twice, calling attention to how despicable it is and also how bizarre given that Trump currently occupies the Oval Office.
A snippet from the nonsense and lies spouted by Mike Pence last night:
My fellow Americans, we are passing through a time of testing. Soon, we will come to a time for choosing. Joe Biden has referred to himself as a transition candidate, and many were asking, ‘Transition to what?’ Last week, Democrats did not talk very much about their agenda. And if I were them, I wouldn’t either.
Irony meter breakage was extensive.
Commentary:
[…] Part of the problem, of course, is that Democrats actually spent a fair amount of time last week talking about their agenda. Joe Biden devoted a chunk of his acceptance speech to outlining how he’d address the coronavirus pandemic — the crisis that Pence is ostensibly overseeing the response to.
But even putting that aside, it was more than a little jarring hearing the vice president complain about Democrats downplaying their agenda given the fact that Pence and his party still don’t have an agenda.
Last week Democrats […] approved a 91-page platform. Voters who want to know what the party would do if given a chance to govern can read, evaluate, and scrutinize at their leisure.
Those who aren’t inclined to read the whole document, but who are nevertheless interested in the Democratic ticket’s governing vision, can visit the Biden/Harris website — which, as of this morning, has a robust issues page, fleshing out the Democrats’ plans and blueprints in 45 different policy areas.
[…] Mike Pence’s party for the first time since before the Civil War, didn’t bother to produce a platform at all.
As we discussed the other day, the president’s re-election campaign did release a 50-point bulleted list of Trump’s priorities for the next four years, but to call the list an agenda would be far too generous: it included goals such as “return to normal in 2021” and “protect our veterans.”
These hardly count as half-written tweets, much less elements of an incumbent president’s governing agenda.
And as much as I’d love to link to the issues page on the Trump/Pence website, which should include plenty of plans and blueprints for voters to consider as the Republicans seek another four years in power, no such page currently exists — because the GOP campaign apparently didn’t see the point in creating one. […]
Does Pence really want to pick a fight over which party is eager to talk about their agenda?
Republican support for Biden’s candidacy is growing, or, more accurately, Republicans desperate to get rid of Trump are willing to accept Biden.
[…] Former Republican Sen. Bill Cohen of Maine endorsed Biden yesterday, joining more than two dozen other former GOP members of Congress who’ve done the same thing.
Also making headlines today, more than 100 former staffers for the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) are throwing their support behind Biden. Several veterans of Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign are doing the same thing, as are dozens of officials from former President George W. Bush’s team, including two former cabinet secretaries.
Politico also reported this week, “A group of onetime Republican presidential appointees who served as senior ethics or Justice Department aides are endorsing Joe Biden for president, warning that Donald Trump has “weaponized” the executive branch and is putting in peril the legitimacy of the Justice Department.”
This comes on the heels of last week’s Democratic convention, when Americans heard from some prominent GOP voices — former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.), et al. — who threw their support behind the Democratic ticket. The day after Powell spoke, several dozen Republican national security officials — from the Reagan, Bush/Quayle, and Bush/Cheney administrations — also endorsed Biden.
[…] those who’ve watched the Republican convention closely this week have heard from a handful of Democrats supporting the incumbent president, including a small-town mayor in Minnesota and a state lawmaker in Georgia.
But to see any kind of equivalency here is ludicrous. […] these isolated voices are often exaggerated to make it appear as if White House hopefuls enjoy broad, bipartisan support.
But 2020 is qualitatively and quantitatively different. There’s no modern precedent for the sheer volume of high-profile Republicans rallying behind the Democratic ticket.
[…] let’s not overlook another group of voters: traditional Republicans whose support for their party is soft. They reluctantly backed Trump in 2016, largely because of their contempt for Hillary Clinton, and every day since, they’ve grown weary of their president’s tweets, failures, and scandals.
These voters aren’t satisfied with the status quo, and while they’re reluctant to back a Democratic ticket, they’re open to change. This is a constituency basically waiting for allies to tell them it’s OK to choose Biden over Trump.
And for this contingent, a whole lot of prominent Republican voices are now encouraging them to do exactly that.
U.S. officials said Wednesday there has been no intelligence to suggest that foreign countries are working to undermine mail-in voting and no signs of any coordinated effort to commit widespread fraud through the vote-by-mail process, despite numerous claims made by President Donald Trump in recent months. […]
A senior official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, asked on a conference call with reporters Wednesday about the threat of foreign countries manufacturing their own ballots or amplifying disinformation about the integrity of the vote-by-mail process, said there was no information or intelligence that any adversary was “engaged in any kind of activity to undermine any part of the mail-in vote.”
From Trump:
RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!
Effing liar.
William Barr, who is also an effing liar, backed up Trump’s claim.
The truth:Tthere is no information or intelligence that any adversary is engaged in any kind of activity to undermine any part of the mail-in vote.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the Michigan Attorney General are investigating “Racially-Charged’” robocalls spreading Vote-By-Mail disinformation.
[…] Who exactly is behind the calls is still unknown, Benson said. But adding to the confusion is that the calls themselves claim to be from a group run by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burman, two conservative provocateurs who have attempted to use incredibly clownish schemes to spread false allegations against everyone from Robert Mueller to Elizabeth Warren.
Burkman denied being involved with the robocalls, repeatedly claiming that “nobody doing robo calls would ever put out their own cell number.”
“[I]’d bet on a [S]oros group trying to embarrass us,” Burkman said, referring to the philanthropist George Soros, who is often the targeted of far-right conspiracy theories. Burkman offered no evidence to back that claim.
Wohl has also denied involvement, according to the Guardian.
The calls are being investigated by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who raised concerns that it might be part of a nationwide effort.
“This is an unfortunate but perfect example of just how low people will go to undermine this election,” Nessel said in a statement. “This robocall is fraught with scare tactics designed to intimidate Black voters — and we are already working hard to find the bad actors behind this effort.”
The robocall, according to a recording released by Benson, tells recipients falsely that voting by mail will put their information in databases that will be used for tracking down warrants, debt collection and “mandatory vaccines.”
Benson called the calls an “unconscionable, indefensible, blatant attempt to lie to citizens about their right to vote.”
“The call preys on voters’ fear and mistrust of the criminal justice system — at a moment of historic reckoning and confrontation of systemic racism and the generational trauma that results — and twists it into a fabricated threat in order to discourage people from voting,” she said.
A recording of the robocall is available at the link.
Some responses to Jared Kushner’s ill-considered tweet:
From Charles Pierce: “Chris Paul worked his whole life and won a scholarship to Wake Forest University. Jared Kushner’s father bought the spalpeen’s way into Harvard.”
From Rex Chapman: “Silver Spoon Jared Kushner calling NBA players “lucky for being able to take a night off from work” is too rich. These are grown men who have worked insanely hard to earn their jobs. Without rich parents. Unlike Jared…”
From Kevin Kruse: “No one knows more about ‘concrete solutions that are productive’ than Jared Kushner, the man who solved the opioid crisis, brought peace to the Middle East, launched a flawless federal response to the coronavirus …”
From Holly Figueroa O’Reilly: “Jared Kushner, who has accomplished LITERALLY NOTHING in the 4 years he’s been sycophanting around in the White House, says that LeBron James, who has, since 2005, been a champion of kids, opened a school, and runs a voting rights non-profit, should be ‘productive’.”
From #JusticeforBreonna Prescod-Weinstein: “My Harvard ‘03 classmate Jared Kushner got in because his parents donated $2.5 million to Harvard. Me? I taught myself to take the SAT there was no $ for a class. Which one of us knows something about earning our position in life, Jared?”
From Jared Kushner: “NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially. What I’d love to see from the players in the NBA–again they have the luxury of taking a night off from work, most Americans don’t…I’d like to see them start moving into concrete solutions that are productive.”
“In the @mitchellreports interview, Joe Biden challenges Donald Trump and GOP convention speakers to condemn the 17-year-old guy arrested in connection with the killing of two people during Kenosha protests.
‘Where’s the condemnation coming for that?'”
tomhsays
@ #202
So many NBA players do a lot of good work, no doubt partly because so many of them came from poverty. When schools closed in March, Steph Curry teamed up with a food bank to provide more than 1 million meals to students in Oakland, who couldn’t attend school but depended on schools for meals. Just one example, there are countless others. What has Kushner done again?
The [Tucker Carlson] claim was echoed by conservative blusterer Erick Erickson and by the Trump White House’s most significant architect of white supremacist policies, Stephen Miller. “Do not use a skateboard to attack a man packing a rifle,” a mocking tweet retweeted by Miller declared. It refers to a bystander, now dead, who forfeited his life after attempting to stop Rittenhouse from further violence with nothing more than a skateboard to use as a shield against the gunman’s bullets.
In prior shootings we were told that burlier-than-average schoolchildren should be taught to “rush” shooters to try to reduce the total number of dead. This time around we are told that rushing an active shooter is adequate legal grounds for the shooter to kill in “self-defense.”
It is because the killer is allied with conservatism. That is the only reason. That is why archconservative pundits are barking that they want the eager murderer Rittenhouse “as my president” after conducting such heroic killings. If Rittenhouse were the one shot and killed after waving his weapon at protesters, each voice would instead be demanding vengeance, and a militarized response. It takes no time or effort to switch from one to the other.
Trump is the head not of a conservative movement, but a fascist one. There can be no plausible dispute about this after ticking off each of the markers of historic fascism. It’s the celebration of necessary or redemptive violence that’s ideologically inherent to fascism—the propping up of acts of vigilantism and terrorism against fascism’s targeted enemies, acts deemed good and reasonable and perhaps the only remaining means, laws be damned, of maintaining “order.”
There will be more, both before and after the election. The defenses of violence are already twisting, in Tucker’s own speech, into notions that it is only natural that vigilante violence will occur if the state is not willing to properly commit the violence itself. The conservative movement intends to broadcast the “need” for such violence as an escalating message. If Tom Cotton cannot rouse the military to suppress the other, the need to maintain order will fall on young Trump supporters willing to do it themselves.
A video criticizing Trump was issued by VoteVets. The video features a Gold Star father:
[…] A new video released by VoteVets slams Donald Trump for his frivolous, deadly, and demeaning use of our troops. Gold Star father Bill Owens, whose son Ryan, a Navy SEAL, was killed in what many believed to be an ill-advised raid in Yemen, speaks directly to the camera, explaining that Ryan was the “first person to die in combat under Donald Trump. Just five days into his presidency, Trump ordered Ryan’s SEAL team into Yemen. Not from the situation room with all the intelligence assembled but sitting across a dinner table from Steve Bannon.” From there, Owens’ testimonial only gets more damning.
“There was no vital interest at play just Donald Trump playing big man going to war.” Owens says. The resulting operation was a disaster by most accounts, and Ryan died during the operation. “When it went horribly wrong Donald Trump demeaned my son’s sacrifice to play to the crowd.”
Owens highlights Trump’s lack of any meaningful acknowledgement of Vladimir Putin’s alleged military bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan. He also talks about Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Postal Service, which is a clear attempt at rigging the election. But the final statement Owens makes is probably the most important one for Americans to hear.
BILL OWENS: Two hundred thousand Americans will have died before we vote. They and Ryan have one thing in common: It didn’t have to be but for Donald Trump. If you hear one thing, let it be this: Don’t trust Donald Trump with your kid’s life, or your own. […]
When Park Service personnel learned that Donald Trump wanted to hold part of his self-appreciation rally at the 250-year-old Fort McHenry structure, the first thing they worried about was that there could be damage to the historic site. And of course, they were right. […]
The brick paths and walls of Fort McHenry really were damaged by the cranes and lightning equipment hastily assembled to capture Pence’s speech. And, of course, Trump paid a visit because if there’s a camera on anywhere he feels pain until it is pointed his way. But truthfully, they needn’t of bothered. Trashing the Hatch Act to shoot the convention at the White House was already bad enough. Adding in a structure whose importance had to be explained to the audience did not make things any more impressive. […]
The purpose of Mike Pence’s speech seemed to be nothing but demonstrating that there was not an atom of division between the Indiana milquetoast and his dear leader. […]
So, now the report is out. It confirms what we already suspected, “GAO report says cutting census timeframe is a threat to its accuracy.”
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published Thursday found that cutting the timeframe in which the 2020 census is conducted could increase the risk for an inaccurate count.
Among other things, the GAO found the shortened survey period announced earlier this month by the Trump administration puts more pressure on the IT systems door knockers rely on and cuts down the time available to test the response processing operation.
“These delays, the resulting compressed timeframes, implementation of untested procedures, and additional challenges such as COVID-19 could adversely impact downstream operations, escalate census costs and undermine the overall quality of the count,” the report said.
The GAO recommended that the Census Bureau hire more workers to follow up on inquiries and invest in safety protocols so workers can continue in-person outreach strategies.
As of August 10, the Bureau had received responses from 63.4 percent of households and plans to hire up to approximately 435,000 enumerators to follow-up with the approximately 56.4 million non-responding households, according to the GAO.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration decided to curtail the census’s enumeration period from the end of October to Sept. 30 […]
Some lawmakers have proposed an extension of the statutory deadlines for the 2020 census in the next coronavirus relief package.
The census count determines federal funding for states and the makeup of House districts.
In July, […] Trump issued an order seeking to block undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census for the purpose of allocating congressional representation, though that measure was met with swift legal challenges.
[…] That Time A Nun And A F’Ball Coach Excommunicated Joe Biden
There was a whole lot of abortion talk last night, with several speakers praising Donald Trump as being, like Gamera, the friend of little children everywhere, only for the ones who aren’t borned yet. Sister Deirdre Byrne, of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (not to be confused with the Little Sisters of No Socialist Birth Control, who took Obamacare to the Supreme Court), said that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris constitute “the most anti-life presidential ticket ever” — just like every other Democratic ticket does, and spoke an untruth, saying Biden and Harris support “the horrors of late term abortion and infanticide.” We are sure you will be surprised to learn that neither has actually called for infanticide, no matter how much wingnuts say otherwise. Biden, for his part, has indeed called for the Supreme Court’s findings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey to be codified into law, but both those cases only allow abortions up to fetal viability, and don’t allow women to just pop into a clinic in the ninth month of pregnancy and announce they want an abortion.
Former college football coach Lou Holtz went farther than Sister Dierdre, and announced that despite Biden’s claims of being a Catholic, Holtz knows better, and that — again like every Democratic ticket every four years — “The Biden-Harris ticket is the most radically pro-abortion campaign in history. […] They and other politicians are Catholic in name only and abandon innocent lives.” Now that’s some good ol’ locker room theology!
Just to make clear that Biden and Harris are utterly without a moral compass, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) chimed in to say that evil Democrats want to fight the pandemic by shutting down America’s churches but want to “keep the liquor stores and abortion clinics open.” Why, it’s almost as if places were being shut down on the basis of how many people are likely to be in them at any given time. Strangely, Blackburn didn’t give Dems any credit at all for closing bars, where people might get drunk, infect each other, and then also have abortions.
A telephone call on coronavirus economic relief between US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and an adviser to president Donald Trump has with no breakthrough, and Pelosi said talks would not resume until the Trump administration agreed to $2.2tn in aid.
Pelosi and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows spoke by phone for about 25 minutes, the first chance in weeks to resume stalled Covid-19 aid negotiations. But the two sides soon appeared to be as far apart as ever. Pelosi said:
This conversation made clear that the White House continues to disregard the needs of the American people as the coronavirus crisis devastates lives and livelihoods.
We’re willing to come down – meet them in the middle – that would be $2.2 trillion, and when they’re ready to do that we’ll be ready to discuss and negotiate the particulars.
But we can’t go any less because we have to meet the needs of the American people we will not short change them we will not nickel and dime them.
…
The talks broke down on 7 August, with the sides far apart on major issues including the size of unemployment benefits for tens of millions of people made jobless by the pandemic, aid for state and local governments and funding for schools and food support programmes.
The Democratic-controlled House in May passed a $3.4tn coronavirus relief bill but Pelosi offered to reduce that sum by $1tn. The White House, which had proposed $1tn in aid, rejected the offer.
Democrats have since demanded repeatedly that the White House agree to “meet in the middle”.
The Pelosi-Meadows phone call came hours before Trump was due to accept his party’s nomination Thursday evening. Some Democrats have said they did not expect the White House to resume negotiations in earnest until after this week’s Republican national convention….
Texas, Florida, California, New York will not follow new US Covid-19 testing plan
Several large US states including Texas are not heeding new federal health officials’ calls to reduce Covid-19 testing of some exposed to the virus, joining a broad rebuke of the Trump administration by public health leaders.
California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Texas, New Jersey and New York all plan to continue to test asymptomatic people who have been exposed to Covid-19, despite new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggesting that such tests may not be needed.
“The current Texas guidance recommends testing for all close contacts of a confirmed case because it allows for early case identification among people who are at a higher risk of infection,” a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services in a statement. “There’s not a planned change at this point.”
California and New York made similar statements.
The Florida Department of Health said asymptomatic testing was continuing while the new CDC recommendations were evaluated, and Texas also said it would evaluate.
…
Even before the CDC guidance, coronavirus testing in the US had dropped. The US tested on average 675,000 people a day last week, down from a peak in late July of over 800,000 people a day.
Nationally, cases have fallen for five weeks in a row but infections are surging again in the US Midwest with four states reporting record one-day increases in cases on Thursday as the US death toll climbed above 180,000….
“Dozens of journalists were detained earlier this evening in Minsk for nothing other than doing their jobs. Many of them, mostly foreign nationals have been released. Belarusian journalists are still in custody.”
Better than my description @ #195: “Harris says the reality of the country has been ‘completely absent’ from the Republican convention because the event is solely to ‘soothe’ Trump’s ego”
a_ray_in_dilbert_spacesays
You know, given that the Rethugs have over the past few months suggested:
1) Granny and Gramps have to die for the economy
2) Your kids need to die for the economy.
3) That people need to be ready to resort to cannibalism (Limbaugh)
4) That people need to be ready to go hungry to support losing Rethug senate candidates
5) That it’s just fine if police beat, gas and shoot protesters and black people
6) That 180000 deaths is “just fine”
I’m just not sure how they can cling to that pro-life banner in any but an extremely ironic sense.
“At least 40 journalists have been detained today in #Minsk. Some of them are still at a police station,because they refused to show the photographs they took – @tutby, @Belsat_TV, @dw_russian, @RFERL and others. World Press Photo-winner photographer Paul Hansen will be deported
Kaciaryna Andreeva,my good friend and excellent journalist at @Belsat_TV, together with her colleague Maksim Kalitouski,just called her husband and said they both would be taken to the infamous Akrescina detention centre.Tania Karavenkova,@belapan journo is being taken to hospital”
The two men shot dead when white armed extremists disrupted a Black Lives Matter protest and at least one agitator opened fire on a group of protesters in Kenosha have been identified.
The victims were Anthony Huber, 26, and Joseph “Jojo” Rosenbaum, 36, both men from the Kenosha area.
They died on Wednesday night in the small Wisconsin city 40 miles south of Milwaukee, where demonstrations against police brutality have continued in the days after local father Jacob Blake was shot in the back by a police officer on Sunday.
Rosenbaum had a two-year-old daughter, according to local reports, while Huber leaves behind a stepdaughter.
A third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, a 26-year-old from West Allis, 30 miles north of Kenosha, was shot but is expected to survive.
Huber, who lived in Silver Lake, 15 miles west of Kenosha, was a keen skateboarder, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
His girlfriend, Hannah Gittings, addressed protesters on Wednesday night, describing Huber as “one of the most amazing people”.
“He had nothing but love in his heart for this city … he took down an armed gunman with nothing but his fucking skateboard, and he took that fucking bullet,” Gittings said, according to the Sun-Times.
Exact details of what happened on the street leading up to the two deaths have not yet been clarified, but a 17-year-old from Antioch, Illinois, about 15 miles away, Kyle Rittenhouse, was arrested on Wednesday and has been charged with two murders.
An online fundraising page said that Huber also leaves behind a stepdaughter.
Rosenbaum was originally from Texas and had moved to Kenosha within the last year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The 32-year-old leaves behind a fiancee and a young daughter, the Sentinel reported.
Rosenbaum’s sister told the Sun-Times her brother was a compassionate father.
…
Grosskreutz was recovering in a Milwaukee hospital on Wednesday, the WTMJ news channel reported, after being shot in the arm, the limb almost severed from the force of the high-powered bullet.
Friends told the channel Grosskreutz had volunteered as a medic at Black Lives Matter protests in Milwaukee this summer, and WYMJ reported the 26-year-old had been volunteering the night he was shot.
“We’ve posted a new report on masks – proof that they work and best practices increasing use. An important part of a comprehensive approach to stopping Covid. The more we mask up, the more we can keep deaths down and restart our economy….”
The Cretaceous Period fossil from Patagonia is believed to be about 80 million years old. The dinosaur appears to have had specialized facial features as a hatchling that changed as it got older. Powerful imaging technology revealed unexpected characteristics including a small horn projecting from the snout as well as eyes facing forward, indicative of binocular vision.
Donald Trump was asked about the NBA today. In his reply he said he didn’t know much about the protests, but he knew that “their ratings have been low.” And then repeated his point about low TV ratings.
The suspected poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has drawn global condemnation. In the week since the Russian opposition leader fell violently ill on a flight from Siberia, world leaders have issued statements demanding a fair and impartial investigation into the case while pledging support for Navalny and his family. But so far, the leader of the United States has not added his condemnation to the list.
No matter how many denials new Trump post office saboteur Louis DeJoy gives to Congress, Americans know whether or not their mail is being delivered on time. Whether it’s needed medications, checks, parts necessary to keep a business up and running, or anything else, people notice when something they’re expecting doesn’t show up until days or weeks past the day they were expecting it.
Now a new wrinkle is being added, with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) apparently gaslighting customers with claims that packages are being held up at their own request. The Washington Post brings us that story, with USPS sending notifications to customers informing them that their packages are being held in the post office “at the request of the customer,” when the customers aren’t requesting any such thing.
Before anyone jumps to too many conclusions, this does not appear to be a real case of the USPS attempting to gaslight customers outright. Instead, it looks like a byproduct of a system that wasn’t really set up to handle widespread delays of the sort we’re now seeing. The Post cites postal workers’ suggestions that the “held at request of the customer” notifications are being sent out falsely when mail carriers aren’t able to finish their route before their shift is up. The message doesn’t actually mean the customer won’t be getting their package until they trudge over to the designated post office to collect it themselves; it just means it got stranded on a truck. It’ll get there when it gets there.
Note that with the nixing of overtime, the problem of mail carriers having to abandon their routes when their designated time is up has been happening more frequently. Hence, the new surge in these messages.
What the USPS needs—and which some gutsy software engineer might want to implement so long as they have a new job lined up the next day—is a new notification informing customers: “Your package is being delayed on instruction of the postmaster general.” If this is the new policy now, at least have the guts to own it.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris delivered a blistering indictment of Donald Trump’s presidency Thursday just hours before he will officially accept the GOP nomination.
The entire Republican National Convention wasn’t about helping the American people, Harris said in the roughly 20-minute speech delivered at George Washington University, blocks away from the White House. “The Republican convention is designed for one purpose, to soothe Donald Trump’s ego, to make him feel good,” she charged.
But Harris said that was just part and parcel of his entire tenure. “Donald Trump doesn’t understand the presidency. He thinks it’s all about him,” she said. “Well, it’s not. It’s about you. It’s about all of us—the people.”
Trump’s No. 1 obligation was to protect and defend the American people, she said, adding that Trump had “failed miserably” on that count. But incompetence was nothing new to Trump either, Harris noted. “That has always been on full display,” she said, “but in January of this year, it became deadly.”
Harris then delivered a point-by-point takedown of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, noting that by their very nature, pandemics are “relentless” and “unforgiving.”
“If you get it wrong at the beginning, the consequences are catastrophic and it’s very hard to catch up. You don’t get a second chance,” she said. “Well, President Trump, you got it wrong from the beginning. And then you got it wrong again and again.”
Trump simply wasn’t capable of handling the crisis, she said. He choked. “Instead of rising to meet the most difficult moment of his presidency, Donald Trump froze. He was scared,” she said. “And he was petty, and vindictive.”
Harris also said Trump had “caved” to the Chinese government in the early days of the pandemic as they were blocking Centers for Disease Control and Prevention representatives from entering the country.
Harris also addressed the protests taking place in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
“As Vice President Biden put it, the shots fired at Mr. Blake pierced the soul of our nation. It’s sickening to watch. It’s all too familiar. And it must end,” she said.
She also sympathized with the anger emanating from protesters in the streets. “It’s no wonder people are taking to the streets, and I support them,” she said.
“We will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice,” Harris said. “Here’s my promise to those mothers and fathers and all who stand with them: In a Biden-Harris administration, you will have a seat at the table in the halls of Congress, and in the White House.”
People seem to be assuming that this tweet from Dr. Bronner’s is some sort of threat to the Biden campaign, but I would be very surprised if that were the case. They’re very leftwing, and that would be out of character. I imagine they just want to discuss how to move forward, and frankly the Biden campaign should have contacted them before going ahead with this effort (which is very good generally).
“Just had a long sit down with Jacob Blake’s uncle before he heads to the airport to fly to DC for tomorrow’s march. Said it’s impossible to fathom how much the family has appreciated the show of support from WNBA and NBA players
One thing the family is particularly upset about — the uncle just gave me a call to make sure I had noted this in our interview — is that Jacob Blake, shot seven times and paralyzed, has been handcuffed to his hospital bed.”
I am totally freaking out about the live images of huge numbers of people jammed together tightly on the White House lawn in preparation for the 4th night of Republican UnReality Show. Today, 1,100 people in the USA died of COVID-19. The number of deaths in the USA is now over 180,000. This is a super-spreader event.
Yes, they are outside, which will help a little bit. But … there is Rudy Giuliani with his face all up in somebody else’s face, talking (loudly, I assume). Giuliani was, at most, 12 inches from the other man’s face. People are hugging and air-kissing. Chairs are so close together that some people’s shoulders are touching.
Eight states, (so far), have now traced COVID cases back to the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. 70 cases so far.
Why is Trumplandia pretending that coronavirus is over. Why are they pretending?
Mary Trump told MSNBC hosts tonight that Donald Trump doesn’t care if people get sick from attending his Falsehood-Festival tonight. He only cares about what he thinks will make him look good in the moment.
After an AR-15-wielding teenager was charged with the first-degree murder of two protesters in Kenosha, WI, Blue Lives Matter supporters told reporters Thursday that Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions did not reflect the nonviolent tactics favored by most police-state apologists. “When you see us out there waving ‘thin blue line’ flags and menacing the public with semiautomatic rifles, please know that the majority of us are just peacefully expressing our support for a system in which police officers are allowed to kill with impunity,” said Blue Lives Matter activist Gordon Hamblett, explaining that the movement did not stand for lethal vigilante violence, but rather for lethal state-supported violence carried out in the name of keeping people safe. “Do we sympathize with this 17-year-old police admirer’s desire to live out a long-nurtured militia-man fantasy of patrolling the streets and administering justice? Certainly. Does the real blame ultimately lie with the people who were shot for failing to obey his orders? Of course. Nonetheless, we cannot condone Rittenhouse’s decision to pull the trigger without a badge.” Hamblett added that anyone who was considering mowing down innocent civilians on a public street should at least enroll in a police academy first.
Mitch McConnell delivered his Trump Show address from a field or very large yard somewhere — not other people around. He claimed that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to limit the number of hamburgers we can have, and that they are going to tell us what car to drive.
Joy Reid commented that somebody should limit the number of hamburgers she has.
Giuliani is now giving his “rioting and looting” speech about cities. He is very pro-police.
Trump just claimed for the umpteenth time that he passed Veterans Choice.
Here are few more tidbits from Daniel Dale:
Trump is correct that about 300 miles of wall have been built. What he doesn’t say: as of August 7, just 5 of those miles had been built in places where there were no barriers before.
——————–
The USMCA retains most of the NAFTA agreement Trump describes as a “nightmare.”
——————–
Trump’s claim is false that this is the first time in 20 years that NATO members have increased spending. Spending increased in 2015 and 2016, before he took office, after the 2014 Crimea invasion by Russia and a 2014 re-commitment to hit the 2%-of-GDP target.
————————
Not true NATO members have agreed to pay $130 billion more “a year.” It’s an estimated $130 billion increase *over 2016 levels* by 2020 — and NATO noted to me in an email this morning that members now have Covid-related budget difficulties.
———————————
They did not get a Jerusalem embassy built for “less than $500,000.” Early documents showed it’s at least $21 million.
———————–
Trump repeats his ludicrous claim that he’s done more for Black people than any president since Lincoln.
(LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.) (And you can make an argument for a bunch of others, but I’m busy.)
—————————
“Completely rebuilding” the military is a large stretch.
Annual pay raises for the troops are standard.
——————————
Trump says he has “very good information” that China wants Biden to win because Biden cheers for China.
The US intel community said China prefers Biden because it sees Trump as “unpredictable.”
—————————-
Biden did indeed vote for the Iraq War. What Trump doesn’t say — and often lies about — is that he too supported the invasion, not becoming an explicit opponent until more than a year in.
——————————
Ivanka Trump on her father: “I sat with him in the Oval Office as he stopped travel to Europe.”
He never stopped travel to Europe in any way. He imposed restrictions, but not a full stop, on travel *from* Europe, but exemptions included entire European countries.
————————–
Sen. Tom Cotton — advocating for Trump, who said he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love” — went after Biden for being soft on certain dictators.
———————–
Sen. Tom Cotton claims Biden “let ISIS terrorists rampage,” while Trump destroyed the caliphate.
1) Kurds did much of the fighting. 2) Caliphate was indeed formed under Obama-Biden, but so was the anti-ISIS coalition; significant progress in liberating territory by late 2016.
—————————
Giuliani’s conspiracy theory is truly ridiculous. He’s arguing, explicitly, that violent protests happened because…”the left,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Antifa” were worried that Congress was too unified on police reform and so Trump would look too good if they didn’t act.
———————–
Ben Carson: “President Trump does not dabble in identity politics.”
It’s like something out of a dystopian movie. I keep contrasting it with the description in The Invention of Nature of Jefferson’s White House visited by Alexander von Humboldt.
“Trump to @peterbakernyt on what he’d do: ‘But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done’.”
Wielding a bunch of flowers and surrounded by clapping supporters, Belarus’s most celebrated writer has lent a powerful voice to the opposition against President Alexander Lukashenko, even if she has so far balked at taking a leadership role.
Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, has mostly kept a low profile and spent years in exile under Lukashenko’s long rule. But she has become more outspoken since turmoil erupted following an Aug. 9 election.
After security forces beat protesters and arrested thousands to quell mass demonstrations and strikes, the 72-year-old Alexievich said she was tempted to enter the fray.
“If I were younger and not sick, then probably. Even now I will help with all my might, but in order to lead the movement, I no longer have physical and moral strength,” she told Radio Liberty on Aug. 12.
Nevertheless Alexievich agreed to support a Coordination Council created in opposition to Lukashenko after the election that he is accused of rigging to extend his 26-year rule.
…
“Her participation in the council is certainly unusual. This is real politics, and she has always avoided politics,” said political analyst Valery Karbalevich.
“She has always been of the opinion that creative intelligentsia should not be on the barricades. But now that has changed. There is a revolution in the country, the scales are swinging, and even a small change in weight can tip the balance in one direction or another.”
Alexievich’s emergence into the opposition limelight comes with most of Lukashenko’s opponents in jail or exile, notably Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who took her jailed husband’s place in the election campaign but has since fled to Lithuania.
Opposition figures in exile include Valery Tsepkalo, a former ambassador to Washington, and Andrei Sannikov who was imprisoned after trying to run against Lukashenko in 2010.
Nikolai Statkevich, jailed for five years after standing against Lukashenko in 2010, has been re-arrested.
Alexievich achieved renown with writings chronicling the harshness of life in the Soviet Union and its aftermath, through interviews with people who lived through tumultuous events.
Her documentary style of writing became popular in the 1980s but her humanistic, emotional tales of peoples’ fates entangled in major historic developments made her an uncomfortable voice for the authorities.
Publication of one of her best-known works, “War’s Unwomanly Face”, was censored as Soviet authorities regarded it as subversive and undermining the army’s World War Two victory.
Alexievich lived in exile in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden because of her criticism of the Belarusian government. Returning home in 2011, she tended to stay out of politics.
Protests were brewing even before the election amid frustration at Lukashenko’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which he called a “psychosis” that could be remedied by drinking vodka and driving tractors.
Alexievich compared the authorities’ behaviour to the secrecy and denial surrounding the Soviet government’s handling of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, an event that was the subject of one of her books.
When Viktor Babariko, a former banker who was considered the most powerful opposition candidate to stand against Lukashenko, was arrested in June, she acted as surety for him.
And when protests erupted, she openly called on Lukashenko to step aside.
“Leave before it’s too late, before you plunge the people into a terrible abyss, into the abyss of civil war! Go away! Nobody wants Maidan, nobody wants blood. Only you want power.”…
“On the lack of social distancing or face masks at Trump’s #RNC2020 acceptance speech in the middle of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a senior White House official tells @Acosta: ‘Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually’. [exploding head emoji]”
I think in one of the pictures of the non-socially distanced crowd I saw Wilbur Ross, who’s like 100.
blfsays
lumipuna@188, “Cue images of Mildly Deranged Penguin trebucheting hundreds of 1 kg consumer packages of bland cheese across the border from Finland to Russia […]”.
You really shouldn’t give her ideas…!
She’s currently researching these alleged cheese plants. She’s checked the Great Cheese Encyclopædia, Cheeses of the Far Nørth, and even All the Universe’s Cheeses which, despite the grandiose title, is only a pamphlet of about six pages. The writing is very very small. Allegedly you just about make it out using an Scanning Tunneling Microscope, but a far more reliable technique is to use a Maxwell’s Dæmon. You shout at the daemon until they understand what you want (they’re a bit deaf), let it do its sorting thing, and then in one corner of the pamphlet is what you want. Scrambled. Not that that matters much, unless you have an STM handy and can read the unknown script in an unknown language. So although Maxwell’s Dæmon did find something, the mildly deranged penguin is still puzzled.
Then she remembered Finland is covered in fins. Ah, it’s a fish-eating cheese plant! That narrows it down a bit, especially if she can work out what sort of fish the cheeses eat. Furthermore, it must be a very common fish, since Finland is full of fins. That identified the fish very quickly — that well-known flying fish, the reindeer. Quite tasty, a very large crunchy mouse, cheese food!
The cheese probably also flies (important point to consider when devising a trebuchet delivery system), thrives in the cold, and is either invisible or hides in plain sight (else it’d be recognised). There is at least one camouflaged cold-thriving albeit non-flying cheese, the Everest Yeti Nest, so called because Yetis use the cheeses to build their nests in return for a supply of monks — but now more commonly, mountaineers — to munch on. Furthermore, they (the Everest Yeti Nest cheese) are known to have invaded much of Eurasia. (Who do you think Genghis Khan was running from?) Some could have easily wound up in Finland, and discovered the delicious reindeer fish. And then, of course, the Vikings ran away from something…
Everest Yeti Nest cheeses can move quite fast on snow, probably faster than reindeer fish can run or take-off, so she guesses the cheeses just sneak up and ambush the fish when they are not airborne. One puzzle is where they live, unless they brought some Yeti’s with them… Another puzzle is the Finland-to-Russia “cheese” is described as “bland”, which is not a description hitherto before ever applied to an Everest Yeti Nest cheese. Maybe that’s due to the change in the cheese’s diet?
Unfortunately, ballistic reentry tests with the Nepalese original Everest Yeti Nest cheese shows they don’t survive supersonic flight very well, restricting the available trebuchet options. Unless, that is, the Russians like their cheese heavily charred-grilled. That, plus the fact she hasn’t actually gotten her wings on any Finnish Everest Yeti Nest cheese yet, means the trebuchet delivery system won’t start operating for a few hours yet.
Trump has one approach: force and violence to prop up white supremacists. Not reform (including any of the detailed proposals put forward by BLM leaders), not dialogue, not DoJ-led investigations of unjust practices, not attempts to address economic inequality or the history of oppression and exclusion, not even recognition that racist policing is a problem. His campaign argument is that courts and state and local Democratic leaders won’t allow him to employ his only tool: racist force and violence to prop up white supremacists. So the campaign argument is plainly that if he wins the election he’ll be unleashed to use force and violence to prop up white supremacists. Which is absolutely what he’d do, and people planning to vote for him (or not vote or vote for anyone other than Biden) should be made to understand and acknowledge that this is what they’re voting for and take responsibility for it.
Spanish police have arrested a man who urged his followers to attack politicians and journalists as he claimed the pandemic is a hoax. The 38-year-old claimed health professionals and the media were behind the pandemic.
He was arrested near the north-eastern city of Zaragoza for inciting hatred and violence across several anonymous social-media profiles. He wrote on one of his accounts:
All this would be solved with a shot to the back of (Spanish Prime Minister) Pedro Sanchez’s head.
In other posts he said the headquarters of Spain’s doctors’ union should be burned down and described those who believed in the virus as bad and ignorant people who deserved to die, according to the police.
Passing himself off as a government official, police said the suspect allegedly made calls to nursing homes, hospitals and football clubs to spread false information about the pandemic.
Police were able to trace the man, described as a “grave danger” to public health, to a location just outside Zaragoza, the regional capital of Aragon.
…
While compliance with national restrictions remains the norm, a small but vocal anti-mask movement has been gaining prominence in the past few months, spurred on by the endorsement of 1980s pop star [Miguel Bosé].
President Donald Trump won a legal skirmish in Iowa over the legality of how absentee ballot request forms were handled by a local election official.
An Iowa trial judge issued a temporary injunction Thursday ordering the county auditor in Iowa’s second largest city to notify tens of thousands registered voters who received absentee ballot request forms from the county that they must apply for new ballot request forms…
The issue is the legality of the Linn County auditor’s move to mail absentee ballot request forms to 140,000 registered voters in the county with each voter’s identification number filled in on the form. ..
Secretary of State Pate had earlier issued a directive to county auditors that absentee ballot request forms sent out by their offices must be blank.
[…]
In a statement posted on its website Thursday, the Linn County Auditor’s Office acknowledged the judge’s decision and said, “In accordance with the decision, the Linn County Auditor’s Office will be voiding each Linn County absentee request form which was prefilled with vote information.”
There are something like 140 court cases going on around the country over voting rights, everything from requirong photo ID to absentee ballots having to be notarized. Most of them are because states have loosened restrictions on absentee ballots because of Coronavirus, and the GOP sues to stop them. Such nice folks.
“It sounds absurd to say it, but America is in the process of choosing whether to be a white nationalist fascist state or an inclusive democracy. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just where we are.
I wish I could take some sort of sophisticated view and say, no, things aren’t really that bad, it’s not as serious as all that. But that would mean refusing to take seriously the implications of the events happening around us.”
Postal union leaders in five battleground states told ABC News that they have seen few concrete steps to reverse or halt a set of cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail service, despite assurances last week from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that he would “suspend” those initiatives until after the general election.
DeJoy’s announcement led to confusion among some in the Postal Service ranks as to whether he meant there would not be cutbacks in addition to the ones already in place, which include reductions in overtime and limiting mail carrier trips, or if it meant a return to prior operational standards before the cuts altogether.
For now, the union officials said DeJoy’s initiatives remain in place — despite a deluge of legal and legislative efforts to reverse them. As a result, and with the clock ticking on election day, many of them said the mail continues to pile up in sorting facilities.
Nick Casselli, the president of the Philadelphia postal union, said overtime pay has not come back fully, post offices are still operating with slashed hours, and trucks are still being instructed not to stay and wait for all of the mail to be loaded on in an effort to keep to a stricter schedule, instead of staying later.
“Nothing has changed,” he said, echoing concerns from postal union leaders in major cities in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and Colorado.
In a press release issued last week, DeJoy said he would “[suspend] these initiatives until after the election is concluded … to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”
He specifically stated that “retail hours at Post Offices will not change,” “mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are,” and “[reasserted] that overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed.”
Despite his promise to suspend the measures, however, some lawmakers and postal workers said they want them fully reversed. On the matter of mail sorting machines, for example, DeJoy pledged to halt removals — but refused to reinstall those that have already been taken offline.
When asked for clarification on DeJoy’s comments, a Postal Service spokesperson referred ABC News to the postmaster general’s congressional testimony.
…
Union leaders told ABC News that simply pausing the changes does little to curb delays, saying the cuts already in place are still impacting mail service in their areas.
“The mail is still being delayed,” said Daleo Freeman, a postal union president in Cleveland. “The damage has been done.”
Meanwhile, legislators in Washington, D.C., said they are planning their next steps to ensure the Postal Service follows through on its pledge to suspend changes.
“Like I said when Louis DeJoy, under pressure, announced a suspension of changes: talk is cheap,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, said in a statement to ABC News. “I’ll be watching DeJoy’s actions, not just his words — and working with my colleagues to hold him accountable.”
In Cleveland, Freeman said he and other postal workers were first made aware of the cost-cutting initiatives during a meeting in June, shortly after DeJoy’s arrival. Since then, he said, workers have not observed any reversals implemented on the ground, nor have they been told of plans to suspend the changes.
Keith Combs, a postal service president in Detroit, said the same applies to workers there. He said that as far as he knows, the postal service is “still to this point operating per the initial instructions from Postmaster General DeJoy.”
“The union is quite used to management saying one thing and doing another,” Combs added. “We hear verbal promises all the time, and we cannot rely on those promises.”
Cuts to overtime and diminished truck trips persist, the union leaders said. Mail sorting machines remain offline, too.
When defending the decision not to reinstall the sorting machines that already had been taken out of commission, DeJoy told lawmakers they were simply “not necessary.”
Postal workers feel strongly otherwise, according to the union officials. Casselli, Philadelphia’s union president, said removing the mail sorting machines is akin to “taking a rifle off a soldier in a battle.”
“We can’t deliver the mail without these machines,” Casselli said.
In Charlotte, N.C., Miriam Bell, the local union president, said at least eight of the 28 mail sorting machines at her facility have been removed. Bell echoed her fellow presidents in saying she had not heard any directives that changes to other protocols would be reversed.
…
In anticipation of what they are concerned could be further damage to the Postal Service, Democrats in state governments and Congress have sought to hold DeJoy accountable for his pledge to suspend the cost-cutting initiatives.
Democratic attorneys general in 24 states plus Washington, D.C., have cumulatively filed three separate lawsuits targeting the Postal Service and the postmaster general.
One of the lawsuits, led by Washington state, charges the postmaster general with hindering the states’ constitutional right to conduct free and fair elections. Another, led by New York, claims mailing executives failed to seek approval for the changes from a regulatory board with oversight of the agency.
All three will attempt to reverse DeJoy’s initiatives.
“We are seeking to overturn those changes – go back to the way they were delivering mail in a timely manner before,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is leading a third lawsuit.
“Our lawsuit is full steam ahead,” he added. “And we will pursue this on an expedited basis in court, so that the mail can begin to flow again regularly and that people can have faith that their ballots will be mailed and received in a timely manner.”
…
After back-to-back hearings in the House and Senate, some Democratic lawmakers remain unconvinced of DeJoy’s commitment to roll back initiatives, despite assurances that election mail will be made a priority.
…
The Postal Service inspector general’s probe of cost-cutting changes and DeJoy’s financial interests also remains ongoing.
Meanwhile, postal workers on the ground remain in limbo, told of changes publicly without evidence of concrete steps – all while they say the mail continues to pile up in warehouses.
“They have given the promises, but I haven’t seen anything in writing,” said Combs, from Detroit. “We’ve been asking: for everything that’s going to be reinstated, tell us about it. Put it in writing. I still today haven’t received anything in writing.”
[…]
Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old who was shot seven times by a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer[goon Rusten Sheskey, with officersgoons Vincent Arenas and Brittany Meronek present,] on Sunday, is shackled to his hospital bed despite being unable to walk and being heavily medicated, with no clarity on whether or why he might be under investigation, his father revealed on Friday.
“There was the cold steel on his ankle. He is shackled to the bed, but he cannot get up, he could not get up, he is paralyzed,” Jacob Blake Sr, father of Jacob Blake Jr, said on CNN in an interview […]
[…]
The family’s lawyer, Ben Crump, said: “There is no explanation for this.”
[…]
Activists have said that some demonstrators who were arrested in Kenosha this week were “snatched up” by federal law enforcement officers in unmarked vehicles, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. On Wednesday night, three area activists were arrested while walking to their vehicle, and then whisked away in an unmarked sports utility vehicle, organizers said.
Video on social media appears to show law enforcement agents smashing the windows of a minivan with Oregon license plates and forcibly removing the people inside. Those people were subsequently driven away in an SUV.
[…] These arrestees were part of the group Riot Kitchen, a Seattle-based non-profit that gives food to homeless persons and protesters, the newspaper said.
[…]
The school librarian who stacked the shelves behind Boris Johnson’s podium with titles including The Twits, Betrayed and The Subtle Knife has admitted that she never intended the message for the prime minister, but for the management of the school from which she resigned in February.
[… T]he librarian in question, who has asked not to be named, said that she set up the display six months ago in a pointed message to the management of Castle Rock school.
[… “]I did it as a message for the school management before I left in February,” she told the Huffington Post. “It just became untenable to carry on working there because of the lack of support I had, and I was left with no choice but to resign. I decided to leave them a big message during my last week. They obviously never actually noticed, and it went untouched for six months.”
[…]
“In my last week I put them up so anybody who looked and took it in would see I’d had enough. I laid it all out — The Subtle Knife, Betrayed, The Glass House. I left on the Friday and thought, ‘I’ve said my piece, job done, walk away.’ It was a little bit bizarre when it all came out. Now they’ve noticed,” she said.
The librarian said that at the time of her departure in February, the school library “wasn’t really used as a library anymore” but being requisitioned as a classroom or a “dumping ground” instead. “I was getting absolutely no support, I was just in there on my own with up to 90 kids running riot. It was just horrendous,” she said.
She remains adamant about the importance of school libraries. “For reading for pleasure and for literacy, they’re invaluable,” she said.
While nine in 10 of English schools have access to a designated library space, this falls to 67% in Wales and 57% in Northern Ireland, according to a report last year by the librarian body Cilip [should be named Oook –blf]. Schools with a higher proportion of children on free school meals are more than twice as likely not to have access to a designated library space. The report also noted that employment terms for library staff fall below national standards, with low pay and little investment in professional development and training. Cilip, supported by authors and MPs, has long campaigned for all schools to have a library.
[…]
In a statement to the Huffington Post, Julia Patrick, CEO of the Apollo Partnership Trust that runs Castle Rock school as an academy, confirmed the librarian had resigned in February and said the library has not been used for five months. “The senior management there were unaware of any ‘covert message’ left through the arrangement of books,” she added.
I suspect they were also unawares there is a library at the school.
The teen has been charged with shooting and killing two protesters in Kenosha, but it hasn’t stopped some pundits from trying to humanize him
There is perhaps no greater example of the polarization of American media than the coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who allegedly shot and killed two protesters and injured another at Kenosha this week.
On one side of the divide, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson defended Rittenhouse on Wednesday, due to the violence and property damage in Kenosha. How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would? asked Carlson.
Ridiculing Carlson’s statement on Thursday, the Daily Show host Trevor Noah replied: “No one drives to a city with guns because they love someone else’s business so much.” He continued: “They do it because they are hoping to shoot someone. That’s the only reason people like him join these gangs in the first place — yes, I said it, a gang — because this is not the battle of Yorktown, it’s a bunch of dudes threatening people with guns.”
Rittenhouse has now been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, but it hasn’t stopped some pundits and journalists from trying to humanize him, even calling for him to become president. How Rittenhouse is being portrayed now will be telling — not least because Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man who was shot by police in Kenosha days before Rittenhouse’s arrest, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, has also not yet stood trial — but has already been labeled a criminal in the media. .
In the words of one Chicago journalist: “{This is} a rare moment in news media where we get to watch this dichotomy in real time … To see to whom news media gives the most compassion and consideration in telling their stories.”
Some will say it is too early to use words like “terrorism”, to describe the events before evidence has been examined. Others will point out the term is not always applied consistently: both the media and the FBI are quick to label people of color who perpetrate violent extremism as terrorists. Donald Trump even referred to people protesting against police violence as such this year, but decided to refer to armed white vigilantes patrolling the Michigan capitol as very good people.
[… the article then goes on to list and describe, with example(s), the terms used (below, they are only listed)…]
● A volunteer […]
● A vigilante […]
● An avid supporter of the police […]
● Maintaining peace […]
● ‘A terrorist’ […]
The Grauniad is current using vigilante, albeit as it points out:
Domestic terrorism is defined by the FBI as “the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States (or its territories) without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives”.
Joe Biden told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell yesterday that he fully intends to participate in the upcoming presidential debates, and he expects to be a “fact checker on the floor.”
While there were scant references to the shooting of Jacob Blake during the last night of the RNC Thursday, President Trump tweeted about the “succes” scene in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Friday morning. (No, that is not a typo on my part, but his).
Blake was shot in the back by police seven times as he leaned into his car. Officers were apparently responding a domestic dispute, but little other information has been shared about the incident. Blake survived, but is paralyzed from the waist down. Protests erupted in the city after the shooting, reigniting Black Lives Matter demonstrations in cities across the U.S. Two people were killed in Kenosha when a 17-year-old law enforcement enthusiast shot at protesters.
Despite barely addressing the incident on Thursday night, he’s tweeting about it this morning, declaring success.
Succes: Since the National Guard moved into Kenosha, Wisconsin, two days ago, there has been NO FURTHER VIOLENCE, not even a small problem. When legally asked to help by local authorities, the Federal Government will act and quickly succeed. Are you listening Portland?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2020
As was already mentioned up-thread, yes Trump will indulge in even more violence against protestors if he is given a second term. And, he will illegally involve the military and other federal departments in perpetrating that violence.
For weeks, the House Foreign Affairs Committee has been asking Mike Pompeo to testify about his use of State Department resources for political purposes, and for weeks Pompeo has been ignoring those requests. Not only did Pompeo violate all past protocol—and the Hatch Act—by speaking this week at the RNC, he did so while on a supposedly official trip to Israel. But long before that grievous violation, Pompeo provided a 1,600 page “portfolio” of information on Joe Biden to Republican senators, and only Republican senators. A subpoena for that information met with no response. Pompeo has been deeply involved in attempts to find some supporting evidence for Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories, both about Biden’s role in Ukraine and the origins of the investigation into the actions of Russia in the 2016 election.
[…] the State Department finally provided a response to the House subpoena […] Pompeo “categorically rejects your baseless assertion that the Department may have acted inappropriately or violated any law” in “what appears to be partisan misuse of resources.” […] the State Department was not going to hand over any documents it had produced for Senate Republicans—not unless Democrats announce that they are also starting a formal inquiry into Joe Biden and nonexistent crimes in Ukraine.
Committee chair Rep. Eliot Engel was just as clear in his response on Friday: The House is going forward with contempt proceedings against Pompeo.
Engel’s statement did not hold back: “From Mr. Pompeo’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, to his willingness to bolster a Senate Republican-led smear against the President’s political rivals, to his speech to the RNC which defied his own guidance and possibly the law, he has demonstrated alarming disregard for the laws and rules governing his own conduct and for the tools the constitution provides to prevent government corruption,” said Engel. “He seems to think the office he holds, the Department he runs, the personnel he oversees, and the taxpayer dollars that pay for all of it are there for his personal and political benefit.”
[…] the idea that the House should be required to pretend—as Pompeo is doing—that there is the least scrap of truth behind the conspiracy theories Trump is promoting is ridiculous.
“Mr. Pompeo is demanding that the Committee do essentially the same thing Russia is doing,” writes Engel, “In other words, Pompeo will give the Committee what we were seeking if we join in a smear of the President’s political rival. Sound familiar?” […].
Watching the Republican national convention and seeing the Democrats fumbling, something seems eerily familiar
Donald Trump is not a competent president but he is a terrifyingly effective one, as the 2020 RNC proved once again. The central lesson of 2016 for Democrats should have been: do not underestimate Trump, and do not take his general ignorance as a lack of political skill. Worryingly, this lesson does not seem to have been fully absorbed, and there are eerie similarities between the present election and the one four years ago. I’m getting deja vu, and I don’t like it.
The good news for Democrats is that Joe Biden is ahead in the polls. The bad news is that Hillary Clinton was also ahead in the polls. Biden’s lead may be sliding in critical states, and some estimates show him underperforming Clinton in the critical state of Wisconsin. Biden’s overall margin over Trump is greater than Clinton’s was at her peak. But FiveThirtyEight reports, troublingly, that “there are also nine states where Biden’s margin over Trump is smaller than Clinton’s was at this point in the campaign,” including “many Rust Belt battleground states”.
The political circumstances should be incredibly favorable for a challenger: nearly 200,000 people are dead in a crisis caused in large part by the president’s [sic] personal incompetence, and the economy has collapsed. The Democratic candidate should be winning in a landslide. The fact that it might be close shows a serious failure of leadership.
Joe Biden could still win in a landslide, and I hope he does. But one thing we need to understand about Donald Trump is that while he is a terrible president, he is an excellent showman who understands the theatrical aspects of politics very well. Though few Democrats will want to admit it, the RNC was well-produced. It is easy to make fun of the absurd quantity of flags — the Republican approach to solving a problem is to throw as many flags at it as possible.
[… T]he right has a very clear message and they hammer it home with relentless force: the Democrats want lawless anarchy in the streets and destructive socialist economic policy, your children will not be safe. There will be mob rule, riots, looting. […]
Of course, a great deal of this is utterly ridiculous […]
Eh? A great deal? How about every bit of it!
[… I]t is spectacle, not facts, that matters in Trump world. In 2016, Democrats made the mistake of thinking they could “factcheck” their way to victory, pointing out the many ways in which Trump’s statements were false or misleading. To beat Trump you don’t need better facts, though, you need a better narrative. […]
Oh for feck’s sake. You do need facts and also a good narrative, well presented.
[…] I am certain most Americans cannot name a Biden policy proposal or even his campaign slogan (that’s a trick, he actually has eight campaign slogans). […]
Plausible. Of course, no-one can name a thug’s policy proposal, for the simple reason they haven’t got any (unless you consider doing what hair furorPutin fancies a “policy (proposal)”).
[… Hair furor’s] final night at the RNC speech was tired and tedious, but Democrats would do well not to get cocky. We’ve seen the consequences of complacency once before, and it was a disaster. A second Trump term will be far, far worse, with unthinkable consequences for the climate, workers and immigrants.
Karl Marx said history repeated itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. 2016 was a tragedy. I just hope we’re not about to see the farce.
A lagging Trump campaign had hoped for a bounce after a four-day, glitzy, lawless, mask-free celebration of Donald Trump and indeed, there is an uptick. Unfortunately, it’s an uptick in COVID-19 cases among attendees.
The Charlotte Observer reports two convention attendees and two of their support staff have already tested positive for COVID-19. The RNC officials tested positive after attending the convention meetings, which took place in Charlotte, North Carolina. It appears the “semi-bubble” the RNC put into place didn’t work out as they’d hoped. Attendees were required to get tested before they arrived and were given another rapid-test upon check-in. And while the RNC told attendees masks were required, as well as maintaining 6 feet of distance from one another, many took those guidelines as mere suggestions and judging by the photos from the event, far too many opted out. […]
Whatever happened at the Charlotte portion of the convention is likely going to pale in comparison to what will happen to the attendees in Washington, D.C., where very few masks were seen in the audience on the White House lawn. Chairs were placed side-by-side, ignoring all medical advice, and as my colleague Mark Sumner notes, those tightly packed chairs on the lawn of the White House for Trump’s convention-closing speech might as well be tombstones. Unlike the attendees at the RNC meeting in Charlotte, the audience for the White House attendees were not required to get a COVID-19 test. […]
Like convention keynote speakers, 50% of whom had the last name Trump, attendees largely pretended the COVID-19 pandemic is a thing of the past. There wasn’t one single mention of the COVID-19 death toll in the United States. You’d think the so-called “pro-life” party might’ve mentioned or had a moment of silence for the 185,000+ Americans who have already died from this virus, but no.
You’d also think the death of Herman Cain, who contracted COVID-19 after attending a largely mask-free Trump rally in Tulsa, might’ve served as a warning for this audience, but it seems clear some people insist on learning the hard way. Let’s just hope for their sake, they weren’t dead wrong.
[…]
Spanish police have arrested a man who claims the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax for inciting hatred and violence across several anonymous social media profiles.
The 38-year-old claimed health professionals and the media were behind what he called the Covid farce and urged his followers to attack politicians and journalists, police said.
All this would be solved with a shot to the back of {Spanish prime minister} Pedro Sánchez’s head, he wrote on one of his accounts.
In other posts he said the headquarters of Spain’s doctors’ union should be burned down, and he described those who believed in the virus as bad and ignorant people who deserved to die, according to the police.
Police said the suspect allegedly made calls to nursing homes, hospitals and football clubs, passing himself off as a government official, to spread false information about the pandemic.
Police traced the man to a location just outside Zaragoza, the regional capital of Aragon.
Itinerant fruit-pickers have been linked to several outbreaks in the region, which has been at the centre of Spain’s recent resurgence in infections. It has had the highest prevalence of the virus over the past two weeks, with 404 cases per 100,000 people.
[…]
While compliance with national restrictions remains the norm, a small but vocal anti-mask movement has been gaining prominence in the past few months, spurred on by the endorsement of a 1980s pop star, Miguel Bosé.
Update: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is still in an induced coma from a suspected poisoning but his condition is stable and his symptoms are improving, the German doctors treating him said Friday.
“While his condition remains serious, there is no immediate danger to his life,” the hospital said. “However, due to the severity of the patient’s poisoning, it remains too early to gauge potential long-term effects.”
Paul Hansen one of 50 reporters, including BBC Moscow’s Steve Rosenberg, detained by police
A Swedish photojournalist has been deported from Belarus, amid a crackdown on local and foreign media and ahead of further mass protests planned for this weekend against the president, Alexander Lukashenko.
Paul Hansen was given 24 hours to leave the country and banned from Belarus for five years. He was one of 50 reporters rounded up by riot police on Thursday and taken into custody, ostensibly so their documents could be checked.
One of those detained was the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg.
Most of the journalists were later released but four Minsk-based correspondents were detained overnight and appeared in court on Friday, charged with organising illegal protests. They included the photographer Alexander Vasukovich and Katsiaryna Andreyeva, a reporter with the independent Belsat TV channel.
[…]
Barys Goretsky, of the Belarus association of journalists, said his members intended to carry on reporting, despite intimidation from the authorities and the threat of imprisonment.
“Our readers are very active. They are demanding information. Our colleagues will continue to work,” he told the Guardian.
Goretsky said some of the journalists who had been detained had had their phones and camera equipment confiscated and not returned. The journalists would make a formal protest next week, he said.
He added that the mood among citizens was upbeat, with protests continuing among different groups, including doctors who staged a walkout on Thursday.
The Belarusian foreign ministry declined to issue accreditation to the majority of foreign journalists who applied for it, after Lukashenko railed against foreign coverage of the country in the run-up to the election.
As a result, some foreign journalists entered the country without the official accreditation, posing as tourists. More than a dozen foreign journalists have been stopped at Minsk airport in the past two weeks and denied entry.
Hansen — who works for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter — described the arrest of media representatives inside Belarus as “outrageous”. In a tweet, he thanked Sweden’s ambassador, Christina Johannesson, who picked him up after his release in her official Volvo.
Another journalist, Franak Viačorka, said riot police had forced reporters to delete photos because they were afraid of appearing in the “Black Book of Belarus”. The book is an online record of alleged abuses carried out by members of Lukashenko’s security services, kept with a view to future prosecutions.
Viačorka tweeted: “It’s outrageous. Journalists in Belarus are shot with weapons, deported, thrown into prison, raided in hotels, their cameras smashed, flash drives taken away. On state TV, independent journalists are threatened. Journalists are treated like dangerous criminals. But they are heroes.”
Four people at the Republican National Convention in North Carolina this week tested positive, officials have said, even as Republicans played down the US health crisis in renominating Donald Trump.
The party’s convention, which began with one day of events in Charlotte, North Carolina, despite the pandemic that has killed more than 180,000 Americans, ended on Thursday after four days of speeches lauding Trump.
Throughout, Republicans largely abandoned talk of the crisis as if it had abated, instead reminding voters of the robust economy that existed beforehand.
The official Twitter feed of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where Charlotte is located, said two convention attendees and two event support staff had tested positive and all were “immediately isolated”.
Convention spokesman Michael Ahrens confirmed the four positive tests out of about 1,000 administered.
Italy’s Civil Protection is considering using dedicated planes and ships to evacuate dozens of tourists who currently under quarantine from Sardinia to Italy’s mainland after the emergence of new clusters in the island’s nightclubs, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has reported.
More than 20 employees of the Phi Beach nightclub in Baja Sardinia, on the Costa Smeralda, have tested positive. An employee of another nightclub in San Teodoro who also tested positive was hospitalised in Sassari.
Italian health authorities are also tracing visitors to the former Formula One team boss Flavio Briatore’s Sardinian nightclub after more than 60 confirmed cases were linked to the venue.
On Friday, Italy recorded a new spike in cases as another 1,411 people tested positive. Such numbers had not been seen since 2 May, when the country was still in lockdown.
Authorities have also registered the highest number of tests since the beginning of the pandemic: 97,065. Nine more people have died with the virus in the last 24 hours and the Italian death toll now stands at 35,472. The total number of cases is now up to 265,409.
France reported 7,379 new confirmed cases on Friday; the most in a day since its lockdown ended and just shy of the 7,578 high set on 31 March. The total number of confirmed cases rose to 267,077, while the cumulative number of deaths from Covid-19 rose by 20 to 30,596, the health ministry reported.
“The sheer volume of lies and illegal behavior from Trump and the Republicans is what allowed them to get away with it.”
I don’t think they got away with it, at least not entirely. I do get the “exhaustion” factor. Republicans flooded the zone with lies and misleading statements.
The most consistent theme of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention wasn’t that Joe Biden was a puppet for radicals. It wasn’t even that rioters and looters are coming to your home and only Trump can protect you from the radical left.
The clear theme of the RNC was a flagrant and brutal disregard for the truth.
[…] The second night starred an anti-abortion activist whose tale about the horrors of Planned Parenthood had been exposed as a fraud more than 10 years ago. On the third night, Vice President Mike Pence suggested that the murder of a police officer by a far-right extremist was a crime committed by left-wing rioters. It was all capped off by […] Trump’s Thursday night speech, a farrago of falsehoods that even veteran Trump fact-checkers found stunning.
“Basically everything Trump says about Biden’s proposals is false,” the Washington Post’s Philip Bump writes. […]
[…]
An Iranian man who beheaded his 14-year-old daughter has been sentenced to only nine years in jail, in a case that has sparked outrage at the way Iranian law appears to enshrine supposed male rights over women’s lives.
Rana Dashti, the mother of 14-year-old Romina Ashrafi, expressed fury at the lenient sentence in an interview with the Iranian Labor news agency (Ilna) on Friday and said the court’s ruling had “caused fear and panic for me and my family”.
Romina was murdered by her father after she ran off with a man aged 28. Dashti said she would appeal against the decision, and that after 15 years she had no interest in continuing to live with her husband.
She added she was worried about the lives of her only son and other relations. “I no longer want my husband to return to the village,” she told the news agency.
The case has sparked controversy in Iran about the frequency of so-called honour killings, the rights of children, and gender bias in Iranian courts. Efforts to tighten the law to protect children have previously fallen foul of Iran’s Guardian Council, which ruled that parliament’s plans were un-Islamic.
Critics say parts of the Iranian penal code are predicated on the assumption that men are entitled to discipline women and girls if they do not conform to the social roles attributed to them.
Romina had pleaded with the judiciary not to return her to her father since she feared he might attack her, but her request was ignored.
The father — who in Iran is considered the guardian of his daughter — had filed a complaint, and the girl, once summoned by the police, had begged the judge not to send her home because she knew her father would try to kill her.
According to an interview following the girl’s death, it emerged that the father had repeatedly asked his wife to make Romina kill herself for having dishonoured the family.
She was murdered with a scythe on 21 May after the father said he felt ashamed that she had run away without his permission.
[…]
The nine-year sentence contrasts with lengthy jail penalties imposed on women who protest over laws requiring the wearing of the hijab.
In some Iranian provinces, as many as 20% of murders are classified as honour killings.
[…]
Although women make up more than 50% of university students, and they are becoming more involved in the political process and decision-making, there continue to be obstacles to finding well-paid work. Women make up only 19% of Iran’s workforce.
“Breaking News: 2 PR advisers at the FDA were ousted from their positions after the agency’s chief acknowledged exaggerating plasma’s benefits for Covid-19.”
“Yolanda Renee King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s granddaughter: ‘Our generation has already taken to the streets, peacefully and with masks and socially distanced, to protest racism…Join me in pledging that we have only just begun’…. #MarchonWashington”
Video atl. It’s a huge march, and everyone’s wearing masks. MLK III: “We’re socially distanced but spiritually united.”
Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen who illegally obtained firearms, then drove across state lines with those illegally obtained firearms to a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he killed two people and injured one, did not appear at his extradition hearing this morning, saying that he needed time to assemble his legal team. A judge has agreed to give him a month to get that together before deciding whether or not to send him back to Wisconsin to face charges there.
On Thursday night, however, the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office charged him on five counts — “first-degree intentional homicide, one count of first-degree reckless homicide, one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment.”
If found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, he would get a mandatory life sentence.
On Twitter for the past few days, conservatives have been pushing the line that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense, asserting without evidence that one of his victims, Joseph Rosenbaum, had thrown a Molotov cocktail at him.
[…] even the police are saying that the thing that was thrown at Rittenhouse was in fact a plastic bag.
Via The Daily Beast:
According to a criminal complaint, obtained by The Daily Beast, Rittenhouse was walking down the road alongside a reporter at about 11:45 p.m. when a protester, Joseph Rosenbaum, approached and tried to “engage” the armed teen. Rittenhouse did a “juke” move and started running away, the reporter […]
As Rittenhouse ran across a parking lot, Rosenbaum followed him and threw an object, according to videos reviewed by investigators. “The object does not hit [Rittenhouse] and a second video shows, based on where the object landed, that it was a plastic bag,” the complaint says. “Rosenbaum appears to be unarmed for the duration of this video.”
Moments later, videos captured a loud bang and a male shouting, “Fuck you!” Another four shots were heard and Rosenbaum was seen falling to the ground.
While we are not bomb experts here at Wonkette, you don’t really need to be one to discern the difference between a Molotov cocktail …
[…] One of the attorneys representing Rittenhouse at this time is Lin Wood, best known for representing Richard Jewell, the security guard who was falsely accused of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing […]
Wood told reporters on Thursday that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.
[…] To be fair, a plastic bag can be used as a murder weapon — though throwing it at someone probably would not do much unless it were a magic plastic bag that could fasten itself to the person’s head, suffocating them.
Wood is also currently representing Dr. Simone Gold of the “America’s Frontline Doctors” videos about how COVID-19 wasn’t any kind of big deal, as well as Patty and Mark McCloskey, the mega-rich St. Louis gun couple, so there’s that. It seems as though he’s gone from being a relatively well-respected libel and defamation attorney to a personal injury attorney for the feelings of rightwing nuts who have made assholes out of themselves and are now sad about people making fun of them.
[…] Those who previously attempted to raise money for Rittenhouse’s defense through GoFundMe were told to GoFuckThemselves.
[…] It’s kind of weird how Lin just threw “human trafficking in there.” Or it would be if he did not have #WWG1WGA [QAnon reference] in his Twitter bio. There is a certain irony in one of the most well known defamation lawyers in the country being in cahoots with a group that regularly goes around insisting that everyone they don’t like is a cannibal/pedophile who eats actual babies for Satan.
Given that the narrative of Rittenhouse acting in self-defense that has been created by wingnuts who want it to be okay to go out and shoot protesters for funsies bears absolutely no resemblance to the actual facts of the case, Lin is going to have a hell of a time trying to pursue this from that angle. […]
America is crumbling. But Trump’s daughter is just thrilled to be here.
For anyone who is actually aware of what is happening in America, watching the Republican National Convention was not a pleasant experience. Despite the reality that most of our lives continue to be upended by the pandemic—the death, the jobs lost, the kids stuck home from school, the parents slowly losing it, the grandparents whose loneliness worries us second only to the prospect of them dying alone—the RNC was a bizarre four-night effort to pretend not only that none of this is […] Trump’s fault, but also that things are actually fine […] The RNC also coincided with two climate disasters—fires burning through much of the West, hurricanes barreling toward the south—and yet another instance of a police officer shooting a Black man. The pageantry of the convention and the parade of speakers making the case that this administration cares about its citizens was painful against this backdrop. But to me, nothing felt as terrible as watching Ivanka Trump speak.
There has always been some speculation that Trump’s oldest daughter doesn’t approve of his more severe actions—that, unlike her brothers, she actually knows better. She’s supposed to have, or maybe used to have, non-offensive views on topics ranging from gay rights to climate change. She went into her job at the White House talking about wanting to make child care more accessible. But the evidence of Ivanka as policy-softener is not really there, and it’s been clear since Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement four months into his presidency that she was not the moderating force she framed herself as during the 2016 campaign. […] Ivanka was there, in the room, making the choices. As Elaina Plott observed in the New York Times this week, “Ms. Trump now has the burden of the incumbency.”
Mary Trump, (while being interviewed by Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicole Wallace), said that Ivanka presented herself as “co-president” in that RNC speech.
So why did she bug me so much last night? I think it’s because she seemed happy. Like, so so happy. From the moment she walked out of the White House and down the steps to the stage, Ivanka was absolutely radiating in delight to be there. And why shouldn’t she be? Not only is she the only Trump offspring to work in the White House (despite having no qualifications to do so), she’s the one who was selected to introduce her father on the biggest night of the convention. She’s the golden child, and she knows it. While her brothers come across as rabid dogs, she beams. In the face of more than 180,000 Americans dead and gun-toting white teenagers “patrolling” the streets of Kenosha, it’s that smile that really got me.
[…] Ivanka’s job is to humanize her father. So it was no surprise that she opened her convention speech expressing sympathy for those affected by Hurricane Laura, and later noted that she prays for health care workers and those mourning loved ones who have died of COVID. But the rest of the speech was built around what an absolute thrill it has been for Ivanka Trump to watch her father be president. (“Tonight, I stand before you as the proud daughter of the people’s president,” she said, just before noting, “He is our president and my father, Donald J. Trump.”) […] the speech wasn’t really about what’s going on in the country, it was about what Ivanka has gotten to witness: […] She was with her father when he commuted Alice Johnson’s sentence and got to see the “emotion on his face.” She said this all with great feeling and pride. And she smiled, and smiled, and smiled.
[…] Even if quarantine suits you personally, this is, objectively, not a good time. Unfortunately for Ivanka, unhappy is the opposite of her brand. Ivanka is aspirational, she’s about how good it is to be her, about how she has figured out how to be a working mom, and you can too. […]
“Four years ago, I told you I would fight alongside my father,” she said last night, wearing a great looking pants ensemble, her shiny hair blowing just right in the wind. “And, four years later, here I am.” And it’s true: Here she is, completely removed from where the rest of us are.
Self-proclaimed prophet Jeremiah Johnson […] has repeatedly claimed to have had a prophetic dream in which he was shown that baby boomers will be the key to Trump’s reelection and outlawing of abortion. Given that COVID-19 hospitalization and death rates are much higher for the elderly population than the general public, Johnson contends that the virus was sent to the United States in order to target this group and prevent them from voting for Trump in November.
[…]
I actually believe that COVID-19 has come to the shores of America and specifically targeted {this} demographic, Johnson said. The elderly, they’re being wiped out in nursing homes. If you’re elderly, oftentimes you’re on a ventilator, all that stuff. I believe it’s a demonic attack trying to target a group of people that very well could be anointed by God himself to help Trump get reelected.
To give teh kook some credit, at least he isn’t denying either Covid-19 or that it can be fatal.
The profusion of falsehoods from Tom Cotton, Rudy Giuliani, and Ivanka Trump provided a fitting setup for the big man at the Republican National Convention.
If the first three nights of the Republican National Convention opened a “fire hose of false or misleading claims,” the finale spewed forth a volcano of lies.
Sen. Tom Cotton, who would like to be secretary of defense in […] Trump’s second term and his successor four years later, rat-a-tat-tatted a dozen points of contrast between Trump and Joe Biden—all of them baseless.
Biden “slashed defense spending,” while Trump “rebuilt our military.” In fact, President Barack Obama, with Biden’s support, increased defense spending in each of his eight years. Trump increased it more, but it had been plenty built up.
Biden “treated Israel like a nuisance,” Cotton continued, while “Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Israel.” No examples of Biden’s hostility were cited, because there aren’t any.
Biden “coddled socialist dictators in Cuba and Venezuela,” while Trump “fights against communism.” Reopening relations with Cuba isn’t quite “coddling,” while, meanwhile, Trump has coddled—in his own words, “fell in love” with—one of the world’s last Communist dictators, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and has expressed greater trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin, still a Soviet man, than in his own intelligence agencies.
“China is rooting” for Biden to win, Cotton claimed. Not quite: U.S. intelligence agencies have said China would rather not see such an unstable president as Trump remain in office. Meanwhile, the same agencies noted that Russia would very much like to see Trump reelected—and is working for that goal.
Russia is actually doing a lot. Russia is taking action, many actions, to achieve their goal. Meanwhile, Chira and Iran are mostly just talking and doing nothing.
Before Cotton came Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer. In a glow of sweat and a rabid holler […] Giuliani noted that, in 2013, when New York elected a “progressive Democrat mayor,” it was America’s safest city, but now “my city is in shock,” owing to rising rates of murder and looting. “How did we get overwhelmed by crime so quickly?” he asked, adding, “Don’t let Democrats do to America what they have done to New York.”
Well, the progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio, has his faults, but crime continued to plummet after he was elected. Giuliani and his police chief, Bill Bratton, did much to reduce crime. Murders did rise in de Blasio’s New York last year to 318 —but this is less than half as many as the 673 murders committed in 2000, Giuliani’s penultimate year in office.* […] numbers are still staggeringly low by historical standards.
Giuliani went too far toward the end of his speech, praising Trump for “his boundless love for our country and all our people, his disciplined work ethic,” and “his understanding of our government”—claims that even the president’s most avid fans must have a hard time believing.
Giuliani could use that as part of a standup comedy act. He’d get some laughs.
Soon after came the Republican video touting Trump’s record, all of it otherworldly. He created the “strongest economy in American history” (according to Forbes, Obama’s last three years were stronger than Trump’s first three), “winning the trade war” with China (not yet), “strengthening Medicare and Social Security” (he supports ending payroll taxes, which, according to Fox Business, would deplete the Social Security fund in two years), “bringing troops home” (more troops are in war zones now than when he took office), building “miles of new border wall” (just five new miles actually), and “tackling coronavirus head-on” (hardly).
Trump’s daughter Ivanka introduced her father, saying, among other whoppers, that he negotiated a “peace agreement in the Middle East, the biggest breakthrough in a quarter-century.” This agreement, between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, was not a peace treaty (the two countries had not been remotely at war); he had little to do with sealing it (except to grease the wheels by offering F-35 jet fighters to the UAE); and it was hardly a breakthrough, much less the biggest one in a quarter-century.
Then came Trump, and space permits only some of the lowest highlights. On the coronavirus, he said he was “delivering life-saving therapies and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.” There are no life-saving therapies, and to the extent some therapies have proved successful, Trump has had nothing to do with them. He claimed convalescent plasma treatments will “save thousands of lives,” a claim debunked by every scientist. Those same scientists have also denounced the notion of a vaccine by the end of the year as irresponsible. […]
He claimed taking heroic action to invoke the Defense Production Act to manufacture masks, gloves, and gowns—when in fact he invoked it many weeks after first saying he would. […]
Painting the big picture, Trump warned that the election will decide “whether we save the American dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.” This, of course, is the first big myth the Republicans are putting forth: that Biden is a socialist or kowtows to socialists in his party.
“Your vote,” he went on, “will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans or … give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals.” This, of course, is the second big myth: that Biden will defund the police, repeal the Second Amendment, and let all the prisoners free. Biden has said the exact opposite, but Trump’s supporters are willing to close one of their ears. […]
no previous convention in modern times has seen such endless regurgitation of pure calumny.
Trump boasted of withdrawing from the “job-killing” Trans-Pacific Partnership (which, in fact, would have increased jobs and provided a multinational bulwark against the Chinese expansion that he, elsewhere in the speech, so loathed and for which he blames Biden). He also hailed his support for the Keystone pipeline (which has since been stopped), his withdrawal from the “unfair and costly Paris climate accord” (whose provisions are voluntary), and, of course, the Iran nuclear deal (which, far from exerting extreme pressure on Iran, has resulted in the resumption of Iran’s nuclear program).
He called for members of the Border Patrol to rise and be applauded, without saying anything about the families separated and children locked in cages along the border. […]
blfsays
The Onion:
● Trump Children Worried Aging Father Not Safe To Be Alone After Falling In Polls Again (no “story”, just an amusing headline).
[…]
• Finally able to put a face to the name of this Trump guy who signed our stimulus checks.
• Some occasional liberties with the facts, sure.
• The largest public display of dental veneers in American history.
• Impassioned speeches of support for Trump from some of his top dependents.
• DC–based fence manufacturers making an absolute killing fortifying the White House perimeter.
• At last had a chance to hear what leaders of the Republican Party think about leaders of the Democratic Party.
• Trump expertly disguising fear-mongering as nothing more than race-baiting.
• Disturbing lack of blinking across the board.
• Mark and Patricia McCloskey condemning protests for disrupting lives of violent suburban residents.
• Four nights dedicated to all Americans who are furious about the state of our nation and will fight like hell to keep it from improving.
All of the NBA arenas will be used as polling places, and some ad time during playoff games will be used to promote civic engagement and provide voting information.
blfsays
Lynna@291, quotes Tom Cotton as claiming Trump moved the US Embassy to Israel (my added emphasis).
Did teh eejit really say that? According to this transcript, he said Jerusalem.
I understand hair furor said recently he’d moved the capital of Israel.
[…] Regimes founded on democracy and human rights, which 25 years ago appeared to have triumphed, now face a grave challenge from a resurgent authoritarianism, which employs new technologies to refashion the tyranny that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union could not sustain. At stake is not only which nations will dominate global affairs, but also whether individual freedoms […] will survive.
A 21st-century victory for democracy, like those that came in World War II and the Cold War, is inconceivable without the leadership of the United States. America must prevail in the race to develop new technologies, rally fellow democracies to counter authoritarian aggression, and reform capitalism and democracy itself to serve a new age. But […] Trump cannot deliver that leadership. On the contrary, over the past three years he has done as much as any global actor to advance the cause of authoritarianism and undermine the free world.
Mr. Trump’s most conspicuous aid to tyranny has been his relentless support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who aided Mr. Trump’s 2016 election and whose foreign policy is laser-focused on weakening the United States and dividing it from other democracies in the NATO alliance. Mr. Trump has provided invaluable support for this cause, most recently by ordering a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany. While he has not hesitated to publicly trash NATO and the leaders of Germany, Canada and Britain, Mr. Trump has never uttered a word of criticism of Mr. Putin, even after receiving U.S. intelligence reports indicating that Moscow paid bounties to the Afghan Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers.
Until recently, Mr. Trump offered similar obeisance to Chinese ruler Xi Jinping, calling him a “brilliant leader” and “a great man.” Mr. Trump encouraged Mr. Xi’s cultural genocide against the Uighur population of the Xinjiang region. That campaign has pioneered Beijing’s technologies of comprehensive surveillance and other AI-aided repression […] Mr. Trump also promised Mr. Xi he would remain silent on the suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy movement while negotiating trade concessions. The administration’s belated reversals on those issues, tied to Mr. Trump’s attempt to shift blame for the more than 177,000 U.S. covid-19 deaths, has predictably altered neither China’s behavior nor the conclusion among many Asians that the United States can no longer be counted on to defend democratic values or resist Chinese aggression.
[…] China and Russia will peddle their authoritarian solutions while the democracies press for free speech and free elections. That competition is already well underway — and again, Mr. Trump has a record of backing the wrong side.
Aspiring strongmen who are dismantling democratic institutions in their countries have been embraced by Mr. Trump and welcomed to the White House […]. This sordid parade has featured Abdel Fatah al-Sissi of Egypt, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Prayut Chan-ocha of Thailand, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Andrzej Duda of Poland […]. At the same time, Mr. Trump has shunned democratic leaders attempting to resist the Russians or Chinese — most notably Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has never received a White House invitation after resisting Mr. Trump’s demand for a politicized investigation of Joe Biden. This month, Mr. Trump has done nothing to help the Belarus democratic movement seeking to overthrow the longtime dictator of a nation Mr. Putin seeks to dominate.
The democratic leaders of South Korea and Japan, the two most important U.S. allies in East Asia, have been whipsawed by Mr. Trump’s insistence on sweeping trade concessions and vast increases in subsidies for U.S. bases on their territories. They watched with dismay as Mr. Trump meanwhile proclaimed his “love” for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, a Chinese client, and scaled back U.S. military exercises with South Korea. […]
For all this, the greatest damage Mr. Trump has done to the cause of democracy has come at home. His assaults on the U.S. media and courts, attempts to politicize Justice Department investigations, and bald efforts to manipulate voting in November’s election threaten to degrade what has been the world’s strongest democracy while offering a model for budding authoritarians around the world. His disregard for science and restrictions on immigration have weakened the chances that the United States will win the race to develop new technologies. His incessant lying has helped to create a political culture in which wild conspiracy theories flourish and there is no consensus on basic facts, making informed legislative debate and compromise all but impossible.
Though damaged, U.S. democracy and the global cause of freedom so far have survived Mr. Trump’s term in office, in large part because they have the determined support of millions of citizens. Yet there should be no question that in a second Trump term, they would suffer grievous and perhaps irreversible harm. […] Mr. Trump must be defeated.
[…] In the case led by Washington state and joined by 13 others, Chief Judge Stanley Bastian of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington ordered the Trump administration and the USPS to provide documentation about the mail slowdowns within 10 days.
At a hearing on Thursday, Bastian told the states and administration to act quickly, and warned the USPS not to try to drag out the process. “We don’t have much time between now and this election,” Bastian said. “I think everyone on this call wants their vote to be counted.” He said what everyone in the country is thinking: “Everybody in this country is relying on the Postal Service to do their job,” Bastian added. “I hope at some point we’ll be hearing from the Postal Service not a bunch of procedural or jurisdictional arguments, but some assurance to the American public that the Postal Service is up to the challenge to deliver ballots to the voters and back to the states so they can be counted.” […]
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the USPS still hasn’t answered to the problem of mail delays, and it’s not at all clear what actions DeJoy has halted or reversed. The states want, among other documents, “a list of all mail sorting machines identified for decommissioning, including their locations, and whether they will be reinstalled if they have already been decommissioned.” Ferguson added that the problem goes far beyond November’s balloting, but is about the timely delivery of prescription drugs and Social Security benefits and rent payments and everything else the public depends upon.
After being forced to cancel all its spring performances due to the coronavirus pandemic, Finland’s National Opera is opening with an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart featuring a topical twist: a story line that plays off of the Nordic country’s outbreak.
The 100-minute piece Covid fan tutte is meant as a satirical adaptation of the Austrian composer’s classic Cosi fan tutte.
The Finnish-language production that premiered on Friday conveys scenes from the coronavirus spring in Finland with a look at social isolation, job losses and travel restrictions, among other topics.
“Without humour, these extraordinary times would have been very hard to take,” said soprano Karita Mattila, who will sing the role of a maid, Despina, a character from Mozart’s classic who is now navigating her way through the pandemic.
The opera will be put on under strict distancing rules. Performed on the Helsinki Opera House’s main stage, only 650 spectators will be allowed inside, half the venue’s capacity.
Face masks are strongly recommended, though not compulsory. There will be no choir on the stage but its singing will be heard through a prerecorded performance.
Several cities with NBA arenas could see those facilities turned into in-person voting sites this fall, thanks to a deal reached Friday between players and franchise officials to resume the NBA playoffs this weekend.
The NBA and NBA players’ association announced the agreement — which also includes the establishment of a social justice coalition and an NBA ad campaign promoting civic engagement — after several playoff games were put on hold this week due to team boycotts. The player strike was in protest of a Wisconsin police officer on Sunday shooting and paralyzing a black man who appeared to show no immediate threat.
“In every city where the league franchise owns and controls the arena property, team governors will continue to work with local elections officials to convert the facility into a voting location for the 2020 general election to allow for a safe in-person voting option for communities vulnerable to COVID,” the statement announcing the new deal said.
While some, including White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, dismissed the NBA strike, the benefits this agreement stands to bring voters — including voters of color — are concrete and significant.
One of Kentucky’s most populous counties hosted in-person voting in a sporting arena for its June primary and it proved to an effective approach in the pandemic to keep wait times low while keeping voters and workers spaced out to limit coronavirus transmission.
Furthermore, NBA arenas are often located near public transportation, making them accessible to low-income voters.
Georgia election officials had already announced a plan with the NBA Hawks to use their Atlanta arena for early voting, and since then, a civic engagement group launched by NBA star LeBron James has helped craft deals to use sporting facilities in other parts of the country for voting.
These partnerships between election officials and sporting facilities have also facilitated the use of arena employees as poll workers, helping to solve the poll worker shortage COVID-19 has caused.
Friday’s announcement acknowledged that there might be legal or logistical challenges in some NBA hometowns in transforming those arenas into voting sites.
“If a deadline has passed, team governors will work with local elections officials to find another election-related use for the facility, including but not limited to voter registration and ballot receiving board,” the announcement said.
[…]
A gospel-singing Brazilian lawmaker accused of masterminding the assassination of the husband who was once her adopted son is facing calls for her expulsion from congress so she can face murder charges.
Flordelis dos Santos de Souza — a favela-born celebrity congresswoman […] — is fighting to avoid jail after police claimed she had orchestrated her partner’s 2019 murder.
The politician met — and initially adopted — Anderson d Carmo in 1991 when he was 14 and she was 30, and they married in 1998 after becoming romantically involved. He was gunned down outside their home on 16 June last year with the singer […] claiming her husband had been killed by thieves.
But on Monday, investigators alleged she had plotted to kill the 42-year-old preacher, with the help of at least seven of the couple’s 55 mostly adopted children. Heavily armed police arrested five of the congresswoman’s children and one granddaughter, but were unable to detain Flordelis since she enjoys parliamentary immunity having been elected to Brazil’s 513-member lower house in 2018.
Fellow lawmakers hope to change that.
[…]
“Given the avalanche of evidence against congresswoman Flordelis, it is clear she cannot remain in the position to which she was elected,” Motta, who is also a gospel singer, argued in [an official petition to the speaker of the lower house].
The president’s [sic] address was an effective political spectacle, but said everything about what is wrong with him and the Republicans
There are lies, there are damned lies — and then there was this week’s Republican national convention: a four-day cavalcade of brazen falsehoods from the president and his enablers. Wild distortions and exaggerations are hardly new to politics. But Donald Trump’s mendacity is in a class of its own, as his closing speech on Thursday underscored.
[… T]he lies about Mr Biden and the Democrats pale beside those told about Mr Trump’s own record. Empathetic. Feminist. Most remarkably, in Melania’s telling, a man of total honesty.
When he announced: total say very modestly that I have done more for the African-American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln, it was hard to know whether the adverb or the rest of the statement was the more misleading. The most glaring falsehood is that he took swift action to protect his country from coronavirus, instead of effectively abandoning it to its grim fate — 181,000 deaths to date. The Republicans want America to believe that the worst is over, though more than 1,000 people are dying a day.
This refusal to even brush shoulders with the truth looks unhinged to those who revile him. But it may well be effective. He came to power by recognising an underlying truth: many Americans were poorly served by years of economic growth, and could no longer identify with those who purportedly served them in Washington. The conspiracy theories embraced by many of Mr Trump’s supporters make his own fantasies look almost tame. […]
[…]
Mr Trump has never disguised his worst; he was elevated despite, or perhaps even because of that. His speech, like those that preceded it this week, told America what it can expect from him. In context as well as tone it reflected his disdain for democracy. […]
[… W]hat matters will not only be how many people are persuaded to vote on 3 November, but how many are allowed to, and whether their votes are recognised. A man as careless of truth as Mr Trump cannot be expected to respect the facts should they prove inconvenient.
“The Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group aligned with Mitch McConnell, has spent more against @Ossoff than any other Democratic Senate candidate—part of a $6.6M ‘surge’ of spending in the state. Another $13.5 million is on its way. #gapol #gasen”
[…]
A video by Britain First, circulated widely on social media, shows a group of far-right activists entering a hotel in Bromsgrove, near Birmingham, and banging on bedroom doors, demanding to know what country the asylum seekers are from.
The Britain First members say in the video they have entered legally and that the hotel is housing illegal immigrants.
The asylum seekers appear not to understand who the far-right activists are. Most who are interrogated answer, perhaps believing the Britain First activists to be officials. Many of the asylum seekers could be at risk if their faces are shown on camera.
Campaigners from the group Status Now have raised concerns about the video and have complained to the Home Office and the accommodation provider Serco about the incident. […]
[…]
Other similar videos are circulating on YouTube from far-right organisations, including one that shows asylum seekers being harassed outside their hotel in Newcastle.
Far-right organisations are also circulating on social media lists of hotels where asylum seekers are being accommodated.
[…]
tomhsays
@ #307
The GOP may not mention repealing the ACA, but they are full steam ahead on the court case that is trying to do just that. The Trump Administration has thrown their full weight behind Texas, which is challenging the constitutionality of the entire ACA, in the case that has reached the Supreme Court. The Court has scheduled oral arguments for November 10, one week after the election, with a decision to come in 2021.
The Dems should not just hammer health care constantly, but stress how, in spite of Trump promising to protect the existing condition insurance clause, they are actually trying to get rid of it, along with the rest of the ACA.
These past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about what our kids are seeing every day in this country – the lack of empathy, the division stoked in times of crisis, the age-old and systemic racism that’s been so prominent this summer. Sometimes they see it on the news. Sometimes they see it from the White House Rose Garden. And sometimes they see it from the back seat of a car.
Like so many of you, I’m exhausted and frustrated right now. It’s a weight that I know Black and Brown people all across the country are shouldering once again. And we’re so often left wondering how things will get better.
“These protests and actions will not make Jacob Blake walk again. They will not erase the trauma from those children. And they will not bring back anyone who’s been taken from us. But they will do something. They already are – opening eyes, rattling consciences, and reminding people of all backgrounds that this problem wasn’t solved earlier in the summer and won’t be any time soon unless we all make a change.
Keep speaking out wherever you are – board rooms, class rooms, dining rooms, break rooms, locker rooms – because if enough of us do that, we’ll open up even more minds. And maybe we can prevent the next name from being added to this seemingly unending list of tragedies.
blfsays
Steve Bell in the Guardian, On gun crime in America (cartoon). (For those wondering about the kkk klown kostume shaped USAlien flags with menacing eyes, that originally started as Mr Bell’s metaphor for Putin (as I recall), but I believe is now used as the shady people behind, controlling, or supporting hair furor.)
Excerpts from Susan B. Glasser’s article, “The Malign Fantasy of Donald Trump’s Convention.”
For four years, Donald Trump has been asking us to believe the unbelievable, to accept the unthinkable, to replace harsh realities with simple fantasies. On Thursday night, using the White House as a gaudy backdrop, [Trump] made his case to the American people for four more years. His speech capping the Republican National Convention was long, acerbic, untruthful, and surprisingly muted in comparison to the grandeur of the setting, which no chief executive before him has dared to appropriate in such a partisan way. “We will make America greater than ever before,” he promised.
Even for a salesman like Trump, it was never going to be an easy deal to close, what with a deadly pandemic, mass unemployment, nationwide protests over racial injustice, and even a killer hurricane smashing into the Gulf Coast hours before his speech. Some seventy per cent of Americans currently believe that the country is on the wrong track, according to recent polls. […]
This should be devastating context for a President, any President, seeking reëlection, a true picture of American carnage to replace the false one that Trump conjured four years ago. Yet the strategy of Trump and his team is now clear: to talk about how bad things would be in Joe Biden’s America, a violent socialist ruin in which freedom itself will no longer exist and rampaging protesters, like those now committing “rioting, looting, arson, and violence” in “Democrat-run cities,” will be coming soon to a suburb near you. […] “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said on Thursday night. […]
Americans know Trump pretty well by now, and so it was more than a little discordant to hear him extolled throughout the Convention this week as a family man, promoter of women, friend to African-Americans, champion of religious liberty, and lover of immigrants, who interrupted his own Convention to preside over a White House naturalization ceremony for five lucky new citizens. A courageous patriot who works “from dawn to midnight,” as his daughter Ivanka told us, this Convention Trump personally charmed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, made peace in the Middle East, and single-handedly saved U.S. industries and unborn babies. And then there was his response to the coronavirus pandemic, perhaps the Administration’s shining hour, in which the President bravely disregarded the so-called experts to ban flights from China, thus saving millions of lives, while working closely with America’s governors, providing medical workers with all the resources they needed, reopening schools and businesses, and putting the greatest economy in history on the path to a fast recovery. The trolling was as epic as the setting was legally questionable: […] While thus publicly and flagrantly flouting public-health standards, Trump touted his response to the pandemic as one that is focussed exclusively “on the science, the facts, and the data.”
[…] a President whose prospects, left unvarnished by lies and fantasy, were so poor that his strategists had to reinvent him as a different person altogether. […]
The truth is that Trump’s heart wasn’t really in the ridiculously uncredible makeover anyway. Fear is his preferred political drug, and nasty personal attacks are his default setting. This is what he is pushing, now and forever. Minutes into his speech, he framed the election as a fight to “save the American Dream” and “the American way of life” from Democrats who would give “free reign to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens.” Trump attacked Biden by name forty-one times in his prepared remarks, some kind of record in a Convention speech. […]
[…] But the real message of the evening was that nothing, not even a deadly plague or a cratering economy, can stop Trump from being Trump. He bragged. He lied. He even ad-libbed a taunt at his critics, using the White House as his prop. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to the flood-lit mansion behind him, “and they’re not.”
[…] Trump’s Presidency […] has always been a puzzling combination of the incompetent and the dangerous; from the start, it has been equal parts dystopianism and hucksterism, with a strong side of nepotism thrown in. […]
Perhaps the most quoted line from Trump’s 2016 speech was a memorable expression of his aspirational authoritarianism: “I alone can fix it.” […]. What happened at the White House last night was its tawdry, perhaps inevitable, sequel.
[…] The dark hellscape of America in the Obama years was not the subtext of his candidacy back then; it was the text of it, and if it did not actually exist—well, that was O.K., because Trump was more than willing to invent it. Four years later, as an actual hellscape unfolds, there is another act of invention: pretending that the cataclysm is not happening, or spuriously claiming that the true crisis is not the pandemic or the economic catastrophe or police brutality toward Black people but a plague of illegal aliens and open borders and attacks on law enforcement—all the same old racially coded appeals to [Trumps] white political base […]. “The more . . . violence reigns, the better it is” for Trump, Kellyanne Conway […] told Fox News […] Trump thinks law and order won him the election four years ago. He thinks it will do so again in November.
[…] This year, Trump wanted it to be all about him, and it was. […] Trump’s ever-slavish Vice-President managed to mention him thirty-three times in his thirty-six-minute speech.
Not surprisingly, all the speeches praised Trump […] Claims about him were outlandish and untrue […]
[Trump] can’t help but recycle his own lines. He has no other playbook. […]
Running as an incumbent was always going to be a problem for Trump. He is a divider, a fighter; he prefers to be against things, not for them. He loves to take credit—and to avoid responsibility. His speeches skew dark and grievance-ridden, even in the best of times. […] We don’t know if Trump will be reëlected in November, but as he enters this final sixty-six-day race to Election Day, we do know this: Donald J. Trump has only one script in politics, and he is determined to use it over and over and over again.
Excerpts from Masha Gessen’s article, “Trump’s Republican National Convention Was a Spectacle Fit for a Would-Be King”:
On Thursday night, Donald Trump stood on the South Lawn of the White House and spoke for more than an hour. […] Trump accepted the Party’s nomination for a second term as President. (He mangled this procedural line, saying that he accepted the nomination “profoundly,” rather than “proudly,” as his script indicated.) But Trump looked less like a candidate than like a king standing in front of his castle, flanked by members of his dynasty, […] The entire four-day spectacle of the Convention seemed designed to assert the existence not of a government, which begins and ends with elections, but of a Trump regime […]
Trump’s use of the White House, where he appeared every day of the Convention; the Washington Monument, illuminated by fireworks at the Convention’s finale; Fort McHenry, where Vice-President Mike Pence delivered his speech on Wednesday; and the U.S. government-owned Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, where most of the Convention speeches were delivered, is, on the face of it, a violation of the Hatch Act, which bans the use of federal property for campaign purposes. It is also an assertion of impunity: violations of the Hatch Act are punishable by removal from office, but Trump shows that he can get away with this […] Democrats were repeatedly—and inaccurately—branded throughout the Convention, are trying to divest him of his property.
[…] every night was anchored by Trump’s family members. The Republican Party dispensed with a platform this year, and its entire agenda could be summed up on a single sheet of paper: the Party supports Trump. […] Trumpism is not merely the governing philosophy of another Republican Administration. It is a new system entirely.
[…] On the last night, at the White House, the cameras showed a bank of American flags and, during the finale, lingered on the raised platforms, a red-carpeted arrangement that Trump apparently favors for the grandest of his grand appearances. […]
To call things what they are, the Republicans adopted a fascist aesthetic for this year’s Convention. It was in the pillars and the flags; the military-style outfit that Melania Trump wore to deliver her speech, on the second night; the screaming fervor with which many of the speeches were delivered; the repeated references to “law and order”; and phrases like “weakness is provocative,” which the Republican senator Tom Cotton offered on the final evening. The aesthetic—and the rhetoric—held out the carrot of greatness, […] The seduction of greatness may grow proportionately to anxiety: the more scared one is—of losing one’s job or health insurance, or of the coronavirus, of the world never going back to normal, among other worries—the more reassuring it is to say (better yet, to scream) that one lives in the greatest country on earth. One looks at people shouting triumphantly—none of them social distancing, only a few wearing masks—and one feels somehow uplifted by the fantasy of being one of them.
The Republicans offered greatness; the Democrats, in contrast, proposed goodness. […] The D.N.C.’s singular message is that Americans ought to choose to live in a country run by good people rather than callous liars. […]
The Party has adopted “Build back better” as its campaign slogan—a vague and misleading phrase. It tells us nothing about what it would be like to live in a country whose guiding principles are mutual care, empathy, and goodness. […] It may be that voters have such deep reserves of both decency and confidence that they will reject the siren call of greatness in favor of the amorphous promise of goodness. But, whatever the polls may say now, it would be foolhardy to count on such an outcome.
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* Quite a sight: “Thousands of protesters gathered Friday at the Lincoln Memorial to call for overall criminal justice restructuring and racial equality while honoring the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ address from the same location.”
* Hurricane Laura: “The most intense hurricane to hit Louisiana in more than a century has left at least six people dead, hundreds of thousands of people without power and an untold number of homes and buildings in ruins.” […]
* USPS problems persist: “One week after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced he was temporarily suspending changes to the United States Postal Service, NBC News spoke with eight postal union representatives from throughout the nation, all of whom expressed concerns and provided examples of ongoing delays in mail delivery. They said the recent removal of hundreds of postal sorting machines and rigid new operational directives for mail trucks and carriers have exacerbated the slowdown.” […]
* The obviously right call: “A federal judge has ordered the State Department to issue a U.S. passport to the daughter of a married gay couple whom the Trump administration had argued in court was ineligible for birthright citizenship.”
* Tokyo: “Teary-eyed and taking a bow, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on Friday announced he was resigning due to ill health. ‘I cannot be prime minister if I cannot make the best decisions for the people,’ Abe, 65, said during a live public broadcast to the nation.”
* CDC: “The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seeking to clarify recommendations on coronavirus testing that incited an uproar, said that ‘testing may be considered for all close contacts of confirmed or probable Covid-19 patients.’ But his clarification may have further confused the issue.” […]
Maya Wiley corrects Giuliani’s depiction of ‘lawless’ NYC in RNC speech. The former counselor to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio [offered] context and corrections to the inaccuracies in Rudy Giuliani’s speech to the Republican National Convention.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) fired back at […] Trump after he suggested sending the National Guard to Oregon’s largest city to deal with protests, pleading with him to “stay away, please.”
“Yet again, you said you offered to aid Portland by sending in federal law enforcement to our city. On behalf of the City of Portland: No thanks,” Wheeler wrote in a fiery letter to the president Friday.
“We don’t need your politics of division and demagoguery. Portlanders are onto you. We have already seen your reckless disregard for human life in your bumbling response to the COVID pandemic. And we know you’ve reached the conclusion that images of violence or vandalism are your only ticket to reelection,” he added. […]
[…]
Just before the New York shutdown for Covid, I’d been kvetching all over the place about people touching me too much. It was the feminist rant of a woman with experience in the service industry, mostly. But in particular, a guy who’d recently not-really-asked me out had decided to repeatedly reinforce his ambiguous, undeclared interest in me by putting his hands on my shoulders at the slightest provocation whenever he ran into me in public, coming up from behind me while I sat working at my computer at a cafe, or just going full-frontal, sometimes sideways, even.
Along came the shutdown. Suddenly, people who used to reach for me found themselves spasmodically curling their arms back to bring their hands to their chests, and standing six feet away from me.
It was delightful.
And then there were the masks: I no longer had to smile if I didn’t feel like it! That, too, was fortifying.
One day, during a walk, I saw the shoulder-clapping fellow I’d kvetched about rounding the corner and veered away from him into the street, and, our eyes meeting above our masks, I said out loud, “Oh, my God! Get away from me!” and laughed rather insanely as we passed each other. It was the laughter of a woman freed and sanctioned by circumstance to demand that men respect her personal space at last. It’s the one thing I hope never changes back.
[…] I am spoiled, now. As a server, I’d had to tolerate a lot of demands from strangers to fake-adore them, particularly from men. Whoever did that study about how servers who touched their customers got better tips than those who didn’t should be boiled alive. I blame that study for the fact that everyone now wants to leverage their tips on how much you seem to love them. Ugh.
Good grief. I don’t recall ever hearing of such an effect or any studies on it, but there does seem to have been some. For example, Reach Out and Touch Your Customers (PDF), 1998, which concludes: Our results, along with those of previous research, suggest that hospitality managers could benefit from encouraging their employees to touch customers. Such a policy would make customers feel more welcome and appreciated. It would also increase employees’ tip income, which should increase employee morale and reduce turnover. We see no valid reason to forgo these benefits. Thus, our recommendation is to reach out and touch your customers.
I would suggest boiling in oil, or molten lead, rather than water!
Back to the column in the Grauniad:
[…]
Knowing I’d likely never work at my local cafe again, I felt free to walk past the customers I’d never liked and not smile or even greet them. I sometimes pretended not to see them at all. Oh, the joy! I only stopped short of saying, “I never liked you.” It reminded me of Mark Twain’s short story, The Facts Concerning a Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut, in which the narrator manages to eliminate his conscience and goes on a killing spree — that’s how sinful it feels for a woman to not smile at strangers who greet her.
I don’t think I’ll ever go back to my ladylike ways. Blame the ’rona or congratulate me for my newfound self-possession, but whichever you do, stand back six feet while you’re doing it, please.
This is quite different to the French custom of shaking hands with the server (pre-pandemic) or bumping elbows (now), or la bise (cheek kissing (pre-pandemic)), especially if one knows them; e.g., is a frequent customer. That touching is by mutual consent, a genuine friendly greeting.
Satire/humor from Andy Borowitz: “Trump Warns That Biden Presidency Would Mean Regular Mail Service and Sports”
In an apocalyptic vision of life under his Democratic rival, Donald Trump [warned] on Thursday night that a Biden Presidency would mean regular mail service and sports.
An advance copy of Trump’s final R.N.C. speech revealed that Trump will paint an ominous picture of a nation living under the tyranny of uninterrupted postal delivery and athletic events.
“Joe Biden and his left-wing puppet masters will take whatever measures they deem necessary to insure that the mail is delivered in a timely fashion,” he will warn. “Biden and his radical henchwomen, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will stop at nothing to make that nightmare a reality.”
Additionally, Trump will charge, “If Joe Biden is allowed to wipe out the pandemic and institute police reforms, professional sports will be played like never before.”
“No city will be safe from sports,” he will add.
Trump will end his relentlessly downbeat speech on a note of optimism, however. “Only one thing can protect America from the sinister threat of mail and sports,” he will declare. “Me.”
blf @317, I’ve found that a similar dynamic exists at all levels of society in the USA. For instance, if I wanted the men in a company meeting (committee of upper management, including me as also one of the managers) to listen to me, as opposed to defaulting into listening to each other and ignoring me, I needed to touch one of the men on the arm. After the touch, that man would listen to me. All the other men would follow suit, as if having earned the imprimatur of one man I was worthy of attention.
I worked for that company for about five years. It never changed.
I found the same dynamic to be dominant in every workplace. Admittedly, this was about 15 years ago. Things may have changed since then. I have been working for myself, by myself, ever since.
No one disrespects me in my office. Some people try, via email or phone, etc. I find it easy to push back.
[…]
A rescue boat [Louise Michel] financed by the British street artist Banksy is close to declaring a “state of emergency” after the crew helped 130 migrants and are now safeguarding over 200 people off Libya’s coast, while the European authorities ignore their request for help.
[…]
On Friday, the crew of European activists responded to a mayday call by Moonbird, an aircraft that monitors migrants’ boat in danger in the central Mediterranean, which had spotted a dingy that was not moving and was taking in water.
“Louise Michel proceeded at full speed,” a ship spokesperson said. “We handed out life vests to 130 people to secure the situation.”
The rubber dinghy is currently located in the Maltese search and rescue zone, dangerously overcrowded and taking in water, with a dead body onboard and several others suffering from fuel burns and injuries, after having spent several days at sea.
The passengers had previously reached out to the Alarm Phone, an emergency hotline assisting refugees at sea, and requested immediate rescue. Both activists of Alarm Phone and Moonbird alerted European authorities to the boat in distress.
The crew alleged that neither the Maltese and Italian authorities reacted adequately.
[…]
The activists stated that the people had been left alone in a European search and rescue zone and warned: “Don’t let it become a body count. Do your job. Rescue them.”
Lea Reisner, head of operations for the Louise Michel, said: “The people have sat in a mix of salt water and fuel for days. It is night and European states are not doing their fucking job. They deny responsibility while we are trying to keep everyone alive … We need immediate assistance.”
Neeske Beckmann of the Moonbird said: “We were shocked when we saw the rubber boat — it was incredibly overcrowded and people onboard were trying to shuffle water out of the boat with their bare hands. We knew this was a grave emergency situation and decided to send out a mayday relay to all authorities and actors in the vicinity. Responsible European authorities failed to react to our distress call and only the Louise Michel responded to this serious distress case.”
[…]
On Wednesday, 45 people — including five children — died when the engine on their boat exploded off Libya, in the country’s deadliest shipwreck this year, the UN said. More than 19,500 migrants have survived the Mediterranean crossing along the central maritime route this year and reached Italy or Malta.
Vesselfinder suggests there are several fishing boats, a cargo ship, and a tanker, in the immediate vicinity (as of about twenty minutes ago), and that the Louise Michel is underway (destination unknown). I suppose they could be trying to tow the dingy (seems unlikely), or there are c.200 people plus crew onboard (which would be considerably (over-)crowded (it’s only a 30 metre former French customs patrol vessel, the Suroît).
Florida governor Ron DeSantis believes tourists could safely take commercial flights to visit the state, as newly reported coronavirus cases grew by more than 3,800 people, down from peak averages of nearly 12,000 cases daily in mid-July.
DeSantis said he had not heard of any airline passenger catching the virus on a plane. […]
Even assuming he’s correct about commercial aeroplanes being “safe”, that’s spectacularly missing the point: Infected people may arrive, and infected people may leave, in both cases, potentially spreading the infection at their destinations (at least). Or has he forgotten hair furor’s claims about the “success” of “shutting down” air travel…?
blfsays
me@321, Sorry, that’s from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog (top link), not their USAlien live blog… albeit he’s still a blithering wannabe-dalek & confirmed-eejit.
When President Trump gave a speech to a group of sheriffs in Tampa late last month, his decision to travel forced a large contingent of Secret Service agents to head to a state that was then battling one of the worst coronavirus surges in the nation.
Even before Air Force One touched down on July 31, the fallout was apparent: Five Secret Service agents already on the ground had to be replaced after one tested positive for the coronavirus and the others working in proximity were presumed to be infected, according to people familiar with the situation.
The previously unreported episode is one of a series of examples of how Trump’s insistence on traveling and holding campaign-style events amid the pandemic has heightened the risks for the people who safeguard his life, intensifying the strain on the Secret Service.
In the past two months, dozens of Secret Service agents who worked to ensure the security of the president and Vice President Pence at public events have been sickened or sidelined because they were in direct contact with infected people, according to multiple people familiar with the episodes, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the incidents.
Despite that, Trump has continued to hold large gatherings — most dramatically at the White House on Thursday night, when he delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention before a crowd of 1,500 people seated closely together on the South Lawn, with few masks in sight. The vast majority were not tested for the coronavirus ahead of time.
[…]
The men and women of the Secret Service live by a unique code, one in which they pledge that they are willing to take a bullet for the president to safeguard a stable democracy.
But this new virus that has killed nearly 180,000 Americans in eight months has prompted some to ask a new question: Should they be required to risk contracting a lethal disease — and infecting a loved one — to secure an event that does not follow health protocols?
[…]
“Never before has the Secret Service run up against a president so intent on putting himself first regardless of the costs, including to those around him,” said Ned Price, a national security expert and former CIA analyst. “And by maintaining a rigorous travel schedule and otherwise flouting public health guidance, he is demanding that agents add to their already considerable professional risk in ways that are qualitatively different than what they signed up for.”
Many more examples of positive tests and quarantines, including a trip of the VP that had to be postponed because the Service couldn’t round up enough healthy replacements.
Do you want to know what it feels like to be black in America this week? Think about Survivor, or Naked and Afraid, or Alone – or any of those wilderness shows in which a person’s survival in a hostile environment depends on keeping that crucial campfire burning bright. Inevitably, some disaster occurs and the fire nearly goes out. Then, on their hands and knees, the person tries desperately to fan one dying ember back to life.
For the African American community living in a hostile environment, that dying ember is hope. Hope that America was finally committed to racial equity. Hope that being black wasn’t a crime and the punishment wasn’t death. The popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement that swept through America this summer after the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd stoked that hope inside us into a small but powerful sun.
Then this week, a black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times in the back by police, a 17-year-old was charged with intentional homicide after two men were killed at a subsequent protests, and the Republican National Convention featured speakers who, instead of voicing outrage over systemic racism and vowing to end it, complained about the audacity of ungrateful black people protesting that their husbands, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers were being murdered by police while President Trump and the GOP conspired to take away their right to vote.
Yeah, hope in the black community took a big hit this week. The small sun set quickly. The dying ember had been extinguished.
But then along came the Milwaukee Bucks, my old team, who announced they would boycott Game 5 of the NBA playoffs, explaining, “Despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action, so our focus today cannot be on basketball.” They demanded that the Wisconsin state legislature, after months of inaction, “take up meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality and criminal justice reform.” And just like that, the ember of hope was flickering to life again.
Other NBA and WNBA teams followed. Games were postponed. That both leagues spoke out immediately was courageous, especially given the hundreds of millions of dollars involved and all the expense and effort it took to create their sports bubbles. But it wasn’t that great of surprise because 81.1% of the NBA and 88% of the WNBA are black and their families and friends don’t live in a protective bubble.
As LeBron James explained, “I know people get tired of hearing me say it, but we are scared as black people in America. Black men, black women, black kids, we are terrified.” As tired as white people may be of hearing it, black people are even more tired of living it.
For me, what really brought the hearth fire of hope back to life was the instantaneous support of other sports teams and athletes. Major League Soccer, in which only 26% of players are black, postponed five games that day, with players from two teams, Inter Miami and Atlanta United, locking arms and refusing to play. Major League Baseball, with only about 8% African American players, also joined in with players from the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds sitting out their games and the Seattle Mariners voted unanimously to postpone their Wednesday game. More baseball teams joined the boycott on Thursday.
In tennis, perhaps the whitest of all the sports, former US Open champion Naomi Osaka walked away from her semi-final match at the Western & Southern Open on Thursday, tweeting, “I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction.” Professional tennis organizations USTA, ATP, and WTA issued a statement in support of her stance and postponed tournament play on Thursday. I have never been prouder of my athlete colleagues….
Here’s a link to the August 29 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Thousands of coronavirus sceptics [deniers – SC] are set to descend on Berlin on Saturday for a mass protest against pandemic restrictions.
Police said they woud turn out in force and strictly monitor compliance with mask-wearing and social distancing, with the Berlin police chief, Barbara Slowik, warning that if the demonstrators did not adhere to virus safety rules, police would clear the area “very quickly”.
“We will not be able or willing to watch tens of thousands assemble and create infection risks,” she added.
Berlin city authorities had previously decided not to allow the Saturday demonstration to go ahead, fearing that the estimated 22,000 protesters would not keep a distance of 1.5 metres (five feet) apart or comply with face mask requirements.
The ban sparked outrage from organisers and their supporters who flooded social media with angry messages vowing to protest anyway, with some even calling for violence.
But on the eve of the demo, Berlin’s administrative court sided with the demonstrators, saying there was no indication that organisers would “deliberately ignore” social distancing rules and endanger public health.
The judge’s reasoning eludes me. The indications that they’ll deliberately ignore social distancing rules include the entirety of their rhetoric, the rationale for the protest, and their behavior at the previous protest a few weeks ago.
In Berlin, police, who deployed 3,000 officers to control crowds at a march expected to reach 20,000, have prepared for possible violence as activists opposed to the virus measures urge social media followers across Europe to arm themselves and gather.
Activists, angered by Berlin’s decision to ban protests after demonstrators at a recent rally failed to wear masks or keep their distance, flooded the city with thousands of applications for additional protest rallies this weekend.
“The gatherings planned by several initiatives for August 29 against the corona policy of the federal and state governments can take place,” the court ruled.
Responding to the ruling, Berlin’s interior minister, Andreas Geisel, said the court had given protesters a second chance to show they could comply with distancing measures.
“I appeal to everyone to gather in Berlin without violence,” he said.
In England, the government published guidance for schools on what to do if there is a coronavirus outbreak.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, branded the timing of the new guidance “reprehensible”.
He said: “It was obvious weeks ago that lockdown advice was necessary. The government’s decision to publish this at 9pm on the Friday of the bank holiday weekend before most schools are due to return is nothing short of reprehensible and demonstrates a complete lack of regard for the wellbeing of school leaders and their teams.
“The decision confirms the government simply does not understand the commitment and professionalism of school leaders who will feel compelled act immediately.
Russia said on Saturday 111 people had died from the new coronavirus in the last 24 hours, raising the official death toll to 17,025. Russia’s coronavirus taskforce reported 4,941 new cases, bringing its nationwide tally to 985,346, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
India recorded a further 76,472 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, slightly lower than yesterday’s figures, which set a new national record for the country.
India’s daily infection rates are currently the highest of anywhere in the world. On Friday, the country reported more than 77,000 cases in 24 hours, just shy of the global one-day record tally held by the US.
India has reported a total of 3.46 million cases during the pandemic, giving it the third highest number of cases in the world, after the US and Brazil respectively.
The western Indian state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital Mumbai, recorded 331 fatalities – the steepest single-day increase among all states in the past two days.
BREAKING: Texas Federal Court orders state to implement simultaneous voter registration–any online driver’s license renewal or change-of-address will automatically result in user being registered to vote at current address.
Press conference ends. Tonally this was a lot less dense than the two before it, but offered very few reassurances about state of policing in Kenosha.”
[…]
German police have halted a march by 18,000 coronavirus sceptics[deniers] in Berlin because protesters were failing to respect social distancing.
[… I]t had barely begun at the city’s Brandenburg Gate when it was forced to stop due to a police injunction.
“The minimum distancing is not being respected by most {of the demonstrators} despite repeated requests,” the police said. “There is no other option than to break up the gathering.”
After the announcement, the demonstrators shouted: Resistance and We are the people[disease vectors], a slogan often used by the far-right, and sang the German national anthem.
Police had vowed to turn out in force and strictly monitor compliance with mask-wearing and physical distancing at the protest.
Berlin’s police chief, Barbara Slowik, had warned that if the demonstrators did not adhere to virus safety rules, police would clear the area “very quickly”.
“We will not be able or willing to watch tens of thousands assemble and create infection risks,” she added.
[…]
A crowd including families with children gathered on Saturday morning around Brandenburg Gate, the starting point of the demonstration.
I’m not an extreme rightwing sympathiser. I’m here to defend our fundamental freedoms [to infect people], said Stefan, a 43-year-old Berlin resident wearing a T-shirt bearing the words thinking helps[is hard for me to do].
[…]
Several groups intend to stage counter-demonstrations to the main protest.
Anne Helm, an MP from the leftwing party Die Linke, said: “There must be no tolerance towards racists, antisemites, rightwing extremists and Nazis. That is why I call on all Berliners to take part in the counter-events.” [they forgot anti-vaxxers and covidiots –blf]
A refugee rescue vessel funded by British street artist Banksy said it was stranded and needed urgent help on Saturday after lending assistance to a boat in the Mediterranean that was carrying at least one dead migrant.
The German-flagged Louise Michel said it was overcrowded and unable to move after encountering another boat attempting to cross the expanse dividing Europe and Africa with 130 people on board.
“There is already one dead person on the boat. We need immediate assistance,” the crew of the 31-metre (101 feet) Louise Michel wrote on Twitter, saying other migrants had fuel burns and had been at sea for days.
[… They tweetinged:] “#LouiseMichel is unable to move, she is no longer the master of her manoeuver, due to her overcrowded deck and a liferaft deployed at her side, but above all due to Europe ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance. The responsible authorities remain unresponsive.” [… and:] “We repeat, #LouiseMichel is unable to safely move and nobody is coming to our aid. The people rescued have experienced extreme trauma, it’s time for them to be brought to a #PlaceOfSafety. We need immediate assistance.”
[… MSF-Sea, which is a joint operation between MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)) and Sea Watch, twitteringed:]
🔴The @MVLouiseMichel is urgently requesting assistance, on scene with a boat in distress.
They report ~130 men, women and children on board, in desperate need of rescue. They say that one person is already dead. #EU, this encroaching state of emergency is on your watch! https://t.co/7fSyVKNR36
[…]
Vesselfinder shows the Louise Michel has not moved. In @320, I said it was “underway” — which did puzzle me — but now realise I was confused by Vesselfinder saying the ship is “Under way”, ignoring its reported speed of “0 kn” (clearly not moving under its own propulsion). There is apparently one yacht nearby (but possibly moving away), and few-to-no other vessels in the area.
France reported 7,379 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, the most since lockdown, in what the health ministry described as an exponential surge just days before millions of children are due to return to school for the first time since March.
The daily tally was just shy of the record 7,578 high set on March 31, at the peak of an initial wave of COVID-19 infections that paralysed Europe. The surge has raised the possibility that the government could be forced to shut the country down again.
“We’re doing everything to avoid another lockdown, and in particular a nationwide lockdown,” President Emmanuel Macron told journalists earlier on Friday. He added it would be dangerous to rule out any scenario.
[…]
So far, the rapid increase in case numbers has yet to lead to a similar surge in hospitalisations or deaths. The ministry reported 20 new COVID-19 deaths on Friday, raising the cumulative total to 30,596. The number of people in hospital with the disease was unchanged at 4,535 and the number in intensive care rose by six to 387.
Authorities say the virus is now spreading among younger people who are less likely to show severe symptoms.
[…]
In the accompanying video, there is one eejit — a mayor of someplace in Alsace, which has introduced mandatory masks in some areas (and was very badly hit during the “first wave”) — complained about mandatory masks, claiming (my paraphrase from memory) I am opposed to making mask mandatory because they are not the most effective solution. Another it must be perfect or there’s no point to it eejit (like a certain commentator elsewhere (usually) here at poopyhead’s blog who prefers hair furor because Biden isn’t perfect (whose offense apparently is being the dummie’s candidate)). Geesh!
[…] There are 320 clusters under investigation, 31 more than the previous day. The percentage of positive tests is 3.9%.
French ministers admitted during a long press conference on Thursday that the August surge in Covid-19 infections could not be solely explained by an increase in testing, currently running at around 840,000 a week. The health authorities aim to reach 1m tests a week by the end of September.
Santé Publique France reported that “the dynamic of transmission is growing strongly and is very worrying”. There has been an increase in the number of infected people showing Covid-19 symptoms — as opposed to half being asymptomatic, as was reported the previous week. While all age groups are reportedly affected, the authorities say there is a continuing increase in cases among young adults, many of whom show no symptoms.
blfsays
Oh for fecks sake, the New York Post’s headline, Banksy’s rescue ship, packed with 219 migrants, flounders in Mediterranean. The article itself is broadly accurate, but neglects to mention just why the Louise Michel is unable to move (notfloundering in anything but the most pedantic sense) — a not-insignificant matter of a stranded dingy with c.130 people alongside. (The dingy was apparently floundering when originally sighted.)
When it comes to hypocrisy, bigotry and lack of a moral compass, the women in Trump’s inner circle are on an undeniably equal footing with the men
Binders full of fascist women… What’s the collective noun for a group of racist white women? I’m not sure, but I think it might be a Republican national convention (RNC). Nobody can accuse the four-day horror show, which wound up on Thursday, of skimping on female speakers. Everywhere you looked there were women — and most of them looked exactly the same. Same long bottle-blond hair; same makeup; same cold, dead look in the eyes.
The strategy behind all the women on stage was about as subtle as Kimberly Guilfoyle’s speaking style. (Or should I say: SHOUTING STYLE.) Donald Trump is doing badly with women in the polls; the RNC was his chance to remind us all that he is the greatest male feminist of our time. One by one Trump’s female advisers sang his praises and reflected on the Pussy Grabber in Chief’s gender-blind leadership.
Lara Trump, a campaign adviser, gushed over her father-in-law’s mentorship of women in the workplace. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, announced that she wanted her baby daughter to grow up in Trump’s America. Kellyanne Conway, who will be leaving the White House at the end of the month, claimed the president [sic] routinely elevates women. {Trump} respects our opinions, and insists that we are on equal footing with the men, she said.
Conway actually has a valuable point there. When it comes to hypocrisy, bigotry and the lack of a functioning moral compass, the women in Trump’s inner circle are on an undeniably equal footing with the men: the RNC made that crystal clear. Just to drum it home, however, here are five of the most terrifying performances by women from the convention.
5.Abby abortion has a smell Johnson:I know what abortion smells like, the anti-choice activist bellowed on Tuesday night; Johnson proceeded to use her primetime speaking spot to demonize the right to an abortion in a very graphic speech. Johnson’s extreme rhetoric was in keeping with her extremely bigoted views. […] Johnson also believes that husbands should have the final say over their wife’s vote. Her RNC speech was a chilling reminder of the war Trump will wage on women’s reproductive rights if he gets another four years.
4.Cissie Graham Lynch: Lynch, the granddaughter of the late Rev Billy Graham […] also used her speech to crusade against the right to an abortion. However, she also found time for some disgusting transphobia. Lynch referred to transgender girls as boys and stoked baseless fears that trans people are sexual predators who want access to bathrooms for nefarious purposes. […]
3.Melania Trump: What makes Melania so dangerous is the way so many (largely male) members of the press can’t help themselves from fawning over her. The first lady has one trait that her husband lacks: empathy, CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote after Melania’s speech on Tuesday. Are you kidding me? This is the woman who excused and echoed Trump’s racist birther theories about Barack Obama. This is the woman who went to visit children in cages while wearing a jacket emblazoned with I really don’t care, do you? There is nothing empathetic about Melania but she does help humanize Trump; she functions like Febreze for fascism.
FeBreze is “an American brand of household odor eliminators”.
2.The Honorable Ivanka Trump: Ivanka collects titles the same way other people collect tchotchkes [non-functional trinkets –blf]. One day she’s an entrepreneur and writer, the next day she’s adviser to the president [sic]. On Thursday she was, bizarrely, introduced as the Honorable. “The Hypocritical” would be rather more fitting. Like Melania, Ivanka is insidious because she softens and sanitizes the Trump administration; her faux feminism helps Trump mask his misogynistic agenda. […]
1.Nikki Haley:America is not a racist country, Haley declared on the opening night of the convention. She knows this, you see, because her parents were Sikh immigrants and her family faced discrimination and hardship[†]. Haley’s speech was very on-brand: throughout her career she has weaponized her identity to deny the existence of systemic oppression. She’s a valuable tool for white supremacists and misogynists — she helps launder their bigotry. […] Her RNC speech was filled with lies but, because she uttered them in an articulate way, pundits fell over themselves to praise her. The only thing more terrifying than four more years of Trump is a successor who is equally cruel but actually competent.
[…]
† That’s probably true, but it’s a “a valuable tool for white supremacists and misogynists” saying this, hence the eejit quotes.
🔴 UPDATE: The #SeaWatch4 is on site to support the #LouiseMichel.
The Italian Coast Guard has already taken 49 people — women and families with children — on board and left the scene making clear they are not taking more people on board.
BBC journalists among those whose accreditation is revoked before fresh protests against election results
Belarusian authorities have deported two Russian cameramen and withdrawn the accreditation of several foreign media journalists, including the BBC’s, in advance of fresh demonstrations challenging the results of the presidential election.
On Saturday the BBC’s press team said two journalists working for its Russian service in Minsk had had their press accreditation revoked “with immediate effect”.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this stifling of independent journalism. We call upon the Belarusian authorities to revoke this decision and allow our journalists to continue doing their jobs,” it tweeted.
“We believe it is vital for the people of Belarus to have access to impartial, independent information about events in their country.”
One BBC journalist to lose her accreditation is Tatyana Melnichuk.
She told Agence France-Presse: “The Belarusian foreign ministry called me and informed me that my accreditation and that of one of my colleagues as BBC correspondents had been cancelled. They demanded that I return my card.”
Belarusian government spokesman Anatoly Glaz said the decision was taken on the recommendation of the country’s counter-terrorism unit, AFP reported.
He did not specify how many journalists were affected by the measure, but foreign media including the BBC and Radio Liberty reported the withdrawal of accreditation of several of their journalists.
[…]
West German Broadcasting (WDR) […] said on Saturday their Russian employees were “on their way to Moscow” after being banned from Belarus for five years, while their producer was due to face trial on Monday.
WDR’s program director, Jörg Schönenborn, described the treatment of his team as “absolutely unacceptable”.
“This shows again that independent reporting in Belarus is becoming more and more difficult and almost impossible,” he said.
“As a public service broadcaster, however, we will not be intimidated and will do everything in our power to ensure that our journalists can continue to report critically and independently on the events, protests and demonstrations in Belarus.”
The Belarussian Association of Journalists has named the cameramen as Sergey Sergeyev and Mikhail Fomin and the producer as Ilya Kuzniatsou. […]
[… F]our Minsk-based correspondents were detained overnight and appeared in court on Friday, charged with organising illegal protests.
They included the photographer Alexander Vasukovich and Katsiaryna Andreyeva, a reporter with the independent Belsat TV channel.
Leading imam condemns violence after police battle more than 300 on streets of the city
[…]
More than 300 rioters threw stones at police and burned tyres in the southern Swedish city on Friday night after a video circulated of followers of the far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan burning a copy of the Qur’an near one of the city’s mosques.
[…]
Police in Malmö had vacillated for two weeks over whether to give Rasmus Paludan, the leader of Denmark’s extremist Hard Line party permission to hold an anti-Islamic protest. Permission was denied on Wednesday, Paludan was stopped in a car on Friday afternoon as he left the Öresund bridge, deported and banned from entering Sweden for two years.
But this did not stop his supporters from filming themselves burning one copy of the Qur’an, and kicking another around Malmö’s main square like a football, for which three of them were arrested on suspicion of hate crimes.
During the riot, Samir Muric, a prominent Malmö imam, paced up and down in the space between the police and the rioters, imploring the rioters to stop and accusing them of shaming their own religion. Muric, who was dressed in a jubbah, has also condemned the rioters on his Facebook page. “Those who are acting in this way have nothing to do with Islam,” he wrote. “Their shouts filled with ‘la ilaha ill Allah’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’, are just outbursts that they do not mean, because if they really meant them, they wouldn’t have acted like this.”
Among the spectators, it was clear that many of the Muslims and Arabs among them opposed the riot. “I don’t like this, because the Arabs, they’re fucking things up for our community here in Sweden, because one Danish man burned a Qur’an,” complained one man, who grew up in Malmö to Lebanese parents. “And this is what he wants. They want us to be like this. I’ve never seen this ever in my life. I’m shocked.”
[…]
Police officers tried to control the situation by explaining their earlier arrests. “The police did not give them {the far-right activists} permission to do anything,” one officer assured a small but angry crowd gathered around him. “We arrested him as soon as a film came out on the internet showing they had burnt a Qur’an, and we arrested several of the others.”
[…]
Thousands of protesters from across the UK gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square on Saturday afternoon to protest against coronavirus restrictions and reject mass vaccinations.
The event, which began at noon, drew a broad coalition including coronavirus sceptics, 5G conspiracy theorists and so-called “anti-vaxxers”.
I have no idea why the Grauniad used so-called and scare quotes. Actually, this is technically the Observer — the Sunday newspaper the Grauniad bought some years ago — and they are more conspiracy-prone and woo-woo friendly then the Grauniad. Dr Ben Goldacre used to snipe regularly at the Observer’s abysmal reporting on science- / medicine-related matters.
Carrying placards railing against the World Health Organization, Bill Gates and the government restrictions to reduce the spread of coronavirus, the demonstrators called for an end to movement restrictions and mandatory face coverings. Many placards described the coronavirus pandemic as a hoax or scam.
A PA system set up in front of Nelson’s Column broadcast speeches by a number of speakers, who denied the reality and severity of the pandemic and accused the government of attempting to curtail civil liberties.
Among those due to speak [… was] David Icke.
Although the demonstration focused on coronavirus restrictions, those taking part espoused anti-authoritarian [eh?] grievances ranging from the lockdown to the imprisonment of Julian Assange to claims of elite child sexual abuse. [And, I assume, reptilian lizard-people –blf]
[… blithering eejits…]
The image at the link shows rather what one would expect: No masks (at all, as far as I can see), and apparently quite poor social distancing. No confederate flags, albeit I presume that is an oversight. (No BLM either, probably not an oversight.)
blfsays
Chris Riddell in the Guardian, Donald Trump as Abraham Lincoln (cartoon): “Government of the Trumps, by the Trumps, for the Trumps, shall not perish from the Earth.”
Three of the tenants who appeared in a public housing clip that aired during the Republican National Convention have said they were never told that their interviews with a longtime Trump associate who oversees New York’s federal housing programs would be edited and used during the GOP convention.
“I am not a Trump supporter,” one of the tenants, Claudia Perez told The New York Times in an interview on Friday. “I am not a supporter of his racist policies on immigration. I am a first-generation Honduran. It was my people he was sending back.”
The revelation is the latest example of […] Trump’s willful exploitation of government resources to advance his chances at re-election.
In the video, the tenants spoke candidly about poor conditions in the housing authority’s buildings and appeared to praise Trump’s record on public housing while bashing Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Perez told the Times on Friday that while she stood by her criticism of the housing authority she was very upset about being misled to appear in a video that was later shown at the RNC.
Manny Martinez, another tenant, told the Times that his grievances about public housing were “not an endorsement of Trump.” […]
Carmen Quiñones, a self-described “lifelong Democrat” and tenant leader who took part in organizing participants for the video told the Times that she wished that she had been told beforehand that the clip would be used at the RNC. She said she plans to vote for her party’s nominee Joe Biden in November. […]
The public housing clip was not the first example of the Trump campaign’s deceiving participants for an event involving the federal government that was then used as a pro-Trump prop during the RNC. On Tuesday, the convention showed a video of naturalization ceremony where five people became American citizens. Several of those participants have said they had no knowledge of the fact that they were being filmed for a political event.
As head of the New York office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Patton is technically banned from leveraging her position as a government employee to engage in political activity under the Hatch Act. She told the Times that video was vetted and cleared for Hatch Act violations by the White House although Patton notably was found in violation of the Hatch Act in 2019.
[…] “He co-opted or the Republican National Committee co-opted the people’s house for their own political benefit,” Mary Trump told Politico in an interview that was published early Saturday.
Trump’s niece described the four-day affair which featured speeches and appearances from many of her own relatives “disturbing.”
Mary Trump called Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump’s speeches “hateful” and “mendacious,” respectively.
[…] Mary Trump told Politico that she found it particularly alarming that “almost every single participant” of Trump’s new brand in Washington featured at the convention was “willing to lie, and knew they were lying, and didn’t care that pretty much everything they said was a lie.” […]
When asked what she wants voters to know about her uncle as the November election approaches, Mary Trump said simply, “that he cares about nobody but himself. ”
She said that her uncle “has no loyalty to anybody. And that he will use anybody for his own purposes and lie to them about his motives.”
Trump’s response was predictable:
About the only way a person is able to write a book on me is if they agree that it will contain as much bad “stuff” as possible, much of which is lies. It’s like getting a job with CNN or MSDNC and saying that “President Trump is great.” You have ZERO chance. FAKE NEWS!
Even whether it’s dumb warmongers like John Bolton, social pretenders like Bob Woodward, who never has anything good to say, or an unstable niece, who was now rightfully shunned, scorned and mocked her entire life, and never even liked by her own very kind & caring grandfather!
Kind of weird for Trump to describe his own reportedly cold and ruthless father as “very king & caring.”
More from Mary Trump:
Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.
Not content that he had an opportunity to drone at America for roughly 27 hours on Thursday evening, Donald Trump went up to Londonderry, New Hampshire to arrange another super-spreader event on Friday night. In addition to explaining to the crowd how he does not talk about his ass, Trump went on to claim that Kamala Harris is “not competent” to be vice president.
Kamala Harris served seven years as a district attorney, seven more as state attorney general, and has been one of the leading figures in the Senate since her election in 2017. As the first woman of color nominated by either party, enthusiasm for her presence on the Democratic ticket hasn’t just been palpable, it’s been visible in the polls. Harris has higher favorability ratings among registered voters than Donald Trump and her nomination both helped unify the Democratic Party, as well as being met by approval by a majority of voters. There’s absolutely no doubt that Kamala Harris is qualified for vice-president—and for president.
But, as CNN reports, Trump sees a candidate of a decidedly different shade. “You know, I want to see the first woman president also,” claimed Trump, “but I don’t want to see a woman president get into that position the way she’d do it—and she’s not competent. She’s not competent. They’re all saying, ‘We want Ivanka.’ I don’t blame you.” What are Ivana junior’s qualifications other than her name? Well … she is blond.
Like the 1,500 people who besmirched the White House lawn on Thursday evening, the 500 who greeted him in New Hampshire were almost uniformly maskless. As The Washington Post reports, that includes a man wearing a shirt saying “Covid-19 just tested positive for fraud.” When organizers attempted to hand out masks and made an announcement encouraging people to wear then, they were booed. [OMFG]
Trump’s previous attacks on Kamala Harris have included claims that she was soft on crime when it was committed by Blacks or immigrants[…]
Kamala Harris has regularly demonstrated her competence in every role she’s held. She’s demonstrated it in California, and she’s demonstrated it in the Senate. Not only is she the sponsor or co-sponsor on some of most important bills of the last session, her incisive questioning of witnesses like vastly unqualified Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh showcased her insightful reasoning and ability to cut through bulls#it and get to the truth.
How racist was Trump’s statement? Racist enough that he recognized it as such. And how boring was his acceptance speech on Thursday? Boring enough that he knew not even his rally crowd would sit still for it. “If I did last night’s speech here, right now you would have all been walking out,” said Trump. “And if I did tonight’s speech there, I would have been criticized by being slightly radical.”
What makes Ivanka competent to be president? Well … […] she’s been practicing that soulless, adoring gaze for decades. [Photo at the link.]
[…] Trump is entrenched in lying about a new set of numbers—the television ratings for the Democratic and Republican conventions. The numbers are not really in doubt. The RNC lost. Mike Pence lost. Donald Trump lost. Not only did the DNC run up considerably larger numbers for the overall convention, Trump lost out to Biden on his acceptance speech, and Kamala Harris absolutely trounced Pence. A million more people watched Joe Biden deliver an emphatic, powerful acceptance speech than tuned in to hear Trump’s endless drone. Five million more viewers tuned in to hear Kamala Harris than Mike Pence. That’s a massive shellacking.
What’s a Trump to do? Lie, of course. Not only did Trump open up Saturday morning Twitter with claims that the TV viewership was higher for his convention, he went on to dismiss the actual TV ratings with claims that he won if you count digital views. Because Trump’s voters are known to be the kind of young, tech-savvy crowd that does their TV watching online. Not at all a bunch of older, rural voters whose Internet is barely sufficient to bring them the latest announcement from Q. Shocking no one, Fox News rushed to back Trump up—and also shocking no one … they also lied.
As NPR reports, across the four nights of the convention, Democrats notched 86.3 million viewers while Republicans drew only 77.5 million. But according to Fox News, that number is nothing, because the Republican convention drew a staggering 147.9 views when you add in those watching online, while the DNC convention had a mere 122 million.
So … game, set, and match to Trump! Except. Hmm. Let’s look just a wee bit more closely. Where did Fox get that massive number—a number that says an amazing 70 million people were streaming the Republican convention? Twice the number of those who streamed the DNC? Well…
The Republican National Convention brought in 147.9 million total views across television and online between Monday and the end of Thursday night’s programming, according to a senior campaign official.
The report that half of all Republicans are streaming demons was a self-reported claim, made after it was clear that the television ratings for the Republicans were much lower than those for the DNC. Trump is citing Fox as proof. Fox is citing Trump as proof. And if there was any justice in the world they would both disappear in a puff of circular logic.
The truth is that Trump is obsessive about the actual TV ratings. […] And this time those ratings showed that his convention came in a sorry second, despite damaging a national monument, turning the White House into an advertising billboard, and blasting fireworks over the Washington Monument.
So of course Trump has to lie about it. Especially to himself. Because this has to be just breaking his little heart.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe notified Congress this week that the intelligence community will be scaling back in-person congressional briefings, and instead replacing them with written updates on election security.
The top intelligence official argued that this process will better protect the authorized disclosure of sensitive information. […]
“[T]he ODNI will primarily meet its obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed leading into the Presidential election through written finished intelligence products,” the letters read, according to a copy obtained by The Hill.
“I believe this approach helps ensure, to the maximum extent possible, that the information ODNI provides the Congress in support of your oversight responsibilities on elections security, foreign malign influence, and election interference is not misunderstood nor politicized. It will also better protect our sources and methods and most sensitive intelligence from additional unauthorized disclosures or misuse.” […]
“This is a shocking abdication of its lawful responsibility to keep the Congress currently informed, and a betrayal of the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy. This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement.
Both Pelosi and Schiff threatened that they will “consider the full range of tools available to the House to compel compliance” if ODNI does not resume briefings, claiming it a “shameful” attempt by the Trump administration to “withhold election-related information from Congress and the American people at the precise moment that greater transparency and accountability is required.” […]
No one in Congress will be allowed to question Trump’s lickspittles.
Chadwick came to the White House to work with kids when he was playing Jackie Robinson. You could tell right away that he was blessed. To be young, gifted, and Black; to use that power to give them heroes to look up to; to do it all while in pain – what a use of his years.
From Wonkette: “New Hampshire ‘Macho Man’ Trumpist Casually Suggests Reporter Watch Out For Bombs.”
A news team from ABC7 Boston was accosted last night at a Trump rally in New Hampshire by a man who seemed to purposely attempt to confront them as “Macho Man” by the Village People was playing, in order to have the appropriate theme music for his rant.
He began by asking the reporters if they had heard about “what happened to Rand Paul” and if they would like it if that happened to them. Given that this terrible thing that happened to Rand Paul was that he walked to his hotel room, surrounded by police as protesters yelled at him a bunch, that would be at best a mild inconvenience for most people. If this guy really wants to see something, he should volunteer as a clinic escort at his local Planned Parenthood.
You guys know what happened to Rand Paul last night? How would you like that to happen to you? We’re Americans, too. Our lives matter don’t we? Even though we’re white. Yeah, you can act like you’ve got someone to text but you’re really just a [P-word].
Good god, so much of this shit boils down to a fear of not being special. Like, yes, obviously this guy is racist and poorly informed, but just like so many of them, he plainly demonstrates that his big fear is not mattering himself. Not being “special.” And truth be told, that’s how Donald Trump reels these people in. By telling them they are special and loved and important.
The Macho Man then demanded to know how reporter Alex DiPrato slept at night after “lying to the people,” and was ignored. He proceeded to get very upset about being ignored and demanded to know who the news team were talking to on their phones and if it was Joe Biden. Then he went away for a moment and came back talking about how “what goes around comes around,” saying “Someone’s going to bomb you. Maybe tonight.”
This is a threat, obviously, and yet he had absolutely no problem saying it out loud to a news team that he was well aware was recording him. You can see him looking into the camera, making sure his face was right there for all to see. He wanted it known that he said this. He thought it was okay to say this and that it couldn’t possibly ever lead to any kind of charges being filed against him. […]
He thinks that people chanting at Rand Paul is the worst thing that could practically ever happen to a person, and a moment later he issues bomb threats. And sees absolutely nothing wrong with it. It’s okay for him to threaten to bomb people, it is not okay for people he feels are beneath him to yell at Rand Paul. That’s what America’s hierarchy was supposed to be for. He’s not scared for Rand Paul’s safety, he’s scared of living in a world where these are not the rules.
From Wonkette: “Militia Member Ominously Warns Modesto’s Straight Pride Event Won’t Be ‘Family Friendly.”
Today, a bunch of bigoted imbeciles in Modesto, California are hosting a “Straight Pride Event” for the second year in a row. You may recall that last year, dopes all over tried to make Straight Pride Parades a thing — the Boston one was even grand marshal’d by Milo Yiannopoulos. […]
rather than the throngs of healthy, good looking, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed specimens of the master race they had hoped to get, those who actually showed up were largely, uh, these guys. Green-skinned clowns. One of whom carried with him a pillow featuring the likeness of YouTuber Sargon of Akaad.
But the organizers in Modesto — who created the original straight pride event (which last year drew an impressive crowd of nearly 20 people) — have decided to soldier on regardless and are holding their event today anyway. Outside of a Planned Parenthood, because of course.
The event was primarily the doing of former Operation Rescue member Don Grundmann, of the California Straight Pride Coalition. You may recall Grundmann from the time when he referred to the “Coalition” as a “totally peaceful, racist group” at a city meeting. […]
at that time, the Facebook page for the California Straight Pride Coalition affirmed that it believed in white supremacy. […]
Western Civilization ( ” the West is the Best ” ) – the Christian religion based social, cultural, and national cornerstone upon which the mass majority of all progress of humanity; i.e.; the modern world; has been built;
Whiteness/Caucasian – the mass majority biological racial component of the developers of western civilization;
Christianity – the religious foundation of the formation, development, and advancement of Western Civilization;
Nationalism – the patriotic love of their nation and its interests, principles, and future that motivated the formulators of and in the development of Western Civilization.
Grundmann will be joined again this year by last year’s co-organizer, Mylinda Mason of the Stanislaus County Republican Assembly, known for spreading a variety of far-right nonsense including QAnon, anti-vaxx and white supremacist views. So that’s nice.
What’s different this year? […] a new player is in town — Jeyna Marie of the Central Valley Militia. Because yes, women can lead far-right paramilitary organizations, too. […]
Jeyna Marie has direct ties to the Proud Boys and also appears to be a very big fan of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who shot three people, killing two, at the protests in Kenosha this week. […]
She has warned that her militia will be there and that “this will not be a family friendly event.” Which is quite interesting for an event purporting to celebrate the glory of heterosexuality.
Open letter to ANTIFA:
Last night, a few of your armed comrades got rolled by a 17 year old kid. One of them looked down and saw his buddy missing most of his face and screamed for the police, the same ones you want to defund. Another kneeled and cried as he looked down at the hole where his bicep use to be. The other laid on the ground with a gaping hole in his chest, bleeding out thinking “maybe I shouldn’t have hit that guy with my skateboard”. […]
Just stop. It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you. Go back to your mom’s house, throw your Black Lives Matter shirt in the trash, give your mom her eyeliner back and go look for a job. Contribute to society and pay your mom some rent while you’re at it. This anarchy stuff ain’t for you. Just stop before the real men come out to play….
This is a person who seems pretty excited by violence. She clearly has some fantasies about going to a protest and killing some people and thinks that is a great thing for people to do. She’s starting a militia. According to her Facebook page, she believes she is fighting a war against pedophiles and child sex trafficking. […]
What’s the collective noun for a group of racist white women?
A Chardonnay?
ravensays
Xpost patheos
1 person is dead after a shooting during protests in downtown Portland
By Hollie Silverman and Alta Spells, CNN
Updated 2:27 AM ET, Sun August 30, 2020
Earlier in the night, police tweeted that there had been “some instances of violence between demonstrators and counterdemonstrators,” as a political rally caravanned through downtown Portland.
Police said they are not releasing suspect information at this time and are asking anyone who was a witness or has first-hand video of the shooting to contact investigators. The area has been secured as a crime scene and investigators are asking people to avoid it.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, there is now another one dead at a protest.
This is in Portland.
Details are scarce since this just happened.
It happened right during a Trump rally though
If the Portland police are true to form, there were dozens of witnesses, and…they will never arrest anyone for this.
ravensays
Portland Mercury:
In photos of the scene viewed by the Mercury, the deceased man is seen with a “Thin Blue Line” patch on his shorts and wearing a hat emblazoned with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in Vancouver. The group has a history of organizing demonstrations in downtown Portland that often turn violent.
It appears it was one of theirs.
A Proud toddler no less, a right wingnut.
Details are scarce but I’m not going to do a fundie xian here.
This is definitely not good
As a general statement, it is OK to protest, it is not OK to llik people.
ravensays
more
Oregonlive.com
Asked what sort of planning Portland police did in preparation for Saturday’s dueling rallies, which were easily identified to contain elements typical of events that end in violence, a bureau spokesman said it does not “discuss our tactical plans publicly.”
The Portland police don’t discuss their tactical plans because…they don’t have any.
When you have opposing sides and one or both are heavily armed, violence and death are inevitable.
We knew that months ago in Charlotte, NC, when that Nazi ran over and killed a woman.
The Portland police have a long history of tolerating and supporting right wing thugs.
That is what they sowed, and one guy dead so far is what they reap.
I’m still waiting for the logical conclusion to this cycle of violence. The mass shooting in public.
One of these heavily armed militia types is going to just empty their clip into the crowd one of these nights.
Vessel suddenly caught fire as Italian naval ship was in the process of taking people onboard
A boat carrying dozens of refugees has burst into flames off the coast of southern Italy as its passengers were being transferred to Italian naval vessels to take them to port.
Between five and seven people are believed to be missing. Six people are in hospital with serious burns injuries, including two Italian officials who were taking the people off the boat.
The vessel was approached by an Italian naval ship that was in the process of taking migrants onboard and, according to preliminary reports, suddenly caught fire, most likely because of a fuel leakage, then exploded. The number of victims is still uncertain.
[…]
A reconnaissance plane is searching for survivors at sea.
Meanwhile, a boat with 450 migrants onboard was rescued by the Italian coastguard off the island of Lampedusa as it risked capsizing in strong winds.
In the last 24 hours, a further 500 migrants have arrived at Lampedusa on small boats, causing a backlash among a portion of the local population.
[…]
On Saturday, the UN refugee agency urged European nations to let in hundreds of people rescued from the Mediterranean by humanitarian boats, including one vessel financed by the British street artist Banksy.
The UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said more than 200 rescued refugees needed to get off the nonprofit search-and-rescue ship Louise Michel immediately, saying it was far beyond its safe capacity.
The plea from UNHCR and IOM also mentioned hundreds of migrants on two other charity ships in urgent need of safe harbour.
[…]
By late Saturday night, all passengers on the Louise Michel had been transferred to the SeaWatch4, which was left with about 350 people onboard. It was looking for a safe seaport to disembark the passengers.
[…]
In @334 I was wondering what the Sea Watch&4 could do. It is a larger ship than the Louise Michel, and I presume the respective crews decided it could accommodate the c.150 on the Louise Michel (or mostly, in fact, in its lifeboats, deployed simply because there wasn’t room on the Louise Michel itself).
[…]
Rival efforts are under way to launch a Fox News-style opinionated current affairs TV station in Britain to counter the BBC.
One group is promising a news channel distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents and has already been awarded a licence to broadcast by the media regulator, Ofcom, under the name GB News. Its founder has said the BBC is a disgrace that is bad for Britain on so many levels and needs to be broken up.
A rival project is being devised in the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire [News UK] by the former Fox News executive David Rhodes, although it is unclear whether it will result in a traditional TV channel or be online-only.
Both are pitching to a perceived gap in the market for opinionated video output fuelled by growing distrust of the BBC among some parts of its audience, especially on the political right […]
[…]
GB News is the work of a company called All Perspectives, controlled by two British-American executives who are associated with the US billionaire John Malone. Known as the “cable cowboy”, Malone chairs Liberty Global, the owner of Virgin Media, as well as the parent company of the Discovery television network.
Andrew Cole, one of the co-founders of GB News, also sits on the board of Liberty Global. He told the Guardian he hoped to be able to discuss the project in September, but he has previously made clear his views on the broadcasting landscape.
He told his LinkedIn followers that the BBC was possibly the most biased propaganda machine in the world […]
[…]
One of the great unknowns of any such project is the role of Nigel Farage. The former Ukip leader left LBC amid staff anger over his comments on migrants crossing the Channel, but he has the potential to deliver a ready-made anti-BBC, pro-Brexit audience. He has recently appeared on the Sun’s YouTube channel and TalkRadio, both owned by News UK.
Well this is weird. “Acting DHS Secretary Denies Knowing WH Naturalization Ceremony Would Air During RNC.” Really?
Acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf […] denied knowing that the Trump administration’s naturalization ceremony would later air as part of the Republican National Convention […] one of several incidents that violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive government officials from participating in political activity while on duty.
When pressed during an interview on ABC News on whether he knew that the naturalization ceremony would be broadcasted in the RNC, Wolf first dodged the question as he insisted that the DHS conducts “hundreds, if not, thousands” of naturalization ceremonies annually.
[…] Karl then circled back to his initial question about whether Wolf knew that he was taking part in a ceremony that it was going to be used during the RNC.
Wolf responded by denying that he had knowledge of it being part of the RNC’s broadcast, before reiterating that the Trump administration will continue holding naturalization ceremonies.
“No,” Wolf said. “What I knew is again, participating in a naturalization ceremony, we had a number of USCIS employees there, as they do every naturalization ceremony, making sure that that ceremony goes off without a hitch. They were giving that oath of allegiance to those individuals there. And again, we’ll continue to do that, because that’s our mission at the department.”
Wolf’s remarks come on the heels of the Wall Street Journal’s report that two of the five immigrants who were part of the naturalization ceremony at the White House found out only minutes before the ceremony that President Trump would attend the event, and that they were unaware that it would be aired during the RNC.
On Wednesday morning, a White House official told TPM in an emailed statement that “there was no violation of law” because “the White House publicized the content of the event on a public website this afternoon and the campaign decided to use the publicly available content for campaign purposes.”
This is a disingenuous excuse: “the White House publicized the content of the event on a public website this afternoon and the campaign decided to use the publicly available content for campaign purposes.”
I have not attended a naturalization ceremony, but have seen a few clips on the TV once and while. So why were there only 5 people in the ceremony that Trump attended at the WH? How many naturalization ceremonies have been held at the WH, in this maladministration and others?
I suspect that they picked these five because of the various countries that they came from, and more importantly with only 5 Trump got to stand out in a not so big crowd.
———————
So, he didn’t know what the cameras were for.
And, he, himself, personally ALWAYS oversees all the naturalization ceremonies.
And, he, himself, personally ALWAYS holds all naturalization ceremonies off hours.
And, he, himself, personally ALWAYS holds naturalization ceremonies at the White House.
With the President.
Next to him.
Yeah, his story checks out.
————————–
Chad Wolf is too stupid to hold such a position of responsibility in the government of the USA if I was unaware he was a cast member in a propaganda video
————————
Trump loves appointing borderline incompetents to important positions, bypassing the traditional Senate confirmation process, because it makes those people beholden to him, and him alone. These are people who in a normal Administration wouldn’t get anywhere close to Cabinet level positions.
A principled resignation is in order, but that would presume he had principles, something Wolf has already proven he lacks.
Country scraps need for employers’ permission before changing jobs, minimum wage set at 1,000 Qatari riyals.
Qatar has scrapped a rule requiring employers’ consent to change jobs and said it will also implement a basic monthly minimum wage of 1,000 Qatari riyals ($274).
Sunday’s landmark announcement by the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs (MADLSA) is the latest in a series of labour reforms by the country whose treatment of migrant workers and its human rights record have been under the spotlight since it was awarded the hosting of football’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Under Qatar’s “kafala” (Arabic word for sponsorship) system, migrant workers needed to obtain their employer’s permission — a no-objection certificate (NOC) — before changing jobs, a law that rights activists said tied their presence in the country to their employers and led to abuse and exploitation.
With the announcement, migrant workers can now change jobs before the end of their contract subject to a notice period.
[…]
In addition to the minimum wage, the ministry has also announced the provision of 500 riyals ($137) for accommodation and 300 riyals ($82.2) for food if those expenses are not provided as part of the contract.
The new laws have been welcomed by the International Labour Organization (ILO) which described the announcement as a “huge milestone in labour reform agenda for the state of Qatar”.
“The NOC was the last problematic part of the kafala system, this power imbalance that was created between an employee and the sponsor will no longer be there,” Houtan Homayounpour, head of the ILO project office for Qatar, told Al Jazeera.
The police union released its version of events. In a more humane world, it’d be a confession.
[…] the Kenosha police union has come to the defense of the officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back last weekend in front of his young children. The union presents its version of events as exculpatory, but by any standards beyond those of a police-supremacist status quo it would be a damning confession of attempted murder.
In a statement released on Friday, the Kenosha Professional Police Association argued that officers drew their guns because Blake was allegedly armed with a knife, had “actively resisted the officers’ attempt to gain compliance,” and remained unaffected by their Tasers. “As the uncontested facts above demonstrate, the officers involved gave Mr. Blake numerous opportunities to comply,” Brendan Matthews, an attorney for the union, wrote in the statement, seemingly attempting to blame Blake for the outcome. “He chose not to.”
These claims are not actually uncontested. Attorneys for Blake say he did nothing to provoke the police, and Raysean White, a witness who filmed the encounter with a cellphone, said he heard officers yelling about a knife but did not see one in Blake’s hands. […] Rusten Sheskey and another officer, who both appear to be white, can be seen following behind Blake, who is Black. Their guns are drawn as Blake walks toward a parked SUV. Sheskey grabs Blake’s shirt from behind and shoots him repeatedly in the back as Blake leans into the driver’s side door, his three children in the backseat. (A second video from another witness shows Blake on the ground scuffling with police prior to the shooting, but it’s blurry and hard to make anything out.) State investigators say they found a knife on the floor of the car.
Even if Blake had resisted officers and did have a knife in his possession somewhere, that shouldn’t be a justification for offloading seven rounds into his back as he was walking away from them toward his kids. The fact that police officers in Kenosha think this is a an excuse is a reminder of how twisted our system of accountability and justice is. […], officers have regularly gotten away with shooting people who were unarmed—some were sleeping in a car or sleeping at home on a couch—because laws in most states allow cops to use deadly force if they can come up with a reason for why they thought a person in their vicinity might harm them, even if they were wrong and the person posed no real threat.
Blake is now recovering in a Milwaukee hospital, paralyzed from the waist down. Attorneys for his family say he had been trying to break up a domestic disturbance between two women when the police arrived, and that the officers were the aggressors. […]
“Based on the inability to gain compliance and control after using verbal, physical and less-lethal means, the officers drew their firearms,” Matthews concluded. “Mr. Blake continued to ignore the officers’ commands, even with the threat of lethal force now present.”
We know this playbook well by now. After police shootings, it’s all too typical for officers to try to smear the victim by pointing to an alleged criminal history or coming up with reasons why officers feared for their safety. The laws are often written to make it easy for prosecutors to listen to the cops’ side of the story. But ultimately the cops’ argument is straightforward. Matthews’ final bullet point all but says it: Blake did not cooperate, and thus deserved to die.
Trump’s response to the shooting in Portland was all too predictable.
Denouncing Black Lives Matter protesters as “agitators and thugs,” […] Trump on Sunday called for a federal crackdown on demonstrations in cities like Washington, D.C., and Portland, Ore., where a man died after tensions between pro-Trump and liberal groups burst into violence.
Starting before 6 a.m., Trump let loose a barrage of nearly 90 tweets and retweets touting his chances for reelection, attacking Democratic state and local officials over ongoing protests and defending aggressive actions by his supporters in Portland, who appeared to be firing paintballs and pepper spray at onlookers from pickup trucks as they drove through the city streets Saturday night.
“The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing,” Trump tweeted […]
“The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!” Trump wrote.
Soon after, Trump responded to a video from Saturday that appeared to show a cavalcade of hundreds of vehicles bearing pro-Trump signs and flags driving toward downtown Portland, writing: “GREAT PATRIOTS!”
In response to a video that seemed to show BLM protesters confronting a motorist in D.C., Trump tweeted Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) should “Clean up D.C. or the Federal Government will do it for you. Enough!!!”
He ended his string of tweets just after 8 a.m. with a call for “LAW & ORDER!!!”
Trump’s frenzied effort to discredit BLM protesters and Democratic leaders came as he prepares to travel on Tuesday to Kenosha, Wis., where Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was left paralyzed a week ago after a police officer shot him in the back.
Trump is clearly inciting violence. He should not travel to Kenosha.
Kate Bedingfield, deputy campaign manager for Joe Biden, said Sunday morning that Trump has incited violence as further protests against police brutality sweep the country.
“He has encouraged his supporters to go out, to be aggressive,” she said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It is better for this president if there is more anarchy, more violence, more chaos. He has at every opportunity tried to fan the flames here. And that is the reason we are living in Donald Trump’s America.” […]
Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), a co-chair of Biden’s presidential campaign and former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Trump has to “own this moment.”
Meadows “said President Trump is on the side of law enforcement. Well, the question becomes: Who is on the side of justice? Who is on the side of constitutional policing? It’s not about law enforcement or protesters. It’s about making sure that police are held accountable when they violate people’s constitutional rights, when they shoot unarmed Black people,” Richmond told “Meet the Press.” […]
Our correspondent on how a nation trying to live at arm’s length to its own government finally decided to take action
[…]
I arrived in Minsk on 11 August, two days after Lukashenko declared victory in elections with an implausible 80% of the vote. The protests that followed had been ruthlessly suppressed, and on the evening I showed up, riot police in balaclavas were pulling people out of their cars at random and beating them up.
[…]
My first day in Minsk was also challenging because the authorities had completely shut down internet access across the country. Using a medley of VPNs, I could just about check my email on my apartment wifi, but nothing else, and mobile internet did not work at all. It was a reminder of what being a journalist in the pre-internet era must have been like, with the difference that now all the readers abroad had access to Twitter and breaking news; it was only we on the ground who had no idea what was happening outside.
After the initial post-election violence, things calmed down, but there was always menace in the background. Columns of army trucks, the shields of the riot troops packed inside bulging against the tarpaulin, were regularly on the move throughout town. Vans with darkened windows and no plates could often be seen lurking on street corners, men in balaclavas sitting in the front seats; I’ll never look at a Ford Transit in the same way again.
One night I came home to find two police in full riot gear waiting outside my apartment block’s entrance. They were probably not for me, but, not wanting to begin a discussion, I walked swiftly past and imposed on a friend for the night.
Heavy-set plain-clothed observers, known locally as tikhari (something like “creepers”), were ubiquitous. At protests, they walked by, ostentatiously filming everyone in attendance on camcorders. It was always possible to tell if Lukashenko was in the vicinity by the sudden increase in their numbers. At a speech he gave in the main square one Sunday, it seemed like half the crowd were wearing earpieces.
This sinister system had always been lurking underneath the surface of what is otherwise a pleasant, laid-back and friendly country. Everyone in Belarus knew what kind of government they had, but many felt they could live a decent life parallel to the state rather than in opposition to it — a mode of living that was known as “internal emigration” in Soviet times.
[…]
It’s not only the “creative class” of young professionals who are protesting. It’s all kinds of people who just a few years ago might have been pro-Lukashenko: factory workers, rural grandmothers and even some state employees. Early on in my trip, I mentioned I was a journalist to a middle-aged cashier in a shop, whom I had presumed was bound to be a Lukashenko fan. “What do you think, are we going to win? Are we finally going to kick that bastard out?” was her reply, to my surprise.
Lukashenko, living in a coddled information bubble surrounded by sycophants, has appeared genuinely surprised by the scale of the discontent. His PR team has wheeled out the same tropes the Kremlin used successfully in Ukraine six years ago, about neo-Nazi radicals trying to bring chaos and sow discord with Russia.
[…] As one person put it to me: “You send men in balaclavas to pick us off the streets, imprison us and beat us up, and we’re the fascists here?”
[…]
Making his celebrated return from exile in April 1917 to take up the reins of the Russian revolution, Vladimir Lenin caught a ferry to Sweden from Sassnitz, a small Baltic coastal town in north-east Germany, before taking the train to Finland station in Petrograd, the city that became Leningrad and is now St Petersburg. Sassnitz’s moment in the historical spotlight was fleeting. Now, thanks to Donald Trump’s blundering buddies, it’s back there again.
A trio of Republican senators — Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Ron Johnson — are threatening to wreak terrible punishment on Sassnitz, its elected officials and residents who make their living from the port. Luckily, Trump’s three stooges seem unaware of Sassnitz’s role in propelling the Bolshevik leader to power. Their beef concerns its present-day dealings with Russia and the almost-completed Nord Stream 2 Baltic pipeline project.
In an extraordinarily high-handed letter this month, the senators claimed the pipeline, which will import Russian natural gas to Europe via Germany, posed a grave threat to US security. If Sassnitz did not immediately halt its involvement, it would incur crushing legal and economic sanctions that could prove fatal to the region’s economy, they decreed. Sassnitz companies, shareholders and employees would face US government-ordered asset freezes and travel bans similar to North Korea and Iran.
[…]
The reaction in Sassnitz and beyond is predictably furious. The Americans are accused of treating Germany more like an enemy, or a colony, than an ally. Foreign minister Heiko Maas said such behaviour reflected basic “disrespect” for European rights and sovereignty. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, expressed “deep concern at the growing use of sanctions, or threat of sanctions, by the US against European companies and interests”.
[…]
America’s increasing resort to bullying and intimidation of old friends in place of reasoned persuasion was highlighted by another showdown last week, over Iran. US secondary sanctions have hurt European companies trading with Tehran but have failed, so far, to break the joint German-French-UK commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal jettisoned by Trump. So when the US sought to reimpose sanctions on Iran at the UN, it was roundly rebuffed.
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo reacted with a classic Trumpian tantrum. Europe was siding with the ayatollahs, he snarled. Kelly Craft, US ambassador to the UN, was every bit as offensive, absurdly accusing America’s most steadfast allies of standing in the company of terrorists. The fact Trump’s Iran policy has demonstrably backfired, pushing the Middle East closer to war, and Iran closer to a nuclear weapon, does not seem to matter.
[…] Despite its desire to save Europe from the Russians (and sell it expensive gas from Cruz’s home state of Texas instead), Trumpland has shown a dismaying lack of concern over the plight of Alexei Navalny, the poisoned Russian opposition activist.
Be it the conflicts in Ukraine, Syria and Libya, or the uprising in Belarus, hands-off Trump has gone out of his way to avoid upsetting Russian president Vladimir Putin, to whom he seems in thrall. These are important matters affecting Europe’s security, prosperity and principles, yet scant solidarity, and often the exact opposite, is what it has come to expect from Trump’s America.
What to do? EU leaders can hope Joe Biden wins in November. But what if Trump triumphs again? Europe can expect more sanctions, selfish stupidity and brutishness where US foreign policy used to be. It would face a second-term president [sic] hostile to Germany in particular, contemptuous of the EU in general, and free to indulge his destructive instincts to the full. Nato and the transatlantic alliance might finally implode under the strain.
Biden’s campaign personnel are fact-checking Trump’s lickspittles.
Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield on Sunday fact-checked Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump’s assertion that the Democratic presidential nominee failed to condemn the violence that erupted during protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death soon enough.
During an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump was asked whether the President’s re-election campaign thinks that this violence in the streets plays to the President’s political advantage.
After acknowledging “that is never something that any of us would want to see happen,” Lara Trump claimed that Biden took three months to condemn the unrests happening at protests.
“I think, unfortunately, what’s really bad, specifically for Joe Biden and the Biden campaign because — Chris, you might remember that it took him about three months to finally come out and condemn this violence and say that people should stop doing it,” Trump said. […]
“I think it’s probably because he knows that that is his base and he doesn’t want to upset these people,” Trump said.
Right after Trump’s interview aired, Bedingfield was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday” as well where she initially bypassed anchor Chris Wallace’s question on Biden’s upcoming campaign trip and proceeded to fact-check Lara Trump’s claim instead.
“First of all, she said that Vice President Biden did not quickly condemn the violence around these protests — that’s absolutely not true,” Bedingfield said. “He came out right after George Floyd was killed back in May and said there’s no place for violence. He said it forcefully again this week. So that’s simply not true.”
Bedingfield added that “a President’s words matter” before criticizing Donald Trump for getting the country into a “state of chaos” due to his failure on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In late May during protests in the wake of Floyd’s death, Biden issued a statement saying that although protesting police brutality is “right and necessary,” the unrest that ensued such as “burning down communities and needless destruction is not.”
“Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not,” Biden wrote. “The act of protesting should never be allowed to overshadow the reason we protest. It should not drive people away from the just cause that protest is meant to advance.” […]
[…] according to the University of Alabama System dashboard, more than 1,000 students have now tested positive for COVID-19 since classes resumed. How long have classes been in session? Less than two weeks. […]
A New York Times report reveals that the Justice Department limited the scope of its investigation and neglected to inform the FBI.
Former longtime intelligence officials saw […] Trump’s extensive history of financial dealings with Russia as such a possible national security threat, they thought it warranted a sweeping investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election.
[…] from the start of the investigation, the Justice Department narrowed the inquiry to a criminal investigation into whether the Trump campaign associates broke laws in connection to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. What’s more, it did not tell the the FBI about the investigation, “all but ensuring it would go nowhere,” writes Michael S. Schmidt in his upcoming book, Donald Trump v. the United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein determined that the FBI didn’t have enough evidence to warrant a sweeping investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia. Rosenstein also thought the intelligence agency’s director, Andrew McCabe, who approved the inquiry, had conflicts of interest. As Schmidt writes:
Mr. Rosenstein never told Mr. McCabe about his decision, leaving the F.B.I. with the impression that the special counsel would take on the investigation into the president as part of his broader duties. Mr. McCabe said in an interview that had he known Mr. Mueller would not continue the inquiry, he would have had the F.B.I. perform it.
“We opened this case in May 2017 because we had information that indicated a national security threat might exist, specifically a counterintelligence threat involving the president and Russia,” Mr. McCabe said. “I expected that issue and issues related to it would be fully examined by the special counsel team. If a decision was made not to investigate those issues, I am surprised and disappointed. I was not aware of that.”
FBI officials had questioned whether Russia had influence on the president, so much so that Trump fired former director James Comey to derail any further investigation. The revelation that the Justice Department never explored Trump’s personal and financial ties to Russia, and neither did the FBI, raises significant questions leading up to the 2020 election. As Schmidt noted:
Mr. Trump has sought to build a Trump Tower in Moscow for at least two decades, including during the campaign. His son Eric once said the Trump Organization relied on Russia for “all the funding we need” to purchase several golf courses in the United States. And the Senate report this month revealed the allegations of Mr. Trump’s potentially compromising encounters with women in Moscow in 1996 and 2013.
In May 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller launched his investigation into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government” and the Trump campaign, but later told Congress he had not conducted a counterintelligence investigation. Rosenstein reportedly told Mueller that if he wanted to expand the investigation, he had to ask for additional resources. Mueller, in turn, built a staff “to investigate crimes, not threats to national security,” Schmidt reported. A Republican-led Senate intelligence report concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win, a determination also made by Trump’s own intelligence agency (whom he has frequently attacked), though both reports found there hadn’t been a coordinated conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
What’s more, the Senate report determined that Trump’s campaign advisers had extensive contact with people tied to the Russian government, including one associate whom the report called a “Russian intelligence officer.”
In short, Rosenstein’s decision to not go forward with a counterintelligence inquiry, and instead prematurely narrow the inquiry’s scope to possible crimes, limited what the public could know about its president—ahead of yet another election.
From Wonkette: “Trump Retweets Covidiot’s Bizarre Claim That ‘Only 6%’ Of COVID-19 Deaths Are Real”
Experts have been clear from the beginning — people over 70 or with underlying health conditions are at most risk of dying from COVID-19. That is why many of us who were able to do so went and stayed with our parents so that we could go grocery shopping for them and limit their exposure. It’s why grocery stores implemented special hours for seniors to do their grocery shopping. Lists of conditions that might make one less likely to survive COVID-19 were widely disseminated.
All of this has been known since the beginning.
But now we’ve got a bunch of Covidiots going around spreading a lie that the CDC “quietly updated” their site to show that we’ve actually only had around 9,000 deaths from COVID-19, rather than the 186,000 being reported.
This one was retweeted by Donald Trump. And by 48,000 other people.
This week the CDC quietly updated the Cover number to admit that only 6% of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from Covid. That’s 9,210 deaths. The other 94% had 2-3 other serious illnesses & the overwhelming majority were of a very advanced age.
[…] The reference was to this:
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.
It’s true. People with certain underlying conditions are more likely to die of COVID-19. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t die of COVID-19.
[…] But back to these “facts.”
The “quietly updated their numbers” thing? That’s not really quite as “sneaky” as this person is making it out to be. One would assume that if this were something they were trying to hide from the public, it wouldn’t be on their website to begin with. Were they supposed to do it loudly? Were they supposed to put out a press release?
It probably didn’t even occur to the CDC that anyone would jump to this conclusion upon seeing those statistics. Largely because, again, they were very clear, from the beginning, that the people most at risk of dying from COVID-19 were people with underlying conditions.
They even made a video about it back in May! [video available at the link]
The narrative these people are trying to push is that these people died of other things and just happened to have COVID-19 in their system at the time. That’s not what a comorbidity means. If you have diabetes or heart disease and you die of COVID-19, you are still dying of COVID-19 Thirty-seven percent of the country either has “underlying conditions” that could make COVID-19 more severe or is over the age of 65.
And hell, those are just the people who know they have underlying conditions. We’re not counting all of the people who may have underlying conditions but don’t know because they can’t afford to go see a doctor.
They want to frame it like “Oh well, all of those people were going to die anyway!” […] We are all going to die someday. And all of those people very likely died a whole lot sooner than they would have had they not gotten COVID-19. It’s not that they don’t understand this, but that they actually just really don’t care about other people and want to be able to get back to their normal lives and for the rest of us to not think they are jerks for doing so.
It’s getting to the point where it’s real hard to tell what the Right sincerely believes and what they pretend to believe in order to get the results they want.
Excerpts from an article written by Amy Davidson Sorkin for The New Yorker:
Tiffany Trump is not the most prominent or politically adept of Donald Trump’s children, but her speech at the Republican National Convention last week served as a succinct summation of the event’s key messages. Donald Trump is a giant among Presidents, protecting the country and keeping his promises. His reëlection is a contest between freedom and oppression. Yet he’s subject to hatred, Tiffany said, because so many people have been “manipulated and visibly coerced” by the media and tech companies that present a “biased and fabricated” version of reality. “Ask yourselves, why are we prevented from seeing certain information?” she urged viewers. The answer is “control.”
[…] On Thursday night, when her father accepted his party’s nomination, he did the same, saying, “They are coming after me, because I am fighting for you!” Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News journalist who is Donald Trump, Jr.,’s partner, loudly warned about “cosmopolitan élites” who “want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live.” Richard Grenell, the former acting director of National Intelligence, said that Trump’s opponents “never want the American people to know who’s actually calling the shots.”
Claims that the media act in bad faith are a commonplace of electoral politics. […] But the thesis of the Republican Convention was more extreme. Forces larger than the media, variously identified as socialists, anarchists, “wild-eyed Marxists,” “woketopians,” and “globalization fanatics,” are gathering to bring down the country. Journalists may not even know who manages the levers. “Nobody really knows who’s controlling who,” Trump said on Monday […]
This was the conspiratorial Convention. Speaker after speaker said that Trump is definitely not a racist, that he is a defender of people with preëxisting health conditions, and that he has single-handedly defeated the coronavirus. Accepting such statements almost requires believing that his opponents are masterly practitioners of deception, with a hidden agenda, and that their grievances are a sham. Thus Black Lives Matter marchers and Democratic mayors were said to want protests to descend into violence. “It isn’t an unintended side effect—it’s actually the goal,” Patrick Lynch, the head of New York City’s Police Benevolent Association, said.
[…] Like all good conspiracy theories, the plot is as capacious as it is fearsome. An R.N.C.-produced video claims that Biden has been bought by Beijing; it shows the Statue of Liberty fracturing. Vice-President Mike Pence said that the election will decide “whether America remains America.”
Public-health imperatives were suspect, too. Senator Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, said that, “if the Democrats had their way, they would keep you locked in your house until you became dependent on the government for everything. That sounds a lot like Communist China to me!” Social-distancing measures weren’t just misguided; the coronavirus was a convenient excuse to promote socialism. (Similarly, Rebecca Friedrichs, a school-choice advocate, noted that “unsuspecting teachers” are being played by radical unions, whose true aim is “subverting our republic.”) And there are few clearer measures of how Trumpism, with its promise of an alternate reality, has captivated the G.O.P. than the sight, on Thursday night, of fifteen hundred mostly maskless people sitting close together for hours on the South Lawn of the White House to hear the President’s acceptance speech. Meanwhile, covid-19 is killing a thousand Americans a day.
[…] According to Media Matters for America, about twenty candidates on the ballot for the Senate or the House this fall have expressed an affinity for QAnon. […]
This is a dangerous path. The country is facing challenges that demand a modicum of trust, from the counting of ballots to the equitable distribution of a covid-19 vaccine. “Nobody will be safe in a Biden America,” Trump said. He and his party are telling their supporters that, if he loses the election, everything will be gone—the country, the borders, the suburbs, their guns. A […] supporter of the President, in Kenosha, was allegedly all too ready to bring out his gun, with fatal results. […]
A federal judge can scrutinize the Justice Department’s decision to drop the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled Monday, allowing the legal saga to continue.
The divided decision from the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit gives U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan the go ahead to question prosecutors’ unusual move to dismiss Flynn’s case ahead of sentencing. The retired general twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts before Trump took office in 2017.
In an 8-to-2 ruling, the court denied Flynn’s request, backed by the Justice Department, to shutdown Sullivan’s planned review and appointment of a retired federal judge to argue against the government’s position.
The decision by the full court reverses an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel of the same court that ordered Sullivan to immediately close the case.
A brief order from the court published Monday indicated forthcoming dissents from Judges Karen Henderson and Neomi Rao.
[…]
Trump and his supporters have rallied behind Barr’s intervention and Flynn’s effort to undo his guilty plea. Supporters say Flynn never should have been interviewed by the FBI. But scores of former and current Justice Department employees say the move is a troubling example of the department bending to political pressure and the president’s interests.
Here’s a link to the August 31 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
A small independent Russian teachers’ union is urging members not to be coerced into accepting shots of the “Sputnik V” vaccine, which is to be mandatory for military personnel.
Moscow clinics recently began receiving supplies of the vaccine, which has been approved for use inside Russia even though the final phase III tests began only last Wednesday.
From September, doctors and teachers will be among the first to be offered the jab on a voluntary basis, officials have said, an arrangement Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has said he supports.
The defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said shots of the vaccine will be made mandatory for military personnel.
With Russian schools reopening on 1 September for the first time since March, the teachers’ union Uchitel has launched an online petition against making the vaccine mandatory for teachers before all clinical trials are complete.
Sweden is seeing a spike in demand for face masks, several pharmacists have said, ahead of a possible U-turn by the authorities, who have so far doubted their effectiveness….
JFC.
The UK is at risk of a new surge of infections, experts have said, as schools and universities reopen their doors and cold weather drives people inside, Nicola Davis and Natalie Grover write.
On Sunday, the government reported 1,715 new cases, the highest daily number since 4 June and the highest number for a weekend day since mid-May. Earlier on Monday, 1,406 new cases were reported. Numbers collected over the weekend are often lower than those for other days of the week owing to lower levels of testing and reporting delays.
Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said Sunday’s figure was “quite a big jump”. He said data for the rest of the week would be needed to get a clear idea of the scale of any uptick, but the figures tied in to a broader trend of an increase in infections in the UK since early July. Prof Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said:
What it clearly demonstrates is we’re in a position where case numbers are going up. So we don’t have much room for manoeuvre.
The USA’s caseload has exceeded six million, according to Johns Hopkins university.
The researchers have been keeping track of the virus’s spread using both official releases and media reports. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has not yet released Monday’s data, acknowledges has confirmed 5,934,824 cases.
The US is the world’s worst-affected country, with more than two million more cases than the next worst: Brazil.
It is hard to pick out one highlight from last week’s bizarre Republican national convention. But the Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz managed to distil into one chilling sentence the essence of rightwing politics today. Joe Biden, Gaetz explained, “would empty the prisons, lock you in your homes, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren’t on their way.”
The only mercy in this grotesque US election – which will only get uglier – is that the fearmongering is totally naked. It’s not about “making America great again” again, or the plight of the little guy. It is about order. The threats to order are always present, and always held at bay, just barely, by conservative leaders valiantly fighting the imminent deluge. This authoritarian populist strategy is founded on an essential fiction: the pretence of powerlessness among politicians, and their voters, who are very much in charge. The weak and the marginalised, and especially their fragile movements for racial and economic equality, are cast as a terrifying force, influential and deeply embedded – a shadow regime that will bloom into tyranny the instant the Democrats are elected.
In Britain, we watch this American political horror from behind our fingers, with the bewildered bemusement of a country far from this madness. But we are there too. The right in the UK now is following the same playbook. The approach is just as calculated, but the presentation is slightly less crude, and therefore more difficult to challenge.
Over here, fearmongering is altogether more refined. Instead of hyped-up nonsense about emptying prisons and killer migrant gangs, there are subtle and insidious threats to British values. Consider the latest attack on our national pride: thinly sourced reports that Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory might be axed from “BBC’s ‘Black Lives Matter Proms’”. Much like Biden’s secret plot to set criminals loose, the Proms scandal isn’t true: there was no demand that the songs be dropped. There will be an orchestral version online this year because there’s a pandemic on, and there will be no audience to sing along. A vocal version is “fully expected to return next year”.
This dubious tale wasn’t invented by a Fox News-style propaganda network: it was carried by the Sunday Times and the Times and followed up by all the other papers. But it wasn’t an innocent misunderstanding: it was the result of a desire to exaggerate the threat to “our culture” from the unnamed vandals set on destroying it.
Once it was out there, the whole of the British media ran with the story. Even the BBC itself rang to ask me to come on for a debate on “the importance of our traditions” – amplifying fears and threats even as its own news site hosted a report explaining that the decision was pandemic-related, and nothing to do with subverting tradition.
There’s nothing new about these concoctions…. But there is something new and significant about the fake Proms scandal. It is a fabrication in plain sight, a trick performed by lazy magicians who don’t bother with sleight of hand because they know how badly the audience wants to believe the illusion.
Before long, the story was given the imprimatur of truth by the prime minister – who supposedly defied the restraint of his own minders to speak out against the dangerous “wetness” stalking the land. By the end of the week, parts of the public had been whipped into a frenzy, as seen in several polls helpfully asking how they felt about the BBC’s craven surrender to rampant wokeness. Land of Hope and Glory raced up the charts as a rebuke to the imaginary censors.
The reason that these made-up stories preoccupy journalists, politicians and the public is that culture-war skirmishes are no longer a sideshow to our politics – they are the politics. They are how rightwing electoral prospects are now advanced; not through policies or promises of a better life, but by fostering a sense of threat, a fantasy that something profoundly pure and British is constantly at risk of extinction. What our most successful politicians understand is the insatiable public appetite for these falsehoods, the wish for these lies to be true – for Britain to be a precious damsel in distress rather than a battered country impoverished by the misrule of its governing class.
For all the clear appetite and motivation for concocting and believing these lies, we are terrible at defending against them. Either we accept their premise, and start debating the pros and cons of cancelling the lyrics, or we think it’s clever to rise above them and not give the right the culture war that it wants. Either way we fall into the trap of promoting fake culture-war stories by engaging in them, or allowing them to grow unchallenged because there is more serious real politics to attend to. This is the serious real politics. It is winning elections. It is fostering a siege mentality that can be easily converted, as Gaetz did, into fear of the other lot getting in and establishing an anarchic regime that vandalises history, opens the borders and embraces the thugs and vandals of Black Lives Matter.
The main challenge that faces any progressive forces over the next few years isn’t in convincing the electorate of the mendacity or incompetence of the Conservative party, it’s exposing the vast complex of lies that it is being sold every day, and those who sell them. We can either do that, or we can continue to stumble, out of credulity or cowardice, into culture-war traps as they pave the way to the next rightwing election victory.
New @MilitaryTimes survey of active duty troops has absolutely devastating numbers for @realDonaldTrump. The Republican Party has long considered the military as part of its base, but Biden is now leading Trump among servicemembers 43/37.
Compared to the 2016 election, @realDonaldTrump’s support within the military has collapsed. Before the last election, Trump led Hillary 41/21. He’s currently losing to Biden 43/37. That’s a huge shift from Republicans to Democrats.
There’s not a lot of good data with which to compare, but this has to be unprecedented for a GOP president: 42% of military service members have a “very unfavorable” view of the commander-in-chief. By contrast, less than a quarter have a “very favorable” view of @realDonaldTrump.
Pretty clear that actions like not saying anything about Russian bounties on troops’ heads have consequences
Military Times link atl. Officers particularly have negative views of Trump. The sample was drawn from readers of their publications, but that was the case in 2016 as well, and they used the same methodology. Also, “About 40 percent of troops surveyed identified as Republican or Libertarian, 16 percent Democrats, and 44 percent independent or another party.”
From the article:
Only about 17 percent of those surveyed felt the White House has properly handed reports that Russian officials offered bounties for Afghan fighters to target and kill American troops, an issue Trump has dismissed as unreliable intelligence. Nearly 47 percent disagreed with his statements.
Similarly, almost 74 percent of those surveyed disagreed with Trump’s suggestion that active-duty military personnel should be used to respond to civil unrest in American cities, including the ongoing racial equality protests. Only about 22 percent supported the president’s idea.
That contrasts with half of the polls respondents’ support for using National Guard troops to help address civil unrest connected to the protests.
Troops agreed with Trump’s assessment of China as a national security threat (nearly 87 percent called it a significant concern) but ranked Russia (81 percent) well above Iran (58 percent). Only about 21 percent of troops saw immigration as a significant national security issue, but 48 percent identified white nationalists as a concern.
Nearly half of troops surveyed said the U.S. military force level in Germany should remain the same, despite Trump’s recent moves to drawn down American military personnel levels there. Another 24 percent say they believe troop levels in Germany should be increased.
SC @372, I think that Trump’s decision to abandon our Kurdish allies also played a big part in the officer class of the military abandoning Trump.
In other news, this campaign tidbit raises red flags for me: A new Republican super PAC, called “Preserve America,” is poised to launch a $30 million ad blitz in the hopes of boosting Trump’s candidacy. The project will reportedly be overseen by Chris LaCivita, who helped orchestrate the wildly deceptive Swift Boat smear campaign against John Kerry in 2004.
Over the weekend, Biden spoke at a virtual gathering of the National Guard Association of the United States, and the former vice president made a timely commitment: “I promise you, as president, I’ll never put you in the middle of politics, or personal vendettas. I’ll never use the military as a prop or as a private militia to violate rights of fellow citizens. That’s not law and order. You don’t deserve that.”
Twitter labeled a video promoted by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of a progressive activist interviewing Joe Biden about police funding “manipulated content,” and Scalise later deleted the tweet Sunday night.
The video splices together footage from an interview between, Ady Barkan, who has ALS and speaks using a computerized artificial voice, and Biden.
In the original video, Barkan asks Biden if he can agree that “we can redirect some of the funding,” for police departments toward mental health services, to which Biden replies, “Yes.”
The clip tweeted out by the number two Republican in the House splices in the words “for police” from one of Barkan’s other questions to make it sound as if Barkan is asking Biden if he agrees they can “redirect some of the funding for police.”
Scalise used the tweet to promote the popular talking point that Democrats are responsible for sowing unrest as protests continue nationwide following shootings of Black people by police, adding in his tweet: “No police. Mob rule. Total chaos. That’s the result of the Democrat agenda.”
Barkan tweeted to Scalise before he took down the tweet, “These are not my words. I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology.”
A Twitter spokesperson said the tweet was labeled based on its, “synthetic and Manipulated Media policy.” The issue with the video was the audio manipulation of Barkan, originally adding words to the audio Barkan didn’t say in that context.
The video was also posted to Facebook. While the video appears to have been taken down by Scalise, it does not look like Facebook took action against the video. Facebook declined to comment.
Before deleting the video, Scalise defended it tweeting, “Twice in one interview Biden says ‘yes’ & ‘yes absolutely’ to questions about ‘redirecting’ police funding.”
And in another tweet Scalise said, “While Joe Biden clearly said ‘yes,’ twice, to the question of his support to redirect money away from police, we will honor the request of @AdyBarkan and remove the portion of his interview from our video.”
Biden also tweeted Sunday demanding that the video be taken down.
“This video is doctored — and a flagrant attempt to spread misinformation at the expense of a man who uses assistive technology,” Biden said. “It should be removed. Now.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier slammed Scalise’s tweet saying in her own, “Congressman Scalise must take his doctored video down and apologize immediately.”
Trump’s campaign to deceive the public about a deadly ongoing pandemic is qualitatively different than the usual presidential nonsense.
[…] Yesterday morning between 4:49 a.m. (ET) and 7:04 a.m. (E.T.), [Trump]t either tweeted or retweeted 89 times.
But it wasn’t just the volume that was the problem. It was the messages themselves.
Over the course of one weekend, [Trump] promoted all kinds of bizarre content calling for the imprisonment of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), arguing that social-justice protests may be part of an organized “coup” attempt, offering support for an accused murderer in Wisconsin, and at one point, even suggesting that the COVID-19 death toll in the United States is not to be trusted.
“So get this straight — based on the recommendation of doctors Fauci and Birx the US shut down the entire economy based on 9,000 American deaths to the China coronavirus,” said the summary of an article by the hard-line conservative website Gateway Pundit that was retweeted by the president, denigrating his own health advisers, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. Deborah L. Birx.
As the New York Times’ report on this added, the missive in question “was a distortion of data available on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports that 6 percent of coronavirus fatalities list only the virus on the death certificates. For other deaths, the patients had an average of 2.6 other conditions or causes of death. The statistics do not mean that they did not die because of the virus, but help explain who is most vulnerable to it.”
The tweet was so wildly misleading that Twitter felt compelled to take it down to prevent the spread of misinformation. It was, however, good enough for [Trump].
[…] his campaign to deceive the public about a deadly ongoing pandemic is qualitatively different than the usual presidential nonsense.
For one thing, many Americans may not fully appreciate the extent to which Trump still has no idea what he’s talking about. For another, the president is still in a position of extraordinary power, and if he’s genuinely under the impression that the fatality figures have been exaggerated, it will lead him to make — or in this case, continue to make — misguided decisions.
[…]: the problem with the official death toll isn’t that it’s been inflated, but rather, that it may not fully reflect the full count.
Leading U.S. authorities have spent months warning about a possible under-count, not over-count.
So why is Trump raising the prospect of the opposite? Apparently because a right-wing website published a message that made the president feel better about his failures.
Trump recently suggested we’d see his new health care plan “prior to the end of the month.” That’s today. So, where is it?
[…] it was on July 17 when Trump sat down with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, and the host asked about the president’s ongoing efforts to tear down the ACA. The president replied that he still intends to “replace” the landmark health care law.
The host reminded Trump, “But you’ve been in office three and a half years, you don’t have a plan.” It was at this point that the president responded with an unexpected vow: Trump said he’d “sign” a “full and complete” health care plan “within two weeks.”
As we’ve discussed, two weeks went by, and the “full and complete” health care plan was nowhere to be found. On July 31, pressed for some kind of explanation, the president told reporters, “We’re going to be doing a very inclusive health care plan. I’ll be signing it sometime very soon. It might be Sunday [Aug. 2], but it’s going to be very soon.” (He added earlier in the day that the upcoming White House health care plan will be “very big.”)
Two days later, [Trump] went golfing. He did not unveil or sign a health care plan. On Aug. 3, Trump presented a new timeline.
“I do want to say that we’re going to be introducing a tremendous healthcare plan sometime prior — hopefully, prior to the end of the month. It’s just about completed now.”
The president added that the new health care plan “will be very impressive to a lot of people.”
I predicted at the time that Trump would neither unveil nor sign an “impressive” health care plan by the end of the month — and the end of the month is today. […]
GOP officials have been promising a superior alternative to the Affordable Care Act since the summer of 2009 — well over a decade ago — and they’ve failed spectacularly because they don’t know how to craft such a blueprint. […]
From yesterday: “Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Minsk and dozens of other cities and towns all over Belarus for the fourth Sunday in a row. Just look at the self organisation, how people give way to the ambulance!”
From today: “The head of Belarus Catholic Church Tadeush Kondrusevich has been denied entry to Belarus despite the fact he is a Belarus citizen. This is a violation of the Belarusian Constitution and one of the most basic human rights – the right to live in your own country.”
SC @375, thanks for posting that. The response from Barkan was memorable:
Barkan tweeted to Scalise, “These are not my words. I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology.”
In other news, here are some more details concerning questionable medical advice Trump is embracing:
[…] Dr. Scott Atlas, a Fox News regular and a leading voice at a conservative think tank, had joined the White House team. […] Atlas has pushed to re-open schools, downplayed the need for broader coronavirus testing, and criticized lockdowns intended to stop the pandemic’s spread.
The neuroradiologist has “no expertise in public health or infectious disease mitigation,” he hasn’t practiced medicine in nearly a decade, and he’s demonstrated a habit of echoing unscientific claims, but Atlas nevertheless had something more important: the capacity to tell the president what he wants to hear.
[…] The Washington Post reported today:
One of President Trump’s top medical advisers is urging the White House to embrace a controversial “herd immunity” strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, while taking steps to protect those in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations, according to five people familiar with the discussions. The administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, according to current and former officials as well as experts, particularly with regard to testing.
The chief proponent of this approach is, of course, Scott Atlas, who reportedly now speaks with Trump “almost every day” […] [Oh shit]
[…] earlier this summer [Trump] encouraged his staff “to find a new doctor who would argue an alternative point of view” that differed from Dr. Anthony Fauci […]
reality-based advice grew tiresome […]
And that voice is now telling the president that if millions of additional people are infected, that would be an encouraging development. Or as Garance Franke-Ruta put it, “The new plan for America is to let everyone get sick.” […]
[…] After the former GOP presidential candidate’s death on July 30, his verified account was taken over by his “team and family,” who rebranded the account as “The Cain Gang” while keeping the account’s original @THEHermanCain handle. […]
The account is also being used to spread disinformation about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
He’s describing the COVID catastrophe, Trump’s attempts to destroy the ACA and Social Security, Putin’s bounties, asking: “Do you really feel safer under Donald Trump?”
Putin’s bounties and Trump’s silence: “It’s not only dangerous. It’s humiliating and embarrassing for the world to see. It weakens us.”
[…] Donald Trump is getting campaign donations from prominent neo-Nazis and there’s apparently not even a glimmer of thought that gosh, maybe Typhoid Hitler might not want to cash those particular checks. […]
Actual Neo-Nazi leader Morris Gulett, who believes “the Jew is the literal child of Satan,” has given Trump at least $2,000. ([Judd] Legum notes that Trump’s campaign was asked about Gulett’s donations over two years ago, but refused and refuses to respond.)
Other Trump campaign supporters include K.C. McAlpin, crackpot Peter Zieve, and (of course) rich racist Republican-backer Timothy Mellon, who’s shoved $10 million at Trump’s super PAC and $30 million towards getting Trump’s enablers in the House and Senate reelected.
There’s no chance Trump’s campaign will be returning the money, of course. For starters, Donald Trump is a cheap, crooked man who goes to great lengths to avoid parting with cash. For seconders, the campaign needs the money, and if Trump’s campaign of white nationalists backed down and returned money from known neo-Nazis there’s no telling just how much money they’d end up having to give back. And for thirdsies, this isn’t 2016. Trump’s campaign isn’t trying to hide their white nationalist ties. Trump himself isn’t trying to hide his constant white nationalist incitements.
Trump’s new “law and order” campaign theme, hastily plastered on top of the administration’s massive and ongoing pandemic failures, has brought his support for white nationalism and its violence front and center. Trump’s racist response to calls for police reform are now his campaign’s primary message.
If anything, it’s likely that Trump’s embrace of prominent neo-Nazi leaders will not stop at taking their money this time around. Trump and his son Junior have been bolder in retweeting white nationalist and eliminationist themes. Trump’s Fox News allies, including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, have been steadily ratcheting up their defenses of vigilante violence on Trump’s behalf. We may yet see Trump standing on stage with one of these militia-uniformed goons before the campaign is out.
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya will address the UN Security Council, her team says.
She will speak via video link at the invitation of Estonia on Friday, and will address the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe next week.
…
Tens of thousands on Sunday occupied the centre of the capital Minsk for the third week in a row to protest about his victory, and dozens were detained there and in other cities. At least four people have died and hundreds have been injured in the unrest this month.
On Monday, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia announced travel sanctions on 30 Belarusian officials, with Mr Lukashenko topping the blacklist.
…
The three Baltic states have been urging the West to take firmer measures against the Belarusian authorities, accusing them of rigging the 9 August presidential elections and brutally supressing the street protests that followed.
Meanwhile, the Belarusian officials have prevented the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Minsk and Mogilev, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, from returning to the country from neighbouring Poland. No reason was given for the decision.
The church has condemned the violence against protesters.
…
On Sunday, Mr Lukashenko spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders agreed to meet in Moscow in the coming weeks, the Kremlin said.
Last week, Mr Putin warned that he had formed a police reserve force to intervene in Belarus if necessary, but added that that point had not yet been reached.
Ms Tikhanovskaya’s press team announced that she would also address the Strasbourg-based Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 8 September.
Russia, President Lukashenko’s chief backer, is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and it is unclear if it will try to stop the Belarusian politician speaking.
Last Monday, Ms Tikhanovskaya told the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee that government intimidation could not stop the protesters. “We will not relent,” she said, speaking from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. “We demand to respect our basic rights. We demand all political prisoners be free.”
Since moving [?] to Lithuania, the opposition leader has called on Belarusians to continue to demonstrate peacefully against Mr Lukashenko.
…
On Sunday, the president’s 66th birthday, protesters faced off with riot police in Minsk and at least 140 arrests were made.
Protesters chanted “disgrace” and “leave” in standoffs with police.
On Saturday, the authorities withdrew the accreditation of 17 reporters, most of them Belarusian citizens who had been reporting for foreign media outlets including two journalists with the BBC’s Russian service.
Last week, the Department of Justice sent widely publicized letters to the governors of four states—Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—seeking information about nursing homes and coronavirus infections. The DOJ justified the request as part of an evaluation whether to open a formal investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA). This does not appear to be an ordinary independent investigation, though. In fact, there’s every reason to believe the DOJ letters are partisan attacks on opponents of [Trump].
[…] The coronavirus pandemic has hit nursing homes hard and highlighted the inhumanity of our system of shunting away elderly and disabled people in isolated congregate institutions. […] at least 68,000 people have died due to COVID in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities—41 percent of the total number of deaths attributable to the virus in this country.
The devastation underscores a truth we have known for years: Institutions separated from the mainstream of society—nursing homes, long-term care facilities, psychiatric hospitals, or jails and prisons—cause intense harm to the people who are confined there. […]
Government investigations of the poor conditions at congregate institutions—and efforts to promote community-based alternatives so that individuals would not be forced to live in those facilities—would be very welcome. The coronavirus pandemic makes the need for such action especially acute.
That is not, however, what the DOJ’s actions were about. Instead, the department is acting in a transparently political manner. Throughout the pandemic, DOJ has failed to take key steps to use CRIPA to protect residents of congregate facilities. Last week’s letters, aimed at governors who have vocally criticized President Trump’s response to the pandemic, and timed amidst the Republican National Convention, will do nothing meaningful to protect those residents.
[…] DOJ’s authority under CRIPA extends to only a tiny slice of those facilities. The statute applies only to institutions that are operated by state or local governments. But the overwhelming majority of people in nursing homes are in privately operated facilities. In New York, for example, only 28 out of the state’s more than 600 nursing homes are public. […] The state with the worst per capita coronavirus death rate in nursing homes, according to federal data, is Massachusetts—but its Republican governor received no similar letter. Same for Mississippi, Maryland, and Arizona—all are in the top 10 in death rate, all have Republican governors, yet none received a DOJ letter. […]
Florida has experienced more nursing home deaths (both absolutely and as a percentage of total COVID deaths) than has Michigan, yet DOJ actually singled Florida out for praise in the press release it issued last week. The only reasonable explanation for the disparate treatment is that the Trump Administration perceives Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as an enemy and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as a friend.
[…] DOJ has the power under CRIPA to address conditions in all jails and prisons. And jails and prisons are still the sites of the nation’s largest coronavirus outbreaks. […] Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio has reported more than 2,400 cases, affecting nearly its entire population. […] DOJ hasn’t lifted a finger to enforce the law there. […]
We have spent our legal careers advocating for the rights of individuals who have been forced—by legal dictate or by the lack of other options—to live in congregate facilities. Much of our advocacy has involved efforts to reduce our nation’s reliance on large institutions by promoting robust community-based alternatives to confinement. As a political appointee at the Department of Justice during the Obama Administration, one of us led the government’s CRIPA enforcement and used that authority to promote deinstitutionalization. As career civil servants at the Department of Justice during the 1990s, both of us worked on CRIPA cases involving a range of settings, including jails, prisons, and mental health and developmental disability facilities. We welcome efforts to move people from congregate facilities, and to improve conditions where decarceration is pending or impossible. But the department’s action is transparently political and plainly not undertaken in good faith.
Some tidbits from @nytmike’s new book: McGahn, a staunch libertarian, was frequently in over his head with the lawless president he nicknamed “King Kong,” and he struggled with his highly unusual extended contact with Mueller’s team.
Schmidt writes that Mitch McConnell fell asleep during a classified briefing on Russia
Describing Trump’s unexpected November 2019 visit to Walter Reed Medical Center, he reports the White House wanted Mike Pence “on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.”
A group of veteran journalists for the Voice of America delivered a letter of protest Monday denouncing their parent agency’s new CEO, Michael Pack, and alleging Pack’s remarks in a recent interview prove he has a damaging agenda for the international broadcasters he oversees.
Pack’s comments and decisions “endanger the personal security of VOA reporters at home and abroad, as well as threatening to harm U.S. national security objectives,” the letter to VOA Acting Director Elez Biberaj read.
The protest was triggered by Pack’s interview with the conservative and pro-Trump website The Federalist but came after a long line of sweeping changes and purges at the federally funded networks overseen by Pack, an appointee of President Trump.
During the half-hour conversation, Pack joked with The Federalist’s host, senior editor Chris Bedford, about deporting his own employees and forcing them to adopt unsafe workplace practices that could expose them to COVID-19. Pack said the agency was ripe for espionage and possibly rife with spies.
“It’s a great place to put a foreign spy,” Pack said, citing what he contended were severe security lapses by previous leadership.
…
“Pack’s insistence that there were issues related to security in hiring at VOA is merely a smokescreen to avert attention from his blatant attempt to interfere with the legislatively mandated independence, or ‘firewall’, protecting the journalists of VOA from government interference,” former USAGM CEO John Lansing said in a text for this article. Lansing is now the CEO of NPR.
In the podcast, Pack also questioned the adherence of the agency’s broadcasters to fair-minded journalism.
“Whatever CNN or any other network does is one thing,” Pack told Bedford. “I have found egregious examples of flouting of those standards. And my job really is to drain the swamp, to root out corruption and to deal with these issues of bias, not to tell journalists what to report.” He forced out several contractors and editors after saying a piece with the Urdu language service unethically promoted former Vice President Biden’s election effort.
The journalists’ letter was shared with NPR as it was submitted to Pack’s office early Monday morning. Signatories include two White House correspondents, foreign correspondents based in Southern Africa and Islamabad, its national security and national affairs correspondents, and several editors, among others.
…
Shortly after arriving, Pack pushed out the broadcast chiefs; withheld visa approvals for foreign nationals who worked for his networks often at some personal peril; accused his journalists of unprofessional pro-Democratic leanings; published an internal government report to allege grave security lapses; and then pushed out most of the agency’s remaining top executives.
“We have watched in dismay as USAGM executives have been dismissed for, in their words, attempting to educate the new CEO on avoiding legal violations, as well as guiding him on the firewall that protects VOA’s legally mandated editorial independence,” the letter states.
Among the signatories is Steve Herman, a White House correspondent who was threatened with retaliation by Vice President Pence’s office after he reported that the vice president did not wear a mask during a visit to patients at the Mayo Clinic — even though accompanying press were warned they would have to.
More of the quote @ #384: “Joe Biden: ‘Donald Trump has been a toxic presence in our nation for four years. Poisoning how we talk to one another. Poisoning how we treat one another. Poisoning the values this nation has always held dear. Poisoning our very democracy’.”
[…]
Some of the most prominent journalists at Voice of America have accused its new Trump-appointed chief executive of McCarthyism and putting reporters at risk by purging staff and suggesting that being a journalist is a great cover for a spy.
Michael Pack, a political ally of the rightwing ideologue Steve Bannon, has been accused by congressional Democrats of seeking to turn VOA and the other international broadcasters under the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) into a propaganda outlet.
On Monday morning, 14 senior VOA journalists delivered a letter of complaint about Pack, saying his words and actions “endanger the personal security of VOA reporters at home and abroad, as well as threatening to harm US national security objectives”.
The letter […] said the continuing purge of journalists in the name of national security was reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy’s “red scare” purge of the 1950s.
One of the immediate triggers for the journalists’ letter of complaint was an interview Pack gave last week to a podcast run by a fiercely partisan pro-Trump website, the Federalist, in which he approved of Donald Trump’s description of VOA as disgusting, awash with political bias and suggested that USAGM broadcasters could be heavily infiltrated by foreign spies.
The fact is that foreign intelligence agencies from the beginning … have been interested in penetrating them, Pack said. To be a journalist is a great cover for a spy … and from the beginning, from the cold war and even earlier, they’ve been penetrated. It’s a great place to put a foreign spy.
In their letter, the journalists pointed out “there has not been a single demonstrable case of any individual [foreign spy? –blf] working for VOA”, and Pack admitted in his interview that there was no evidence that any current USAGM employee was a foreign spy.
The journalists also complained that in the Federalist interview, Pack had joined in on a joke about potentially exposing his staff to the Covid virus, as a way of getting rid of them and draining the swamp.
[…]
Pack insisted he was trying to restore impartiality to an institution that was riddled with partisan bias and corruption. He gave no evidence of corruption, but as an instance of bias Pack pointed to the recent broadcast by the VOA Urdu service of material produced by the Democratic campaign of Joe Biden. The contractors and editors involved have been sacked.
Pack insisted: I would never tell a journalist how to cover a story or what to say. But added he would make sure that the procedures and practices that ensure the highest journalistic standards.
A VOA Spanish language service interview with a White House official was censored over the weekend. In the interview, journalist Bricio Segovia asked Mauricio Claver-Carone, an administration hawk on Cuba and Venezuela, whether the White House was aware that Pack was blocking the visa extensions of VOA foreign journalists covering the region. Claver-Carone suggested the visa issue was somehow linked to the pandemic.
After initially being put on air on Friday morning, the section addressing the visa issues was cut out in the afternoon.
“When VOA News management emailed all the organizations ordering to unpublish / not publish my interview, I responded asking for the reason,” Segovia said on Twitter. “The only answer I got was the deactivation of my corporate username that gave me access to my email, communication and publishing platforms.”
[…]
As their visas have approached expiration, VOA’s foreign journalist employees have been forced to make preparations for leaving the US, some after many years of residence. Two Indonesian journalists flew out last week.
“Being thrown out of a country in the middle of a pandemic feels very cruel. Very cruel,” one of the journalists, Valdya Baraputri, said. “Especially as this happened to international journalists with no good reason in a country that upholds press freedom and democracy. It feels terribly, terribly ironic.”
[…] The coronavirus pandemic has forced many universities to shut their campuses down, and students are experiencing growing voter suppression efforts.
Now, in addition to mastering remote learning, students are trying to figure out how to make their ballot count this fall. Some will have to reregister to vote from their home towns, while others will have to vote by mail.
[…]
A recent poll by NextGen America found that more than half of voters under the age of 35 feel they don’t have the resources or knowledge they need to vote by mail in November. And campus closures mixed with active suppression efforts are creating the “perfect storm” for keeping students from casting their ballot, especially as many turn to mail-in voting, according to Nancy Thomas, the director at the Tufts University’s Institute for Democracy and Higher Education.
In Pennsylvania, a politically competitive swing state, Feinman said structural issues like mail delays could disenfranchise students. Students need to apply for a ballot with a paper request form if they don’t have in-state driver’s licenses, which requires having a printer. And there’s the issue of postal service delays.
[…] Pennsylvania isn’t the only state with laws that could put student voting at risk. In New Hampshire, Republicans put forth a law requiring voters to have an in-state driver’s license if they intend to drive [vote? –blf] in the state, which many students do not. In Wisconsin, students are at high risk of being purged from voter rolls.
Meanwhile, college students are particularly vulnerable to ballot issues. In the 2020 primaries, NPR recently found that more than 550,000 ballots had been rejected, with experts finding that first-time absentee and young voters were more likely to make the kinds of mistakes that led to rejected ballots.
Harry Belafonte on the manipulated video featuring him tweeted by Scavino, a dep WH chief of staff: “They keep stooping lower and lower. A technical glitch in an interview I did 9 years ago now becomes another one of their lies, more of their fake news…”
“…I beg every sane American-please vote them out. I knew many who gave their life for the right to vote. Never has it been so vital to exercise that right.”
Asked whether President condemns supporter and Trump rally attendee Kyle Rittenhouse who murdered two protestors, Press Secretary says Trump’s “not going to weigh in on that.”
[… Thomas] Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology” surveys the rapid rise of inequality around the world and includes attacks on the “plutocracy” of the Chinese regime, which he says has overtaken Western countries.
“In short, they want to remove all references to contemporary China, and in particular to inequality and transparency in China. I have refused these conditions, and indicated that I will only accept a full translation without any kind of cut,” Piketty told AFP by email.
[…]
Chinese President Xi Jinping has used his [Piketty’s] research on rising inequality in the United States and Europe as proof of the superiority of the Chinese communist model.
An example of the violent doofuses that are ready to commit violence in Trump’s name … luckily, this one was caught by the FBI:
A Florida man known as “the Antifa hunter,” who launched online harassment campaigns against those who disagreed with white supremacy, was sentenced on Monday to three years and five months in prison.
A federal judge in Virginia sentenced Daniel McMahon, 32, of Brandon, Fla., after he admitted to using social media to threaten a Black activist to stop him from running for office and threatening to sexually assault a female activists’ autistic daughter […]
McMahon pleaded guilty to cyberstalking and bias-motivated interference with a candidate for elective office in April.
The FBI recovered his computer and several loaded guns from McMahon’s home that he shared with his parents, prosecutors said, with the computer showing evidence of his harassment campaigns and of his interest in racially motivated killings.
McMahon operated his cyberstalking through the name “Jack Corbin,” an alias […]
Following McMahon’s arrest, a woman told prosecutors that he had threatened her and her daughter, an autistic minor, over Facebook and attempted to get information from her about another protester.
McMahon said he would sexually assault the daughter “all in the service of his self-assigned ‘mission’ to hunt down and silence anyone who spoke out against white supremacy,” prosecutors said. […]
Law enforcement found 35 gigabytes of data on McMahon’s computer that he weaponized against his online targets. Prosecutors said they found folders including one dedicated to photos of dead Black men as well as others that had information about those he was harassing. […]
“The numbers are overwhelming: Most of the violence is coming from the extreme right wing,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who studies extremist political activity for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Philadelphia.
[…]
A well-known Russian opposition blogger and radio host was beaten outside his home in Moscow, his spokesman said on Monday, as Kremlin critics say they are being subjected to a growing number of attacks.
Yegor Zhukov, 22, was handed a suspended sentence last year on extremism charges for making videos criticising President Vladimir Putin amid huge protests calling for fair elections.
[…]
Earlier on Sunday, Zhukov said he had been excluded from a master’s degree course at the prestigious Higher School of Economics in Moscow, shortly after enrolling.
He said a university administrator told him the decision had been taken “on orders from above”.
[…]
As fireworks lit up the sky over the White House following Donald Trump’s acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination, speakers blasted two separate renditions of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” But the song isn’t the Christian hymn Republicans seem to think it is.
A Canadian Jew and practitioner of Zen Buddhism, Leonard Cohen wrote such wholesome tunes as “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On.” If you listen to the lyrics of “Hallelujah,” which Cohen released in 1984 […], you’ll notice that the song is less an exaltation of God than a cynical rumination on more secular matters. […]
It’s all pretty ironic, given how frigid Republicans tend to be when it comes to sex: no free birth control, no sex ed, no dining with any women other than your wife, no cuckolding.
Cohen conveniently died one day before Trump was elected [sic] president [sic] in 2016, but I think it’s safe to say he wouldn’t have sported a MAGA hat.
This kind-of reminds of the time when some thug candidate for president — a quick search indicates it was Ronaddled Raygun — used Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” (without permission, of course). This AVclub article, Trump fans now booing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” from 2016, indicates teh thugs have been appropriating Mr Spingsteen’s song since it first came out.
Detroit turned an island park into a memorial garden on Monday as cars packed with grieving families slowly travelled past hundreds of photos of city residents who died from Covid-19.
Mayor Mike Duggan declared a Detroit Memorial Day to honour the 1,500-plus city victims of the pandemic. Hearses escorted by police led solemn processions around Belle Isle Park in the Detroit River after bells rang across the region at 8:45am.
“It is our hope that seeing these beautiful faces on the island today … will wake people up to the devastating effect of the pandemic,” said Rochelle Riley, Detroit’s director of arts and culture.
The memorial was designed to bring some peace to families whose loved ones didn’t have the funerals they deserved, Riley said. “But it may also force us to work harder to limit the number of COVID-19 deaths we’ll endure in the coming months.”
More than 900 photos submitted by families were turned into large posters and staked around Belle Isle, revealing the crushing breadth of the virus.
The pictures show people in better times: Darrin Adams at college graduation; Daniel Aldape catching a fish; Shirley Frank with an Elvis impersonator; Veronica Davis crossing the finish line at a race.
They had “dreams and plans and a story,” Michigan gov Gretchen Whitmer said at Belle Isle. “They weren’t finished yet.”
Detroit has roughly 7% of Michigan’s population but 23% of the state’s 6,400 Covid-19 deaths. The city is nearly 80% Black.
“The virus exposed deep inequities, from basic lack of access to health care or transportation or protections in the workplace,” Whitmer said. “These inequities hit people of colour in vulnerable communities the hardest.”
Liberty University is opening an independent investigation into Jerry Falwell Jr.’s tenure as president, a wide-ranging inquiry that will include financial, real estate and legal matters, the evangelical school’s board announced Monday.
In a statement, the board said it had retained an outside firm to investigate “all facets” of the school’s operations under Falwell, and that it was “committed to learning the consequences that have flowed from a lack of spiritual stewardship by our former president.”
Calls for such an investigation had been mounting since Falwell’s departure last week from the post he had held since 2007.
…
The couple said in a statement provided to The Associated Press late Sunday that they support Liberty’s board and “welcome any inquiry as we have nothing to hide.” A Falwell representative declined further comment when reached on Monday.
…
Granda, 29, said in an interview with AP that he wanted to see an independent investigation of the school’s management under Falwell, describing it as run “like a monarchy.”
A number of Falwell’s family members have worked for the school, including his son Trey Falwell, who on Monday was still listed on Liberty’s website as the vice president of university support services.
The statement also said the school is considering establishing a post aimed at offering spiritual guidance for university leaders to ensure they “live out the Christian walk expected of each and every one of us at Liberty.”… [LOL]
It’s somewhat disturbing that this is being covered as a religion story rather than a political story, given his political power, his early and influential endorsement of Trump, the involvement of Michael Cohen, etc.
johnson catmansays
re SC @407: Falwell and Liberty “University” should be investigated as a criminal organization that has used its capital and influence to procure real estate and assets under its “tax-free” banner. Lynchburg Virginia has suffered a reduction of its tax base because the acquired properties have been protected under the banner of a “religious organization” for each property purchased by Liberty “University”. Citizens of the city have suffered because of this.
tomhsays
A group of Wisconsin residents have filed a a class action lawsuit against the city and county of Kenosha, claiming First Amendment violations. From the introduction:
In Kenosha, there are two sets of laws – one that applies to those who protest police brutality and racism, and another for those who support the police. Plaintiffs bring this action to protect their right and the rights of others to protest police brutality free of retaliation and free from fear that they will be arrested solely on the basis of the content of their message.
Over the past 9 days, the Kenosha City Police Department and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department have arrested over 150 peaceful protesters for violating the County imposed curfew order, yet in spite of the presence of pro-police protesters and militias, NOT A SINGLE PRO-POLICE DEMONSTRATOR has been arrested. The Kenosha Police and Kenosha Sheriffs use this ordinance to silence the voices of those who peacefully demonstrate against police brutality while allowing pro-police activists and militias to roam the streets without fear of arrest.
…These actions have not been isolated events – rather, they are part of a force-wide use of this ordinance to restrict the constitutional rights of demonstrators challenging racism and police brutality in our society. This pattern and practice of
conduct by Kenosha police tramples on the Constitution. Plaintiffs bring this action to ask the Court to restrain the City of Kenosha from further violations of the First Amendment and Equal Protection rights of peaceful demonstrators.
A footnote questions whether the curfew order was ever even enacted. After diligent effforts to locate it, “The only reference to be found are three press releases by the Kenosha County Sheriff.”
On the economy, Trump said his executive actions would “take care of, pretty much, this entire situation.” Mnunchin is nevertheless seeking new spending.
In mid-May, House Democrats saw the CARES Act’s expiration on the horizon and took steps to stay ahead of the problem. The chamber approved an ambitious, $3 trillion aid package, which would extend benefits to struggling families, businesses, and communities through the end of the year.
Republicans soon after responded with … very little. […] There were some bipartisan negotiations, which went nowhere, and at the end of July, CARES Act aid came to a halt.
With the economy still struggling badly, and many Americans desperately in need of a lifeline, Donald Trump announced a series of executive actions in early August, which he said would “take care of, pretty much, this entire situation.”
The presidential measures did not, in fact, take care of the entire situation. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged Congress to appropriate more money to combat the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, saying at a hearing Tuesday that he was ready to sit down with Democratic leaders to resume negotiations at any time.
[…] Left unsaid was the obvious fact that the White House’s executive actions have fallen far short. […] but as of yesterday, there still isn’t an administration policy, per se.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — by some accounts, the one person most responsible for the stalemate — appeared on CNBC yesterday and said Senate Republicans would return to Capitol Hill next week, at which point they’d take up a bill with $500 billion in additional federal aid.
I’m not sure I see the point. As bipartisan and bicameral talks took shape, Republicans eyed an economic aid bill worth roughly $1 trillion, while Democrats eyed a package worth roughly $3 trillion. Democratic leaders eventually said they’re prepared to split the difference, embracing a $2 trillion bill, if GOP leaders would agree to meet them in the middle.
Team Trump balked. And now Republicans are apparently looking at a $500 billion proposal.
Or put another way, the party appears to be moving further away from a compromise, instead of moving closer to one.
[… ]House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has already offered more than one compromise solution, told reporters late last week that she’d spoken with Mark Meadows, but they remained at a “tragic impasse.”
Mark Meadows is a slightly less orange version of Trump. He is definitely adding to the cluster-fuck aspect of economic aid.
Pitiful, sick orange man in the White House claims … again … that he won the popular vote in 2016:
Around Thanksgiving 2016, […] Trump came up with a conspiracy theory to make himself feel better: he secretly won the popular vote, [he] claimed, “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
He soon after started referring to “the so-called popular vote.”
[…] On his fourth day as president, Trump hosted a private discussion with congressional leaders at the White House to discuss his legislative agenda. He spent the first 10 minutes talking about the campaign and his belief that he won the popular vote, even if reality suggested otherwise.
Nearly four years later, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham asked the president if he considers it important to win the popular vote in 2020. The Republican responded in predictable fashion.
“I think I could win — I think I did win the popular vote in a true sense. I think there was tremendous cheating in California. There was tremendous cheating in New York and other places.”
[…] Let’s note for the record that Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes; there is literally no evidence of “tremendous cheating” in any American state in 2016 […]
Trump is still pretending he won the popular vote, after having lost the popular vote, “in a true sense.”
[…] the broader political context surrounding this nonsense. Trump is, after all, unwilling to say whether he’ll accept the legitimacy of the 2020 results, and he’s investing considerable energies into undermining public confidence in his own country’s electoral system. The president is simultaneously signaling to supporters that he believes he’s entitled to more than two terms in office.
It’s against this backdrop that Trump suggested election results are what he says they are, not what the numerical tallies actually show.
If [Trump] doesn’t accept the legitimacy the results of an election he won, what are the odds he’ll accept the legitimacy of an election he loses?
Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa) is reinforcing bonters conspiracy theories about the COVID death toll.
[…] The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported:
One attendee told Ernst during the question-and-answer period he believed COVID-19 cases and deaths are being overcounted, a theory discounted by medical professionals who say the actual numbers are probably much higher than official tallies. Ernst said she was “so skeptical” of those numbers as well. “These health-care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?” she told the crowd.
[…] Asked after the event what she was talking about, the Iowa Republican said she wasn’t certain about her theory, but she’s “heard” things from health-care providers she didn’t identify.
[…] Ernst added. “I heard the same thing on the news. … They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19.”
Let’s take stock of reality. First, as actual experts have repeatedly tried to explain, the COVID-19 death toll has not been inflated. If anything, the latest tallies under-count the number of American lives claimed by the coronavirus pandemic — a total that currently stands at over 185,000.
Second, the senator, who really ought to know better than to peddle stuff like this in public, was lending her support to ideas from the radical fringe. As the Washington Post noted, “Ernst’s comments echo conspiracy theories pushed by QAnon followers that have been debunked by doctors and public health experts…. Her inaccurate figure of 10,000 or fewer covid-19 deaths is similar to a widely spread QAnon meme that misinterpreted a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
[…] Update: In the interest of context, it’s worth emphasizing that Iowa’s junior senator publicly questioned the veracity of COVID-19 fatalities while her home state struggles with one of the nation’s most severe ongoing outbreaks.
Instead of taking steps to ease tensions in Kenosha, Trump seemed eager to instead play make-believe.
Nine days after a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, Donald Trump visited the community, ignoring the wishes of state officials.
[Trump] pretended not to notice that one of his supporters stands accused of murder after his actions in Kenosha last week. Trump pretended police abuses aren’t a national problem. He pretended questions about systemic racism aren’t important. He pretended he was responsible for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) activating the state’s National Guard. [Trump] pretended social unrest is a purely partisan matter that has nothing to do with his failed leadership, at one point insisting yesterday, “It’s all Democrat. Everything is Democrat.”
And perhaps most strikingly, Trump pretended to stand alongside a local camera-shop owner. The NBC affiliate in Milwaukee reported overnight:
A Kenosha business owner is accusing […] Trump of using his destroyed store for political gain. Tom Gram’s century-old camera shop burned to the ground a week ago during the unrest in Uptown Kenosha. Gram said he declined Trump’s request to be a part of his tour of damage Tuesday in Kenosha. Instead, a former owner of the shop was invited and he praised the president’s efforts.
So, let me see if I have this straight. Trump held a pseudo campaign event in front of the remains of Rode’s Camera Shop in Kenosha, which was destroyed during local unrest last week. The owner and longtime employee of the shop didn’t want to get caught up in the political circus, so he rebuffed a White House invitation to participate.
Trump instead stood alongside someone who sold the business eight years ago — and simply pretended he was the current owner, who, naturally, sang the president’s praises during yesterday’s photo-op.
During the photo-op, Trump seemed eager to celebrate himself, while criticizing state officials. “Unfortunately, they had a few days when people wouldn’t call us,” the president said. “They didn’t want to have us come in. They just don’t want us to come in, and then destruction is done. A day earlier, we would’ve saved your store.”
Except, it wasn’t the other guy’s store. The actual owner was at home watching this play out on television.
Alas, it wasn’t the only thing Trump got wrong yesterday. The New York Times published a fact-check piece on the president’s lies yesterday, and the Associated Press ran a related report, highlighting Trump’s many “misstatements.”
Well, that’s just peachy. “DHS Kept Intel About Russian Scheme To Smear Biden’s Health Under Wraps.”
The Department of Homeland Security intervened to stop the release of an intelligence bulletin that detailed a Russian scheme to attack Democratic nominee Joe Biden by alleging his poor mental health. […]
the bulletin called “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Election” was submitted for review on July 7, with the intention that it would be dispersed to federal and local law enforcement partners.
At that point, the department heads intervened.
“Please hold on sending this one out until you have a chance to speak to [acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf],” wrote DHS Chief of Staff John Gountanis in an email obtained by ABC News.
[…] analysts had reportedly written that they had “high confidence” that Russian actors were going to use the attacks to try to sway the 2020 election.
“He is blocking the intelligence community from sharing with federal and state law enforcement a crucial finding: that Russia is disseminating false and scurrilous attacks on the health of Joe Biden — one that aligns with Trump’s own constantly-backfiring attacks,” Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates told TPM.
[…] Russia and the Trump campaign are speaking from the same script of smears and lies […]
[…] a disturbing trend within the administration […] political interference with intelligence around the election.
Earlier this week, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress he would stop providing in-person briefings on election security and foreign interference […]
If the Russians are attacking Biden’s mental health, it just confirms that that is Biden’s least vulnerable area, and Fat Nixon’s most vulnerable. [Yes, I agree]
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So the Trump DHS is working with Russian Intelligence, either formally or informally, depending on how you read this story.
That’s just swell.
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If the Democrats can manage to beat this rigged system they MUST hold these department heads responsible for their crimes.
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So Comrade Trumpski is now officially spouting Russian propaganda. Check.
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The “my opponent is senile” line of attack fails to land when you go out everyday and prove to the world just how senile you actually are.
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I think the bigger question is what other Russian initiatives to smear Biden have been swept under the rug…there’s no way this is the only effort at election interference. This feeds into Ratcliffe’s decision to hold back on sharing intelligence, odds are he’s afraid of questions being asked about things like this that come out. If the administration is allowing this kind of stuff to go on, then that is opening the door to a foreign nation to change our political system…that’s about as bad as it can be, and twisting the intelligence system to allow it to happen opens us up to other threats.
[…] We’ll see if this blows up, or if it gets subsumed by Trump’s latest nonsensical tweet.
Stephanie Winston Wilkoff, a former friend and adviser to First Lady Melania Trump who helped plan [the] inauguration in 2016, stated on Tuesday that the first lady had used private email accounts while in the White House.
“Melania and I both didn’t use White House emails,” Winston Wilkoff, who recently published a memoir titled “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” told the Washington Post.
During the interview, Winston Wilkoff provided “what appeared to be extensive digital and physical archives of emails and emoji-laden texts” between her and Trump, in the Post’s words.
Private email servers the first lady had used while in the White House, according to Winston Wilkoff, included a Trump Organization email account and one using a MelaniaTrump.com domain.
In both her book and in interviews as part of her book tour, Winston Wilkoff alleges that Trump was involved in handling the inaugural committee’s expenditures, which are currently under federal and state investigation. Winston Wilkoff stated that she is assisting the investigators, which include the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, along with the attorneys general in New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
“I’m working with three different prosecutors, and it’s taken over my life,” she told ABC News in a pre-taped interview that aired on Tuesday.
D.C. Attorney General spokesperson Marrisa Geller confirmed to TPM that Winston Wilkoff “received and responded to a pre-suit subpoena from our office.” […]
Markey won in the Massachusetts Democratic primary race for Senator. He defeated Representative Joe Kennedy.
[…] Markey, who co-sponsored the Green New Deal with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and had cultivated mass support among progressives in the race, described via Twitter his victory as an “undeniable mandate for change.”
“Tonight is more than just a celebration of an election, it is a celebration of a movement,” the senator tweeted. “Thank you to the thousands of grassroots supporters who organized around the principles that we believe in.” […]
Kennedy told supporters that he had called Markey to congratulate the incumbent and “pledge my support to him and his campaign in the months ahead.”
“The senator is a good man,” he said. “You have never heard me say otherwise.” […]
The primary marks the first defeat in Massachusetts for the long-reigning Kennedy dynasty.
[…] Trump won a brief reprieve from New York law enforcement on Tuesday, as Manhattan’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals further delayed a subpoena for his tax returns from going into effect. […]
The ruling stays enforcement of a lower court order that threw out arguments from Trump seeking to invalidate the subpoena, issued last year by a grand jury empaneled by Manhattan state prosecutors.
The Supreme Court rejected an earlier challenge by Trump in July in which he claimed that he was immune from state criminal process, which delayed the subpoena’s enforcement for the past twelve months.
The high court then ordered the district court judge to hear any further arguments that Trump wished to raise. The President raised them, and was shot down last month.
The Second Circuit scheduled oral arguments in the case for Sept. 25. The appeals court will decide whether arguments from Trump that the current subpoena is “wildly overbroad” stand muster.
William Consovoy, a personal attorney hired by the President in the case, has said that Trump will appeal the case once again to the Supreme Court in the event of a loss.
The effect of all the legal tangling has been to delay the subpoena’s enforcement from its initial issuance in August 2019, likely keeping the records out of reach of investigators before the November elections.
[…] “The first shot has been fired brother,” said Stewart Rhodes, founder of the armed anti-government group Oath Keepers, in a tweet Sunday. “Civil war is here, right now. We’ll give Trump one last chance to declare this a Marxist insurrection & suppress it as his duty demands. If he fails to do HIS duty, we will do OURS.”
Rhodes was referring to the killing of Aaron Danielson in Portland on Saturday. Danielson was affiliated with a right-wing group known for street brawling, Patriot Prayer, whose members had joined a caravan of trucks that made a route through Portland earlier in the day, many armed with pepper spray and paintball guns.
Just a few days earlier, two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin — Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum — were allegedly killed by the 17-year-old Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse has been charged with homicide. No one has been charged in the Portland killing yet […]
The Oath Keepers’ tweets went beyond their normal schtick, said Sam Jackson, an assistant professor at the University of Albany and author of a new book about the group.
[…] “They’ve identified the start of a civil war over and over again,” Jackson said. “The identification or anticipation of a civil war is consistent.”
“What’s different now is they’re pointing to a particular act of violence from the people that they’ve identified as the other side — the enemy combatants in the civil war,” he added. “What’s different now is they’re not just anticipating that it’s going to happen soon — they’re rhetorically positioning that it has begun.”
The Oath Keepers message was part of a wave of ominous forecasts from right-wing vigilantes in recent days.
“This is the inflection point. This is where the pendulum swings back in the other direction,” Chris Hill, leader of the armed group called Georgia Security Force III%, said in a video last week, referring to the Kenosha shooting. He added, “There’s going to be an escalation in this conflict that we have — that is now, it is here, it is spreading, it is going to get crazy. It’s already crazy, but now there’s a body count.”
Hill saved his pitch for the end. If viewers didn’t join a militia soon, he said, “your country is going to be shattered glass and fucking rubble… But if you are interested, hit me up!”
[…] Hill’s attempt to recruit off of the unrest is part of leading an armed vigilante group.
[…] the right-wing presence at uprisings across the country serves to “radicalize” potential extremists, said Daryl Johnson, a former domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security
[…] The armed groups aren’t acting alone. Mainstream conservative media and political figures have created a bogeyman out of antifa and Black Lives Matter — convenient domestic “others” that serve as scapegoats. The President himself on Monday referred to people “on the streets” and “in the dark shadows” that were controlling Joe Biden. Separately, he said vaguely that the departments of Justice and Homeland Security would be “announcing a joint operation center to investigate the violent, left-wing civil unrest.”
[…] A member of Patriot Prayer who claimed to have been with Danielson when he was killed — and whose story Oath Keepers retweeted — was asked a similar question this weekend: What should Trump do?
“Send troops,” the man said. “Send troops.”
[…] the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Some members of the radical right realized that, even while claiming to be victims of liberal overreach, they could capitalize on their own violent acts. Video of a dramatic punch could go viral, making heroes out of the movement’s street warriors and recruiting people to the cause.”
[…] “the far-right has demonstrated that it is willing and able to escalate at a quicker rate, and that’s really where we see the biggest potential for violence.” […]
Navalny remains in an induced coma in a Berlin hospital.
The German government said Wednesday there is now “unequivocal evidence” Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group.
A special military laboratory in Germany has carried out toxicology tests using samples from Navalny, who was airlifted to Berlin’s Charité hospital on August 22 after falling unwell in Tomsk, a city in Siberia. At noon on Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the lab results with senior ministers and concluded that Novichok, a chemical weapon first developed by Soviet scientists, was used. […]
Novichok is the same substance used in the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, allegedly carried out by Russian security services, in the U.K. in 2018. […]
Excerpts from coverage of an interview with Jill Biden:
In an interview with CNN’s “New Day,” Jill Biden blamed DeVos and the Trump administration for not having a strategy to reopen schools safely in the fall as rates of new coronavirus infections continue to vex officials in many states.
“No, it doesn’t surprise me [that she didn’t have a plan],” Biden told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga. “Coming from Betsy DeVos, you know, I don’t think she ever felt invested in America’s public schools.”
“She didn’t have a strategy, Trump didn’t have a strategy,” Biden continued. “There’s so many things already that Joe has planned to do.”
“We are in Donald Trump’s America. And there’s just so much chaos. … Educators don’t know what to do, students don’t know what to do.”
Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace, who has angered some Republicans for his pointed questioning of Trump and White House officials, will moderate the first presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sept. 29.
The second debate, which will be town-hall style, will be moderated by C-SPAN’s Steve Scully in Miami on Oct. 15.
The third and final presidential debate will be moderated by Kristen Welker of NBC and will take place in Nashville on Oct. 22.
There will be one vice presidential debate between Vice President Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), which will be moderated by USA Today’s Susan Page and will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah.
[…]
The US government has said that it will not participate in a global initiative to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a vaccine for Covid-19 because the effort is co-led by the World Health Organization.
The Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (Covax) is a plan developed by the WHO, along with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and is meant to accelerate the development and testing of a vaccine and work toward distributing it equally. The WHO announced last month that more than 170 countries were in talks to participate in Covax.
Asked to confirm a report in the Washington Post that the US will not be joining Covax, a White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said in a statement: Under President [sic] Trump’s leadership [sic], vaccine and therapeutic research, development, and trials have advanced at unprecedented speed to deliver groundbreaking, effective medicines driven by data and safety and not held back by government red tape.
The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.
[…]
“No one is safe until everyone is safe. No one country has access to research and development, manufacturing and all the supply chain for all essential medicines and materials,” said the WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in August. “We need to prevent vaccine nationalism.”
European Union states could buy potential COVID-19 vaccines through a procurement scheme co-led by the World Health Organization, the EU Commission said in what appears to be a change in position.
The move could allow EU governments to secure vaccines from companies that are not negotiating with Brussels, such as U.S. firms Merck, Inovio and Novavax. They are all in talks with the WHO scheme, dubbed COVAX, but have so far not been reported to be involved in negotiations with the EU Commission.
EU states have committed not to enter into parallel negotiations with the same vaccine manufacturers with which talks are ongoing at EU level, but this “does not exclude the possibility to take part in negotiations with other vaccine companies through COVAX,” an EU Commission spokesman said.
Trump has spent years telling his followers they are the only true Americans. Now, he’s implying their use of force is legitimate too. —Dahlia Lithwick
We have reached the point at which there is no reason to frame the 2020 elections in terms of “politics.” There is not even really a reason to think of this in terms of “voting.” While it is comforting to think that Nov. 3 will simply come down to which side gets out the vote or who phone-banks or postcards most effectively, it’s also the case that so much of the apparatus of voting is newly unrecognizable this year. The ways we vote have changed, due to COVID and federal interference with the U.S. Postal Service. […] the ways in which votes are counted and tabulated have changed due to well-funded and systematic efforts throughout the states to reject ballots that have been cast in minority precincts and Democratic strongholds, under bogus claims of fraud. Also, the ways in which the Justice Department ordinarily comports itself in advance of a federal election has […] changed, with Attorney General Bill Barr already making false claims about mail-in ballots and cheerfully helping to midwife an October surprise.
Despite heroic efforts by voting rights lawyers who are killing themselves to expand and protect the franchise, the fact remains that so much of what has functioned as an elections system in the United States has functioned because of a fundamental national compact of acceptance, if not good faith, that allowed us to make the best of a flawed, decentralized, and inherently unjust system. […] But that collective agreement—much like the fact that presidents do not accept foreign or domestic emoluments, or the fact that Cabinet members don’t give convention speeches, or the fact that the president doesn’t use the White House or the Washington Monument as campaign props—was always more of a norm, even if it was carved into the Constitution or required by statute. […] What Hatch Act? […]
Trump has now spoken out in defense of a supporter who killed protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. [Trump] has claimed that the 17-year-old shooter, who crossed state lines with a weapon that was not his own, found himself in “a very interesting situation.” [Trump]t did not condemn the violence and instead echoed Rittenhouse’s lawyers, who said the 17-year-old “did nothing wrong” and “exercised his God-given, constitutional, common law and statutory law right to self-defense.”* Trump has now defended crowds of his supporters who took it upon themselves to shoot paintballs and pepper spray on protesters in Portland, Oregon […]
[Trump], who defended the attack by federal officials on lawful protesters at Lafayette Square only a few months ago, is now defending armed militiamen stepping in to quell racial justice protests around the country after he himself sees fit to describe them as rioting and looting. […] And he is suggesting that his own followers’ dedication might be the only remedy to broken trust in voting, after spending four years breaking trust in voting.
Back in 2000 in Florida, disputes over voting resulted in a so-called Brooks Brothers Riot, in which GOP lawyers swarmed into local elections disputes, demanding close monitoring of recounts and alleging improprieties. That felt like an inevitable endpoint for the 2020 election as well: lawyers on both sides jostling to make their case for the votes they represent. But in a matter of one short week, Trump has seeded the terrifying notion that this riot does not come dressed in natty suits and good haircuts. He is implying, if not stating outright, that the legal work need not be conducted by lawyers at all, and that the conduct itself need not be lawful, so long as the ends are just.
His supporters, he insists, day after day, are the only true Americans, and he keeps telling them that as patriots they are free from whatever norms once governed how we protest, how we enforce the law, and also how we vote. And as gun-toting countrymen, he says, aloud, they are well within their rights to decide when actual law enforcement is not doing its job correctly, and they can cross state lines with weapons of war to pick up the slack themselves. […]
12pm: The Enabler, with some twat like me presenting it
The so-called mildly-lefty “balance” element. Just like all the Brits who take the Russia Today [RT] rouble on the basis that “I’ve never had any interference in my show”, the Enabler fails to understand his or her role in the partisan channel ecosystem. I think it’s best described by a Victoria Wood line about prawns. “Never touch prawns. Do you know they hang around sewage outlet pipes, treading water with their mouths open? They love it.” The presenter of this slot resigns before Christmas, writes a faux-self-deprecating “long read” about their year behind enemy lines and gets a deal off the back of it for a book called something like Not Very Nice Work If You Can Get It. […]
7.30pm: So You Want to Own the Libs?
Extreme panel show where media contestants do things like burn Nike trainers they’ve already bought or give their children measles. The prize? “Owning” the “libs”, two words they only loosely understand but have somehow grasped could be linked to a career break in America that’s deffo going to happen.
8pm: An American Has Noticed Us
Plum spot phoned in by literally any old mildly well-known US shock jock whose voicemail message says “I’ll do it”. Paid more than anyone else because it’s a prestige hire and speaks of global ambition, even though they’re a frothing isolationist and three months off being #MeToo’d by their own niece.
2am: Up All Night with Nigel Farage
Great to see the eternally silenced Nigel get a spot on the new channel, even though his BBC appearance tally is second only to David Attenborough’s. Initial surprise when Farage requests the graveyard slot gives way to the realisation that he is specifically tailoring his phone-in topics to sweet-spot areas he hopes his close friend Donald Trump will call into, just like he does on proper Fox News.
5am: Please, I Am Begging You, I Will Literally Do Anything If You Call Me Just Once
With Nigel Farage.
From Dana Milbank, more details related to Trump’s trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin:
[…] Trump took off on Air Force One on Tuesday morning on his way to Kenosha, Wis. He landed on Planet Zog.
In real life, protests (some peaceful, some violent) erupted after police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back. A Trump-supporting militia member allegedly gunned down three of the protesters, killing two of them.
But in the imaginary Kenosha that Trump created Tuesday afternoon at an invitation-only “roundtable” — in a high school cafeteria serving as a government “command center” — things were quite different.
There was no pandemic in this Kenosha; at his suggestion, everybody in the roundtable took off their face masks. There was no right-wing violence. […] There was no such thing as police brutality […] And there were hardly any Black people (only two of the 23 in the room).
It quickly became clear that the pair, a pastor and his wife, were to be seen rather than heard. James Ward, who said he is the pastor to Blake’s mother, was asked by Trump to offer a prayer, then offered to discuss “the real pain that hurts Black Americans.” Trump wasn’t interested.
When Trump opened the roundtable to questions, a reporter asked the pastor whether he believed that there is systemic racism in law enforcement.
Before Ward could answer, Trump broke in to say there were only “some bad apples” among police, of which “I have the endorsement of so many, maybe everybody.”
The reporter tried again. “Could the pastor answer my question, please?”
Trump called on another questioner.
Then, shutting down the session, Trump turned to the muted pastor he had just used as a prop. “Fantastic job,” he said.
As the election gets closer and closer, Trump appears to be getting further and further from reality. Tuesday’s stagecraft in Kenosha was Trump’s most audacious attempt to rearrange reality since … well, since the night before. On Monday, he informed Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that Joe Biden is the victim of mind control by “people that you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows.” They are, he said, the same “people that are controlling the streets.” Trump further reported the existence of a plane, “almost completely loaded with thugs wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms.” He said they “were on the plane to do big damage.”
Pressed for details, Trump said he could divulge no more. “I’ll tell you sometime, but it’s under investigation.” As NBC reported, Trump’s fantastical tale closely matched a two-month-old conspiracy theory making the rounds on Facebook.
By the time he arrived at Joint Base Andrews for his trip to Wisconsin, Trump had already developed more details about his new conspiracy theory. This time, “the entire plane filled up with the looters, the anarchists, the rioters.” And Trump said he has a firsthand account from a person on the plane. “Maybe they’ll speak to you and maybe they won’t,” he said. (They didn’t.)
[…] “I feel so safe,” Trump remarked, after a tour in which he was protected by armored personnel carriers, military trucks and police in camouflage carrying automatic rifles.
He received thanks from a participant for “sending the National Guard.” (That was actually the work of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who, like Kenosha’s mayor, urged Trump not to visit.)
Trump reported that “there was love on the street, I can tell you, of Wisconsin when we were coming in … so many African Americans.” According to the “pool” reporters traveling in the president’s motorcade, he had been greeted by friends and foes alike, including one “large group protesting the president, their middle fingers pointed at motorcade.” […]
Trump would not be moved. Asked about nonviolent protests and structural racism, he answered with “anarchists,” “looters,” “rioters” and “agitators.” He said Democrats like riots and want to close prisons and end immigration enforcement. “The wall will be finished very shortly,” he added.
[…]
A data specialist [Will O’Shea] recruited to the civil service following Dominic Cummings’ [NKofE’s Stephen Miller –blf] call for weirdos and misfits to work for the UK government was sacked recently after posting on social media that police should use live rounds against Black Lives Matter demonstrators […]
It is the second known departure of a government recruit hired under the project set up by Cummings, to tempt an unusual set of people into senior government roles. Both departures involved recruits who publicly expressed sentiments viewed as racist.
[…]
As a reminder, most police in the “U”K do not carry guns and have no access to guns. Guns are available mostly only to specialist “armed response units”, and (from memory) typically carried in a locked storage inside the vehicle.
blf @426, Ha! That last bit, showing Nigel Farage desperate for someone to call him, is funny.
In other news, here are some bits and pieces of campaign news:
Joe Biden’s political operation announced that it raised over $364 million in August, which is a record-breaking monthly haul. The figure includes financial support for Biden for President, the DNC, and their joint fundraising committees.
A new national USA Today/Suffolk University poll found Joe Biden leading Donald Trump, 50% to 43%. In June, the same poll showed the Delaware Democrat ahead by 12 points. There are quite a few polls showing the race tightening.
In Virginia, two of Kanye West’s 13 electors have filed a new lawsuit, claiming they were tricked into signing an “Elector Oath” backing Kanye West’s candidacy.
Satire/humor from Andy Borowitz: “Trump Says He Deserves No Blame for State of America Because He Has Not Actually Worked for Past Four Years”
Pushing back against attempts to brand the United States of 2020 as “Trump’s America,” Donald Trump said that he deserves no blame for the state of the country, because he has not actually done any work for the past four years.
“I could understand people blaming me for things if I had actually been doing my job, but, quite frankly, I haven’t,” he said. “Anybody who claims otherwise is a terrible person.”
“CNN, which is a disgrace, says that it’s the White House’s fault for this and the White House’s fault for that,” he added. “Well, I’ve hardly been at the White House, so, once again, they’re wrong.”
Attempting to answer the question of whose America it is, if not his, Trump said, “The last President who actually worked at the White House was Barack Obama. So if this is anybody’s America it’s his and Sleepy Joe’s. People are saying that. They’re sick of living in Biden’s America, and we cannot give Joe Biden another four years.”
He rejected any suggestion that, as President, he must own the current conditions in America, asserting, “I know what I own and what I don’t own. I own Bill Barr. I own Mitch McConnell. I don’t own America.”
Bill Barr can go down as the greatest attorney general in the history of our country or he can go down as just another guy. It depends. They have all the stuff — you don’t need anything else. You know, they want everything. You don’t need anything else. They all lied to Congress. They were liars. They were cheaters. They were treasonous. There was treason.
More details:
[…] The host [Fox News’ Laura Ingraham] asked, “Bill Barr, you’re saying, has to prosecute all of these individuals to be a great attorney general?”
Trump replied, “Well, look, I’ll let you know about that.”
The president didn’t specify who, exactly, he wants Barr to prosecute in order to be “the greatest attorney general in the history of our country,” but as part of the on-air harangue, Trump referenced former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by name.
[…] the conspiracy theory the president keeps describing is folly. No one spied on his campaign. His perceived enemies did not commit treason. No one in the Obama White House, U.S. intelligence agencies, or federal law enforcement committed “the crime of the century.”
[…] the point of the president’s little on-air tantrum was to press his attorney general: Trump said in order for Barr to be “the greatest of all time,” the president expects the Republican attorney to go after Trump’s perceived enemies post haste. […]
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden are going to Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Thursday. The Democratic nominee will “hold a community meeting in Kenosha to bring together Americans to heal and address the challenges we face,” according to the campaign, followed by a “local stop.”
On Tuesday, Donald Trump managed to visit Kenosha and dwell on the damage from unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake without mentioning Blake, who is paralyzed after being shot seven times in the back. Biden, on the other hand, has already spoken with members of Blake’s family. […]
I want to make it absolutely clear Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple, and those who do it should be prosecuted.
Fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames. He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it. But his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows how weak he is.
Violence will not bring change. It’ll only bring destruction. It’s wrong in every way. If I were president, my language would be less divisive. I’d be looking to lower the temperature in this country, not raise it.
Donald Trump is determined to instill fear in America because Donald Trump adds fuel to every fire. This is not who we are. […]
From Mark Sumner: “Rushing the release of a vaccine could be the worst part of Trump’s COVID-19 disaster.”
[…] on August 27, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Robert Redfield issued a letter to the governors of all fifty states telling them that Trump wants them to “do everything in their power to eliminate hurdles for vaccine distribution sites to be fully operational by Nov. 1.” The signals that Trump is planning to announce the availability of a vaccine before the election are not subtle—and they’re everywhere.
If Trump does this, if he rushes a vaccine into distribution without the completion of trials and without the full support of healthcare experts, the result could be more illness, more economic cost, and more deaths than no vaccine at all.
The risks of rushing a vaccine forward without completing Phase 3 testing are more than the threat of releasing an unsafe or ineffective vaccine, but obviously, those are threats. […] To effectively end the pandemic, at least 70% of the population needs to be immunized. If hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines were administered, even a low rate of safety issues could generate thousands of serious problems. And if a vaccine is less than 70% effective, even administering it to everyone in the nation might not achieve the level of immunity necessary to reduce the rate of transmission below the point where the COVID-19 epidemic would be sustained.
That’s only part of the risk. Even if the vaccine turned out to be almost perfectly safe and almost perfectly effective, pushing it forward without adequate testing will absolutely generate a problem with public trust that could be at least as bad as a vaccine that simply didn’t work.
[…] the latest Harris poll shows that 78% of Americans believe vaccine approval is being driven more by politics than by science. An amazing 83% of Americans worry that any vaccine that appears in the next few weeks could be unsafe. As a result of these concerns, only half of Americans have said they would consider getting a COVID-19 vaccine. These results are only to be expected after Trump has repeatedly pushed an ineffective “cure” for COVID-19 and made exaggerated claims about other treatments.
By attempting to deliver a “miracle” in advance of the election, Trump risks creating a whole new—and much more justified—anti-vax movement specifically aimed at the COVID-19 vaccine. […]
Whether the U.S. moves forward with an ineffective vaccine, or rolls out a vaccine that works but which 83% of the population doesn’t trust, the effect is the same: An insufficient level of immunity to halt the spread of COVID-19. That kind of result would make it much more likely that COVID-19 moves from being epidemic to endemic—to becoming a disease that is always present, and always ready to flare up again in the population. It also increases the chance that a large pool of COVID-19 virus continues to exist in the population, creating a very real risk that mutations could occur to make the virus more contagious, or more deadly, or unphased by current vaccines.
[…] If Trump fumbles the vaccine roll-out, it would be a sorry finish to the greatest tragedy in a century. At this moment, the number of dead Americans from COVID-19 is approaching 190,000 and the economy is in deep recession, but even those results could be trivial compared to the long-term damage that would result if COVID-19 becomes a recurring plague.
Elizabeth Farah, the co-founder and chief operating officer of the right-wing conspiracy theory website WorldNetDaily, posted a video Friday in which she declared that it is a sin to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 presidential election, asserting that it is akin to doing nothing while one’s family is viciously attacked by home invaders.
You’re obligated to vote for Trump/Pence in this 2020 election, she said. To do good is to eschew those who are advocating evil and unrighteousness, killing of babies, lawlessness, defunding of police, socialism, Marxism, fascism. So you cannot vote for Biden and Harris.
Yeah! Socialism, marxism, fascism, and eating babies all in one go. What’s not to like? (Cheese is not mentioned, points out the mildly deranged penguin. Nor is the deadly Dihydrogen Monoxide.)
[…] You are watching as a blind man goes to a cliff, or maybe it’s toward an oncoming train, and you cannot be bothered to redirect his path to safety? she added. That’s what this is about. I want you to just watch the news every single day and you tell me that it would not be sin to vote for Biden and Harris.
blf @434, what news does Elizabeth Farah want us to watch?
In related news, here is a good summary from The New York Times:
Trump said on Monday that a plane “almost completely loaded with thugs” wearing “dark uniforms” had been headed to the Republican National Convention to do “big damage.” The claim is similar to a baseless conspiracy theory that spread online over the summer, well before the convention.
He has declined to condemn the killings of two protesters in Kenosha, Wis. He instead defended the 17-year-old charged in the shootings — a Trump supporter named Kyle Rittenhouse — saying he was acting in self-defense. Trump also promoted a Twitter post that called Rittenhouse “a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.”
He defended violence committed by his supporters in Portland, Ore., who fired paintballs and pepper spray at Black Lives Matter protesters.
He compared the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha to missing “a three-foot putt” in a golf tournament. [He said the police officer “choked.”]
He claimed that “people that you’ve never heard of” and “people that are in the dark shadows” are controlling Joe Biden.
He claimed Democrats were trying to “destroy” suburbs with “low-income housing, and with that comes a lot of other problems, including crime.” He added that Cory Booker — one of the highest-profile Black Democrats — would be “in charge of it.”
[…] He said that Biden, at the Democratic National Convention, “didn’t even discuss law enforcement, the police. Those words weren’t mentioned.” In fact, Biden held a discussion at the convention on policing, with a police chief.
Trump claimed that he “took control of” the situation in Kenosha by sending in the National Guard. In fact, Wisconsin’s governor, not the president, sent the National Guard.
He retweeted messages asserting that the pandemic’s death toll was overstated. Evidence indicates the opposite is true.
He said that protests against police brutality were actually a secret “coup attempt” by anarchists “trying to take down the President.”
Declaring that they had already earmarked tens of millions of dollars toward funding the vital medication, the FDA reportedly promised Tuesday to fast-track a cure for the side effects of the fast-tracked Covid-19 vaccine. “Developing a response to address the effects of the accelerated coronavirus vaccine, whatever they end up being, is our number-one priority,” said FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, adding that the agency planned to bypass phase three testing and get the cure out on the market before the most debilitating side effects of the administration’s Covid-19 vaccine became permanent. “Once we have the initial data in place that tell us whether the coronavirus vaccine causes, for example, profuse vomiting, excruciating pain, or organ failure, we’ll be able to ensure that a cure will be available to Americans shortly after the vaccine. We know how much widespread suffering the coronavirus has caused, and how much widespread suffering a fast-tracked, minimally tested vaccine is likely to cause, so we’re working to keep a cure for the as-yet-unknown side effects a top priority.” FDA officials additionally confirmed they were also preparing to fast-track a cure for the side effects of the fast-tracked cure for the side effects of the coronavirus vaccine.
[…]
The letter from the Nobel laureates endorses Biden with three sentences:
At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy. During his long record of public service, Joe Biden has consistently demonstrated his willingness to listen to experts, his understanding of the value of international collaboration in research, and his respect for the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country. As American citizens and as scientists, we wholeheartedly endorse Joe Biden for President.
The letter does not make explicit reference to the coronavirus pandemic or to the climate emergency, but it does single out an issue outside the expertise of the signatories: immigration.
Biden respects “the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country”, the letter says.
In July, the Donald Trump administration advanced a plan to deport foreign students in the United States whose classes had moved online owing to the pandemic […]
The NIH is contradicting the White House again: “There is no solid evidence for or against recommending convalescent plasma to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19, a government panel said Tuesday, less than 10 days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of the treatment.”
* Census: “Facing lawsuits and mounting scrutiny for making last-minute changes that cut 2020 census counting a month short, the U.S. Census Bureau is now ending in-person counting in the San Diego area and some other parts of the country as early as Sept. 18 — nearly two weeks before the expedited end date of Sept. 30 that NPR first confirmed.” [Yikes! That is such bad news.] [See also: NPR link ]
If something can be exploited for political gain, it will be exploited for political gain: “Millions of Americans who are struggling to put food on the table may discover a new item in government-funded relief packages of fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy and meat: a letter signed by President Donald Trump.” [Oh, FFS.]
Waiting for the inevitable: “It’s not a matter of if a privately built border fence along the shores of the Rio Grande will fail, it’s a matter of when, according to a new engineering report on the troubled project.”
Not good news: FEMA narrows the “emergency protective measures” for which it will pay.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it will no longer pay for some safety measures related to COVID-19 that it had previously covered.
Keith Turi, FEMA assistant administrator for recovery, announced the changes during a call Tuesday with state and tribal emergency managers, many of whom expressed concerns about the new policy.
Under the new guidance, FEMA will generally not reimburse states for the costs of cloth face coverings or personal protective equipment in nonemergency settings, including schools, public housing and courthouses. The policy goes into effect on Sept. 15.
The changes narrow what constitutes an “emergency protective measure” and is thus eligible for FEMA’s Public Assistance Program.
A recording of the call was provided to NPR by a government official responsible for emergency funding. The official is not authorized to speak to the media and is concerned about a possible job loss for doing so.
Going forward, Turi explained, cloth face masks and personal protective equipment in nonemergency settings will be classified as “increased operating costs” for public services and will not be covered by the fund. […]
A day after the new policy was announced, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden blasted the change.
“This is an emergency. And Donald Trump and his FEMA should treat it as one,” Biden said at a campaign event Wednesday in Delaware.
“If I were president today I’d direct FEMA to make sure that our kids K-12 get full access to disaster relief and emergency assistance,” he said. “I’d make sure that PPE and sanitation supplies for school qualify as ’emergency protective measures,’ which is the phrase they use, to fully be eligible for federal assistance.” […]
Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana has a long and colorful track record of being a right-wing [doofus] who has a strange preoccupation with World War II, though which side he’s most obsessed with remains debatable. But one thing is clear: He likes to dress with flair and really sell his Military Police Corps career, complete with tough talk about hitting heavy bags and “riding Harleys to honor our American flag.” […] Higgins is also a big Second Amendment rights and states’ rights guy. Of course, that doesn’t apply to those who aren’t white right-wing, Second Amendment types.
According to The Advocate and Mother Jones, on Tuesday Rep. Higgins posted a picture of armed Black demonstrators on Facebook, captioning it: “I’d drop any 10 of you where you stand.” Higgins seems to be working on the assumption that these demonstrators are out-of-towners with secret agendas—the oldest and most classic fascistic ruse in abusive states dealing with civil unrest. Higgins made sure everyone knew that he wasn’t being racist while he was clearly being racist, since trying to find similar images of white guys in tactical gear and assault weapons “demonstrating” would also include too many MAGA hats. “Nothing personal. We just eliminate the threat. We don’t care what color you are. We don’t care if you’re left or right. if you show up like this, if We recognize threat…you won’t walk away,” he spewed.
The post disappeared very quickly from his Facebook campaign account. The Advocate reports that Facebook said it removed Higgins’ post as it breaks their “Violence and Incitement” policies. To be clear: Higgins is a big Second Amendment guy. The fact that he chose to use an image of Black American demonstrators with their Second Amendment gear on to stipulate some kind of rebellion or invasion is genuinely racist. Louisiana is made up of almost 40% Black citizens, making it one of the Blackest states in the Union. Louisiana has super lax gun laws, allowing people older than 17 years old to freely open-carry firearms without a permit.
The idea that Rep. Higgins would single out a group of Black demonstrators in Louisiana who are open carrying, as an example of outsiders and interlopers to be potentially targeted for vigilante justice, is not simply abhorrent—it’s straight up racist and murderous.
So then Higgins posted an image of a bald eagle, and this threat against … the U.S. government, maybe?
No, I did not remove my post.
America is being manipulated into a new era of government control. Your liberty is threatened from within.
Welcome to the front lines, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I suggest you get your mind right.
I’ll advise when it’s time gear up, mount up, and roll out.
The multimillion-dollar privately funded border fencing near Mission, Texas isn’t just a legal disaster for the likes of newly indicted white nationalist creep and former Trump official Steve Bannon, it’s an actual physical disaster. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune write that new engineering reports say that if necessary repairs aren’t made, extensive erosion will cause the fencing to fail the next time the Rio Grande floods.
“Company president Tommy Fisher, a frequent guest on Fox News, had called the Rio Grande fence the ‘Lamborghini’ of border walls,” Jeremy Schwartz and Perla Trevizo report. […]
The engineering reports, which are getting filed in federal court as part of ongoing litigation against contractor Fisher Sand and Gravel, confirm prior reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune on the fencing’s status as a hot mess, finding “that segments of the structure were in danger of overturning due to extensive erosion if not fixed and properly maintained. Fisher dismissed the concerns as normal post-construction issues.”
Not exactly. […] it seems clear from the reports that shoddy planning, shoddy work, and the company’s rush to build border fencing for purely political reasons benefitting the impeached president’s reelection chances could be now coming back to seriously bite it in the ass.
For instance, […] Fisher had “bragged that his company’s methods could help Trump reach his Election Day goal of about 500 new miles of barriers along the southern border.” Those methods don’t seem so great now: The fencing was placed very close to the river, when “the federal government usually builds sections of the wall miles inland on top of existing levees, partly due to erosion concerns,” […]
Schwartz and Trevizo write that one of the reports further found “concrete cracking, construction flaws and what the firm concluded was likely substandard construction material below the fence’s foundation.” […] A University of Texas at El Paso engineering professor who reviewed the reports told Schwartz and Trevizo that “[i]t seems like they are cutting corners everywhere. It’s not a Lamborghini, it’s a $500 used car.”
While Fisher Sand and Gravel has said that it plans quarterly inspections of the fencing, one of the reports calls the plan “completely inadequate.” It would be easy to laugh at this project’s literal collapse, but it would come at the expense of the Rio Grande and surrounding environment, which shouldn’t be littered with this physical monument to hate. It’s also hard to laugh when Fisher Sand and Gravel has been awarded not one, but two federal contracts to build fencing for the administration. […]
[…] But as soon as the legal troubles and uh-ohs started, Trump Sr. began to distance himself from all of that. Funny how that happens. As Bannon now faces indictments on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in the We Build The Wall scam, one of the Fisher Sand and Gravel contracts now also faces audit by the Defense Department’s inspector general.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Rachel Maddow had a good monologue on what appears to be the new Covid “policy” from Hair Furor, namely herd immunity which is obtainable my 2.13 million deaths from Covid. I’ll post ia video in the morning if posted by MSNBC.
Akira MacKenziesays
@42
Don’t worry, according to the Right such a number of deaths is less. “tragedy” and more of a “statistic.”
It’s also more of a reason to call them out as hypocrites when they complain about Stalin’s supposed crimes.
Dozens of journalists gathered Wednesday outside a police station in the capital of Belarus to protest the detention of colleagues covering a demonstration against the nation’s authoritarian president and an election the opposition sees as rigged.
Police detained several journalists from Belarusian news outlets Tuesday on charges of taking part in an unsanctioned demonstration. They could receive fines or jail sentences of up to 15 days, if charged and convicted.
[…]
During Tuesday’s protest, hundreds of students marched across the city, chanting for Lukashenko to “Go away!” as they continued a fourth straight week of mass post-election protests.
[…]
More than 100 students of the Minsk State Linguistics University formed a human chain to protest Tuesday’s detentions of students and professors. By Wednesday evening, similar human chains popped up all over Minsk, with hundreds of people joining in to express solidarity with detained protesters.
[…]
Belarusian prosecutors have opened a criminal probe of the Coordination Council that opposition activists set up after the election to try to negotiate a transition of power. Last week, two of its members were given 10-day jail sentences on charges of staging unsanctioned protests, and several others were summoned for questioning.
Pavel Latushko, a former minister of culture and ambassador to France who joined the council, traveled to Poland Tuesday after facing threats and being questioned. His departure came a day after the Belarusian president warned that Latushko had crossed a “red line” and would face prosecution.
Latushko told The Associated Press that he plans to return to Belarus later this month after attending a conference in Poland and also visiting Lithuania.
[…]
During a visit to Moscow on Wednesday, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei thanked Russia for supporting the Belarusian government in the face of what he described as protests orchestrated from abroad.
[…]
blfsays
This is one of those Al Jazeera articles written by Bloomberg (albeit it appears to be circulated by Reuters), so the analysis is a bit suspect (i.e., it only focuses on (some) financial matters), US debt set to exceed size of its economy — first time since WWII:
[…]
The nonpartisan United States Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday said the federal budget deficit for fiscal 2020 will hit $3.3 trillion, 16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), down from its April 24 preliminary estimate of $3.7 trillion.
[…]
So far this year, more than $3 trillion in emergency coronavirus pandemic aid has been enacted into law.
These huge federal outlays have caused a surge in this year’s already large deficit and federal debt.
“This report shows that our unsustainable fiscal challenges have rapidly accelerated, as our national debt will now exceed the size of our entire economy next year,” said Peter G Peterson Foundation Chief Executive Michael Peterson. The group works to increase public awareness of the urgent fiscal challenges facing America’s future.
The CBO’s forecast did not include another round of coronavirus aid Congress might consider, which could exceed $1 trillion.
[… F]ederal debt held by the public was projected to rise sharply, to 98 percent of GDP in 2020, compared with 79 percent at the end of 2019 and 35 percent in 2007, before the start of the previous recession, the CBO said.
The CBO also sounded alarms over the viability of the Social Security, Medicare, military retirement and other trust funds, predicting they would be depleted within 10 years unless Congress addresses the shortfalls.
[…]
The Medicare hospital insurance fund for the elderly will run out of money by 2024, the CBO estimated[.]
US president [sic] suggests people vote in person and by mail and if system works it will stop two votes
Donald Trump has suggested that people in the state of North Carolina should vote twice in the November election, once in person and once by mail, although doing so is a crime.
Let them send it in and let them go vote, Trump said in an interview with WECT-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Wednesday when asked about the security of mail-in votes. And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote in person.
I don’t know how mail-in voting works in N.Carolina, but polling stations would know who was sent a mail-in ballet, possibly by the simple expedient of not being on the list of registered voters for that station. So such a person attempting to vote would be detected and at most one vote counted.
From memory, in some places, it is possible for an intended-to mail-in voter to instead vote in-person (e.g., change of plans or whatever). As I very vaguely recall, such a voter must present their mail-in ballet to the polling station (to either be destroyed or used, as I very vaguely recall); I have no recollection of how an in-person voter who “lost”, didn’t receive, or damaged their mail-in ballet are(? were?) handled.
Voting more than once in an election is illegal.
“President Trump outrageously encouraged” North Carolinians “to break the law in order to help him sow chaos in our election,” said the state attorney general, Josh Stein, in a tweet. “Make sure you vote, but do NOT vote twice! I will do everything in my power to make sure the will of the people is upheld in November.”
The US attorney general, William Barr, told CNN that Trump was trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good. When told that voting twice is illegal, he said, I don’t know what the law in the particular state says. […]
I also don’t know the specifics of the N.Carolina law (or, really, any state’s voting laws, especially w.r.t. in-person or non-foreign mail-in voting), but can assert with reasonable confidence voting twice is illegal. (As per my vague recollections above, there are some exceptions, but at most one of the ballets is counted.)
Legal scholars says Trump has little power make good on the document in which he threatened to cut funding to Democratic-led cities
Donald Trump signed a memo on Wednesday that threatened to cut funding to Democratic-led cities that the administration has characterized as lawless and anarchist jurisdictions, using his office to launch an extraordinary – if legally ineffective – attack on his political opponents ahead of the November election.
My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones, the memorandum reads. It is imperative that the federal government review the use of federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities.
The document compels William Barr, the attorney general, to develop a list of jurisdictions that permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract these criminal activities within the next fortnight. It also instructs Russell Vought, the White House budget director, to issue guidance in the next month on how federal agencies can restrict or disfavor anarchist jurisdictions in providing federal grants.
Excepting Bristol, England, where the police themselves opted to not intervene when the slave trader statue was pulled down and dumped in the floating harbour, I cannot think of anywhere where “damage” was permitted. Not even in Portland’s police-free zone. Which is not to say it didn’t happen, only that there was no “Get Out of Gaol Free” card or whatever (not even in Bristol, where the police did, many days later, arrest a few people, after making a video appeal for information / identification). And of course, e.g. in Portland, BLM was discouraging damage / fires / rioting / looting, pointing out it would play into the tiny hands of hair furor and his dalekocrazy.
[…] Pushing hardline law and order rhetoric, Trump has also pushed baseless conspiracy theories about leftwing violence amid protests against police brutality and systemic racism while refusing to condemn rightwing and white supremacist vigilantism.
The memorandum that the White House shared on Wednesday night, which specifically names Portland, New York City, Seattle and Washington DC as examples of jurisdictions might lose federal funding, is unlikely to result in any of those cities losing significant funding, according to legal experts. Congress determines how funding is distributed, and agencies cannot “willy nilly restrict funding”, said Sam Berger, a former senior policy advisor at the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration.
The five-page memorandum “reads like a campaign press release”, Berger told the Guardian. “The first two pages are a bizarre diatribe — that’s not what a government document looks like.”
I smell the stink of Stephen Miller.
Even if federal agencies are able to find justification to reduce funding to certain cities, perhaps via grants linked to law enforcement, any funding restrictions are unlikely to hold up to legal challenges, he added.
Interfering with at least some of those grants could be literally defunding the policegoons — but not what the de-funders want, which is to switch the excess(ive) goon funding into community services (e.g., homelessness, mental health, child care, etc., etc.).
“The president obviously has no power to pick and choose which cities to cut off from congressionally appropriated funding,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard, and recently the co-author of To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment. Trump “has no defunding spigot. The power of the purse belongs to Congress, not the Executive. Donald Trump must have slept through high school civics,” Tribe said in an email.
Since lockdown, sales of devices that help women and trans men pee standing up have gone through the roof. […]
Natasha Bright watched in horror as she saw her friends drinking beer after beer in the park. She had gone out to meet them as lockdown restrictions eased and maybe have a drink herself. But one thought plagued her: what if I need the toilet?
It was the same when she went to walk her dog in the Peak District near her home in Sheffield. With the already dwindling numbers of public toilets closed, and pubs and cafes shuttered, the options were to hold it in or find a bush. “There’s a lot that can go wrong when you’re squatting outside,” says the 33-year-old charity communications manager. “It takes longer to get your trousers up than it does for men, there’s nettles and the fear of being caught … oh God. If the choice was to have a drink and have to go in the bushes, or not have a drink and wait until I got home, it was easy.”
A friend had told Bright about something she had used at a festival: a cardboard funnel that women can pee through, aiming into a urinal. “It was a laugh at the time,” she says. But when lockdown happened, she bought herself a Shewee; a plastic contraption that comes with its own carry case and enables the user to pee standing up. “This way I can wee as easily as my boyfriend does,” she says.
Bright was not alone in finding this solution. Sales of Shewees have boomed, with the company reporting a 700% increase since the beginning of lockdown. Other companies have reported the same […]
It has been something of a stand-to-pee revolution, says Sam Fountain, who invented the Shewee in the late 1990s when she was a product design student. […]
[…]
According to the gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter, there is little evidence to suggest that using a stand-to-pee device is safer in terms of coronavirus. “The issue with toilets is what you touch with your hands,” she says. “Which is why good hand hygiene is so important. But you are not going to get Covid vaginally, or via the skin on your bottom. The virus causes a problem because it goes straight into your lungs.”
A more rational fear around public bathrooms is ventilation. According to research published in the journal Physics of Fluid, droplets containing coronavirus could potentially linger up to a metre in the air after a toilet is flushed, to be inhaled by the next user. Hence, the importance of ventilation and wearing a face mask.
[… other potential issues…]
This is the main problem Gunter has with these devices. “Voiding is such a complex reflex,” she says. “When you’ve been doing it one way for 30 years, changing it is very hard for your brain to comprehend. It’s not a good idea to mess with that.”
[… W]hile the Shewee may sound radical and modern, there have been similar devices dating back to the 1700s. “They were discreet objects that women could tuck into purses and make use of when travelling. It’s even claimed that they were used in churches when preachers went on for too long,” says [professor of architectural humanities at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, and author of the book Bathroom, Barbara] Penner.
[…] Is the Shewee a viable solution? Mary Anne Case, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, who has worked extensively on equalising public toilet provision, says that the problem with many of the alternatives for women “is they are not thinking about the female body, customs and habits. Most of the people inventing these devices are trying to allow females to urinate in the way males do.” The fly on women’s jeans, for example, is not positioned for the female urethra.
[…]
For the trans community, however, the devices have been helpful. […]
Child marriage in the country has increased during coronavirus — and now a newly-tabled bill would allow children as young as 10 to marry
[…]
According to the latest government figures, 34% of Somali girls are married before they reach 18, and 16% of them before their 15th birthday.
While children are married off for different reasons, such as the economic benefit of a dowry, and an increase in child marriage cases has been reported during the coronavirus pandemic, early marriage is rooted in Somali culture. An old Somali saying goes: “Gabadh ama god hakaaga jirto ama gunti rag,” which loosely translates as a girl should either be married or in a grave.
I dislike and try to avoid commentary — such as typesetting in eejit quotes — traditional sayings and similar (especially when not from my own culture), but that one (as roughly translated) Shall Not Pass!
(As an aside, Generalissimo Google Translate conjures up “There is a girl or a man in your hole or a man’s belt”, correctly(?) identifying the original as Somali. The mildly deranged penguin suggests “Cheeses are to be hunted and ate”, albeit what in which language she is translating is unclear; e.g., that is also her translation of “Exit”.)
Marriage under 18 is not illegal, although Somalia’s constitution prohibits it and the country is signed up to several international treaties promising to tackle it. In July 2014, the government signed a charter committing to end child marriage by 2020. But in August, the Somali parliament tabled a controversial bill that would allow a child to be married once they reached puberty, which can mean 10 years old. The sexual intercourse related crimes bill would also allow marriage if parents consented. The UN has called the bill “deeply flawed”.
The new bill has been fiercely criticised after MPs realised that it was different from a sexual offences bill unanimously adopted in 2018 by ministers but not enacted, which sought to prevent child marriage, and effectively criminalise a wide range of sexual offences.
Last year, the speaker of the house returned the draft bill, which has been in development since 2013, to the cabinet requesting changes. It remained dormant until two weeks ago when a new version was introduced under a new name: the sexual intercourse related crimes bill.
“It is completely unacceptable,” says Sahra Omar Ma’alin a member of the parliament’s human rights committee. “We have to protect the rights of our children. We have asked the deputy speaker to bring back the original bill, which we had been working on for so many years. It was such a comprehensive document that provides women the dignity and protection they deserve.”
Somalia’s current political instability and the forthcoming general elections makes it difficult for Ma’alin and civil society organisations to keep the pressure on for human rights.
The country is now run by a caretaker government after prime minister Hassan Ali Khaire was ousted in a vote of no-confidence in July.
“It is a race against time as the parliament’s mandate is going to end in a few months,” says Ma’alin. “The fate of our children is being politicised. Some politicians are using the bill as a campaign tool. They attempted to carry out the voting in the same manner they used to remove the former prime minister — in just a seven-minute debat — but we will never allow that to happen.”
[…]
More than 350 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean have been transferred to a quarantine vessel off Sicily, aid workers said on Wednesday.
The 353 migrants, who had been on board the Sea-Watch 4, included those rescued last week by the Louise Michel, a 30-metre boat sponsored by the mysterious British street artist Banksy.
“The first people have boarded the quarantine vessel and the operation is ongoing,” Mattea Weihe, spokeswoman for the Sea-Watch humanitarian organisation, told AFP. Many had been on board under severely cramped conditions for the past 12 days, Weihe added.
The migrants are due to land in Palermo, Sea-Watch said, after quarantine checks.
[…]
The Louise Michel itself is currently docked in Palma (Balearic Islands (Spain)), presumably for cleaning, resupply, etc.
The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) said on Wednesday that its men’s and women’s national soccer teams will receive equal pay and prize money.
“There is no more gender difference, the CBF is treating men and women equally,” the Brazilian Football Confederation chief Rogerio Caboclo said in statement.
The CBF said that it had also appointed two women’s soccer coordinators, Duda Luizelli and Aline Pellegrino.
[…]
Australian soccer’s governing body said in November that it had reached agreement with the players’ union on a new collective bargaining agreement that “closes the pay gap” between the men’s and women’s teams.
New Zealand and Norway have also moved to address the pay gap between their male and female players.
The Brazil women’s team reached the World Cup final in 2007 and Olympic finals in 2004 and 2008.
The States woman’s team famously had their lawsuit for equal pay dismissed and appeal denied, despite having won both the World Cup and the Olympics (four times, each) — neither of which the higher-paid men’s team has yet to win at all (best-ever being 2nd in the 1904 Olympics and 3rd in the 1930 World Cup).
johnson catmansays
re blf @446:
The US attorney general, William Barr, told CNN that Trump was trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good. When told that voting twice is illegal, he said, I don’t know what the law in the particular state says. […]
Barr is wrong as attested by the fact that voter fraud is not even a rounding error among total votes. However, with The Orange Toddler-Tyrant’s encouragement to commit an illegal act, you can bet that more than a few right-wing idiots will give it an attempt.
As millionaires inside and outside of government lean on us to stop working from home, what are we really missing?
[…]
Office life is under the microscope again because the government and various other characters are on a big messaging push to get us back in to work. This has been communicated in two distinctly different ways, each calamitous enough in their own right: the first, a method known as “weaponised LBC”, which involves various millionaires calling us all lazy, work-shy bastards on call-in shows. (The virus has turned millions into selfish, cowardly liars who don’t give a damn about their fellow citizens so long as they can hide away at home while continuing to get paid — Pimlico Plumbers’ founder Charlie Mullins says via a Twitter post announcing his appearance on BBC Radio, freshly home from his holiday villa in Spain).
LBC is a NKofE-wide commercial talk-backyell-at radio station. My memory of LBC when I lived in London was as something to tune away from, either by using the tuner or smashing the radio. (I tended to listen to what was then known as GLR.)
At the other end there’s the Jeremy Hunt look, sliding his tie out and leaning back in his chair […] trying to remind you how much you love office life, how all your friends are there, how you can only really get things done on a juddering Windows XP desktop with a internet blocker […]. There’s only so long you can carry on working completely remotely, or you start losing the fizz and excitement that you get in a really good work place, the former health secretary told Sky News. Fizz. Excitement. This man has never worked in an office in his life.
It’s hard not to look at the government trying to send us all back to work and assume that they are covertly up to something — is this just to get people using trains again so they can yank up the fares come the new year? But my dark suspicion is that they have no idea why they want children back in schools and workers back in offices beyond well, it’s normal. […]
[… M]ost people I know have been working just as hard, if not harder, at home, balancing their existing job with the new challenge of having to be on a Zoom call for four hours out of every day, not having an actual desk and, in many cases, the constant demands of childcare. Nobody has had a summer off, though millions of us have learned just how much we can get done working from home, despite what dismissive layers of middle management have been telling us about it for years.
This back-to-the-office shtick is designed to make us forget just how little we need the grey tower blocks, the wilting midday sandwiches, the occasional Friday slice of pizza or go on a ping-pong table. They want us to go back to normal life without acknowledging that six months of distance from normal life has made us realise that normal life was stacked against us to begin with.
If you want to feel like you’re in an office again just wad a packet of wet wipes down your toilet and, at 4pm every Friday, throw away all the milk that’s left in your fridge. That’s all you’re really missing.
One reader observed, “The immediate reasons they want us back ‘in office’ are […] to save the property portfolios of commercial landlords, who are some of the party’s biggest donors.”
Some other readers’s comments:
● “Home working will reduce the correlation between pay and height.”
● “Landlords (those lovely, cuddly individuals that refuse to lower rents whilst their tenants struggled) are the living embodiment of work-shy bastards. They do as little as possible whilst pursuing their tenants for as much as possible. Politicians come a very close second, [except for] Johnson who has morphed into the laziest PM in history.”
There’s an example of this in the village where I live. One of the best restaurants in the village — and a favourite of mine run by a lovely young couple I know — was forced to close in early-July (only a month after reopening after being closed by the pandemic lockdown). The problem? Something is wrong — dangerously wrong — with the building, and the council has been trying to get the owner / landlord to fix it for over a year. To no avail (to-date). Hence, the council was forced to order the building closed and all tenets had to leave; both the restaurant, and those who lived in the apartments above. The building is now vacant and fenced-off with warning signs. I presume the landlord is not being paid rent and is being taken to court. (I did see some trucks at the site the other day, I dunno if they were inspectors or if repairs are starting or what…)
● “The Tory government doesn’t want us to work from home because that would mean things changing. And they don’t like change. But look at the benefits to more people WFH. Better for the environment. Cash strapped councils can stop paying for buildings and utilities. More buildings are freed up in towns and cities which could be converted to cheaper housing and help end homelessness. The tip of the iceberg! I know it all sounds a bit utopian but isn’t a genuine opportunity to re-design the way we live?” In reply: “It also involves some creative thinking from government. That’s not likely to happen”.
● “The lack of commute is very helpful for families. This seems to have passed the government by.”
The funniest WFH-ish experience I had was many yonks ago in Ireland. I was on vacation, but had promised to call in on the weekly project call (which wasn’t any big deal, being usually well-run, productive, and short). The spot I choose to make the call was in the middle of a grassy field near the Grand House I was staying in. As the call progressed, a flock of sheep surrounded me and started eating the grass. At one point I can remember saying something like “Yes, that’s not correct behaviour. Best thing to do is send me an e-mail. I can’t do anything right now because I’m on vacation, in the middle of a field, and about to eaten by some aggressive-looking sheep…”.
blfsays
johnson catman@453, “with The Orange Toddler-Tyrant’s encouragement to commit an illegal act, you can bet that more than a few right-wing idiots will give it an attempt.”
Yes, I also presume that. I expect most cases to be caught, and to be caught in such a way the excess votes (at least) aren’t counted (or more to the point, do not effect the result). Whilst I hope most such illegal multi-voters are prosecuted, and when guilty, convicted, there’s enough dalek-friendly state / local “governments” I also expect bribes and other shenanigans.
The far bigger problem is the vote & voter suppression efforts: Dubious purging of voter rolls, inconveniently-positioned (or moved at the last moment (including fake announcements of relocated)) voting stations, unnecessary or excessive ID requirements, all sorts of difficulties in registering, confusion about (e.g.) student registrations (especially, perhaps, if the University is not in the student’s home state but is online study from home due to the pandemic), plus, of course, the USPS shenanigans and voter intimidation (e.g., fake patrols at voting stations). Essentially all of which are being done by teh thugs, who are also (as in this example of hair furor’s lying) trying to cause people to doubt the integrity of the entire voting process.
blfsays
Eeek! My keyboard is acting up, an all of a sudden, some keys are not registering. I do not need this…
(CN) — A group of Republican committees — including the principle committee for President Donald Trump’s reelection bid — have filed a federal lawsuit in Montana alleging that Governor Steve Bullock usurped the power of the Legislature when he issued a directive that would allow universal vote-by-mail balloting in November.
The all-Republican court granted the Harris County Republican Party’s request for a stay to stop Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, a Democrat, from mailing the applications to the county’s 2.37 million registered voters.
And Harris County has 2.37 million voters, so the Republican effort to stop (or reduce) mail-in voting will have a truly deleterious effect. Harris County usually votes for Democratic candidates.
blfsays
me@456, The mildly deranged penguin found what she thought was a lump of cheese in one of the vents, and promptly ate it (the alleged lump of cheese, not the vent, computer, or me). That seemed to fix the suddenly-mysteriously malcheesing keycheese, albeit she (the mildly deranged cheese) is now looking a bit walrusmouldy. The mouse is sniggering (the buttoned up one lasered to the computer, not the angry one with the sonic screwdriver in the Tardis in the cabinet of curiosities). And I’m almost out of rum…
[…]
Seven years after the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful — and that the US intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the US court of appeals for the ninth circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.
[…]
“I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them,” Snowden said in a message posted to Twitter.
[… W]atchdog groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped bring the case to appeal, welcomed the judges’ verdict on the NSA’s spy program.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for our privacy rights,” the ACLU said in a statement, saying it “makes plain that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records violated the constitution”.
lumipunasays
Re 441 “private border wall”
For instance, […] Fisher had “bragged that his company’s methods could help Trump reach his Election Day goal of about 500 new miles of barriers along the southern border.” Those methods don’t seem so great now: The fencing was placed very close to the river, when “the federal government usually builds sections of the wall miles inland on top of existing levees, partly due to erosion concerns,” […]
I saw some claims on Samantha Bee’s show that this private wall section was never meant to connect with the federal wall project, which will run further inland. This is wild if true. (Presuming that the federal wall is indeed meant to be continuous in that part of the Rio Grande valley.)
Apparently, you can’t build on the Rio Grande floodplain, which is why that area will be left “outside” the federal wall and effectively ceded to Mexico. Surely it will be impractical for US civilians to live or visit near the river, or border guards to patrol there.
But the private scam wall section was built right next to the river, presumably because it looks better that way in reporting. Aside from being overpriced, even if it doesn’t collapse, it will be a virtually useless giant monument to American racism and gullibility.
I first heard of this obvious scam project years ago, but never imagined they’d actually get around to building anything – or that they’d raise as much as $25 million. Apparently, they had Trump’s explicit approval at some point, but there was little coordination with the federal government. Who was going to guard and maintain the private wall in future? Who’s even going to own the land it stands on? Did Kolfage et al plan run this project for the rest of their lives, or run away with the money at some point? Will they be held liable for the cleanup?
In text quoted by johnson catman in comment 453: “When told that voting twice is illegal, he [William Barr] said, I don’t know what the law in the particular state says.”
Say what now? Barr is a lawyer. Does he not know that voting twice is illegal in every state? It is illegal everywhere. The man gets himself in trouble when he tries to back up Hair Furor’s ridiculous statements.
A third of €100bn post-Covid package to be used for greener future, but critics say it falls short
[…]
Environmental groups said the plan, presented on Thursday by the prime minister, Jean Castex, and other cabinet members, marked a welcome first step — but criticised a missed opportunity to break decisively with a growth-driven, high-carbon economy.
“After multiple announcements of a plan meant to ‘reconcile economy and ecology’, the government has presented a recovery plan from a bygone era,” said Jean-François Julliard, the head of Greenpeace France. “It’s a lot less green than it looks.”
The overall package, aimed at pulling France out of a deep Covid-induced slump, equates to 4% of GDP — more than any other big EU country — and has three key objectives: increasing competitiveness, boosting jobs, and greening the economy.
The main environmental measures focus on transport, energy production and energy-efficient renovation programmes for public buildings, offices and homes. A further €1.5bn is to be spent on greening the food sector, for example by developing shorter supply chains, and the fishing industry.
[… details…]
Campaigners remain largely unconvinced, arguing that there was little point spending millions on greening the economy if millions were also being spent on polluting industries and outdated technologies. Some measures in the broader recovery programme were counterproductive, they said.
“Blank cheques have been written to the aviation and automobile sectors,” Julliard said, “and the government is still kowtowing to the private sector. There are €20bn of tax cuts for industry in the recovery plan that companies will benefit from regardless of their environmental impact, with no green conditions attached.”
The sums allocated to the rail network [€5bn] and the agriculture sector were “certainly important”, he said. “But this plan will not change things structurally: there is nothing on reducing road or air traffic, on the cuts to beef, egg and milk production that will be necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” [Not quite true, part of the spending on trains is to move freight from road to rail — but I take their point… –blf]
[…]
Louise Kessler, of the Institute for Climate Economics, said the environmental measures were a good start but would need to be extended over the long term. “Extra money should also be in addition — it must finance investment, not just make good the deficits left by the crisis,” she told Le Monde.
Another NGO, Réseau Action Climat, said €30bn was not enough, arguing that more than €43bn would be needed over the next two years alone to make meaningful progress. An ecologist MP, Matthieu Orphelin, said the plan was “a welcome catch-up” but “nowhere near enough for the step[? steep? –blf] change in climate policy we need”.
blfsays
Lynna@462, Exactly, that was the point I was trying to make in @446, “I […] can assert with reasonable confidence voting twice is illegal.”
[…]
The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has claimed that his security forces intercepted German calls showing that the Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny’s poisoning was faked.
Lukashenko told the visiting Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, in Minsk that the call between Berlin and Warsaw showed that the incident was a falsification.
There was no poisoning of Navalny, Lukashenko told a poker-faced Mishustin during their televised meeting. They did it — I quote — in order to discourage {Russian president Vladimir} Putin from sticking his nose into Belarus’s affairs.
Lukashenko provided no further details but said he would hand over transcripts to Russia’s security services.
[…]
The claim about Navalny could be aimed at currying favour with Moscow, which has voiced support for Lukashenko during the protests.
[…]
Lukashenko and Putin are set to meet in Moscow in the next few weeks.
Hair furor will perhaps soon be getting his instructions. As he already is scared of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and loves dictators like Lukashenko, he have no problem at all in pushing this absurdity.
[…]
The number of people filing claims for unemployment benefits dropped sharply last week as the US labor department switched to a new method of counting weekly jobless claims figures.
For the week ending 29 August, 881,000 claims for benefits were filed, down from just over 1m the previous week. It was only the second time since the pandemic hit the US economy that claims had dipped below 1m.
However, last week the labor department announced it was switching its statistical model to better reflect the extraordinary number of unemployment claims made during the pandemic.
Government bodies routinely use “seasonal adjustments” to smooth out annually occurring events that can cause spikes in numbers, such as the January layoffs of retail workers hired for the holiday season. The unprecedented nature of the coronavirus has meant the old method of seasonal adjustments may have overstated the actual number of weekly unemployment claims.
While the fall in the latest claims numbers suggests firings are slowing, the job market remains deeply troubled. […]
If Bill Barr is trying to position himself as a shameless partisan with no credibility on matters of national importance, he’s succeeding beautifully.
Toward the end of Attorney General Bill Barr’s interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer yesterday, the discussion turned to foreign election interference, and the host asked a straightforward question: “Do you accept that Russia is once again interfering in the U.S. presidential election?”
The answer didn’t go well.
“I accept that there’s some preliminary activity that suggests that they might try again…. It wouldn’t surprise me if Russia tries something again of the same general genre of before.”
While I suspect the Kremlin and Donald Trump appreciated Barr’s rhetoric, there’s no reason anyone else should take it seriously. There’s a lot more than “some preliminary” evidence that “suggests” Russia “might try again” to interfere in U.S. elections. We know this with some certainty because it was just a few weeks ago when William Evanina, Trump’s director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released a statement documenting the fact that Kremlin-linked operatives are actively involved in an effort to keep Trump in power.
[…] Evanina’s intelligence assessment said Moscow’s efforts are ongoing right now. The unclassified statement is available online and it literally reads, “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden…. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”
Note, all of this was in the present tense.
[…] As part of the same interview, Barr argued that China is more aggressive than Russia in targeting the U.S. political system. Pressed for an explanation, the attorney general, “I’ve seen the intelligence. That’s what I’ve concluded.”
The problem, of course, is that Barr’s assessment is almost certainly untrue. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center report said that while China would like to see Trump lose, it’s not actively involved in direct intervention — unlike Russia, which is taking deliberate steps.
Barr lied. Barr blatantly lied.
Politico reported this week that the U.S. intelligence community has come to conclusions that are at odds with what Barr claimed on CNN. The article added, “[N]ational security officials and others briefed on the latest election threat intelligence are now expressing concern that the Trump administration is trying to draw attention away from the more acute threat posed by Moscow, which is again trying to boost Trump’s reelection, they said.”
Yep. That’s exactly what they are doing. And Barr, being the lickspittle that he is, is aiding and abetting the spread of disinformation.
Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), a former assistant secretary of state, wrote on Twitter this morning, “I’ve seen the intelligence, too, and have been briefed by the intel community’s top China and Russia experts. Barr is lying here.”
From text quoted by blf @466, “It was only the second time since the pandemic hit the US economy that claims had dipped below 1m.” Yeah. I wouldn’t focus on unemployment numbers “dropping sharply.” We’re still in a huge hole as far as the economy goes. Unemployment is still high.
In other news, here are some polling updates: the latest national Quinnipiac survey found Joe Biden leading Donald Trump, 52% to 42%, among likely voters. CNN released its latest national survey, which showed Biden leading Trump, 51% to 43%, among registered voters. The latest Fox News poll shows Biden leading Trump, 49% to 40% in Arizona. Arizona used to be a “red” state. Also in Arizona, Mark Kelly (D) has a huge lead over Martha McSally (R), 56% to 39%.
blfsays
As a counter-point to the military-reminiscent outfit(s) worn by hair furor’s family at teh thugs’s recent covidkookathon, Kamala Harris: what her sneakers mean:
As a woman of colour wearing sneakers on the campaign, it semaphores a change in political dress and much more
Kamala Harris’s nomination as Joe Biden’s running mate is historic: the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, she is the first woman of colour to be on a major party’s presidential ticket. She is also the first to prominently wear sneakers on the campaign trail.
It is a small sartorial detail, but it is linked to the larger cultural moment in which we live. […]
Harris’s preference for non-traditional footwear was first seen last year when she was a Democratic presidential hopeful, and appeared in Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. As she told The Cut: “I run through airports in my Converse sneakers. […]”
Ever since James Dean wore his, Converse has become the go-to shoe for the rebellious and the outcasts. […]
[…] Harris’s US is in contrast to Donald Trump’s blindingly white one, and she is making a statement about the country she represents. A biracial woman whose parents met while protesting for civil rights in Oakland in the 60s, Harris is stepping into a political landscape where, for example, 90% of the Senate is white. As Bobbito Garcia wrote in Out of The Box: “The progenitors of sneaker culture were predominantly … kids of colour who grew up in a depressed economic era.” […]
What White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said:
The president is not suggesting anyone do anything unlawful. What he said very clearly there is make sure your [mail-in] vote is tabulated, and if it is not, then vote.
Bullshit.
What Trump actually said:
So let them send it in and let them go vote, and if their system’s as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated, they’ll be able to vote.
If it’s as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated, they’ll be able to vote. So that’s the way it is. And that’s what they should do.
Commentary:
[…] The idea that he was merely describing a “verification” method is difficult to take seriously.
But just as importantly, let’s not overlook the substantive reality: while systems vary by state, there’s no reason to think millions of voters who’ve already voted by mail should show up at their local precincts just to be sure everything worked out as intended. Most states have online systems in place to check on the receipt of mail-in ballots, and alternatively, in many areas, voters can simply check with local election clerks.
All of which is to say, no one should take Trump’s advice seriously.
Update: Karen Bell, the executive director for North Carolina’s board of elections, said in a statement this morning, “The State Board office strongly discourages people from showing up at the polls on Election Day to check whether their absentee ballot was counted. That is not necessary, and it would lead to longer lines and the possibility of spreading COVID-19.“
My state, which is not known for effective and progressive government, has an online system where voters can check that their mail-in ballot has been received.
Joe Biden is likely to win the 2020 popular vote. But by what margin will he need to win in order to actually become president?
[…] FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver crunched the numbers and determined Biden’s chances of winning the electoral college vote based on the size of his popular-vote victory.
Nate added that a 2020 victory isn’t really “safe” for Biden unless he wins the popular vote by 5 or more percentage points. […]
In other words, if Biden narrowly receives more votes than Trump, there’s a 94% chance the Republican will win the election. If Biden defeats Trump by 2 or 3 percentage points, the former vice president would still likely lose, despite the will of the American electorate.
The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman added yesterday, “Turnout projections are running at around 150 million this year (137 million voted in 2016), which would mean that if Silver is right, Biden could win by 3 million to 4.5 million votes and still have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming president. If Biden won by 4 percent to 5 percent, or 6 million to 7.5 million votes, Trump would still have a one-in-ten shot of prevailing.”
[…] the closer the 2020 surveys, the more likely it is Trump will win the election, even if he receives fewer votes. […]
it’s worth occasionally pausing to emphasize just how indefensible the current system is.
[…] if Trump wins in 2020 after losing the popular vote, it will be the sixth time in 58 presidential elections in U.S. history. That’s a failure rate of nearly 10%, which isn’t that rare. […]
Lebanon’s army said it found the chemical near the entrance to Beirut port, the site of a powerful explosion last month.
Lebanon’s army has found 4.35 tonnes of ammonium nitrate near the entrance to Beirut port, the site of a powerful explosion last month, caused by a large stockpile [about 3000 tonnes –blf] of the same highly explosive chemical, that killed 191 people.
The military said in a statement on Thursday that army experts were called in for an inspection and found the dangerous chemical in four containers stored near the port
[…]
There were no details on the origin of the chemicals or their owner.
[…]
The public remains anxious that more hazardous materials are being stored badly, putting them at risk.
Days after the August 4 blast, French and Italian chemical experts working amid the remains of the port identified more than 20 containers carrying dangerous chemicals.
The army later said these containers were moved and stored safely in locations away from the port.
[…]
Earlier this week, a UN agency warned that more than half of Lebanon’s population risk facing a food crisis in the aftermath of the explosion that compounded the country’s existing woes.
“More than half of the country’s population is at risk of failing to access their basic food needs by the year’s end,” the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) said.
Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press today, arguing that he’s still a Republican who’ll support GOP candidates up and down the ballot, but he’s nevertheless endorsing Joe Biden’s Democratic presidential candidacy.
In my opinion, Snyder should also refuse to support Republicans running for the Senate, for state legislators, for local school boards, etc. Republicans have infused trumpism into every level of government … and it is all bad.
The former governor’s endorsement appears designed to coincide with the launch of a larger bipartisan effort. Reuters reported this morning:
Nearly 100 Republican and independent leaders will endorse Democrat Joe Biden for president on Thursday, including one-time 2020 Republican presidential candidate Bill Weld and the former Republican governors of Michigan and New Jersey, people involved in the effort told Reuters…. Called ‘Republicans and Independents for Biden’, the group is headed by Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey who has become one of Trump’s fiercest critics and who spoke at the recent Democratic National Convention in support of Biden.
[…] What I find especially notable, however, isn’t just the existence of an initiative like this, but rather, the scope and scale of Biden’s GOP support.
[…] it was just last week when the public was introduced to two prominent political appointees from Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, both of whom are now Biden voters and prominent voices in Republicans Voters Against Trump.
Around the same time, former Republican Sen. Bill Cohen of Maine endorsed Biden, joining more than two dozen other former GOP members of Congress who’ve done the same thing.
Also making headlines, more than 100 former staffers for the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently threw their support behind Biden. Several veterans of Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign did the same thing, as did dozens of officials from former President George W. Bush’s team, including two former cabinet secretaries.
Politico also reported last week week, “A group of onetime Republican presidential appointees who served as senior ethics or Justice Department aides are endorsing Joe Biden for president, warning that Donald Trump has “weaponized” the executive branch and is putting in peril the legitimacy of the Justice Department.”
This comes on the heels of the Democratic convention two weeks ago, when Americans heard from some prominent GOP voices — former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.), et al. — who threw their support behind the Democratic ticket. The day after Powell spoke, several dozen Republican national security officials — from the Reagan, Bush/Quayle, and Bush/Cheney administrations — also endorsed Biden.
[…] every four years, voters will see a handful of partisan apostates throw their support behind the other party’s nominee […] and these isolated voices are often exaggerated to make it appear as if White House hopefuls enjoy broad, bipartisan support.
But 2020 is qualitatively and quantitatively different. There’s no modern precedent for the sheer volume of high-profile Republicans rallying behind the Democratic ticket.
[…]This is a constituency basically waiting for allies to tell them it’s OK to choose Biden over Trump.
And for this contingent, a whole lot of prominent Republican voices are now encouraging them to do exactly that.
[…]
In a statement regarding the case of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, the global chemical weapons agency has said the poisoning of any individual with a toxic nerve agent would be considered use of a banned chemical weapon.
“Any poisoning of an individual through the use of a nerve agent is considered a use of chemical weapons. Such an allegation is a matter of grave concern,” the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday.
A lawyer for the Trump administration provoked palpable frustration Thursday from at least one of the three judges in New York who are considering a challenge to […] Trump’s new anti-immigrant census policy.
“I wonder why we have to wait,” the judge, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Wesley, said at the hearing, clearly skeptical of Justice Department arguments that the case wasn’t ripe for resolution now.
The policy, unveiled by Trump in July while the decennial survey was well under way, seeks to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count that is used to decide how many House seats each state gets, in the process known as congressional apportionment. It has major consequences for how political power is doled out in the country, and would shift representation away from diverse, immigrant-rich parts of the country, in favor of whiter, more Republican-leaning regions.
A key question before the judges on Thursday is whether they should now decide whether the policy — which, in this case, is being challenged by a coalition of states and by immigrant rights groups — is legal, or whether they should wait until January, after the apportionment numbers are produced.
[…] Wesley suggested that the administration was depending on an argument that made it “easy to hide the ball,” as Joshi couldn’t tell him when the Commerce Department would provide more information on whether the policy would be feasible.
[…] The new policy is widely believed to be a violation of the Constitution — which demands an “actual enumeration” of “whole number of persons” for congressional apportionment — as well as of certain statutes Congress has passed backing a total population approach to apportionment
The New York case challenges the policy on both grounds, while also arguing that the administration is running afoul of administrative law in how the policy is being implemented.
[…] In addition to the tough questions the Justice Department faced about the case supposedly not being ripe, the administration also ran into serious headwinds for its claims about the challengers lacking standing.
[…] U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman — the only Democratic appointee on Thursday’s panel, and the judge who also presided over the lawsuit challenging Trump’s addition of a citizenship question to the census — suggested that both he and the Supreme Court had already rejected the arguments the administration is making now for why that theory of harm shouldn’t count.
[…] Furman asked ACLU attorney Dale Ho, who’s representing the immigrant rights groups, whether the court needed to resolve both the constitutional and statutory claims, or could it just block the policy based on the census law, in keeping with a principle known as “constitutional avoidance.”
[…] Furman ended the hour and a half long hearing with a promise that the panel would issue a decision “as soon as we can.”
While I realize that judges need to be judicious and fair in their consideration of matters before them, I fail to understand why, time after time, they have come to tolerate an endless stream of absurd, disingenuous, and disruptive claptrap arguments from the clown show that is Trump and Barr’s DOJ.
[…] Mayors Muriel Bowser of D.C., Jenny Durkan of Seattle, Bill de Blasio of NYC, and Ted Wheeler of Portland released a joint statement declaring that their cities “are not President Trump’s political pawns.”
“We are confronting unprecedented challenges—fighting back a pandemic and economic devastation without another stimulus,” they said. “Now, instead of leadership from the White House, we are faced with new attacks that are unlawful, unconstitutional and will be undoubtedly defeated in court. […] Trump needs to wake up to the reality facing our cities—and our entire country—and realize he is not above the law.”
[…] New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) roasted Trump during a press call on Wednesday night, saying that the President is “persona non grata in New York City.”
“Forget bodyguards, he better have an army if he thinks he’s going to walk down the streets in New York,” the governor told reporters. [Not a wise statement in my opinion.]
Cuomo also pointed out that Trump’s order likely won’t go anywhere from a legal standpoint.
“He thinks he’s a king but he’s not, he’s a president,” he said. “And there is a Constitution and there are laws–nothing that he knows anything about–but the federal budget is appropriated by law.”
Excerpts from comments posted by readers of the article:
The power of the purse belongs to Congress…
Trump is grandstanding for his base and falsely grabbing power from Congress
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Trump must have been the kid who took his ball home when the other kids wouldn’t allow him a do over every time he screwed up.
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Looks like a classic Trump incitement and deflection operation that is (of course!) focused on himself. Mission accomplished.
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New York AG Letitia James: “If the president actually decides to move forward with his threat to defund New York City, we will be ready to take immediate legal action. The president is not a dictator and his efforts at tyrannical rule will be met with fierce opposition.”
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no running water, no electrical service, no heat, no air conditioning [for the White House]
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There are plenty of Judges out there that believe that Trump can do whatever he wants with the money as long as he claims it’s national security or something, and that the courts should not get involved in disputes between the executive and Congress.
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Maybe the courts would intervene to curtail or stop the worst of it. But I imagine Trump has arrows in his quiver that can pierce any armor de Blasio or Bowser choose to don. He has the luxury of not giving a shit about States (or D.C.) that won’t be casting electoral votes for him anyway.
It’s been 111 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, which Sen. Mitch McConnell has refused to take up, and it’s 27 days until the government runs out of funding at the end of the fiscal year. New unemployment figures for last week are out: 833,000 people filed for state unemployment benefits under the new seasonally adjusted guidelines. But the real number, including those filing under Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is 1.6 million. Just last week. The week before was 1.4 million.
There are more than 29 million people receiving unemployment insurance in the U.S. right now […] Many of them—as many as 23 million—are facing eviction. Feeding America projects an additional 17 million of them will become food insecure this year, for a total of 54 million Americans who don’t have enough food. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that he doesn’t know if another stimulus bill will be agreed to this month, “but we’re giving it our best.”
He is not giving it his best. His best would be having passed the HEROES Act back in May, or at least having negotiated with the House before summer for a bill that would pass. […] Instead, he’s wasted weeks negotiating with other Republicans. He would be offering something other than his “skinny” (he prefers to call it “targeted”) bill that slashes the UI boost in half to $300/week, just through December (the coronavirus is not ending in December), more loan funding for small businesses, $105 billion for education, and liability protections for schools and businesses to let them off the hook for negligence that ends in coronavirus infections. There are indications that McConnell is feeling some pressure, though, in that his bill would convert what is now funding as a Treasury loan to the U.S. Postal Service into a grant.
McConnell has been working to get 51 votes for this among Republicans, and there’s a suggestion from Republican aides that he’s going to once again threaten a government shutdown if it’s not passed as part of a continuing resolution funding government past Sept. 30. Because of course he is—that’s exactly what you’d expect of McConnell.
He can’t do it with 51 votes, or even the 53 he has in his conference. He needs Democrats. […]
[Democratic Senator Schumer] wrote. “We should strive for, and hope we can achieve, another comprehensive, bipartisan bill that meets the moment facing our nation.”
Democrats need to stand firm against McConnell to help House Speaker Pelosi and Schumer shut him out of the negotiations with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin again. That’s the only way anything has gotten done thus far in the crisis. There’s been a tiny crack opened up in that Mnuchin and Pelosi having at least resumed talking. Now is not the time to cave and let McConnell get away with his usual tricks.
Here’s a link to the September 3 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
The independent panel appointed by the World Health Organization to review its response to the coronavirus pandemic has said it will have full access to any documents, materials and emails from the UN health agency.
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response will meet on 17 September and every six weeks until next April, before presenting its final report next year.
The panel’s co-chairs, the former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, announced the 11 other members on Thursday. They include Dr. Joanne Liu, who was an outspoken WHO critic while leading Medecins Sans Frontieres during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, according to the Associated Press.
Also on the panel are D. Zhong Nanshan, a renowned Chinese doctor who was the first to publicly confirm human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus; Mark Dybul, who led the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary who is CEO of the International Rescue Committee.
Clark said she and Johnson Sirleaf chose the panel members independently and WHO did not attempt to influence their choices.
“We must honour the more than 25.6 million people known to have contracted the disease and the 850,000 and counting who have died from COVID-19,” Johnson Sirleaf said.
From their summary:
Global deaths passed 860,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, with the current total at 864,415. The highest toll is in the US, where 186,185 people have died. There were 26,112,402 cases worldwide.
…
India reported a staggering daily jump of 83,883 coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking its tally to 3.85 million, just 100,000 behind Brazil, the world’s second most affected nation, health ministry data showed. According to Johns Hopkins, this is the second-highest one day total ever reported, with India breaking the world record on 26 August with more than 85,000 cases.
…
France registered more than 7,000 new coronavirus infections over 24 hours for the second time in two days, the health ministry said on Thursday, while hospitalisations for the virus also rose again. The number of people in intensive care with the disease also rose again for the fifth consecutive day, up by 18 to 464.
David Clarke, a Trump-supporting former sheriff from Milwaukee best known for running a jail ripe with abuse, where four inmates, including a baby, died, is again swirling in controversy. Clarke was a key Trump advocate in 2016, later getting hired on for a cushy senior advisor gig at America First Action, a pro-Trump Super PAC where many of the Trump administration and Fox News castaways like Don Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, have landed high-paying jobs.
Clarke was fired from America First Action not long after Fox News banned him because of his increasingly outrageous rhetoric. Twitter once temporarily suspended Clarke after he advocated violence toward liberals.
And now Clarke is again proving how unfit he ever was for the job of sheriff or political adviser. Clarke was guest-hosting The Mark Belling Show, a Milwaukee-based radio show on WISN, when he essentially advocated the premeditated murder of protesters, telling listeners to “make a plan.” Thanks to Media Matters for the audio and transcript.
DAVID CLARKE (GUEST HOST): The question is when is government going to do something? Inaction is not a plan. You know what happens with inaction? People take the law into their own hands. Government is leaving them no choice. No choice. I don’t advocate for some of the stuff that’s starting to happen, but I am certainly done — I am through with condemning it. I’m done with that.
I’m just telling people, “Hey, you’re on your own.” Think about it, have a plan. Act reasonably. You have to act reasonably. Then you’re going to have to articulate what you did afterwards. But you can’t have government officials and law enforcement executives telling people, “Do not take the law into your own hands.” Well, you’re forcing them to!
Clarke went even further:
DAVID CLARKE (GUEST HOST): The majority of these gun purchases are first-time gun owners. And when we leave this up to the individual, it’s not going to end real pretty. But I don’t blame them. Have a plan, think it through, be able to articulate it, and be reasonable. It’s all the law requires. You have the right to defend yourself, you don’t need permission from the police or a sheriff.
Just make a plan … to murder. In other words, premeditated murder. He once likened the Black Lives Matter movement to the KKK. Is it any wonder he was too extreme for even the Trump administration and Fox News?
Audio file of Clarke speaking is available at the link. This is a guy who appeared onstage at the Republican Convention in 2016.
“BREAKING: #PennState’s director of athletic medicine, Wayne Sebastianelli, says that cardiac MRI scans revealed that roughly 30-35 percent of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared to have myocarditis.”
The number of potential evictions […] in the coming months is hard to fully comprehend. Some are estimating upwards of 40 million Americans could be kicked out of their homes. The moves by local leaders to “ban” evictions, or put a moratorium on evictions, is simply a finger in the hole of a crumbling dam as federal relief is what is needed.
Houston, Texas, as one of the largest cities in the country without eviction protections, has become the shining example of our country’s failure to protect its citizens during the pandemic. When the state’s Supreme Court declined to extend the moratorium on evictions in the middle of May, Houston’s eviction numbers exploded. For weeks, news story after news story of families living out of cars, looking for work, looking for help, and being evicted have been filtering out. On Wednesday, CNN’s Kyung Lah logged a report detailing the brutality going on in our country.
The report, like many in Houston, follows Deputy Bennie Gant of the Harris County Constable’s Office as he carries out court orders to evict people from their homes. “Since the Covid-19 issue, I’ve had no significant number of families that are crying like that, men and women.” The story shows 20-year-old Israel Rodriguez […] He lost his job, and when he was able to find another job, the $300 dollars he’s pulling in every couple of weeks wasn’t enough to dig himself out of the financial hole his family is in. [video at the link]
[…] throwing out tens of millions of people is not simply inhumane, it is asinine. While it is pretty well documented that the case numbers of COVID-19 across the country, but especially in places like Houston, are far higher than what are the official—already terrible—numbers. Those numbers can only get worse as people lose the ability to literally shelter in place, a foundational physical aspect of social distancing.
Houston-area 29-year-old mother of four Kenia Madrigal has been living in her SUV with her children since June. She was laid off from her job during the stay-at-home order, could not pay rent, and became one of the first casualties of the ineptitude of our federal government’s leadership. Whether or not her oldest two children (11 and 8) will be able to attend whatever the hell school looks like is completely up in the air. Madrigal has landed herself a new job, but $11.50 an hour will not get her a new place to live.
[…] And while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a national moratorium on evictions recently, this will only delay the huge financial issues we will face in 2021—if it carries any weight. Landlords will likely sue in order to get the money […]
Without extended unemployment benefits, without better unemployment benefits, millions of Americans have moved beyond needing help to needing a ton of help. Every day, every week that our current administration, the House, and the Republican-led Senate sit on their hands, the price tag of what this crisis will cost us in the long run grows exponentially. […]
See also: YouTube link to video of a Houston mother of 4 sleeping in a car after being evicted during a pandemic. She applied for state assistance and was denied.
While adding around a quarter-billion dollars to the industry’s bottom line.
[…] few workforces have been hit as hard by the coronavirus pandemic as the people who work in meatpacking plants. […] more than 40,000 meatpacking workers have been infected with the virus, and 200 have died. At the same time, the Trump Administration is pushing for a policy change that will put thousands of the industry’s workers under yet more pressure—by allowing chicken companies to speed up their slaughter lines by 25 percent.
[…] The blistering pace of kill lines has been a major driver of the industry’s COVID-19 catastrophe, because workers have to bunch together shoulder-to-shoulder to handle the load, making social distancing very hard, if not impossible. Trump’s Department of Labor, headed by former management-side labor lawyer Eugene Scalia, has declined to issue strict social distancing rules on meatpacking plants during the COVID crisis, instead settling on voluntary guidelines suggesting that plants tweak the alignment of workstations “if feasible,” and “consider” making signs to urge workers to physically distance. […]
Trump’s proposed rule would allow the poultry industry to ramp up kill lines from a maximum of 140 birds per minutes to 175 birds per minute. For the industry—dominated by Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, Perdue, Sanderson Farms—a faster line means lower cost and thus more profit. Back in 2012, the Obama US Department of Agriculture estimated that raising the speed limit to 175 birds per minute would lower costs by 3 cents per bird, resulting in an annual boost to the industry’s bottom line worth “at least” $258.9 million.
The industry’s quest for faster lines started well before Trump. Under Obama, the USDA essentially privatized the way the agency inspects poultry slaughter, shifting much of the task of ensuring food safety in these facilities to the companies themselves. As part of that push, the USDA initially intended to allow the speed up to 175 birds per minutes, but ultimately backed off under pressure from immigration, labor, and workplace-safety advocates.
Upon the election of Trump, the chicken industry ramped up efforts to raise the limit. […] There is no plan, of course, to raise worker wages to compensate for this speedup.
The agency responded in piecemeal fashion, by inviting companies to apply for “waivers” that allowed individual plants to speed up. In April 2020—just as COVID was ripping through meatpacking plants—15 large poultry plants requested and received approval from USDA to increase their line speeds. […] eight of the plants had COVID outbreaks, with one of them “closing shortly after the USDA decision due to the rampant spread” of the infection.
The USDA’s proposed rule […] would allow the entire industry to follow suit. […] As recently as 1979, the speed limit stood at 70 birds per minute […] For the workers who provide our chicken—largely women of color, around a third of them immigrants, making a mean hourly wage of $12.71—it’s another kick in the teeth.
[…] “The sanctions announced by the United States administration … are unacceptable and unprecedented measures that attempt to obstruct the Court’s investigations and judicial proceedings,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement.
“The ICC must be able to work independently and impartially, free from outside interference. The United States should reconsider its position and reverse the measures it has taken. Impunity must never be an option.”
Washington on Wednesday announced penalties against ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko, head of the ICC’s Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division. The sanctions followed an executive order signed by […] Trump in June, authorizing the possible imposition of economic sanctions and visa restrictions on ICC employees involved in an investigation into whether American forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
The United States, which is not a party to the international court and does not recognize its authority, has called the ICC “corrupt,” “grossly ineffective,” and “highly politicized.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also accused the court, which is based in The Hague, of being on “ideological crusade against American service members.”
France echoed Borrell’s statement Thursday, calling the sanctions a “serious attack” against the court and countries that support it, as well as “a challenge to multilateralism and the independence of the judiciary.”
France “calls on the United States to withdraw these measures,” French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a statement.
From Black Lives Matter to election fraud, Barr didn’t seem interested in even pretending he’s doing anything other than Trump’s bidding.
[…] Barr’s interview with Wolf Blitzer began with the attorney general making unsubstantiated claims about circumstances surrounding the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It wound down with him going to desperate lengths to substantiate Trump’s baseless, politically motivated claims about how mail-in voting will result in a rigged election. On more than one occasion, Blitzer seemed surprised at how unpersuasive Barr’s arguments were.
The whole spectacle demonstrated how, under Trump, the office of the nation’s top law enforcement official has been diminished to something akin to a campaign surrogate for the president.
Barr’s comments about Jacob Blake and Black Lives Matter revealed how unserious he is about racial unrest.
[…] Barr claimed that Blake was “armed” — the implication being that officers had good reason to shoot him seven times in the back. In fact, while there was a knife in Blake’s car, no evidence has emerged that he brandished it at police officers.
“His family says he wasn’t armed,” Blitzer pointed out to Barr. “There may have been a knife in the car, but he wasn’t armed when he was shot. That’s what his family and his lawyer said.”
But Barr’s narrative seemed impervious to facts.
“Well, I stated what I believe to be [the case],” he replied. […]
From there, Barr made an unpersuasive case that systemic racism is not a factor in police violence against Black men like Blake, insisting that “the narrative that the police are on some, you know, epidemic of shooting unarmed Black men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that that’s based on race.”
In reality, a number of studies have found that Black Americans are far more likely to be police shooting victims than whites. For instance, a Washington Post analysis of data about police shootings found that while Black Americans represent 13 percent of the US population, 36 percent of unarmed officer shooting victims are Black. […]
When Blitzer pressed Barr to cite evidence that mail voting is as ripe for fraud as Trump says it is, Barr couldn’t. Asked whether he had seen any evidence substantiating his own claims that a foreign government would counterfeit ballots to sway the election, Barr instead resorted to saying these concerns are “a matter of logic.” Blitzer seemed taken aback at the weakness of Barr’s case. […]
Barr was later unable to answer straightforward questions from Blitzer about how many people Barr’s DOJ has indicted for voter fraud. And the interview concluded with Barr making an extremely unpersuasive case that China is a bigger threat to American elections than Russia — comments at odds with the findings of the intelligence community but consistent with Trump’s desire to downplay Russian interference.
“I’m not gonna discuss that,” Barr said, pressed by Blitzer to substantiate his claim. “I’m not gonna get into that.” […]
Barely a month after Barr was sworn in, he released his misleading spin on special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings a month before the report itself. His Justice Department decided Trump’s request that Ukraine’s president investigate the Bidens wasn’t worth investigating, and other federal investigations into Trumpworld appear to have fizzled out. Barr personally instructed prosecutors to weaken their sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, and he is trying to have the case against Michael Flynn dismissed entirely. He instituted a new rule requiring his personal approval for any investigations into presidential candidates or campaigns. And he’s attempted to place loyalists into key US attorney posts, such as the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia.
[…] Rudimentary questioning from Blitzer revealed that he’s unfamiliar with basic facts surrounding key cases, the reality of racial disparities in America, and apparently even the fact that it’s illegal to vote twice in America. And he seems more intent on repeating his boss’s talking points than he does in getting up to speed.
The coronavirus outbreak that began at this year’s annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, has chalked up its first fatality, a 60-year-old man who died after attending the rally and returning home to Minnesota.The Minnesota Department of Health said the man had underlying health conditions, and was among 50 Sturgis participants who have brought the infection home to Minnesota.
The Washington Post reports that so far, its survey of public health departments has identified “at least 260 cases in 11 states tied directly to the event,” of which 105 cases are in South Dakota. But epidemiologists believe that’s well short of the full number, “due to the resistance of some rallygoers to testing and the limited contact tracing in some states.” […]
Minnesota’s state infectious disease director, Kris Ehresmann, said there didn’t appear to be any single event or location during the rally that could be an epicenter of the outbreak; basically, it was everything.
“They attended multiple events, stayed at multiple campgrounds, were inside, outside,” she said. “I think, given the number of individuals that were participating in the Sturgis event, I think it’s fair to say that pretty much everyone was in a crowded setting.”
In addition to the direct infections, Ehresmann said Minnesota is finding evidence that after participants returned to Minnesota, they then spread the virus to others, which is what tends to happen with infectious diseases. […]
Then there’s this fun data bit from the Post:
An analysis of anonymized cellphone data, conducted by a firm called Camber Systems, found that 61 percent of all U.S. counties had been visited by a rallygoer.
[…] Minnesota currently has a total of “77,085 infections — with an untold number of additional infections being undetected in people who experienced mild or no symptoms.” That caution should probably be a standard part of every story presenting COVID-19 stats […]
There’s currently a spike of coronavirus cases in the Dakotas, the Post notes:
South Dakota’s seven-day averages for new cases stood at 347 on Sept. 2 compared to 107 two weeks earlier and its total caseload was 14,003, up from 10,566, according to The Post’s tracking. In North Dakota, the seven-day averages for new cases was 257, up from 142 two weeks earlier and its total caseload was 12,267, compared to 8,968.
[…] It probably doesn’t help a whole hell of a lot that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has consistently framed preventing the spread of the virus as none of the state’s business, because people should be free to make their own decisions about their own health, and the health of everyone they encounter after attending super-spreader events. Earlier this month, Noem explained that anyone afraid of the virus could just not go to Sturgis, which is surely a big comfort to the folks in Minnesota who did not go to Sturgis, but attended a wedding where another person had. Hooray for freedom!
We would like to clone Minnesota’s Kris Ehresmann and send one of her to every state health department; she noted that part of the problem in Sturgis may have stemmed from a false belief that the virus can’t be transmitted at outdoor gatherings.
Being outside is preferable to being inside, all things considered, when it comes to COVID transmission […] Being outside does not eliminate risk. And being outside if you’re not social distanced, if you’re not wearing a mask, if you’re not being attentive to all of the other important mitigation measures … doesn’t save you […]
NPR also notes that “Many Sturgis residents left town during the rally and those who stayed were encouraged not to have much contact with visitors and to take precautions when they did,” which seems like a pretty good idea for any location where superspreaders plan to congregate. […]
Sen. Ted Cruz, a man who’s been convinced of his own brilliance at least since he was a teenager, decided Wednesday to show just how willfully ignorant he is. Tweeting about the medical abortion drug Mifeprex, Cruz wrote, “Pregnancy is not a life-threatening illness, and the abortion pill does not cure or prevent any disease. Make no mistake, Mifeprex is a dangerous pill. That’s why 20 of my Republican colleagues and I are urging @US_FDA to classify it as such.”
Reaction on Twitter was swift and brutal and centered around a few key points: Pregnancy, while not an illness, is absolutely a life-threatening condition. Many women die in pregnancy or childbirth—and Cruz’s own state of Texas has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, at 35.8 per 100,000 live births. High rates of maternal mortality in the U.S. hit Black women especially hard—the numbers are 17.4 per 100,000 live births overall and 37.1 per 100,000 for Black women. Abortion is safer than pregnancy and childbirth, and, as many noted, erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra are more dangerous than medical abortion drugs like Mifeprex.
Cruz has children, yet he is either ignorant of or willing to pretend to be ignorant of the physical dangers of pregnancy in pursuit of closing off healthcare options for women. He’s doing this at a time when COVID-19 is making pregnancy even more dangerous, especially for Black women.
Many, many people let Cruz know not just how wrong he is on the facts but to tell him about their own experiences with the fact that pregnancy is absolutely life-threatening.
Comments posted in reply to Cruz’s ill-considered tweet:
Monday b4 last my friend was the most excited expectant parent you could meet. Happy and healthy. By Tuesday, she and her baby girl were gone – yet another addition to our alarming Black maternal mortality rate in the wealthiest country on earth
Throw your hot take in the trash
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Dear @tedcruz: My wife was nearly killed by her pregnancy after she was struck by severe pre-eclampsia. She had to have an emergency c-section at 32 weeks to save her life. Go fuck yourself.
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I was extremely sick for 7 1/2 months of my pregnancy. I spent the last month of my pregnancy on bed rest because I was high risk. Fuck you Rafael Ted Cruz.
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On behalf of the *many* women for whom pregnancy has been life-threatening, fuck you
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Until you’ve sprinted down the hall for “Code Blue: Labor & Delivery” pleading with god I don’t want to hear that pregnancy isn’t a life-threatening illness.
In my short career I’ve seen 3 maternal deaths already.
Fiercely opposing restrictions imposed by Rome after the coronavirus pandemic hit Italy, some of the country’s super-rich including ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi have now fallen prey to the Covid-19 “curse of the Emerald Coast”.
Berlusconi and two of his children tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, the latest among Italy’s jet-set to be hit after holidaying along Sardinia’s exclusive coastline, often called the country’s “most glamorous vacation resort”.
Speaking to an election rally in Genoa on Thursday, Berlusconi reassured activists of his centre-right Forza Italia party that he had “no fever, no pain”.
“I want to reassure you: I’m doing pretty well,” he added, saying he had been moved by all the messages of support he had received.
Taking its name from the beautiful waters that surround the Mediterranean’s second-largest island, the Emerald Coast has recently built a reputation as a place where the super-rich often flouted Rome’s strict face-mask policies, local papers said Thursday.
…
One of the best-known hangouts for the rich and famous is the “Le Billionaire” nightclub which belongs to Italian businessman and former managing director of the Benetton Formula One racing team Flavio Briatore.
The nightclub was closed down in August after Briatore and employees tested positive for the coronavirus.
Ten days before, Briatore met Berlusconi at his home along the same coastline, according to local news reports.
Several other celebrities spotted at the nightclub also tested positive for Covid-19, including Bologna football club manager Sinisa Mihajlovic – who underwent treatment for leukaemia last year – reports said.
Local television personalities, some 10 footballers, a boxer and one politician were also infected, the Corriere della Sera reported.
Radical right–wing commentator Josh Bernstein had a bit of a meltdown in his most recent YouTube video as he frantically warned that Democrats are trying to steal the upcoming presidential election through the use of mail-in voting.
Bernstein, who is so opposed to anything other than in-person voting that he recently declared that senior citizens should be forced to vote in person even if doing so literally kills them, said that those who are pushing for expanded mail-in voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic are Satanic, evil people who should have been aborted.
Seems like the sort of kook hair furor would appoint as an Ambassador (provided, of course, the kook makes a sufficiently large “donation”).
The Democrat media complex is keeping COVID in the news cycle so that they can push for mail-in ballots instead of voting in person for the 2020 election, Bernstein said. Why would that be? Well, pretty simple: Because they have a dementia-riddled piece of crap scumbag, child predator and molester as their nominee, and they know that he doesn’t excite anybody, except maybe pedophiles and sick twisted individuals. … They know that they have no chance, zero chance of winning. There is only one way they can win and that is to steal it, because they’re all a bunch of soulless pieces of crap.
Also sounds like a certain notorious frothing-at-Clinton-and-Biden commentator here at poopyhead’s blog (mostly in other threads)…
[…] This election is truly Trump or death, Bernstein warned. [… and on and on. and on. and yet more on…]
This kook’s clear reasoning and convincing evidence suggest that instead of an Ambassadorship, or swivel-eyed-blog-frothing, the kook should be a Supreme Court Justice.
Some really cool news: @AliVelshi, @BrandyZadrozny and I will be hosting a disinformation special on MSNBC.
Sunday morning at 9 a.m. [ET]
We’re going to break down, in detail, how the Internet got so broken, how your family members got radicalized so fast, and how we can fix it.
We’re really excited about this: a place to take the Internet seriously on TV.
We’ll talk about the disinformation pipelines that shape policy, and how it effects people in our lives in the real world — even if they don’t use the internet.
I really hope you guys watch it.
[In response to a question about whether they’re “planning on visiting families that have been torn apart from misinformation”:]
Yes! It’s really important to show that this stuff impacts a lot of us.
If you have stuff you specifically want us to address, DM us! We want to include you guys.
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice have interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
…
Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)
…Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible….
On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
…
Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. “He has a lot of fear,” one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump’s views said. “He doesn’t see the heroism in fighting.” 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….
Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.
johnson catmansays
re blf @492: Josh Bernstein. Wow, I miss Ed Brayton. He would sometimes have a post about this idiot. The man is WAY off the deep end.
Bernstein, who is so opposed to anything other than in-person voting that he recently declared that senior citizens should be forced to vote in person even if doing so literally kills them, said that those who are pushing for expanded mail-in voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic are Satanic, evil people who “should have been aborted”.
The pure logic of this individual is revealed in that he is totally opposed to abortion, but wants people who disagree with him to have been aborted in the past.
“#Russian Orthodox #Church’s council dismissed the head of Belarusian exarchate (branch of the ROC in #Belarus), Metropolitan Pavel – and moved him to Krasnodar in southern Russia. He was the top Orthodox cleric in Belarus since December 2013:…”
RNC 2020: a two-hour glimpse into the upside-down world of Trump TV:
At this point, I fell over laughing. I saw very competent production of Evita in London last millennium, and whilst my specific memories are a bit vague, she, as presented in the show, would fit right in with hair furor’s dysfunctional family / mafia and teh fox & Putin / thug enablers.
As a reminder, these two loons are “lawyers” who have had felony chargers filed against them.
From today’s Guardian world liveblog:
I still can’t believe they opened discos.
“The criminal information filed in Hawaii implicating but not charging RNC Finance Elliott Broidy (Person B) with FARA violations in connection with lobbying Trump to squash the 1MDB investigation and to remove Guo Wengui to China–first reported by WSJ….”
Link and more at the link.
“FDA Chief Admits He Overhyped Plasma Treatment Against COVID: ‘Criticism Is Entirely Justified’”:
I was just overwhelmed by all of the irresponsible errors Hahn made in that presentation. It was like something Ben Goldacre would use to illustrate how not to interpret data.
@ 2
I don’t know. Never underestimate the fickle stupidity of the “independent” voter.
I’d love for people in the media to start asking Trumpublicans to describe specifically what they mean by “Western civilization,” “the values our country was founded on,” and the like.
SC @7, me too. Young conservative organizer Charlie Kirk called Trump the “bodyguard of Western civilization” battling “vengeful activists.” What “Western civilization”? That’s a racist dogwhistle.
There was a lot more where that came from, including Representative Matt Gaetz saying that Democrats want to “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren’t on their way.” Only Trump can protect you.
It all sounded like a violent game was being played in which a weak, small-minded, posturing bully-boy named Trump had assumed an avatar that was the opposite of what he really is. All the other players pretended that Warrior Trump was real.
Chris Hayes:
Nikki Haley was particularly good at presenting lies. During her speech at the Republican Convention she claimed that North Korea was no longer a problem, was no longer threatening anyone, (all thanks to Trump). That’s not true at all. How could she say all that with a straight face? It’s a mystery.
Turning reality on its head.
Why would Trump praise a dictator to a freed hostage?
No one on Team Trump thought it might be unwise to show a clip of Trump praising Erdogan to an American pastor who was unjustly imprisoned by Erdogan?
Rep. Malinowski:
If the case for Trump is strong, why isn’t the truth good enough?
Deceptions are necessary to prevent Trump’s defeat.
Follow-up to SC’s comment 12.
From the previous chapter of this thread, here is a useful description of QAnon.
From Robert Reich:
https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1297975796250955783
From yesterday – Michael Cohen’s anti-Trump ad.
Fascism: Republicans declare their only policy stance to be ‘strong support’ for Donald Trump
Trump says he’ll nominate Chad Wolf to be DHS secretary
President Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he will nominate acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to be the permanent head of the agency.
It’s been more than 500 days since a Senate-confirmed secretary led the Department of Homeland Security — a record for any administration.
Wolf himself has served in an acting role since November 2019.
Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office found that Wolf and his acting deputy Ken Cuccinelli are ineligible to serve in their position because they did not follow federal law governing how certain leadership vacancies can be filled.
Link
“Jacob Blake, the father of the Black man shot by Kenosha police, told Chicago Sun-Times that his son is paralyzed from waist down.
Blake’s father, also named Jacob Blake, said there are ‘eight holes’ in his son’s body & doctors don’t yet know if his paralyzation is permanent.”
From the Trumpublican resolution quoted in Lynna’s #17 above:
This is a minor point in my criticism of the disgrace that is this document, but it is one of my biggest pet peeves and I see it almost every day. “The Republican Party has support the President’s…” is wrong, so they can’t use this construction. They would need to say “the Republican Party has supported and will continue to enthusiastically support…”
I LOLed.
@ 12
You do know what’s going to happen? The Republicans will starting screaming and bellyaching “What about Antifa!” as if anti-fascist activists and right-wing conspiracy kooks were somehow comparable.
The Hill – “LeBron James speaks out over Jacob Blake shooting: ‘We are scared as Black people in America'”:
This rat has (presumably) just realised that jumping from the ship dries up the income, and hence is trying to climb back aboard, Jerry Falwell Jr resigns from Liberty University but then backtracks:
Nothing(?) about why teh rat is now trying to climb back aboard.
Guardian world liveblog:
Flavio Bolsonaro is the subject of multiple investigations. He’s 39. Bolsonaro’s wife’s grandmother died from the coronavirus recently.
@ #24
Lebron also said, “Guns are a huge issue in America. They’re not just used for hunting, like a lot of people do for sport. For Black people right now, when you’re hunting, we think you’re hunting us.”
Good!
“#Belarus. On this day in 1991, independence of Belarus was restored – the declaration of sovereignty of Belarus was given the constitutional status. Several thousands gathered outside the parliament again. This time, I’d call it not a protest, but celebration of independence
And so they came out again. The people are chanting ‘Long Live Belarus!’ Your everyday dose of Belarusians self-organising on the #Minsk streets”
Applause! Africa declared free of wild polio after decades of work:
This means wild polio now only exists in Afghanistan and Pakistan (confirmed by the BBC, Africa declared free of wild polio in ‘milestone’, which has additional details).
Update to @25, and teh rat has jumped ship (again?) — this is a later report, dated less than an hour ago (as I type this) — Jerry Falwell Jr confirms he has resigned from Liberty University:
Geoff Bennett:
(As an aside, Bennett has really come into his own, as have Jacob Soboroff, Julia Ainsley, and Heidi Przybyla, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some others.)
California: popular ski resort to remove racist term from its name:
Quoted in blf’s #31:
Well, that’s aggressively offensive.
I honestly think he believed he was entitled to retain his position and all its perks at the school (where students aren’t allowed to watch R-rated movies) and still maintain his lifestyle, even brazenly combining the two. He’s thoroughly aggrieved that they put a stop to it.
“Arizona reports a cumulative COVID death toll of 666.6 residents per million today.
1 out of 1,500 residents dead.”
Akira MacKenzie @ #23, not Antifa yet, but lies about Ilhan Omar.
blf @ 30, thanks for posting that.
I didn’t know this:
We Straw poll?
Van teh Mence is ranting woo-woo, Van Morrison blasts Covid gig limits as :
Mr Webber, however, is not ranting about , ‘Made it back!’: Lloyd Webber unveils safety measures at London Palladium (“Theatre reopens at 30% capacity for Beverley Knight performance to showcase stringent hygiene methods”).
Back to Van teh Massacre:
Sinead O’Connor & others have also told Jim Corr he’s an eejit. Mr Corr is apparently also an anti-vaxxer and all-around nutter, ‘You need to get a life’: Sinead O’Connor joins Jedward in destroying Jim Corr over anti-lockdown protest:
Van teh Murderer has been preforming since the 1960s and has a string of prestigious awards. He is estimated to be “worth” multiple tens of millions of USD. He is often described as not a very nice person (No guru, no method, no manners) — “Scrooge”, “shite”, and similar are frequently(?) used.
SC @32, yes, Geoff Bennett is nailing this. His dogged pursuit of the Postal Service story is partially responsible for putting DeJoy in the hot seat, and for revealing lies coming from the Trump administration.
The parts of the sorting machines that were trashed beyond repair were the barcode readers. I’m hoping that some tech-savvy company offers to fix them.
TPM – “Falwell ‘Free At Last’ As Endless Questions Linger Over Peccadilloes, Politicos”:
More commentary on the Republican National Prevarication show:
Link
The number of COVID-19 deaths in the USA is now more than 178,000. The number rises so quickly ….
Ben Collins re #12 above:
Image atl.
“In a deleted video obtained by VICE News, RNC speaker Abby Johnson says ‘statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons’.”
Lynna@42 quotes (about the thugs’s ongoing covidkookathon), “There was a speech claiming that are which is quite a trick.”
I haven’t tried to track it down, but there is a possibility a meme to that effect is circulating in the kooksphere. One reason for suspecting so is Black Lives Matter at odds with my religious beliefs, says Billy Vunipola. Mr Vunipola, a talented Rugby player in the UK of Tonga ancestry, is a magic sky faerie fundamentalist and known to be anti-LGBT, and is quoted in that article as saying
I am unawares of any genuine BLM protestors attacking any religious, well, anything… The closest might be a small fire near(? at?) the church around the time hair furor used teh gestapo to clear a path through DC so he could pose holding that book (allegedly upside down, as I recall) at that church. Mr Vunipola is either making things up, or there is something going around teh nutter’s echo chambers to the effect that (BLM) protestors are attacking religious whatevers.
Tweet o’ the day.
Trump’s plan to ‘terminate’ payroll taxes would ‘terminate’ Social Security by 2023.”
The payroll tax termination is just about the only policy issue that made an appearance at the Trumpian Prevarication Show. Donald Junior brought it up.
Joan McCarter analyzed this issue, and the inevitable effects if Trump carries out this plan.
Link
blf @45, I think you are right. I have seen that small fire, which was quickly extinguished, blown out of proportion in a lot of rightwing media outlets, and on rightwing online forums. They did the same thing with what was basically a trash receptacle fire in Portland: the claim is now that radical activists burned down a church in Washington DC; and that they burned down a federal building in Portland.
In more RNC news, Madison Pauly commented on Trump’s appearance in pre-taped video last night:
Link
What does Trump mean? “See, we are all ignorant and gullible. MAGA!”
Well, this will certainly hit Trump where it hurts: “GOP convention’s first night draws fewer viewers than Democratic kickoff.” TV ratings are one of the few things Trump understands.
However, Fox News racked up more viewers than CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC combined. So, I guess Trump’s base of cult members watched.
AOC commented on Guilfoyle’s performance:
Link
A good summary of DeJoy’s testimony in the House of Congress, when he was questioned about the Postal Service:
Washington Post link
DeJoy claimed he didn’t know about some steps taken by middle management, but I think he did know … or he should have known. Some of those steps were taken as part of middle management’s efforts to follow his directives.
So, DeJoy is ignorant, incompetent, and probably a liar as well. All the best people.
Guardian world liveblog:
Yes, this was literally a change from this morning.
Lynna@50, I cannot recall, but it would not surprise me if hair furor does not know (or has forgotten (again?)) Puerto Ricans are States citizens — and the on-going thugs’s covidkookthron is all about him… So I’m not too surprised the other
speakersbellowers are “toeing the line”, so to speak, of his fantasies. Hence, perhaps, Guilfoyle insults & seeming-confusion.ACLU: “BREAKING: In response to our class-action lawsuit, a federal court has ruled the Trump administration cannot deny thousands of US military service members the right to citizenship that Congress has long promised them.”
Former Trump aide says president offered pardons to officials to break laws.
Washington Post link
Oh, FFS. I wish this were not true.
Link
Michael Cohen: “You asked for it and I am complying…just agreed to appear on @maddow @MSNBC #StayTuned #Disloyal”
The USA is all alone, isolated in a display of ignorance and stupidity.
Link
“#Protest to demand fresh election and end to the police state of Lukashenka – in central #Minsk, #Belarus, tonight:…”
Video atl.
Some snippets from US media fact-checks Republican National Convention in real time:
“Yandex is evacuating employees from Belarus after searches in the company’s office. Viber has closed its office in Belarus. High-tech giants are considering moving operations to other countries. Even if Lukashenka survives, Belarus IT-industry will likely not.”
blf @ #60, that’s good to know. During the convention hours, I was cooking and watching the season finale of Endeavour, which was intense. In general, if anyone’s looking for something to watch during the remaining RNC nights, I would recommend watching the whole season (also entertaining: Imposters and High Seas, both on Netflix).
Sorry – I didn’t see that Viber responded to the tweet @ #161 saying their office is back open. But the larger point remains.
Holy shit this is horrifying.
“HFAC oversight & investigations subcomm chair @JoaquinCastrotx writes DepSecState Biegun requesting @StateDept legal opinion & any dissents on Pompeo violating Hatch Act & other dept regulations to address RNC from foreign soil while on taxpayer funded foreign travel, by Sept 10….”
Letter and more atl.
The other day I stumbled on a video which had me ROTFL (not a good idea when wearing headphones!). It is “political” — or actually, more a sly commentary — but perhaps requires a bit of a backstory.
It starts with the pandemic. Assorted people have been producing what is called “Bardcore” music during lockdown. Bardcore is described by the Grauniad (Never mind the ballads! How bardcore took over pop music) as “Modern hit songs played on medieval instruments, often with medievalised lyrics”. That’s a bit fanciful, most of it is faux-medieval, both in the instrumentation and lyrics. It’s a bit of fun, rarely anything authentic.
Much of Bardcore is just actually instrumentals. I find that if you don’t know the actual modern song, it’s difficult to appreciate the creativity that’s gone into the faux-medieval version. (But that could just be me.)
This particular example does have lyrics, in a very much faux-Olde Englishe. The artist admits that only one of the instruments is potentially authentic. Whilst the lyrics are (very!) loosely-based on the modern version, it is not at all a cover in any sense of the modern song.
It’s hilarious. The ending of the chorus, “With thy might we shall reclaim the kingdom we never had” cracks me up every time. (The lyrics are included in the video, which may help until your ear “tunes in”, so to speak.)
Africa (Toto) — Medieval Style with Vocals.
Extremists storm Idaho Statehouse to protest COVID-19 measures, but Republicans are cool with that
Extra thickheadedness, stupidity on steroids. All of it dangerous.
This might be less news worthy but for the fact that Republican legislators and law enforcement personnel cooperated to some degree with the rightwing extremists.
From comments posted by readers:
I will add that Bundy and his crew actually destroyed property! No arrests.
Montana secretary of state asks Supreme Court to intervene in Green Party ballot fight
Dan Berman and Caroline Kelly
Updated 7:23 PM ET, Mon August 24, 2020
Lynna@67, According to the Griffords Law Center, Location Restrictions, both Open- and Concealed-carry are “prohibited” in Idaho’s capital building.
Calls to poison control spike in Texas after residents take bleach to combat COVID-19
The damage Trump causes just goes on and on.
Jim Bakker Warns That if Trump Is Not Reelected. As quoted, he seems incoherent, so I won’t attempt to excerpt.
Follow-up to comment 55.
More details from Miles Taylor:
Wonkette link
Add this to the pile of “Trump should resign” evidence already amassed by SC.
The Onion, RNC Features Tribute From Family Members Of Americans Who Will Die If Trump Wins Second Term:
Follow-up to SC’s comment 5.
Trump takes incrementally good news and lies about it:
The 50% Trump claims is a wild exaggeration.
The scene @ #64 is reminding me of Kramer refusing to wear the AIDS ribbon on Seinfeld and now they’ll be forever linked in my head.
Trump invited racist Q-cultist Marjorie Taylor Greene to his Thursday acceptance speech.
Follow-up to Lynna@74, from the Grauniad’s current delusional wannabe-daleks live blog (quoted in full with Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
“Boris Johnson: ‘I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness [?], I wanted to get that off my chest’.”
Nesrine Malik:
It’s also tragic because the story told by people like Priyamvada Gopal in Insurgent Empire (which I still haven’t finished, because it’s very long and my Kindle died :( and I can’t afford to replace it) is the UK’s history/traditions/culture, too, and so are the movements against slavery and for women’s rights and for immigrants’ rights and a thousand others. How sad and debilitating to limit your vision of your nation’s history to one category of people and to feel like you have to defend the indefensible or lose your identity.
Another follow-up to Lynna@74, Cochrane review, Plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 to treat individuals with COVID-19, July 2020 (my added emboldening):
A snippet from QAnon explained: the antisemitic conspiracy theory gaining traction around the world:
From the Grauniad’s current delusional wannabe-daleks live blog:
Mary Ann Mendoza was pulled from the RNC lineup at the last minute, evidently.
“A chunk of the country is on fire, a hurricane is about the hit the gulf states, another tropical storm has formed, a pandemic has claimed 178k lives and we are on the brink of a major spread of race riots. Quite the backdrop for the convention.”
“#Minsk, #Belarus, earlier tonight: thousands keep on protesting, on a week night”
“Giancarlo Granda calls Jerry Falwell Jr. a ‘predator’ and says he shared a photo of a Liberty University student exposing herself at his farm”
Statement atl.
“One of tonight’s RNC speakers [Abby Johnson] tweeted earlier this year that one of her most controversial takes is she supports bringing back household voting, in which each household gets one vote, not allowing women their own individual vote.”
“The Ronald Reagan quote Eric Trump is ending with was a warning about the drastic evil consequences of … Medicare.
No, seriously.
This was the quote he just read, and it’s the closing lines from Reagan’s 1961 address denouncing the Kennedy proposal that became Medicare….
Seems like if you’re going to make the case that Democrats are going to enact policies that destroy America, maybe you shouldn’t invoke one of the most popular programs of the last half-century and show that past claims about socialist nightmares were extremely overblown?”
Sen. Murphy:
“It’s a relatively small thing, I guess, but one of the eeriest parts of the RNC to me is the consistent use of the past tense when talking about Covid”
“The anti-Semitic conspiracy theory lady that got cancelled from the #GOPConvention [Mary Ann Mendoza] is also on the board of the Build the Wall scam. The one involved in an apparent criminal conspiracy.”
Chris Hayes: “OH SO I GUESS THE WOKEMOB IS NOW GETTING OFFENDED BY THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION!?!? WHAT NEXT WILL THEY TAKE OFFENSE AT!?!”
CNN is reporting that two people have died and one is injured after people they’re describing as “armed vigilantes” and “militias” attacked protesters in Kenosha.
There’s a link here to a usefu interview with Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny about QAnon.
From the discussion:
(One counterpoint: Regardless of how the question was or is framed, Trump was never going to and will never give the answer “the weight it deserves.” He’s a sociopath. None of it means anything to him aside from what he thinks he can get out of it.)
“Kenosha police to militia members: ‘We appreciate you guys. We really do’. Breathtaking.”
Video atl.
Here’s a link to the August 26 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who’s 59, is in intensive care in critical condition with COVID-19.
Gah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Supreme Court Rejects Republican Effort to Restore Green Party Candidates on Montana Ballot
August 25,2020 NICHOLAS IOVINO
“A scoop by me: Yale Law prof Jed Rubenfeld (aka Mr. Tiger Mom) has been banned from teaching for two years after Yale found he had sexually harassed multiple students. Allegations spanned decades. He told me he’s a ‘target’ for his views on Title IX.
Rubenfeld denies the allegations, which include verbal harassment, unwanted touching, and attempted kissing, both on campus and at parties at Rubenfeld/Chua’s home, over decades. He claims ‘identities were not revealed to me’, but that’s not true….”
New York link atl.
Great news! (from another failed listmaker :)):
Congratulations to everyone involved.
“BREAKING: Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, Alex Vindman’s twin brother who served as a senior NSC ethics official, has filed a complaint w/DoD IG raising concerns that he was retaliated against for reporting ‘ethics and legal compliance violations’ by NSA O’Brien”
Laura is now a category 4 hurricane.
National Weather Service:
“Belarusian state TV switched the audio of protesters chanting to make it appear that the crowd was heckling an opposition leader, instead of Lukashenka. We compare the TV report with the original footage to document how the facts were faked:…”
Video report atl. The guy in this video is like a cartoon character.
Guardian world liveblog:
CNN – “CDC was pressured ‘from the top down’ to change coronavirus testing guidance, official says”:
The doctors on the news earlier, who are generally very measured, were flummoxed by and suspicious of this change. Sanjay Gupta called it “ridiculous.” Neither they nor any of the journalists working on this have been able to get any real explanation. I honestly don’t think Trump understands the point of testing. I’m sure they’ve tried to explain it to him, but he’s incapable of seeing anything beyond the level of competition and PR and image.
“#US Deputy Secretary of State Biegun said that if the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexey @Navalny will be proven as such, the US would introduce harsh new #sanctions against #Russia’s leadership:…”
Their attacks on our elections have been proven many times over and Trump continues to deny it, and Biegun also wrote the memo about not participating in political campaigns that Pompeo just spat on, so…
“More than 600 complaints were filed by peaceful Belarusian protesters beaten or tortured by security forces. ZERO cases have been instituted. Instead, huge propaganda campaign on TV to justify police violence.”
“New: Four House chairs are asking the Acting DOD IG to open an investigation into a possible ‘concerted effort by the Trump Administration to retaliate against U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonels (LTC) Alexander S. Vindman and Yevgeny Vindman’.”
Walter Shaub:
A 17-year-old has been taken into custody for first-degree murder in the shooting of protesters in Kenosha last night.
“Holy Moly.
Jerry Falwell Jr tells CNN he will get a total of $10.5 million from Liberty University after resigning as President and Chancellor. It’s $2.5M over the next two years as part of his departure, which is about 2 years of his salary and around $8M after that.”
He’s really letting his asshole flag fly.
Fearing defeat, Trump turns our resources into his campaign tools
“It would be a mistake to see Trump’s convention abuses as some kind of aberration born of desperation. They’ve actually been ongoing since January 2017.”
Kanye West update:
Stephen Colbert’s live monologues Monday night and last night were great. The studio replica and his wife being there laughing are really working.
Unsure of its message, GOP relies on a series of contradictions
As one observer put it, “The Republican National Convention should have come with a safety warning — beware of whiplash.”
LOL.
SC @115, Melania dressed as Commander in Chief of a Russian force invading Ukraine. Meanwhile, Trump squatted in the audience, with a look on his face that said, “Why is this taking so long?”
I wondered why the teleprompter was so socially distanced from Melania that she looked like she was stargazing when she read her speech.
Commentary on Trump’s naturalization stunt:
Link
Trump morphs White House into a fortress as he threatens to ignore election results
“This is Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, an Illinois resident who was just charged with first-degree murder of two people last night in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This teen, whose social media history is full of misogyny and white supremacy, had easy access to an AR-15.
In recent months, gun violence has broken out at protests against violence against Black Americans by police. In Albuquerque, a man was shot and wounded in June during a protest. In Portland, protests were escalated this weekend by white supremacists with rifles and handguns.
Armed insurrectionists and white supremacists are exploiting America’s dangerous and unpopular ‘open carry loophole’, which enables them to open carry military-style firearms in most states with little to no regulation.
Easy access to guns combined with racism, bigotry and misogyny is killing Americans and undermining democracy. Male supremacists used guns in 70% of domestic terror attacks and are responsible for the most deaths by domestic extremists.”
About the shooter in Kenosha, Wisconsin last night … more details:
Link
Trump seems determined to make things worse in Kenosha:
Link
Chris Hayes:
Trump’s children are using the framework of the Republican National Convention to stoke grievance and resentment.
Does anyone recognize the Donald Trump that Eric described?
Fox News! One America News Network (OANN)!
Washington Post link
RNC videos are loaded with scenes from outside the U.S. because they can’t find happy images here
“this guy [Kenosha Chief of Police] is like: look the victims shouldn’t have been out there, and the guy who killed them ‘was involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place’.”
Video atl. And it took them forever to get to even talking about the murders of two people by a white supremacist. I had to go out before this guy came on, but the press conference was jawdropping. There are serious fucking problems with this police department.
From an article written by Doreen St. Félix for The New Yorker:
Link
MSNBC is reporting that both teams scheduled to be playing in the playoff game today between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Orlando Magic are boycotting the game in protest against racial injustice.
Yikes.
(I’ll take this moment to cite Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, though I have problems with Erik Larson’s books.)
re Lynna @123:
Ahem. You are not a majority, you fucking lying shitweasel.
Joy Reid pointing out to the AP that their tweet isn’t conveying that the violence at the Kanosha protests was against the protesters. You really wouldn’t know this from most of the news coverage. The way Kenosha is being covered is bizarre, surreal.
SC#125 Kenosha is part of the district that elected former Speaker Paul Ryan to congress. Full of folks fleeing over the IL border to avoid the POC who live in Lake County, IL, where I live. The alleged killer comes a very reactionary area here in Lake County, so not surprised. While IL has some strict gun laws, they aren’t real effective as the state is not walled off from the rest of the country. Say like WI. A 10 minute drive from Antioch.
All of the NBA games scheduled for today have now been postponed. Solidarity.
“You know, back when Trump first took office and people kept saying, ‘Don’t normalize this’, they were talking about this exact situation we’re in now where the administration blatantly breaks the law, but the DC media dinner party crew goes, ‘Yes, but who really cares?'”
Tweet o’ the day.
“The NBA, owners and front offices didn’t see this wave of player boycotts coming today. Hours ago, they all expected to be playing these games tonight. This is a pivot point for the NBA and professional sports in North America.”
“Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams is a Trump world fav who was invited to the White House and appeared on the Trump campaign’s podcast.
Yesterday, Adams went on an unhinged rant about “satanic coincidences” he imagined are present in the Biden campaign….”
RightWingWatch link atl. Batshit.
“BuzzFeed finds the teenage Kenosha murder suspect in the front row of a Trump 2020 rally.
[link at the link]
‘Grayslake Police Department confirmed that Rittenhouse was a former member of the Lindenhurst, Grayslake, Hainesville Police Department’s Public Safety Cadet Program’.”
Trump administration wants limits reimposed on medication abortion
A group of doctors won an injunction to have restrictions on Mifeprex relaxed during the coronavirus pandemic because it exposed them to risks.
Aug 26, 2020
By Pete Williams
WTF? They’re far less available and riskier in terms of coronavirus than a drug.
Guardian world liveblog:
“Full statement from the Milwaukee Bucks:…”
Video atl.
“NBC News: The U.S. coronavirus death toll has now passed 180,000.”
“Two of the immigrants who participated in the naturalization ceremony at the WH that was later aired during the GOP convention said they were not told they would be part of the convention.”
WSJ link atl.
“… @tuckercarlson: ‘how shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?'”
Video atl. Trump’s and his party’s America.
“Tucker Carlson has no significant advertisers left, but at what point do large advertisers stop supporting Fox News, which rubber-stamped this call for vigilante violence tonight?
How can any corporation trust this network?
And how can @Xfinity @DIRECTV @DISHNews @Ask_Spectrum @verizonfios and @att continue to carry this type of rhetoric on their networks?
This is an absolute abdication of responsibility.”
Geoff Bennett:
continued:
“The circumstances surrounding the Kenosha shooting, which left 2 ppl dead and injured another are so incredibly infuriating I don’t even know where to start
This THREAD explains how @facebook, and Republican rhetoric are radicalizing extremists and turning them into killers….”
“Fauci tells @drsanjaygupta he was under anesthesia when task force met to discuss changing testing guidance. ‘I am concerned about the interpretation of these recs & worried it will give people the incorrect assumption asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is’.”
“The first ten minutes of tonight’s Tucker Carlson Tonight are the closest thing I think I’ve ever seen to pure, unfiltered fascism in American public life. Going out to the largest cable news audience ever….”
More atl.
“NEW AD: Elizabeth Neumann – the former Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention in Trump’s DHS – says that the U.S. is ‘less safe today’ because of Trump’s actions.
In 2016 she supported Trump but based on what she saw inside his administration, she’s voting for Joe Biden.”
Video atl.
Judge Temporarily Blocks DeVos From Diverting Pandemic Aid to Private Schools
August 26, 2020 NICHOLAS IOVINO
SC@127 & others, In addition to the NBA (basketball), some MLS (soccer), MLB (baseball), and Tennis games in the States were postponed in protest & solidarity & all in the States. I don’t know if any games outsides the States (e.g., here in Europe) were — or will be — postponed, but it’s not all unlikely…
And on that most peculiar of States “sports”, handegg, teh Washington
Redskins owner is apparently even more of a creep, Dan Snyder: covert video of cheerleaders reportedly made for Washington owner:me@154, Oops! The
strikeoutwas only supposed to be for the part of the handegg team’s (former) name — I accidently clickedPost Commentrather thanPreview. (Also, the {curly braces} are Grauniad edits.)Oook! In the NKofE, Books seen behind Boris Johnson tell their own story. Teh so-called “PM” was giving a speech in a school library. A librarian (probably) got creative:
In the image at the link, I can also see “Bad Guys”, “Corpse Talk”, several editions of the How It Works magazine, something about “Scientists”, and others that I cannot decipher or recognize. In other images (and as that thead notes) show “Lord of the Rings”. Supposedly, “Oliver Twist” and “1984” are there… and others are mentioned in the thread, including “Exodus” (a story about people abandoning an island due to the Climate Catastrophe). As several twitterings have noted, there is also a sign “Will You Take on the Challenge?”
Never annoy a librarian! Ook.
SC@78 quotes, “Boris Johnson: .” The Grauniad explains that mysterious , : the roots of Boris Johnson’s watery contempt:
Thanks so much, blf @ #157! No one else seemed to be commenting on it, so I partially assumed it must be a British thing, but I’d never seen it before so I had my doubts. Explained!
Here’s a link to the August 27 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
They have a graphic showing the number of vaccines in different research stages globally:
Pre-clinical: 139
Phase 1: 25
Phase 2: 15
Phase 3: 7
Approved: 0
Politics.co.uk – “The UK is facing down Covid without turning to religion”:
This is a very rosy view of things, but the broader phenomenon deserves attention.
Guardian world liveblog:
‘I was selling honey to survive.’ Then Mel Gibson threatened to sue:
The image used on Miel Gibson’s label (see image at the link) — which Ms Agurto apparently is planning to replace — is of William Wallace as played by Mr Gibson. That and the second part of the name are the only explicit “uses” of Mr Gibson’s , as that ridiculous threat put it. (Think Andy Warhol’s Campbells Soup Cans art for an analogy.) Her slogan should perhaps bee “So good the lawyers tried to ban it!”
Update to @162, Multiple reports indicate Ms Agurto has reached an ageement with Mr Gibson’s lawyers: Just change the image. The name and current slogan is fine, but not an artwork based on a real-life character played by Mr Gibson. (There are quite a number of public domain images of Mr Wallace she could use, albeit none — that I can recall or quickly find — that are as dramatic (fictionalised) as Mr Gibson’s likeness.)
Slate – “Kenosha Police Chief Blames Protesters for Their Own Deaths, Defends Vigilante Groups”:
This man should not be in this job. This police department needs a complete overhaul.
A few snippets from a long article in the Irish Tmes, Irish people have a distorted view of the realities of their country:
Anyone else find “10% don’t understand percentages” ironic?
Whilst the data and examples are very specifically Irish, the entire article is worth a read. It’s in two sections; the first is the data for Ireland, the second is on why people get things wrong (“Analysis: How we react to protect and promote news and data integrity should concern us all […]”).
re SC @164: Someone should have asked Miskinis if being out after curfew was a capital crime worthy of being killed. Not that he would have answered.
Reuters – “Tech firms threaten to quit Belarus after crackdown, internet outages”:
“In Moscow, Putin says Russia now has a reserve police force ready to deploy to Minsk to help with unrest. Meanwhile, in Minsk, Lukashenko says he’s agreed with Putin on refinancing $1 billion of debts to Russia.”
“#Russia’s president Putin ‘pledged to protect sovereignty of #Belarus’.
This sounds like the Kremlin has made plans for an incursion into Belarus.”
White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says:
“Employees of Belarusian cardiology centre, a well-known medical institution,collected signatures in support of fired director Aliaksandr Mrochak. When acting minister of health came to the centre to announce the dismissal of Mrochak,the employees chanted ‘Shame!’ to the official…”
“Employees of Belarusian cardiology centre support fired director Alexander Mrochek, who was blamed for doctors’ participation in protests….”
“In #Minsk, women are forming a human chain of solidarity outside the Red Church,where dozens of people where blocked by riot police yesterday. Catholic Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz said he ‘protests against the illegal actions of law enforcement that should be investigated’…”
“#Belarus How fluid these protests and protest locations are. Medical workers and employees ofBelarusian cardiology centre gathered at the centre.They are now marching to the Red Church,where dozens of people were blocked yesterday by riot police.They are chanting Long Live Belarus”
Gov. Cuomo:
David Corn at MoJo – “New Hot-Mic Video: What Trump Told His Lawyer When He Didn’t Know a Camera Was Rolling”:
Corn’s video with clips, the full recording, amd more atl. Two side notes: Trump looks remarkably like Boris Johnson in this video. Also, they have it as “[unintelligible],” but I think Trump says it was Michael Cohen who called the BBB threatening to sue over the low rating for his fraudulent “university.”
Jim Sciutto:
“As he fact checks the third night of the Republican convention, watch how @ddale8’s frustration builds and builds until it washes over the set like a giant wave of receipts!”
Video atl.
“Chemical leak south side of I-10 west Lake area west of Lake Charles. 911 is aware they are overwhelmed.” John Morales posted a map of the local chemical plants yesterday.
Here’s another image of the chemical leak. The large yellow thing on the right is evidently a casino boat that blew into and is now wedged under the bridge.
Gun Rights
August 26, 2020
Guardian world liveblog:
“The White House says it’s putting together a dossier on [David] Fahrenthold,” who has a new report on how the Trump Org is corruptly siphoning off public money. Both links atl.
UK’s rating of its Covid-19 response lowest of 14 countries in poll :
Banksy funds refugee rescue boat operating in Mediterranean:
Face mask recycling: French firm finds way to re-use Covid waste (some minor edits for readability (unmarked)):
SC @160, meanwhile, in the USA religion is making the coronavirus pandemic worse. Many religious meetings are still being held with no social distancing, no masks, and in defiance of state regulations.
Some religious organizations back off once the pastor (or equivalent) gets sick, along a good percentage of the worshippers. Some have to be taken to court before they comply with state regulations.
Many religious organizations continue to defy common sense rules when it comes to a contagious disease. Some back Trump and Pence’s “miracle” concept when it comes to ending the COVID-19 infections.
blf @ #182, I love everything about that initiative (other than the horrors giving rise to it).
“Why was Eric Trump in #HurricaneLaura briefing at FEMA? We have asked the WH (you can see him in this video under the EXIT sign at the end).”
Also, why is Trump ranting about Portland in a briefing about Hurricane Laura? Why aren’t they wearing masks? Why hasn’t he resigned?
Steve Rosenberg, BBC:
Detaining BBC journalists is an escalation.
Somewhat comically, trade and travel restrictions seem to have created an illegal cheese smuggling industry from Finland to Russia (link in Finnish):
https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11511992
(Disclaimer: the cheese in question might not impress Mildly Deranged Penguin, since it’s the sort of cheap bland stuff that North Europeans like to eat for breakfast)
Background: Finnish cheese is incredibly popular with Russians who live within shopping distance of the border (mainly St. Petersburg). There’s some quality issues with Russian food products, especially dairy products, that make wealthier people prefer high quality foreign produce. Finnish dairy brands were increasingly exported to Russia by early 2010s, but individual Russians visiting Finland also continued to shop a lot of cheese, among other things. There’s this consumer perception that buying directly from Finnish retail stores is the best guarantee of quality.
Besides, you could import 5 kg of cheese per traveler to Russia duty free, after buying it tax free (Some grocery stores near the southeastern border were allowed to make tax free sale arrangements for people with Russian passports). To increase the import quota, shoppers sometimes recruited old ladies to sit in their car – these are called “kilogram grannies”, or perhaps one might say in English “kilograns”. Sometimes, larger amounts of cheese would be smuggled in cars past the customs.
Then there was the Crimean occupation, and mutual trade sanctions between EU and Russia. The end of official food exports to Russia was a significant hit for Finnish food industry. Dairy companies scrabbled to increase their brand production in Russia, from locally sourced milk, while trying to maintain their reputation for high quality. Meanwhile, individual Russian people continued shopping cheese in Finland “for personal consumption”.
Then there was Covid-19, ending virtually all passenger traffic (but not cargo truck traffic) across the border. Russian epidemic situation being what it is, EU or Finland will likely continue to restrict travel from Russia for a long while. Russia also currently continues to restrict travel from the EU, if only on spite. Since almost no Russians can shop in Finland, sales in grocery stores and many other shops near the southeastern border have collapsed. However, there have been reports of individual Russian nationals asking to buy unusually large amounts of cheese (like, hundreds of kgs) from grocery stores tax free. Finnish authorities presume this cheese is being smuggled in cargo trucks past Russian customs.
(Cue images of Mildly Deranged Penguin trebucheting hundreds of 1 kg consumer packages of bland cheese across the border from Finland to Russia, risking to escalate an armed conflict between the countries)
Excerpts from the Washington Post link to which SC referred in comment 180:
Link
“Overnight ratings for night three of the conventions. Six networks combined, 10-11p ET:
Democratic – 16.2
Republican – 10.5
In a matchup of VP nominees, Harris outrated Pence by +54% in America’s biggest markets.”
Kamala Harris is speaking now.
“Joint NY, NJ and CT governors statement on CDC reversal over testing: ‘This 180-degree reversal of COVID-19 testing guidelines is reckless, and not based on science and has the potential to do long-term damage to the institution’s reputation’.”
Statement atl. They’re going to keep doing what they’re doing.
EPA Approval of Lax Emissions Plan for Pennsylvania Tossed Out
August 27, 2020 EMILEE LARKIN
“The moment when @RFERL cameraman Andrey Rabchyk was detained. He was livestreaming from the protests – and then the video disappeared. Just a moment ago, BBC, DW, Tut[dot]by, Lenta[dot]ru and other local and international journalists have been detained [in Belarus]”
The best part of Harris’ speech was when she pointed out that the RNC has been about making Trump feel better and guarding his fragile ego when he should be focused on the safety, health, and well-being of the people.
Jobless claims inch lower, but remain above 1 million
Over the last 22 weeks, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has topped 1 million a total of 21 times.
“How do Trump aides see Kenosha? Here’s @KellyannePolls to Fox this AM on what they see as political upside: ‘The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety, and law and order’.”
In an interview with Andrea Mitchell earlier, Joe Biden pointed to this quote twice, calling attention to how despicable it is and also how bizarre given that Trump currently occupies the Oval Office.
A snippet from the nonsense and lies spouted by Mike Pence last night:
Irony meter breakage was extensive.
Commentary:
Link
Follow-up to SC’s comment 151.
Republican support for Biden’s candidacy is growing, or, more accurately, Republicans desperate to get rid of Trump are willing to accept Biden.
Link
From the Associated Press:
From Trump:
Effing liar.
William Barr, who is also an effing liar, backed up Trump’s claim.
The truth:Tthere is no information or intelligence that any adversary is engaged in any kind of activity to undermine any part of the mail-in vote.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the Michigan Attorney General are investigating “Racially-Charged’” robocalls spreading Vote-By-Mail disinformation.
TPM link
A recording of the robocall is available at the link.
Some responses to Jared Kushner’s ill-considered tweet:
From Charles Pierce: “Chris Paul worked his whole life and won a scholarship to Wake Forest University. Jared Kushner’s father bought the spalpeen’s way into Harvard.”
From Rex Chapman: “Silver Spoon Jared Kushner calling NBA players “lucky for being able to take a night off from work” is too rich. These are grown men who have worked insanely hard to earn their jobs. Without rich parents. Unlike Jared…”
From Kevin Kruse: “No one knows more about ‘concrete solutions that are productive’ than Jared Kushner, the man who solved the opioid crisis, brought peace to the Middle East, launched a flawless federal response to the coronavirus …”
From Holly Figueroa O’Reilly: “Jared Kushner, who has accomplished LITERALLY NOTHING in the 4 years he’s been sycophanting around in the White House, says that LeBron James, who has, since 2005, been a champion of kids, opened a school, and runs a voting rights non-profit, should be ‘productive’.”
From #JusticeforBreonna Prescod-Weinstein: “My Harvard ‘03 classmate Jared Kushner got in because his parents donated $2.5 million to Harvard. Me? I taught myself to take the SAT there was no $ for a class. Which one of us knows something about earning our position in life, Jared?”
From Jared Kushner: “NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially. What I’d love to see from the players in the NBA–again they have the luxury of taking a night off from work, most Americans don’t…I’d like to see them start moving into concrete solutions that are productive.”
“In the @mitchellreports interview, Joe Biden challenges Donald Trump and GOP convention speakers to condemn the 17-year-old guy arrested in connection with the killing of two people during Kenosha protests.
‘Where’s the condemnation coming for that?'”
@ #202
So many NBA players do a lot of good work, no doubt partly because so many of them came from poverty. When schools closed in March, Steph Curry teamed up with a food bank to provide more than 1 million meals to students in Oakland, who couldn’t attend school but depended on schools for meals. Just one example, there are countless others. What has Kushner done again?
Follow-up to SC @144 and 145.
Link
A video criticizing Trump was issued by VoteVets. The video features a Gold Star father:
Link
Video is available at the link.
Pence’s speech last night caused other damage:
Link
So, now the report is out. It confirms what we already suspected, “GAO report says cutting census timeframe is a threat to its accuracy.”
Link
“Tuesday was six months since White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said because of Trump:
‘We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here..and isn’t it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama’.”
From Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/rnc-night-three-the-enstupiding
Guardian world liveblog:
More re #192 from the Guardian world liveblog:
JFC.
“… eric trump on democrats: ‘all they can talk about, steve, is covid. covid, covid, covid!’
the confirmed u.s. death toll from covid-19 is over 180,000 people.”
“Dozens of journalists were detained earlier this evening in Minsk for nothing other than doing their jobs. Many of them, mostly foreign nationals have been released. Belarusian journalists are still in custody.”
Better than my description @ #195: “Harris says the reality of the country has been ‘completely absent’ from the Republican convention because the event is solely to ‘soothe’ Trump’s ego”
You know, given that the Rethugs have over the past few months suggested:
1) Granny and Gramps have to die for the economy
2) Your kids need to die for the economy.
3) That people need to be ready to resort to cannibalism (Limbaugh)
4) That people need to be ready to go hungry to support losing Rethug senate candidates
5) That it’s just fine if police beat, gas and shoot protesters and black people
6) That 180000 deaths is “just fine”
I’m just not sure how they can cling to that pro-life banner in any but an extremely ironic sense.
“At least 40 journalists have been detained today in #Minsk. Some of them are still at a police station,because they refused to show the photographs they took – @tutby, @Belsat_TV, @dw_russian, @RFERL and others. World Press Photo-winner photographer Paul Hansen will be deported
Kaciaryna Andreeva,my good friend and excellent journalist at @Belsat_TV, together with her colleague Maksim Kalitouski,just called her husband and said they both would be taken to the infamous Akrescina detention centre.Tania Karavenkova,@belapan journo is being taken to hospital”
Tweet (thread) o’ the day.
“President Trump is wise like an ‘ullu’: Tomi Lahren’s video leaves Desi Twitter in splits.”
Guardian – “A father and a 26-year-old skateboarder: the protesters killed in Kenosha”:
“We’ve posted a new report on masks – proof that they work and best practices increasing use. An important part of a comprehensive approach to stopping Covid. The more we mask up, the more we can keep deaths down and restart our economy….”
Useful document atl.
Not political, but scientific. Analysis of some titanosaur embryos (in eggs) from Argentina, that show some unexpected features.
Fascinating.
Follow-up to comments 135 and 153.
Donald Trump was asked about the NBA today. In his reply he said he didn’t know much about the protests, but he knew that “their ratings have been low.” And then repeated his point about low TV ratings.
He is a useless fool.
From the Washington Post:
Oh, FFS.
U.S. Postal Service now telling customers late packages were delayed at their own ‘request’
Harris called out Trump for being a miserably incompetent failure. It was glorious
People seem to be assuming that this tweet from Dr. Bronner’s is some sort of threat to the Biden campaign, but I would be very surprised if that were the case. They’re very leftwing, and that would be out of character. I imagine they just want to discuss how to move forward, and frankly the Biden campaign should have contacted them before going ahead with this effort (which is very good generally).
Yes.
“Just had a long sit down with Jacob Blake’s uncle before he heads to the airport to fly to DC for tomorrow’s march. Said it’s impossible to fathom how much the family has appreciated the show of support from WNBA and NBA players
One thing the family is particularly upset about — the uncle just gave me a call to make sure I had noted this in our interview — is that Jacob Blake, shot seven times and paralyzed, has been handcuffed to his hospital bed.”
“Night 4 video opens by attacking mask wearing. Image of Biden and Harris in masks voice over ‘telling you what to wear'”
Follow-up to SC @229.
I am totally freaking out about the live images of huge numbers of people jammed together tightly on the White House lawn in preparation for the 4th night of Republican UnReality Show. Today, 1,100 people in the USA died of COVID-19. The number of deaths in the USA is now over 180,000. This is a super-spreader event.
Yes, they are outside, which will help a little bit. But … there is Rudy Giuliani with his face all up in somebody else’s face, talking (loudly, I assume). Giuliani was, at most, 12 inches from the other man’s face. People are hugging and air-kissing. Chairs are so close together that some people’s shoulders are touching.
Eight states, (so far), have now traced COVID cases back to the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. 70 cases so far.
Why is Trumplandia pretending that coronavirus is over. Why are they pretending?
Mary Trump told MSNBC hosts tonight that Donald Trump doesn’t care if people get sick from attending his Falsehood-Festival tonight. He only cares about what he thinks will make him look good in the moment.
The Onion – “Blue Lives Matter Supporters Say Kyle Rittenhouse Not Reflective Of Most Peaceful Apologists For Police State”:
This is a great thread.
Mitch McConnell delivered his Trump Show address from a field or very large yard somewhere — not other people around. He claimed that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to limit the number of hamburgers we can have, and that they are going to tell us what car to drive.
Joy Reid commented that somebody should limit the number of hamburgers she has.
Giuliani is now giving his “rioting and looting” speech about cities. He is very pro-police.
Giuliani, speaking about Trump: “[…] Trump, with his boundless work ethic…”
@ 236
That’s very hard to believe since Trump has never worked nor Is he intellectually capable of grasping the concept of “ethics.”
Akira @237, quite right. I laughed out loud, rolled my eyes, and then started to search my refrigerator for comfort food.
Daniel Dale made me laugh:
Trump just claimed for the umpteenth time that he passed Veterans Choice.
Here are few more tidbits from Daniel Dale:
Trump still can’t say “plasma.”
Now Trump is lying about coronavirus statistics.
Now Trump is providing misleading new job growth statistics.
I’m out of here for awhile. I need a break.
Highly misleading to tout the “record” 9 million job gain over the last three months with no context…
…specifically, the context that 22 million jobs were lost in the previous two months.
“This is the image people have in their heads when they write government ethics laws.”
More re Lynna’s #239: “Hell of a thing to watch CNN’s @ddale8 fact-check the cascade of lies from Trump’s speech.”
It’s very impressive.
“…This was it. This desecration of the White House is what the press was asked to collaborate in keeping secret.”
It’s like something out of a dystopian movie. I keep contrasting it with the description in The Invention of Nature of Jefferson’s White House visited by Alexander von Humboldt.
“#BREAKING Japan PM Abe to resign over health: local media”
“The Trump 2020 fireworks over the Washington Monument is the real cherry on top of this Hatch Act violation sundae.”
Here’s a link to the August 28 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
“Trump to @peterbakernyt on what he’d do: ‘But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done’.”
Another tweet o’ the day from yesterday. Late entry.
Reuters – “Nobel laureate author emerges as powerful voice backing Belarus protests”:
“How fitting that Trump accepted his renomination with a mass violation of the rule of law
And an intentional mass Covid exposure event.
The two core failures that history will remember him for.”
Morning Joe this morning is an endless stream of Thoughts from White Men (even more than usual).
“On the lack of social distancing or face masks at Trump’s #RNC2020 acceptance speech in the middle of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a senior White House official tells @Acosta: ‘Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually’. [exploding head emoji]”
I think in one of the pictures of the non-socially distanced crowd I saw Wilbur Ross, who’s like 100.
lumipuna@188, “Cue images of Mildly Deranged Penguin trebucheting hundreds of 1 kg consumer packages of bland cheese across the border from Finland to Russia […]”.
You really shouldn’t give her ideas…!
She’s currently researching these alleged cheese plants. She’s checked the Great Cheese Encyclopædia, Cheeses of the Far Nørth, and even All the Universe’s Cheeses which, despite the grandiose title, is only a pamphlet of about six pages. The writing is very very small. Allegedly you just about make it out using an Scanning Tunneling Microscope, but a far more reliable technique is to use a Maxwell’s Dæmon. You shout at the daemon until they understand what you want (they’re a bit deaf), let it do its sorting thing, and then in one corner of the pamphlet is what you want. Scrambled. Not that that matters much, unless you have an STM handy and can read the unknown script in an unknown language. So although Maxwell’s Dæmon did find something, the mildly deranged penguin is still puzzled.
Then she remembered Finland is covered in fins. Ah, it’s a fish-eating cheese plant! That narrows it down a bit, especially if she can work out what sort of fish the cheeses eat. Furthermore, it must be a very common fish, since Finland is full of fins. That identified the fish very quickly — that well-known flying fish, the reindeer. Quite tasty, a very large crunchy mouse, cheese food!
The cheese probably also flies (important point to consider when devising a trebuchet delivery system), thrives in the cold, and is either invisible or hides in plain sight (else it’d be recognised). There is at least one camouflaged cold-thriving albeit non-flying cheese, the Everest Yeti Nest, so called because Yetis use the cheeses to build their nests in return for a supply of monks — but now more commonly, mountaineers — to munch on. Furthermore, they (the Everest Yeti Nest cheese) are known to have invaded much of Eurasia. (Who do you think Genghis Khan was running from?) Some could have easily wound up in Finland, and discovered the delicious reindeer fish. And then, of course, the Vikings ran away from something…
Everest Yeti Nest cheeses can move quite fast on snow, probably faster than reindeer fish can run or take-off, so she guesses the cheeses just sneak up and ambush the fish when they are not airborne. One puzzle is where they live, unless they brought some Yeti’s with them… Another puzzle is the Finland-to-Russia “cheese” is described as “bland”, which is not a description hitherto before ever applied to an Everest Yeti Nest cheese. Maybe that’s due to the change in the cheese’s diet?
Unfortunately, ballistic reentry tests with the Nepalese original Everest Yeti Nest cheese shows they don’t survive supersonic flight very well, restricting the available trebuchet options. Unless, that is, the Russians like their cheese heavily charred-grilled. That, plus the fact she hasn’t actually gotten her wings on any Finnish Everest Yeti Nest cheese yet, means the trebuchet delivery system won’t start operating for a few hours yet.
Joe Biden: “Remember: every example of violence Donald Trump decries has happened on his watch. Under his leadership. During his presidency.”
Trump has one approach: force and violence to prop up white supremacists. Not reform (including any of the detailed proposals put forward by BLM leaders), not dialogue, not DoJ-led investigations of unjust practices, not attempts to address economic inequality or the history of oppression and exclusion, not even recognition that racist policing is a problem. His campaign argument is that courts and state and local Democratic leaders won’t allow him to employ his only tool: racist force and violence to prop up white supremacists. So the campaign argument is plainly that if he wins the election he’ll be unleashed to use force and violence to prop up white supremacists. Which is absolutely what he’d do, and people planning to vote for him (or not vote or vote for anyone other than Biden) should be made to understand and acknowledge that this is what they’re voting for and take responsibility for it.
“2016: Trump declares ‘he alone could fix’ America’s problems.
2020: The pitch — and the problems — remain strikingly similar.”
Video atl. Incredible.
“A stunning reminder from @jaketapper just now on CNN: ‘Just since the Republican convention began, we have had more losses due to this virus than were lost due to 9/11’.
Between the RNC opening on Monday and 5pm today, 3,688 Americans have lost their lives to coronavirus.”
Still no explanation for this: “Eric Trump shows up to a government meeting for no reason, leaves everyone baffled.”
“A fleeting mention of the tax cuts and deregulation ‘at a rate nobody’s ever seen before’, which was the entire agenda”
(Well, that and the oppression it assumes and requires.)
Guardian world liveblog:
The Biden campaign bought the keepamericagreat domain and is using it to describe Trump’s failures.
In a Victory for Trump, Iowa Judge Orders Thousands of Absentee Ballot Requests to Be Voided
August 27, 2020 ROX LAIRD
There are something like 140 court cases going on around the country over voting rights, everything from requirong photo ID to absentee ballots having to be notarized. Most of them are because states have loosened restrictions on absentee ballots because of Coronavirus, and the GOP sues to stop them. Such nice folks.
“It sounds absurd to say it, but America is in the process of choosing whether to be a white nationalist fascist state or an inclusive democracy. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just where we are.
I wish I could take some sort of sophisticated view and say, no, things aren’t really that bad, it’s not as serious as all that. But that would mean refusing to take seriously the implications of the events happening around us.”
“South Dakota posts largest one day New COVID-19 Cases count with 343, bringing their post [Sturgis] Rally 7d average up to 215.
Prior to the Rally, Daily New Cases ran around 80.
North Dakota post largest one day New COVID-19 Cases count with 333, bringing their post Rally 7d avg to 223.
Prior to the Rally, Daily New Cases ran around 120.
Iowa posts largest one day New COVID-19 Cases count with 2,620, bringing their post Rally 7d avg to 993.
This outbreak is much worse than their meat packing outbreaks earlier this year.
Prior to the Rally, Daily New Cases ran around 470.
Kansas and Minnesota also join Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota among states showing post Rally increasing cases….”
Yesterday, the governor of Iowa closed “bars, taverns, breweries, wineries, distilleries and nightclubs” in six counties with large student populations. All of these were fully open while students returned to colleges and universities. Still no mask mandate.
ABC – “Despite USPS chief DeJoy’s pledge, postal unions say mail delays persist”:
“Protests in Belarus to follow this weekend:
Saturday: Women March, 16:00, Start at Pieramohi Square
Sunday: March for Peace and Independence, 14:00, Independence Sq.
Crackdown and detentions possible.
For journalists: Be very cautious.”
Jacob Blake shackled to hospital bed despite being paralyzed, father says:
Update to @156, Librarian who put books behind Boris Johnson says message was for school:
I suspect they were also unawares there is a library at the school.
Vigilante, volunteer, terrorist: how the US media covers Kyle Rittenhouse:
The Grauniad is current using , albeit as it points out:
That would seem to describe this kook.
First Dog on the Moon in the Grauniad, Despite bats being critically important to our ecology AND adorable, we treat them with disdain (cartoon): “We don’t want them in our parks and nice places because they behave like the wild animals they are”.
Joe Biden told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell yesterday that he fully intends to participate in the upcoming presidential debates, and he expects to be a “fact checker on the floor.”
Link
As was already mentioned up-thread, yes Trump will indulge in even more violence against protestors if he is given a second term. And, he will illegally involve the military and other federal departments in perpetrating that violence.
House announces contempt proceedings against Pompeo after he refuses to hand over documents
https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1299230842145964032
With Donald Trump and this election, it feels ominously like 2016 all over again:
Eh? A ? How about every bit of it!
Oh for feck’s sake. You do need facts and also a good narrative, well presented.
Plausible. Of course, no-one can name a thug’s policy proposal, for the simple reason they haven’t got any (unless you consider a “policy (proposal)”).
Republicans see immediate post-convention bounce…in COVID cases: Attendees start testing positive
Spanish police arrest Covid sceptic for inciting violence (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
Update: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is still in an induced coma from a suspected poisoning but his condition is stable and his symptoms are improving, the German doctors treating him said Friday.
“While his condition remains serious, there is no immediate danger to his life,” the hospital said. “However, due to the severity of the patient’s poisoning, it remains too early to gauge potential long-term effects.”
Belarus deports Swedish journalist amid media crackdown:
Guardian world liveblog:
The RNC weaponized exhaustion
“The sheer volume of lies and illegal behavior from Trump and the Republicans is what allowed them to get away with it.”
I don’t think they got away with it, at least not entirely. I do get the “exhaustion” factor. Republicans flooded the zone with lies and misleading statements.
Outcry in Iran at nine-year sentence for man who beheaded daughter:
“Breaking News: 2 PR advisers at the FDA were ousted from their positions after the agency’s chief acknowledged exaggerating plasma’s benefits for Covid-19.”
Nice.
:D.
“Yolanda Renee King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s granddaughter: ‘Our generation has already taken to the streets, peacefully and with masks and socially distanced, to protest racism…Join me in pledging that we have only just begun’…. #MarchonWashington”
Video atl. It’s a huge march, and everyone’s wearing masks. MLK III: “We’re socially distanced but spiritually united.”
Personal observation: there’s been a noticeable increase in the number of Twitter bots and trolls this week.
A Well-Connected QAnon Guy Is Representing The Teen Who Shot, Killed Kenosha Protesters
Link
What Is Ivanka Smiling About?
America is crumbling. But Trump’s daughter is just thrilled to be here.
Mary Trump, (while being interviewed by Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicole Wallace), said that Ivanka presented herself as “co-president” in that RNC speech.
Re Lynna@201, RWW’s report, Right-Wing Political Operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl Target Black Voters With Robocalls, Disinformation, with more details.
Also from RWW, Jeremiah Johnson Says COVID-19 Is a to Prevent Baby Boomers From Reelecting Trump (RWW edits in {curly braces}):
To give teh kook some credit, at least he isn’t denying either Covid-19 or that it can be fatal.
A Volcano of Lies
The profusion of falsehoods from Tom Cotton, Rudy Giuliani, and Ivanka Trump provided a fitting setup for the big man at the Republican National Convention.
Russia is actually doing a lot. Russia is taking action, many actions, to achieve their goal. Meanwhile, Chira and Iran are mostly just talking and doing nothing.
Giuliani could use that as part of a standup comedy act. He’d get some laughs.
The Onion:
● Trump Children Worried Aging Father Not Safe To Be Alone After Falling In Polls Again (no “story”, just an amusing headline).
● Highlights Of The 2020 Republican National Convention:
“The NBA and NBPA release joint statement, outlining social justice initiatives, establishing voting centers within arena properties and increased awareness…”
All of the NBA arenas will be used as polling places, and some ad time during playoff games will be used to promote civic engagement and provide voting information.
Lynna@291, quotes Tom Cotton as claiming (my added emphasis).
Did teh eejit really say that? According to this transcript, he said Jerusalem.
I understand hair furor said recently he’d moved the capital of Israel.
From the Washington Post editorial board: Global freedom would suffer grievous harm in a second Trump term
Judge sides with states, orders Trump and Postal Service to cough up documents on sabotage ASAP
Guardian world liveblog:
TPM report on #293 – “NBA Announces Playoff Deal With Players That Includes Big Win For Voting Rights”:
Follow-up to @439(previous page), Gospel-singing Brazilian politician may be expelled from congress to face murder charges:
Editorial in the Grauniad, The Guardian view on Trump’s convention speech: the unwitting truth amid lies:
“The Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group aligned with Mitch McConnell, has spent more against @Ossoff than any other Democratic Senate candidate—part of a $6.6M ‘surge’ of spending in the state. Another $13.5 million is on its way. #gapol #gasen”
“Final night ratings for the RNC:
14.1 million
Final night ratings for the DNC:
17.5 million
With President Trump speaking, ratings for the RNC dropped from night 3 and were lower than 2016.”
Follow-up to @267, from the Grauniad’s current
policegoons live blog:“More people watched @KamalaHarris speech last week than Trumps speech yesterday.”
OMG this is hilarious.
I so needed the laugh today.
Seamus Jennings in the Grauniad, On Donald Trump’s convention speech (cartoon).
“Obamacare repeal has disappeared from the Republican National Convention — it didn’t come up at all this year, after dominating the 2012 and 2016 conventions….”
Chart atl. Democrats should hammer on health care every single day.
In teh NKofE, Far-right activists filmed hassling asylum seekers in hotels:
@ #307
The GOP may not mention repealing the ACA, but they are full steam ahead on the court case that is trying to do just that. The Trump Administration has thrown their full weight behind Texas, which is challenging the constitutionality of the entire ACA, in the case that has reached the Supreme Court. The Court has scheduled oral arguments for November 10, one week after the election, with a decision to come in 2021.
The Dems should not just hammer health care constantly, but stress how, in spite of Trump promising to protect the existing condition insurance clause, they are actually trying to get rid of it, along with the rest of the ACA.
From Michelle Obama:
Steve Bell in the Guardian, On gun crime in America (cartoon). (For those wondering about the kkk klown kostume shaped USAlien flags with menacing eyes, that originally started as Mr Bell’s metaphor for Putin (as I recall), but I believe is now used as the shady people behind, controlling, or supporting hair furor.)
Excerpts from Susan B. Glasser’s article, “The Malign Fantasy of Donald Trump’s Convention.”
New Yorker link
Excerpts from Masha Gessen’s article, “Trump’s Republican National Convention Was a Spectacle Fit for a Would-Be King”:
New Yorker link
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Link to video.
Follow-up to comment 272.
Link
‘I don’t have to smile if I don’t feel like it!’: Covid freed me from politeness and unwanted touching:
Good grief. I don’t recall ever hearing of such an effect or any studies on it, but there does seem to have been some. For example, Reach Out and Touch Your Customers (PDF), 1998, which concludes:
I would suggest boiling in oil, or molten lead, rather than water!
Back to the column in the Grauniad:
This is quite different to the French custom of shaking hands with the server (pre-pandemic) or bumping elbows (now), or la bise (cheek kissing (pre-pandemic)), especially if one knows them; e.g., is a frequent customer. That touching is by mutual consent, a genuine friendly greeting.
Satire/humor from Andy Borowitz: “Trump Warns That Biden Presidency Would Mean Regular Mail Service and Sports”
Link
blf @317, I’ve found that a similar dynamic exists at all levels of society in the USA. For instance, if I wanted the men in a company meeting (committee of upper management, including me as also one of the managers) to listen to me, as opposed to defaulting into listening to each other and ignoring me, I needed to touch one of the men on the arm. After the touch, that man would listen to me. All the other men would follow suit, as if having earned the imprimatur of one man I was worthy of attention.
I worked for that company for about five years. It never changed.
I found the same dynamic to be dominant in every workplace. Admittedly, this was about 15 years ago. Things may have changed since then. I have been working for myself, by myself, ever since.
No one disrespects me in my office. Some people try, via email or phone, etc. I find it easy to push back.
Follow-up to @182 and SC@185, Banksy-funded boat nears ‘state of emergency’ as it shelters 200 people:
Vesselfinder suggests there are several fishing boats, a cargo ship, and a tanker, in the immediate vicinity (as of about twenty minutes ago), and that the Louise Michel is underway (destination unknown). I suppose they could be trying to tow the dingy (seems unlikely), or there are c.200 people plus crew onboard (which would be considerably (over-)crowded (it’s only a 30 metre former French customs patrol vessel, the Suroît).
From the Grauniad’s current blithering wannabe-dalek eejits live blog:
Even assuming he’s correct about commercial aeroplanes being “safe”, that’s spectacularly missing the point: Infected people may arrive, and infected people may leave, in both cases, potentially spreading the infection at their destinations (at least). Or has he forgotten hair furor’s claims about the “success” of “shutting down” air travel…?
me@321, Sorry, that’s from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog (top link), not their USAlien live blog… albeit he’s still a blithering wannabe-dalek & confirmed-eejit.
WaPo:
Secret Service copes with coronavirus cases in aftermath of Trump appearances
By Carol D. Leonnig
August 28, 2020
Many more examples of positive tests and quarantines, including a trip of the VP that had to be postponed because the Service couldn’t round up enough healthy replacements.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the Guardian – “Hope is a dying ember for black people in the US. Athletes have rekindled it”:
Here’s a link to the August 29 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
The judge’s reasoning eludes me. The indications that they’ll deliberately ignore social distancing rules include the entirety of their rhetoric, the rationale for the protest, and their behavior at the previous protest a few weeks ago.
Guardian world liveblog:
Marc Elias:
“Kenosha mayor asked about calls for Kenosha’s police chief and sheriff to resign, and if he thinks they should.
He says no.
Press conference ends. Tonally this was a lot less dense than the two before it, but offered very few reassurances about state of policing in Kenosha.”
Thread about yesterday’s press briefing atl.
Follow to SC@325, Berlin police break up ‘anti-corona’ protest against Covid-19 restrictions (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
Follow-up to @182, SC@185, and @320 (and a correction to @320), Banksy-funded migrant rescue boat calls for urgent help in Mediterranean:
Vesselfinder shows the Louise Michel has not moved. In @320, I said it was “underway” — which did puzzle me — but now realise I was confused by Vesselfinder saying the ship is “Under way”, ignoring its reported speed of “0 kn” (clearly not moving under its own propulsion). There is apparently one yacht nearby (but possibly moving away), and few-to-no other vessels in the area.
France reports 7,379 new Covid-19 cases in ‘exponential’ daily rise (video (English)):
In the accompanying video, there is one eejit — a mayor of someplace in Alsace, which has introduced mandatory masks in some areas (and was very badly hit during the “first wave”) — complained about mandatory masks, claiming (my paraphrase from memory) . Another eejit (like a certain commentator elsewhere (usually) here at poopyhead’s blog who prefers hair furor because Biden (whose offense apparently is being the dummie’s candidate)). Geesh!
The Grauniad, France records ‘exponential’ increase in Covid-19 cases, adds (snippet):
Oh for fecks sake, the New York Post’s headline, Banksy’s rescue ship, packed with 219 migrants, flounders in Mediterranean. The article itself is broadly accurate, but neglects to mention just why the Louise Michel is unable to move (not in anything but the most pedantic sense) — a not-insignificant matter of a stranded dingy with c.130 people alongside. (The dingy was apparently floundering when originally sighted.)
The Grauniad’s snark machine on The five most terrifying performances by women at the RNC — ranked! (minor edits for formatting reasons (not marked)):
FeBreze is “an American brand of household odor eliminators”.
† That’s probably true, but it’s a “a valuable tool for white supremacists and misogynists” saying this, hence the .
The Grauniad is reporting that Italian coastguard responds to distress call from Banksy-funded rescue ship: “The Italian coastguard has answered a distress call from a rescue boat financed by the British street artist Banksy and taken charge of 49 migrants in most need of help, it has said.” The Louise Michel twittering feed confirms (and has some videos of the situation onboard).
That’s obviously some help, but still means there’s c.170 people stranded. I presume the Louise Michel is still unable to move (see @330). Vesselfinder now shows the Sea Watch 4 nearby, but they already have c.200 migrants onboard — so authorities haven’t been giving them docking permission (Sea-Watch 4 rescue boat seeks port for 200 migrants in the Mediterranean) — making it unclear to me just what they can do… The Sea Watch International (English) twittering feed confirms:
Belarus authorities strip accreditation from foreign journalists:
In Sweden, Riots rock Malmö after far-right Swedish activists burn Qur’an (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
Coronavirus
sceptics[deniers], conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers protest in London:I have no idea why the Grauniad used and scare quotes. Actually, this is technically the Observer — the Sunday newspaper the Grauniad bought some years ago — and they are more conspiracy-prone and woo-woo friendly then the Grauniad. Dr Ben Goldacre used to snipe regularly at the Observer’s abysmal reporting on science- / medicine-related matters.
The image at the link shows rather what one would expect: No masks (at all, as far as I can see), and apparently quite poor social distancing. No confederate flags, albeit I presume that is an oversight. (No BLM either, probably not an oversight.)
Chris Riddell in the Guardian, Donald Trump as Abraham Lincoln (cartoon): “Government of the Trumps, by the Trumps, for the Trumps, shall not perish from the Earth.”
That would be the QAnon cultists. The insanity is spreading.
Ah (re @339), “Q” is teh reptilian’s commander… that would explain rather a lot! ;-)
Tenants Say They Were Tricked Into RNC Video Appearance: ‘I Am Not A Trump Supporter
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/tenants-tricked-rnc-video
Mary Trump Condemns RNC, Says Trump Will ‘Use Anybody For His Own Purposes’
Trump’s response was predictable:
Kind of weird for Trump to describe his own reportedly cold and ruthless father as “very king & caring.”
More from Mary Trump:
Trump’s post-RNC rally goes off the racist rails with claims Kamala Harris ‘is not competent’
Donald Trump’s convention lost the TV ratings war, so naturally he’s lying about it
This sounds to me like one more way for the Trump administration to hide Russian election interference from the American people.
ODNI to no longer brief Congress in-person on election security
No one in Congress will be allowed to question Trump’s lickspittles.
From Barack Obama:
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1299718379440398337
From Wonkette: “New Hampshire ‘Macho Man’ Trumpist Casually Suggests Reporter Watch Out For Bombs.”
Link
From Wonkette: “Militia Member Ominously Warns Modesto’s Straight Pride Event Won’t Be ‘Family Friendly.”
Link
Quoted in blf’s #333:
A Chardonnay?
Xpost patheos
To the surprise of absolutely no one, there is now another one dead at a protest.
This is in Portland.
Details are scarce since this just happened.
It happened right during a Trump rally though
If the Portland police are true to form, there were dozens of witnesses, and…they will never arrest anyone for this.
It appears it was one of theirs.
A Proud toddler no less, a right wingnut.
Details are scarce but I’m not going to do a fundie xian here.
This is definitely not good
As a general statement, it is OK to protest, it is not OK to llik people.
more
The Portland police don’t discuss their tactical plans because…they don’t have any.
When you have opposing sides and one or both are heavily armed, violence and death are inevitable.
We knew that months ago in Charlotte, NC, when that Nazi ran over and killed a woman.
The Portland police have a long history of tolerating and supporting right wing thugs.
That is what they sowed, and one guy dead so far is what they reap.
I’m still waiting for the logical conclusion to this cycle of violence.
The mass shooting in public.
One of these heavily armed militia types is going to just empty their clip into the crowd one of these nights.
This is not the Louise Michel (albeit the excerpt below does contain an update), Migrant boat bursts into flames off southern Italian coast:
In @334 I was wondering what the Sea Watch&4 could do. It is a larger ship than the Louise Michel, and I presume the respective crews decided it could accommodate the c.150 on the Louise Michel (or mostly, in fact, in its lifeboats, deployed simply because there wasn’t room on the Louise Michel itself).
Follow-up to an older comment in this series of poopyhead threads about fox setting up a for-pay stream disservice in non-USAlien countries, Rivals plan Fox News-style opinionated TV station in UK:
Well this is weird. “Acting DHS Secretary Denies Knowing WH Naturalization Ceremony Would Air During RNC.” Really?
Link
This is a disingenuous excuse: “the White House publicized the content of the event on a public website this afternoon and the campaign decided to use the publicly available content for campaign purposes.”
Follow-up to comment 355.
From comments posted by readers of the article:
Minimum wage, no NOC: Qatar announces changes to labour law:
Here’s How Kenosha Cops Will Try to Get Away With Nearly Murdering Jacob Blake
The police union released its version of events. In a more humane world, it’d be a confession.
Trump’s response to the shooting in Portland was all too predictable.
Trump is clearly inciting violence. He should not travel to Kenosha.
Washington Post link
Cartoons in the Washington Post.
“We’ve decided against having any party platform in 2020. We’ve settled for a gangplank instead.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/opinions/2020/08/28/republicans-traded-party-platform-this/
Reporting on Belarus: courage, violence and ‘creepers’ with cameras:
How should Europe respond now its American ally has turned hostile?:
Biden’s campaign personnel are fact-checking Trump’s lickspittles.
TPM link
How is that reopening schools thing going?
Link
Former Intel Officials Thought Mueller Was Investigating Trump’s Personal and Financial Ties to Russia. He Wasn’t.
A New York Times report reveals that the Justice Department limited the scope of its investigation and neglected to inform the FBI.
From Wonkette: “Trump Retweets Covidiot’s Bizarre Claim That ‘Only 6%’ Of COVID-19 Deaths Are Real”
Link
Excerpts from an article written by Amy Davidson Sorkin for The New Yorker:
WaPo:
Michael Flynn case does not have to be immediately dismissed, appeals court rules
By Ann E. Marimow
August 31, 2020 at 9:13 a.m. PDT
Here’s a link to the August 31 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
JFC.
Nesrine Malik in the Guardian – “The right’s culture war is no longer a sideshow to our politics – it is our politics”:
“NEW: The House Oversight Committee is preparing to subpoena Postmaster General DeJoy, saying he failed to provide documents to the panel….”
Memo atl.
Wow:
Military Times link atl. Officers particularly have negative views of Trump. The sample was drawn from readers of their publications, but that was the case in 2016 as well, and they used the same methodology. Also, “About 40 percent of troops surveyed identified as Republican or Libertarian, 16 percent Democrats, and 44 percent independent or another party.”
From the article:
SC @372, I think that Trump’s decision to abandon our Kurdish allies also played a big part in the officer class of the military abandoning Trump.
In other news, this campaign tidbit raises red flags for me: A new Republican super PAC, called “Preserve America,” is poised to launch a $30 million ad blitz in the hopes of boosting Trump’s candidacy. The project will reportedly be overseen by Chris LaCivita, who helped orchestrate the wildly deceptive Swift Boat smear campaign against John Kerry in 2004.
As a followup comment to SC’s 372:
Link
CNN – “Twitter labels Scalise tweet of Biden interview about police funding ‘manipulated media’ before he took it down”:
JFC. Followup to comment 366.
Trump promotes message questioning coronavirus death toll
Trump’s campaign to deceive the public about a deadly ongoing pandemic is qualitatively different than the usual presidential nonsense.
Trump faces an awkward health care deadline of his own making
Trump recently suggested we’d see his new health care plan “prior to the end of the month.” That’s today. So, where is it?
From Saturday: “Women are marching from Victory square towards October square in Minsk.”
From yesterday: “Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Minsk and dozens of other cities and towns all over Belarus for the fourth Sunday in a row. Just look at the self organisation, how people give way to the ambulance!”
From today: “The head of Belarus Catholic Church Tadeush Kondrusevich has been denied entry to Belarus despite the fact he is a Belarus citizen. This is a violation of the Belarusian Constitution and one of the most basic human rights – the right to live in your own country.”
SC @375, thanks for posting that. The response from Barkan was memorable:
In other news, here are some more details concerning questionable medical advice Trump is embracing:
WTF?
Herman Cain’s Twitter Claims COVID Is ‘Not As Deadly’ As ‘Mainstream Media’ Portrayed
Herman Cain is dead. He died of COVID-19 in July.
The tweet was later deleted.
The account is also being used to spread disinformation about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Biden is speaking now. Here’s some livetweeting.
He’s describing the COVID catastrophe, Trump’s attempts to destroy the ACA and Social Security, Putin’s bounties, asking: “Do you really feel safer under Donald Trump?”
Putin’s bounties and Trump’s silence: “It’s not only dangerous. It’s humiliating and embarrassing for the world to see. It weakens us.”
This is another good speech.
Lynna @ #380, aside from everything else that’s gross about their use of that account, it’s enormously disrespectful to him.
Trump’s campaign has been taking cash from neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders
Biden: “Donald Trump has been a toxic presence in our nation for four years.”
Cartoon: Here to help! (White Supremacist militia-type white guy talks to the police.)
Link
BBC – “Svetlana Tikhanovskaya: Belarus opposition leader to address UN Security Council”:
The DOJ’s COVID-19 Nursing Home Inquiry Is Nakedly Corrupt
“So… the net result of SCOTUS precedent and DC Circuit’s opinion in McGahn is: the House can’t take a subpoena to court but can immediately proceed to inherent contempt power, which includes all ‘such auxiliary powers as are necessary and appropriate to that end’.
Let’s go!”
Adam Goldman:
NPR – “Voice of America Journalists: New CEO Endangers Reporters, Harms U.S. Aims”:
“Quite the glut of Trump-themed books coming out in September. Partial list of authors:
9/01: Michael Schmidt, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff
9/08: Michael Cohen, Peter Strzok
9/15: Bob Woodward
9/22: Devlin Barrett
9/29: Andrew Weissmann”
More of the quote @ #384: “Joe Biden: ‘Donald Trump has been a toxic presence in our nation for four years. Poisoning how we talk to one another. Poisoning how we treat one another. Poisoning the values this nation has always held dear. Poisoning our very democracy’.”
Endorse.
Voice of America journalists condemn Trump-backed boss over remarks:
Empty US college campuses are making it harder for students to vote:
Another one:
From Josh Marshall:
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1300510824180723712
Follow-up to comment 397.
Joe Biden:
Henny Beaumont in the Grauniad On schools reopening in a pandemic (cartoon).
French economist Piketty is refusing to let his latest book be censored for China:
An example of the violent doofuses that are ready to commit violence in Trump’s name … luckily, this one was caught by the FBI:
Link
Clint Watts has been warning about these guys for the past three years.
https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom
From a Washington Post article that quotes Clint Watts:
Russian opposition blogger Zhukov beaten outside home in Moscow:
PZ’s post with video of John Oliver’s show last night.
Leonard Cohen Estate threatening legal action after Trump Campaign uses Hallelujah”
My poor significant other practically choked on her breakfast at this headline in this morning’s paper. Gods, how clueless can people be…
Follow-up to quotetheunquote@404 from Mother Jones, Do Republicans Know “Hallelujah” Is About Sex?:
This kind-of reminds of the time when some thug candidate for president — a quick search indicates it was Ronaddled Raygun — used Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” (without permission, of course). This AVclub article, Trump fans now booing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” from 2016, indicates teh thugs have been appropriating Mr Spingsteen’s song since it first came out.
Guardian world liveblog:
AP – “Liberty announces investigation into Falwell’s tenure”:
It’s somewhat disturbing that this is being covered as a religion story rather than a political story, given his political power, his early and influential endorsement of Trump, the involvement of Michael Cohen, etc.
re SC @407: Falwell and Liberty “University” should be investigated as a criminal organization that has used its capital and influence to procure real estate and assets under its “tax-free” banner. Lynchburg Virginia has suffered a reduction of its tax base because the acquired properties have been protected under the banner of a “religious organization” for each property purchased by Liberty “University”. Citizens of the city have suffered because of this.
A group of Wisconsin residents have filed a a class action lawsuit against the city and county of Kenosha, claiming First Amendment violations. From the introduction:
A footnote questions whether the curfew order was ever even enacted. After diligent effforts to locate it, “The only reference to be found are three press releases by the Kenosha County Sheriff.”
Trump can’t even do the business/economic stuff associated with the presidency. Likewise for the trumpian lickspittle, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Mnuchin makes clear that Trump didn’t ‘take care of’ economic crisis
On the economy, Trump said his executive actions would “take care of, pretty much, this entire situation.” Mnunchin is nevertheless seeking new spending.
Mark Meadows is a slightly less orange version of Trump. He is definitely adding to the cluster-fuck aspect of economic aid.
Pitiful, sick orange man in the White House claims … again … that he won the popular vote in 2016:
Link
Follow-up to comment 366.
Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa) is reinforcing bonters conspiracy theories about the COVID death toll.
Link
Same conspiracy theory that Trump retweeted.
Relying on falsehoods, Trump turns Kenosha into a campaign prop
Instead of taking steps to ease tensions in Kenosha, Trump seemed eager to instead play make-believe.
See also: https://apnews.com/e5c0dd83a2c172c0aed75b0a91517a55
Well, that’s just peachy. “DHS Kept Intel About Russian Scheme To Smear Biden’s Health Under Wraps.”
TPM link
Follow-up to comment 414.
Comments posted by readers of the article:
Melania Trump Used Several Private Email Servers
Link
Markey won in the Massachusetts Democratic primary race for Senator. He defeated Representative Joe Kennedy.
Link
JFC, another delay.
Some Right Wingers Predict The Next Civil War Has Finally Arrived
Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent, Germany says
Navalny remains in an induced coma in a Berlin hospital.
Andrzej Krauze in the Grauniad On the return to classrooms during a pandemic (cartoon).
Also in the Grauniad, Ben Jennings On social distancing in reopened schools (cartoon).
Excerpts from coverage of an interview with Jill Biden:
Debate moderators have been announced:
US refuses to join international effort to develop Covid-19 vaccine:
Related, In change of tack, EU leaves door open to COVID vaccines purchase through WHO:
The Horror of Trump’s Support for Kyle Rittenhouse
Trump has spent years telling his followers they are the only true Americans. Now, he’s implying their use of force is legitimate too. —Dahlia Lithwick
Follow-up to @354, Farage, Ferrari and a Bafta Rising Bile award: Welcome to Fox News UK! Most of this opinion column is highly NKofE-specific — a fair amount has whooshed over my head — only a few snippets of the Grauniad’s suggested snarky launch schedule:
From Dana Milbank, more details related to Trump’s trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin:
Washington Post link
Also in teh NKofE, Cummings recruit sacked after suggesting police use on BLM protesters:
As a reminder, most police in the “U”K do not carry guns and have no access to guns. Guns are available mostly only to specialist “armed response units”, and (from memory) typically carried in a locked storage inside the vehicle.
blf @426, Ha! That last bit, showing Nigel Farage desperate for someone to call him, is funny.
In other news, here are some bits and pieces of campaign news:
Joe Biden’s political operation announced that it raised over $364 million in August, which is a record-breaking monthly haul. The figure includes financial support for Biden for President, the DNC, and their joint fundraising committees.
A new national USA Today/Suffolk University poll found Joe Biden leading Donald Trump, 50% to 43%. In June, the same poll showed the Delaware Democrat ahead by 12 points. There are quite a few polls showing the race tightening.
In Virginia, two of Kanye West’s 13 electors have filed a new lawsuit, claiming they were tricked into signing an “Elector Oath” backing Kanye West’s candidacy.
Satire/humor from Andy Borowitz: “Trump Says He Deserves No Blame for State of America Because He Has Not Actually Worked for Past Four Years”
New Yorker link
The piece is accompanied by a photo of Trump golfing.
Trump presses Barr (again) to target his enemies before election
More details:
Follow-up to comment 427.
Biden’s trip to Kenosha will be different.
Link
Details from Biden’s recent speech:
From Mark Sumner: “Rushing the release of a vaccine could be the worst part of Trump’s COVID-19 disaster.”
Link
Elizabeth Farah Says It’s a Sin to Vote for Biden / Harris:
Yeah! Socialism, marxism, fascism, and eating babies all in one go. What’s not to like? (Cheese is not mentioned, points out the mildly deranged penguin. Nor is the deadly Dihydrogen Monoxide.)
blf @434, what news does Elizabeth Farah want us to watch?
In related news, here is a good summary from The New York Times:
Follow-up to Lynna@433 from The Onion, FDA Promises To Fast-Track Cure For Side Effects Of Fast-Tracked Covid Vaccine (quoted in full):
Eighty-one Nobel winners back ‘pro-science’ Biden for president:
Bits and pieces of news:
Link
Not good news: FEMA narrows the “emergency protective measures” for which it will pay.
NPR link.
Facebook removes Louisiana Republican’s scary, racist threat against Black demonstrators
Link
Walter Einenkel called this “performative machismo bullshit.”
Engineers say privately funded border fence is on the verge of collapse
Rachel Maddow had a good monologue on what appears to be the new Covid “policy” from Hair Furor, namely herd immunity which is obtainable my 2.13 million deaths from Covid. I’ll post ia video in the morning if posted by MSNBC.
@42
Don’t worry, according to the Right such a number of deaths is less. “tragedy” and more of a “statistic.”
It’s also more of a reason to call them out as hypocrites when they complain about Stalin’s supposed crimes.
Belarus journalists face charges for covering protests against PM Lukashenko:
This is one of those Al Jazeera articles written by Bloomberg (albeit it appears to be circulated by Reuters), so the analysis is a bit suspect (i.e., it only focuses on (some) financial matters), US debt set to exceed size of its economy — first time since WWII:
Trump says North Carolinians should vote twice — despite it being illegal:
I don’t know how mail-in voting works in N.Carolina, but polling stations would know who was sent a mail-in ballet, possibly by the simple expedient of not being on the list of registered voters for that station. So such a person attempting to vote would be detected and at most one vote counted.
From memory, in some places, it is possible for an intended-to mail-in voter to instead vote in-person (e.g., change of plans or whatever). As I very vaguely recall, such a voter must present their mail-in ballet to the polling station (to either be destroyed or used, as I very vaguely recall); I have no recollection of how an in-person voter who “lost”, didn’t receive, or damaged their mail-in ballet are(? were?) handled.
I also don’t know the specifics of the N.Carolina law (or, really, any state’s voting laws, especially w.r.t. in-person or non-foreign mail-in voting), but can assert with reasonable confidence voting twice is illegal. (As per my vague recollections above, there are some exceptions, but at most one of the ballets is counted.)
Trump signs memo to defund cities but experts raise legality doubts:
Excepting Bristol, England, where the police themselves opted to not intervene when the slave trader statue was pulled down and dumped in the floating harbour, I cannot think of anywhere where “damage” was . Not even in Portland’s police-free zone. Which is not to say it didn’t happen, only that there was no “Get Out of Gaol Free” card or whatever (not even in Bristol, where the police did, many days later, arrest a few people, after making a video appeal for information / identification). And of course, e.g. in Portland, BLM was discouraging damage / fires / rioting / looting, pointing out it would play into the tiny hands of hair furor and his dalekocrazy.
I smell the stink of Stephen Miller.
Interfering with at least some of those grants could be literally defunding the
policegoons — but not what the de-funders want, which is to switch the excess(ive) goon funding into community services (e.g., homelessness, mental health, child care, etc., etc.).Whilst the article is somewhat specific to the “U”K, I imagine this broadly applies everywhere, The Shewee revolution: how 2020 has changed urination:
‘A race against time’: the new law putting Somalia’s children at risk of marriage:
I dislike and try to avoid commentary — such as typesetting in — traditional sayings and similar (especially when not from my own culture), but that one (as roughly translated) Shall Not Pass!
(As an aside, Generalissimo Google Translate conjures up “There is a girl or a man in your hole or a man’s belt”, correctly(?) identifying the original as Somali. The mildly deranged penguin suggests “Cheeses are to be hunted and ate”, albeit what in which language she is translating is unclear; e.g., that is also her translation of “Exit”.)
Link to Maddow and herd immunity,
Only the best.
Migrants rescued by Banksy-funded boat to be taken to Palermo:
The Louise Michel itself is currently docked in Palma (Balearic Islands (Spain)), presumably for cleaning, resupply, etc.
Closing the gap: Brazil announces equal pay for men, women footballers:
The States woman’s team famously had their lawsuit for equal pay dismissed and appeal denied, despite having won both the World Cup and the Olympics (four times, each) — neither of which the higher-paid men’s team has yet to win at all (best-ever being 2nd in the 1904 Olympics and 3rd in the 1930 World Cup).
re blf @446:
Barr is wrong as attested by the fact that voter fraud is not even a rounding error among total votes. However, with The Orange Toddler-Tyrant’s encouragement to commit an illegal act, you can bet that more than a few right-wing idiots will give it an attempt.
? ? Jeremy Hunt has clearly never worked in an office in his life (I missed it, but presume, based on the title, NKofE MP Hunt said something like (the actual quote is in the excerpt below)):
LBC is a NKofE-wide commercial
talk-backyell-at radio station. My memory of LBC when I lived in London was as something to tune away from, either by using the tuner or smashing the radio. (I tended to listen to what was then known as GLR.)One reader observed, “The immediate reasons they want us back ‘in office’ are […] to save the property portfolios of commercial landlords, who are some of the party’s biggest donors.”
Some other readers’s comments:
● “Home working will reduce the correlation between pay and height.”
● “Landlords (those lovely, cuddly individuals that refuse to lower rents whilst their tenants struggled) are the living embodiment of work-shy bastards. They do as little as possible whilst pursuing their tenants for as much as possible. Politicians come a very close second, [except for] Johnson who has morphed into the laziest PM in history.”
There’s an example of this in the village where I live. One of the best restaurants in the village — and a favourite of mine run by a lovely young couple I know — was forced to close in early-July (only a month after reopening after being closed by the pandemic lockdown). The problem? Something is wrong — dangerously wrong — with the building, and the council has been trying to get the owner / landlord to fix it for over a year. To no avail (to-date). Hence, the council was forced to order the building closed and all tenets had to leave; both the restaurant, and those who lived in the apartments above. The building is now vacant and fenced-off with warning signs. I presume the landlord is not being paid rent and is being taken to court. (I did see some trucks at the site the other day, I dunno if they were inspectors or if repairs are starting or what…)
● “The Tory government doesn’t want us to work from home because that would mean things changing. And they don’t like change. But look at the benefits to more people WFH. Better for the environment. Cash strapped councils can stop paying for buildings and utilities. More buildings are freed up in towns and cities which could be converted to cheaper housing and help end homelessness. The tip of the iceberg! I know it all sounds a bit utopian but isn’t a genuine opportunity to re-design the way we live?”
In reply: “It also involves some creative thinking from government. That’s not likely to happen”.
● “The lack of commute is very helpful for families. This seems to have passed the government by.”
The funniest WFH-ish experience I had was many yonks ago in Ireland. I was on vacation, but had promised to call in on the weekly project call (which wasn’t any big deal, being usually well-run, productive, and short). The spot I choose to make the call was in the middle of a grassy field near the Grand House I was staying in. As the call progressed, a flock of sheep surrounded me and started eating the grass. At one point I can remember saying something like “Yes, that’s not correct behaviour. Best thing to do is send me an e-mail. I can’t do anything right now because I’m on vacation, in the middle of a field, and about to eaten by some aggressive-looking sheep…”.
johnson catman@453, “with The Orange Toddler-Tyrant’s encouragement to commit an illegal act, you can bet that more than a few right-wing idiots will give it an attempt.”
Yes, I also presume that. I expect most cases to be caught, and to be caught in such a way the excess votes (at least) aren’t counted (or more to the point, do not effect the result). Whilst I hope most such illegal multi-voters are prosecuted, and when guilty, convicted, there’s enough dalek-friendly state / local “governments” I also expect bribes and other shenanigans.
The far bigger problem is the vote & voter suppression efforts: Dubious purging of voter rolls, inconveniently-positioned (or moved at the last moment (including fake announcements of relocated)) voting stations, unnecessary or excessive ID requirements, all sorts of difficulties in registering, confusion about (e.g.) student registrations (especially, perhaps, if the University is not in the student’s home state but is online study from home due to the pandemic), plus, of course, the USPS shenanigans and voter intimidation (e.g., fake patrols at voting stations). Essentially all of which are being done by teh thugs, who are also (as in this example of hair furor’s lying) trying to cause people to doubt the integrity of the entire voting process.
Eeek! My keyboard is acting up, an all of a sudden, some keys are not registering. I do not need this…
Cases like these are the real election fraud.
Republicans Sue Montana Governor to Stop Universal Mail-In Voting
September 2, 2020
Texas High Court Blocks County From Mailing Ballot Applications
September 2, 2020
And dozens more like these all over the country.
tomh @457, yes, you are absolutely correct.
And Harris County has 2.37 million voters, so the Republican effort to stop (or reduce) mail-in voting will have a truly deleterious effect. Harris County usually votes for Democratic candidates.
me@456, The mildly deranged penguin found what she thought was a lump of cheese in one of the vents, and promptly ate it (the alleged lump of cheese, not the vent, computer, or me). That seemed to fix the suddenly-mysteriously malcheesing keycheese, albeit she (the mildly deranged cheese) is now looking a bit
walrusmouldy. The mouse is sniggering (the buttoned up one lasered to the computer, not the angry one with the sonic screwdriver in the Tardis in the cabinet of curiosities). And I’m almost out of rum…NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden was illegal, court rules seven years on:
Re 441 “private border wall”
I saw some claims on Samantha Bee’s show that this private wall section was never meant to connect with the federal wall project, which will run further inland. This is wild if true. (Presuming that the federal wall is indeed meant to be continuous in that part of the Rio Grande valley.)
Apparently, you can’t build on the Rio Grande floodplain, which is why that area will be left “outside” the federal wall and effectively ceded to Mexico. Surely it will be impractical for US civilians to live or visit near the river, or border guards to patrol there.
But the private scam wall section was built right next to the river, presumably because it looks better that way in reporting. Aside from being overpriced, even if it doesn’t collapse, it will be a virtually useless giant monument to American racism and gullibility.
I first heard of this obvious scam project years ago, but never imagined they’d actually get around to building anything – or that they’d raise as much as $25 million. Apparently, they had Trump’s explicit approval at some point, but there was little coordination with the federal government. Who was going to guard and maintain the private wall in future? Who’s even going to own the land it stands on? Did Kolfage et al plan run this project for the rest of their lives, or run away with the money at some point? Will they be held liable for the cleanup?
In text quoted by johnson catman in comment 453: “When told that voting twice is illegal, he [William Barr] said, I don’t know what the law in the particular state says.”
Say what now? Barr is a lawyer. Does he not know that voting twice is illegal in every state? It is illegal everywhere. The man gets himself in trouble when he tries to back up Hair Furor’s ridiculous statements.
Here in France, a 100 billion Euro (€) pandemic recovery plan was announced today, France’s ‘big green recovery plan’ not big enough for campaigners:
Lynna@462, Exactly, that was the point I was trying to make in @446, “I […] can assert with reasonable confidence voting twice is illegal.”
, Belarus president claims Alexei Navalny poisoning was faked (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
Hair furor will perhaps soon be getting his instructions. As he already is scared of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and loves dictators like Lukashenko, he have no problem at all in pushing this absurdity.
Possibly not shenanigans, albeit the sort of thing hair furor will take credit for while also blaming President Obama, US jobless claims drop sharply as government changes counting method:
blf @464, right. We got that right. Why can’t Barr get it right?
A follow-up: Pressed on foreign election interference, Barr gets everything wrong
If Bill Barr is trying to position himself as a shameless partisan with no credibility on matters of national importance, he’s succeeding beautifully.
Barr lied. Barr blatantly lied.
Yep. That’s exactly what they are doing. And Barr, being the lickspittle that he is, is aiding and abetting the spread of disinformation.
From text quoted by blf @466, “It was only the second time since the pandemic hit the US economy that claims had dipped below 1m.” Yeah. I wouldn’t focus on unemployment numbers “dropping sharply.” We’re still in a huge hole as far as the economy goes. Unemployment is still high.
In other news, here are some polling updates: the latest national Quinnipiac survey found Joe Biden leading Donald Trump, 52% to 42%, among likely voters. CNN released its latest national survey, which showed Biden leading Trump, 51% to 43%, among registered voters. The latest Fox News poll shows Biden leading Trump, 49% to 40% in Arizona. Arizona used to be a “red” state. Also in Arizona, Mark Kelly (D) has a huge lead over Martha McSally (R), 56% to 39%.
As a counter-point to the military-reminiscent outfit(s) worn by hair furor’s family at teh thugs’s recent covidkookathon, Kamala Harris: what her sneakers mean:
What White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said:
Bullshit.
What Trump actually said:
Commentary:
Link
My state, which is not known for effective and progressive government, has an online system where voters can check that their mail-in ballot has been received.
blf @469, regarding Kamala Harris and her sneakers: all the better for dancing, which she also does often.
In other news: To win and take office, how big a margin does Joe Biden need?
Joe Biden is likely to win the 2020 popular vote. But by what margin will he need to win in order to actually become president?
Lebanon: Over 4 tonnes of ammonium nitrate found near Beirut port:
As Election Day nears, Biden picks up even more Republican backers
In my opinion, Snyder should also refuse to support Republicans running for the Senate, for state legislators, for local school boards, etc. Republicans have infused trumpism into every level of government … and it is all bad.
‘Grave concern’: Navalny case alarms chemical weapons agency:
Judges Push DOJ On Why They Shouldn’t Tackle Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Census Policy Now
Follow-up to comment 475.
A reader of the article commented:
I agree.
Follow-up to blf’s comment 447.
Dem Mayors Slam Trump’s Defunding Gambit: Our Cities Are Not Your ‘Political Pawns’
Excerpts from comments posted by readers of the article:
McConnell concedes ‘need to reach agreement’ on COVID-19 relief, but his actions contradict that
Here’s a link to the September 3 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
From their summary:
‘Have a plan’—former Sheriff David Clarke advises audience on how to ‘legally’ kill protesters
Audio file of Clarke speaking is available at the link. This is a guy who appeared onstage at the Republican Convention in 2016.
“BREAKING: #PennState’s director of athletic medicine, Wayne Sebastianelli, says that cardiac MRI scans revealed that roughly 30-35 percent of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared to have myocarditis.”
Heartbreaking: video of an eviction notice being served in Houston.
https://twitter.com/KyungLahCNN/status/1301345195544502274
See also: Videos begin to hit the airwaves showing families being evicted from their homes
See also: YouTube link to video of a Houston mother of 4 sleeping in a car after being evicted during a pandemic. She applied for state assistance and was denied.
Biden is speaking in Kenosha right now.
This is disgusting. Trump Has a Plan to Make Poultry Workers’ Lives More Miserable
While adding around a quarter-billion dollars to the industry’s bottom line.
I wish there really were anarchist jurisdictions in the US.
Europe urges U.S. to reverse sanctions against staff of International Criminal Court
“French foreign [minister] calls for the Trump administration to withdraw its sanctions on two ICC officials”
LeDrian statement atl.
Barr’s interview on CNN was a train wreck
From Black Lives Matter to election fraud, Barr didn’t seem interested in even pretending he’s doing anything other than Trump’s bidding.
All the best people insist on remaining ignorant.
From Wonkette:
Link
Ted Cruz claims pregnancy is not life-threatening, and Twitter has an absolute field day
Comments posted in reply to Cruz’s ill-considered tweet:
Guardian world liveblog:
Josh Bernstein Melts Down Over Mail-In Voting:
Seems like the sort of kook hair furor would appoint as an Ambassador (provided, of course, the kook makes a sufficiently large “donation”).
Also sounds like a certain notorious frothing-at-Clinton-and-Biden commentator here at poopyhead’s blog (mostly in other threads)…
This kook’s clear reasoning and convincing evidence suggest that instead of an Ambassadorship, or swivel-eyed-blog-frothing, the kook should be a Supreme Court Justice.
Welp.
Ben Collins:
“SUNY Oneonta is sending all students home and ceasing all in-person classes for the rest of the fall semester after reporting 389 confirmed coronavirus cases”
Super.
I…uh…
This is the full article from #496 – Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic – “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’”:
re blf @492: Josh Bernstein. Wow, I miss Ed Brayton. He would sometimes have a post about this idiot. The man is WAY off the deep end.
The pure logic of this individual is revealed in that he is totally opposed to abortion, but wants people who disagree with him to have been aborted in the past.
Tweet o’ the day.
Miles Taylor re #497: “To the skeptical: these aren’t ‘mainstream media’ lies. This is who the Commander-in-Chief really is—and everyone in his orbit knows it. Character is all that matters in this election.”