Trump 11 520

5/20/20

see FASCISM AUTHORIT 4

see ADMIN on systemic corruption

new tag in his honor: authrn

evil in 10, new derg tag in his dis-honor

bak 820 html flaunt

see covid FAIL 3 on kush let blue state die and alyssa farah demon spawn reverse engr BS

820 kid killer on pfoa veto

capt 1020

some neglect in shitstorm, see stop the steal

an 8 22

In wake of the latest court ruling in favor of the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, a new report is shedding light on Alex Jones' influence and how he has contributed to conspiracy theories going mainstream.

Recalling multiple recent traumatic news events, NPR's Shannon Bond noted Jones' "track record of fabulism" and how he's managed to spin conspiracy theories to refute factual reporting.

"The Boston Marathon bombing in 2013? Staged by the FBI," Bond wrote. The shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011? A government mind control operation. The September 11th terrorist attacks? An inside job."

When Jones founded InfoWars in 1999 after spinning a conspiracy theory on an Austin, Texas [waco siege?] radio station, he became a catalyst for the far-right community. Bond went on to explain how Jones crept into the mainstream. "As his audience grew, Jones popularized a vocabulary for pernicious doubt: not just that officials and media are hiding the truth, but that tragic events are being engineered for nefarious purposes," she wrote.

Sara Aniano, a disinformation researcher for the non-governmental organization, Anti-Defamation League, also offered more insight. "He's at least a catalyst of those prevailing narratives that follow almost every newsworthy tragedy, whether it's a mass shooting or otherwise," Aniano said.

But despite the many conspiracies he's spun over the years, the misinformation circulated about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was likely the most appalling.

"A lot of people who share these theories that those were staged by the government for gun control reasons or that the children and parents are crisis actors will reference Sandy Hook as the basis of that conclusion," Aniano said.

So, how did Jones reach a common ground with former President Donald Trump? Bond noted that Jones also contributed to the spread of the PizzaGate conspiracy theory; a theory Trump bought into during an InfoWars interview back in 2015. Melissa Ryan, CEO of disinformation tracking firm CARD Strategies, explained how Jones and Trump inadvertently fueled conspiracy theorists.

The former president "gave those folks who are conspiracy theorists signals that he was their guy and they had a candidate who was a conspiracy theorist for the first time," said Ryan.

"Trump won by being willing to appeal to this base of supporters that other people in the party would have kept at arm's length," she said, "lest they be called out for having extremist views. Conspiracy is a permanent part of our political and cultural discourse now," Ryan said. "I think you can say that Alex Jones was an innovator in that."

an 6 22

A new article featuring Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) initially sought to shed light on the "MAGAWorld" and how its top influencers are rising to power. However, it also uncovered something less favorable about the Republican lawmakers.

The report included a reference to former President Donald Trump's autographed message to Gaetz. Ironically, the former president signed it on top of a report about the child sex trafficking case Gaetz is currently up against.

"In a glass display case, there’s a handwritten note from President Trump, scribbled in Sharpie on an article about Gaetz defending himself against a federal sex-trafficking probe involving the transportation of a 17-year-old across state lines. 'Matt, This is Great,” Trump wrote. 'Keep fighting – You will WIN!'”...

https://www.alternet.org/**2022/05**/trump-administration-meat-industry-covid/

former President Donald Trump's administration colluded with top-level meatpacking industry executives to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in order to drive up prices and downplay the severity of the emergency, according to an exhaustive investigation released on Thursday by the United States House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Representative Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina), the House Majority Whip and chairman of the Subcommittee, said in a statement that "the shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated."

The probe began last year and uncovered a spider web of corruption and flagrant disregard for human life involving American corporate titans and individuals in the highest ranks of the federal government.

Officials at the Department of Agriculture – including Secretary Sonny Purdue and Under Secretary for Food Safety Mindy Brashears – "collaborated" with corporate bigwigs to prioritize profits and production over the safety of employees and the public despite being fully aware of the hazards.

"Infections and deaths among workers for five of the largest meatpacking companies—Tyson Foods, Inc. (Tyson), JBS USA Holdings, Inc. (JBS), Smithfield Foods (Smithfield), Cargill, Inc. (Cargill), and National Beef Packing Company LLC (National Beef)—were significantly higher than previously estimated, with over 59,000 workers for these companies being infected with the coronavirus andat least 269 dying," the report states.

The powerful cadre also "engaged in a concerted effort with Trump Administration political officials to insulate themselves from coronavirus-related oversight," it explains.

In one instance, the chief executive officers of the conglomerates told Purdue on a phone call that their workers “should not be entitled to unemployment benefitsif they are otherwise able to work through the pandemic” and cautioned against “creat[ing] an incentive, much less a path, for food industry workers to choose unemployment overproducing food.”

In that same conversation, they "implicitly acknowledged how dangerous plants were, asking for liability protection against lawsuits if workers were infected on the job."

There was also an aggressive campaign to skirt "pesky" local, state, and federal regulations that would have kept workers and their products safe and healthy.

"Companies lobbied the White House to make clear that—despite concerns by state and local health departments—meatpacking companies should not have to address coronavirus risks if it would impact productivity," the investigation revealed.

Alarmingly, the CEOs managed to successfully lobby Trump to draft and sign an executive order in April of 2020 that "would insulate meatpacking companies from oversight by state and local health departments and provide legal protection against lawsuits for worker illnesses and deaths."

The edict led to Trump "invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure meatpacking plants 'continue operations.'"

Shortly thereafter, records handed over to the Subcommittee show that "meatpacking industry representatives and companies—Smithfield and Tyson in particular—engaged in constant communications with Trump appointees at USDA, the National Economic Council, and the White House, including calls between Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; a joint call with Sullivan, Meadows, and Tyson CEO Noel White;a call between White and Vice President Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short; and a call from Meadows to White asking if White would be willing to meet with President Trump."

Trump subsequently "held a call with officers of the meatpacking companies who had lobbied for it on the morning the order was issued."

After Trump granted their wish, an effort was undertaken between the administration and the industry to "coordinate closely on messaging concerning the order and its effects, apparently hoping to generate positive press coverage" for the ex-commander in chief.

Worker fatalities, meanwhile, were swept under the rug.

In a particularly egregious example, an outbreak at Foster Farms in Livingston,California that infected "at least" 392 workers and killed eight in August of 2020 prompted the company to "intimidate" the Merced County Department of Public Health from shutting down the plant.

"Foster Farms attempts to obfuscate the death count by labeling fatalities as 'resolutions,'" investigators learned. "MCPH officials told the Select Subcommittee that an unidentified person on the call from either Foster Farms or USDA said these cases could be considered 'toe tag resolutions,' referring to the toe tag that is often put on a corpse at the morgue. MCPH said that Brashears asked this individual to 'stop' and said they would 'talk about this separately.'"

Operations at Foster Farms in Livingston were eventually temporarily suspended on August 31st.

Read the full report here.

lin wood?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-georgia-2649520984/

On Monday, the Electoral College met to formalize the results of this year's presidential election — and that included electors in Georgia, where President-elect Joe Biden won the state's 16 electoral votes. President Donald Trump, however, has pushed a disinformation campaign alleging he was the real winner in Georgia. And on Twitter, Trump threatened that the state's two incumbent GOP senators competing with Democrats in runoffs could have a "bad day" on January 5 if the presidential election result isn't overturned.

With Democrat Stacey Abrams presiding, Georgia's 16 electoral votes were cast for Biden on Monday. And it was also on Monday that Trump angrily railed against Gov. Brian Kemp on Twitter. Trump is furious with Kemp as well as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, for acknowledging that Biden won Georgia. Trump tweeted:

[failing kemp]

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trumps-live-tweets-show-he-increasingly-watching-foxs-fringe-right-competitors

an 1220

...The staffer who spoke to Taylor is clearly fed up with all the members of Congress who know Biden won but publicly go along with Trump's bogus claims.

"Never thought my work would include trying to destroy democracy," the person said. "Privately they all say Trump lost, but publicly, they're terrified of him. It's embarrassing."

They added: "No staffer wants their name attached to this shit show."

Taylor said that he replied: "Resign in protest. We'll help you find a job."

cruz offers go to scotus, dobbs po'd a s miller for not?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/texas/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/texas-election-lawsuit/

ken abbott? sos

trump launches 'despicable' last-minute attack on Social Security

Jake Johnson Common Dreams

December 07, 2020

Just weeks away from relinquishing power to incoming President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is quietly launching a last-minute assault on Social Security by rushing ahead with a rule that, if implemented, could deny critical benefits to hun

rant

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-speech-2649419941/

met wakefield in 2015 campaign? 1st UK jabs

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-qanon

pvt praise

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-dictator/

flynn dobbs oann

pissed at barr, pence awol on stop steal

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-presidential-records/

bribery, pardon flymm kids and rudy

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/fascism-expert-donald-trumps-coup-is-not-over-and-his-enablers-arent-done

1120 an

'Blackmail': Trump 'blindsided' officials with list of 7 demands for World Health Organization. 'It was an enormous backfire'

who? ;)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/sidney-powell/

note st'd state GOP legis move to gut power of governor when they lose]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-fascism

raw story

Trump is making several moves ahead of leaving office on Jan. 20, 2021, to destroy President-elect Joe Biden's term in office, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained in part of a video series Sunday.

Ben-Ghiat explained that she started the series of videos because she knew that Trump would try to cause as much destruction as possible before officially leaving office.

She cited a story byNew York Times reporter Michael Shear, making it clear that Trump is using his final days to make Biden's life impossible.

"Watch very carefully what Trump and the GOP are doing right now," she instructed. "These end-stage follies, as I can them, are revealing. They're trying to loot and plunder the Earth. They're trying to rush through oil drilling leases in Alaska. They're trying to make sure their secrets are kept, and they're trying to make the world as unsafe as possible so that Biden will have difficulty restablizing foreign relations."

She said that it's akin to former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, who had a year before he had to be out of office. That year, he worked to damage the incoming democracy, which was Chile's first after Pinochet's junta took over 17 years before. He worked to keep human rights violations secret, made it impossible to purge staff he installed, and stacked the courts.

In his book, Pinochet alleged the democracy was all a conspiracy against him.

It sounds eerily familiar.

See the video from Ben-Ghiat below:

mitt and sasse, also Christie

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/sasse-romney-want-trump-out/

2 MI gop legis leaders called to DC WH

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/michigan-election-results-2648981644/

increasingly clear he and invanka will face charges? re mueller?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-biden/

envoy departing Trump admin brags about misleading the White House: ‘There was never a Syria withdrawal’

Matthew Chapman Raw Story

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/jim-jeffrey/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-iran/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-records/

fear destroy evidence [already scotch tape team from git]

trump says might create online channel, fox --> newsmax and oann (ingr and hannity twit--> parler)

1120 holland

...Meanwhile, Trump has decapitated the senior civilian leadership of the Pentagon and much of the intelligence community and replaced them with Trump loyalists, many of whom are conspiratorial nutjobs. We don't know towards what end, but it is a brazenly authoritarian move that's inconsistent with the idea that he's just trying to keep donors' dollars flowing....

At what point is this treason?' Pompeo’s claim there will be a ‘smooth transition to a 2nd Trump administration’ draws furor

Alex Henderson

November 10, 2020

With President-elect Joe Biden ahead of President Donald Trump by at least 4.2 million in the vote count after flipping Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other states that Trump won in 2016, Democrats as well as some conservatives are calling for Trump to concede — which...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-pardon-himself

nixon OLC opined can't pardon self

kick and scream, long way from over post PA call

lindsey pledge 500K$

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-debt/

Early Friday evening, professor of law and political science at UC Irvine Rick Hasen tweeted out that "If you give money to Trump's recount/postelection litigation efforts, half of that money will go towards retiring his campaign debt instead, per the fine print." The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot of the purported fine print on one of the Trump campaign's fundraising emails, that said "50% of each contribution, up to a maximum of $2,800 ($5,000), to be designated toward DJTFP's 2020 general election debt retirement until such debt is retired." The emails have been sweatily sent out from the sinking garbage can fire called his campaign since Election Day.

The Wall Street Journal reports that this is indeed true. In fact, the con man-to-the-end and soon-to-be former disgraced and impeached president of the United States' "official election defense fund" might actually be more about retiring his money-laundering campaign's debt than anything else.

According to the Journal, while some of the "protect the election" fundraising emails direct marks to pages with fine print like the one Hasen pointed out above, others send MAGA supporters to pages with different fine print: "The fine print on those solicitations says 60% of a contribution helps the campaign retire debt and 40% goes to the Republican National Committee."

In contrast, Biden's similar asks for money for potential legal battles surrounding this election do not have fine print about "debt retirement." Instead, that money is mostly earmarked for the DNC, with $2,800 going to Biden's "recount account" only after $142,000 has been allocated to the DNC. This makes sense, as usually the RNC and DNC play the main role in financing election-related legal claims and battles.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

10 People Who Say Trump Has Cheated Them Out of Money ... ›

Trump says report that he failed to pay $287 million debt tied to ... ›

Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The ... ›

Trump could be more than $1 billion in debt — that's a national ... ›

The $1.1 billion rabbit hole: Here's a staggering list of Trump debts ... ›

trump adviser Pam Bondi falters under pressure from Fox & Friends on ‘fake ballot’ claims

Travis Gettys Raw Story

Pam Bondi wilted under light pressure from a "Fox & Friends" host to substantiate her claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

The former Florida attorney general, who's now an adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, argued that ballots arriving after the Nov. 3 election should be rejected as "fake," despite a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that said those ballots should be counted unless there was evidence they were mailed after Election Day.

"We love democracy and we all want every legal vote...

re DN increase white women votes?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/what-trumps-voter-turnout-reveals-about-america

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/a-vote-for-trump-and-the-gop-is-a-vote-to-destroy-unions

cops and trumpistas suppress vote

pull loan sieze assets?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/deutsche/

rally chants, says will fire after election, backpedal //BIRX says disaster coming

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/white-house-lashes-out-after-faucis-honest-interview-about-19-exactly-the-way-you-expect/

1120 mma

EMILY CHANG (HOST): Now, President Trump has retweeted QAnon content on multiple occasions, but continues to claim he hasn't heard of them. What's your take on that?

ANGELO CARUSONE: I think it's the same thing that we saw back in 2016, during -- in the lead-up to the 2016 election, Trump repeatedly retweeted the "white genocide" hashtag and prominent members of the white genocide community, which is essentially a racist organization, it's an idea that's pretty racist, then he would sort of claim he didn't know anything about it.

But constantly they interpreted it as a wink and a nod, and as a result of that, that community grew, and it wasn't that long after he was in office that we saw Charlottesville. It's a similar pattern here, which is that most of the retweets of QAnon and promotion of QAnon from Trump has actually taken place since April, more than half of those two -- over 250 have happened in the last few months.

So, it's obviously an intentional electoral strategy, the same thing that those candidates saw in sort of becoming QAnon adherents in order to break through their primaries and win them, as I think what you're seeing Donald Trump do at a national level.

Militias?!

mma1120

Oath Keepers militia, which is comprised of “former law enforcement officials and military veterans,” is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical anti-government groups in the U.S. today.” This week, Oath Keepers militia leader Steward Rhodes told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that members of his militia will be at polling locations on Election Day to “protect” Trump voters.

Rhodes went on to make many other unhinged statements on the program, including that the militia would follow directives from President Donald Trump totake members of the “deep state” into custody and “do what we have to do,”and that Oath Keepers will “be in range” of Washington D.C., to stop a “Benghazi-style” attack on the White House on election night, among other statements. Rhodes also hyped the possibility of a second civil war where his “battle-hardened” supporters kill the “street soldiers” and “command and control” of “the radical left.”

death cult?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/stanford-study-links-18-trump-rallies-to-over-30-000-cases-and-700-deaths/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-asserts-dictatorial-power-over-top-government-employees/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/noam-chomsky-lays-out-a-variety-of-reasons-why-he-considers-trump-the-worst-criminal-in-human-history-interview/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-accuses-media-of-election-law-violation-for-reporting-on/

President Donald Trump on Monday accused the American media of trying to illegally interfere in the 2020 presidential election by accurately report on the novel coronavirus pandemic.

"We have made tremendous progress with the China Virus, but the Fake News refuses to talk about it this close to the Election," the president wrote. "COVID, COVID, COVID is being used by them, in total coordination, in order to change our great early election numbers. Should be an election law violation!"

The president's accusations against the news media comes as the average number of new COVID-19 infections hit a record high over the weekend.

According to the COVID-19 Tracking Project, there have been an average of 68,954 infections per day over the past seven days.

Despite the fact that infections are hitting record highs, the president has continued to claim that the United States has "rounded the corner" on the pandemic.

We have made tremendous progress with the China Virus, but the Fake News refuses to talk about it this close to the… https://t.co/3gNeu2d4AT

— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)1603712195.0

an 1020

Kushner: 'Complaining' Black people have to 'want to be successful'

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-mulls-over-firing-fbi-director-after-election-as-his-patience-wanes-with-barr-wray/

10/20 tom disp failled state US

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/donald-trump-response/

===

nate silver 538 1:8 chance

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/dont-laugh-off-trumps-fascist-blather/

an 1020 proud b email

And in urging Americans to be "thoughtful, careful, and discerning consumers of information online," Wray was, essentially, telling them to be the opposite of Trump, who has spread absolutely ridiculous conspiracy theories on Twitter recently. When asked to defend himself at an NBC News town hall, he said simply: "l put it out there, people can decide for themselves."

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/former-cia-official-reveals-why-intel-officers-are-terrified-to-brief-trump-on-russia/

U.S. intelligence officers responsible for briefing President Donald Trump on the country's potential threats are reportedly "terrified" to brief him on anything Russian-related due to concerns about his possibly explosive reaction.

During an interview with GQ magazine, former CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos weighed in on Trump's perplexing affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin to like him. At this point, Polymeropoulos insists no one is willing to brief the president on anything involving Russia.

"No one's going to brief anything on Russia to the president," Polymeropoulos told GQ correspondent Julia Ioffe. "They're terrified of doing that. I know that from the briefers. Because he'll explode and the whole thing will get derailed, because he has this weird affinity for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."

When Polymeropoulos was asked why the subject of Putin and Russia are such delicate issues in the White House, insisted Trump "wants Putin to like him."

According to Polymeropoulos, the issue is sensitive for Trump because: "He doesn't want to be embarrassed in front of Putin, that's part of the dilemma. Polymeropoulos went on to recall how Trump interacted with the Queen as he noted that the president insists on being connected to people who have "glamour and cachet."

"Just look at how he behaves with the Queen. That's how he behaves with everyone who has any glamour and cachet," Polymeropoulos continued, adding, "Putin has everything he doesn't have."

The latest news comes as intelligence reports warn of the possibility of Russian election interference as election day fast approaches. In 2016, the former Soviet republic was accused of running disinformation campaigns in an effort to sway the election in Trump's favor. Now, reports suggest Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani may be Russia's new target to help circulate disinformation campaigns on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in a manner similar to the attacks on former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has repeatedly refused to address situations involving Putin.

an 1020

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-mcconnell-face-backlash-from-kentucky-voters-for-their-failure-to-deliver-on-this-promise/

Kentucky paper busts Trump and McConnell's failed pledge to bring back coal: 'Inability to meet promises' made

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/evangelicals-went-all-in-on-trump-and-he-played-them-like-suckers-ex-white-house-advisor/

an 1020 alex h

bunch of grifters’: Ronald Reagan’s son slams modern GOP for ‘degrading’ the values it once espoused

an 1020 incampaign call, Trump attacks Dr. Fauci and ‘these idiots’ who keep talking about COVID-19

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-mocks-biden-for-vowing-to-listen-to-the-scientists

speaking to a largely maskless crowd of supporters on Carson City, Nevada late Sunday, President Donald Trump mocked Democratic nominee Joe Biden for vowing to "listen to the scientists" on the Covid-19 pandemic if elected in November and boasted about his own refusal to heed the advice of experts even as coronavirus cases and deaths continue to surge nationwide.

"If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression," Trump said, neglecting to mention that the U.S. is, in fact, currently in the midst of an unprecedented economic downturn.

"We're like a rocket ship, take a look at the numbers," the president added, remarks that came just days after the Labor Department reported that another 1.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits during the week ending October 10. According to data from the Census Bureau, nearly 80 million U.S. adults are struggling to afford basic necessities such as food and rent.

Watch Trump's comments:

Trump mocks Biden for pledging to listen to scientists. Watch this clip and ask yourself if Trump was trying to kil… https://t.co/d9050P6n5p

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar)1603064199.0

The Biden campaign and allies of the former vice president were quick to respond to Trump's attack, which was in line with the president's repeated dismissals of expert recommendations and basic public health guidelines as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the country.

Ronald Klain, Biden's former chief of staff who led the Obama administration's Ebola response, tweeted, "Trump admits he doesn't listen to scientists. No wonder the U.S. leads the world in Covid deaths."

Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates called Trump's remarks "tellingly out of touch and the polar opposite of reality."

"Trump crashed the strong economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden administration by lying about and attacking the science, and layoffs are rising," Bates said.

The president's anti-science rhetoric, policies, and personnel moves—which have included the installation of political officials at federal public health agencies—have led nonpartisan publications and groups like *Scientific American* and the National Academy of Sciences to publicly criticize Trump, in some cases, call for his ouster in November.

"Policymaking must be informed by the best available evidence without it being distorted, concealed, or otherwise deliberately miscommunicated," the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine said in a joint statement last month. "We find ongoing reports and incidents of the politicization of science, particularly the overriding of evidence and advice from public health officials and derision of government scientists, to be alarming."

an 1020 in middle of covid crisis, when mcconn/trump cut off $; this makes no sense right before election, so mebbe lag effect?

judge strikes down Trump effort to slash food stamps for 700,000 Americans: Victory for 'basic human decency'

an 1020

dr. Johnny Bananas': The White House is pushing a fraudulent medical petition to let COVID-19 run rampant

Daniel Villarreal The New Civil Rights Movement

October 18, 2020

Having basically surrendered to the coronavirus, Republican President Donald Trump has increasingly said that he'd like to stop focusing on COVID-19 prevention measures and instead go for "herd immunity." The White House is even backing a p

an 1020 cdv tim snyder

...

What do we know about the connections between a humane society and authoritarianism?

There is a strong connection. In my new book "Our Malady" I explore this.

For example, on an individual level, when you can't talk, you do not have freedom of speech. When you can't move, you do not have freedom of assembly. When you do not think that you are going to have a future, then freedom is no longer a meaningful concept.

If you cannot afford health care, you're afraid. If you're ashamed to talk about health care, you're less free. If you're aware of that the access to health care is going to be competitive and somebody who's less sick than you might come ahead of you because they have better insurance and better connections or whatever it might be, then you are less free. Pandemic or not, it all creates a situation where there is not an unnecessary reservoir of anxiety and fear. And that totally unnecessary reservoir of anxiety and fear can be directed to other places.

The talent that Donald Trump has is to either generate that anxiety or to take the anxiety and fear that already exists in America and to direct it in the ways that he wants to. Authoritarianism works through taking abuse and trauma and pushing it in other directions.

Donald Trump understands that he cannot win a free and fair election. Trump knows that the pandemic and the economic downturn can give him the sources of energy that he just might be able to use to stay in power some other way than an election. Donald Trump is in "the worse, the better" territory now, because he understands abuse, pain, trauma, fear and related things. Evil understands evil. Trump understands that the more anxiety and fear is out there, the larger the chances he must somehow turn the election in his direction and then pick up the pieces.

Election Day is imminent. How do you respond to those critics who would say that, "You were talking about a Reichstag Fire! It didn't happen! You are an alarmist. Hysterical! None of that happened!" What would you tell such people?

Obviously, we are in a slow-motion Reichstag Fire right now. That is what is happening. Donald Trump is not as skilled as Hitler. He doesn't work as hard as Hitler. He doesn't have the same level of confidence as Hitler, but he's clearly looking for that Reichstag Fire emergency. Trump tried to make Black Lives Matter into that emergency. "Antifascists" and "thugs" and "law and order" and so on is part of that effort. Donald Trump keeps trying to make the Reichstag Fire work.

If Trump is not successful, then that is a credit to the people who are resisting. Donald Trump is not involved in a political campaign; it is emergency politics in the constant search of an emergency. Whether Trump and his allies can line up the emergency politics with the emergency, I do not know. But that is all that Trump and his allies have got on their side — and it all they are going to have through to Election Day.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-toxic-masculinity-became-a-threat-to-public-health/

no lnx

How toxic masculinity became a threat to public health

Nicole Karlis and Salon October 18, 2020

As if the first two waves of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States weren't enough to inspire serious political changes to stop the coronavirus, health experts have sounded the alarm that a third wave is underway. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are rising across the nation, specifically in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Montana, as the seasons change and the election nears.

It's certainly taken a lot of resilience and strength to persevere through this pandemic — particularly given the backdrop of political chaos, uncertainty and immense change in our daily lives. Yet perhaps it is this attitude of "staying strong," and acting stoically — which is rooted in a culture that favors and thrives off toxic masculinity — that has hurt and continues to hurt us the most.

Toxic masculinity, which has become a household phrase over the last few years, is when the archetypal image of masculinity, like displaying strength, becomes harmful to oneself. In 2005, in a study of men in prison, psychiatrist Terry Kupers defined toxic masculinity as "the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence." The phrase is used to describe the issues men face or sometimes, wrongfully, justify them. Certainly, in a patriarchal society, toxic masculinity not only defines people but politics — as its mores trickle into our entertainment, discourse and politics.

Notably, the pandemic response is being led by the most psychologically compromised, toxic men in America. As I wrote last weekend, President Donald Trump's insistence on depicting himself as so strong as to be able to "work through" his COVID-19 illness is deeply harmful, and apt to put Americans' lives at risk who mimic his behavior — either by working while sick or hiding symptoms.

Meanwhile, Trump's re-election campaign has tried to frame Trump as a "warrior" — masculine, strong and void of emotion. The administration's individualistic, pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps rhetoric personifies toxic masculinity, and trickles down to Trump's underlings, too. In June, Vice President Mike Pence wrote an op-ed essay in The Wall Street Journal claiming there was no second wave of COVID-19, despite all the evidence to the contrary. "We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy," Pence wrote then, adding "our greatest strength is the resilience of the American people."

Yet as psychologists will warn, there is a dark side to resilience.

an 1020

trump's latest harebrained election scheme goes up in smoke

Amanda Marcotte Salon

October 14, 2020

Despite days of a seemingly steroid-addled Donald Trump raving about alleged conspiracies against him on Twitter and to any right wing pundit who would listen, it appears Attorney General Bill Barr — usually so indulgent of Trump's various crimes and corrupt

an 1020

trump falls for satirical website's fake news story about Twitter helping Biden

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-and-fascism/

hunter kos

Rattled by poor polling numbers in his reelection bid, the alleged president of the United States is encouraging domestic terrorism. That's where we're at, and everyone from top national security experts to local emergency officials are all crystal clear on that. *The New York Times* reports from a bunch of 'em in a piece that can both contain remarkable factual phrases like "Mr. Trump has descended into rants about perceived enemies" and still somehow soft sell the underlying message:

The nation is preparing for violence on and after Election Day because Donald J. Trump, a fascist, is goading his supporters into that violence with rally claims that any loss on his part will be proof that his enemies cheated.

There is no possible chance that Trump doesn't know what he's doing. His tweeted calls to "LIBERATE" states from governors who imposed widespread pandemic measures resulted in a Michigan militia attempting to do exactly that. Trump is back at it even today, claiming their primary target, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, "wants to be a dictator." He is attaching the legitimacy of the state to calls for mob action—only to repeat those calls when it looks like the first versions are beginning to bear fruit.

The only reason he is not being treated as a radical, dangerous figure who has irreparably violated his own oath of office, necessitating removal, is because Republican Party leadership and lawmakers have themselves embraced and defended those violations. It is self-radicalizing; the farther Trump goes into overtly authoritarian behavior, the more pressure the party feels to defend and normalize their own support for him. The more Trump's circle has succeeded in isolating and excising state and local functionaries who express alarm at his grotesqueries, the more the party has become a homogenized group of anti-democracy, authoritarian-molded radicals themselves.

Trump has clearly been unfit for office in every respect; the impeachment investigation identified his corruption, the pandemic proved his apathetic incompetence, and his continued calls for mob justice against targeted enemies have proven (as have similar quotes repeated through the last five years) that he is not just indifferent to extralegal punishments of his enemies, but publicly fantasizes about them. If Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Attorney General William Barr, Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin, Sec. of State Mike Pompeo, Rep. Mark Meadows, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Ted Cruz, and the entire rest of the party had not all decided to ally with him for their own ideological and policy ends, he would have been removed in bipartisan fashion long ago, reduced to a historical footnote.

They didn't, and now local law enforcement officials around the country are preparing for radicals among what Trump has proudly designated his "Army" intent on disrupting Election Day, sabotaging ballot-counting measures, and committing acts of coordinated terrorism targeting his opponents. It's now expected.

Once again we're in a position where the fate of democracy rests on not just beating anti-democratic forces, but doing so in such a convincing fashion that sabotage can't alter the outcome. But now it comes with the near certainty of violence. This is Mitch McConnell's fault: Remember that. This is Lindsey Graham's fault. Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway, William Barr. Trump's suggestions to "liberate" parts of America from small-d democratic governance would be intolerable if they believed them to be intolerable. Everything Trump does and will do has happened because they allowed it.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Desperate' Trump blasted for calling on supporters to engage in voter intimidation

Jake Johnson Common Dreams

September 30, 2020

Among the stream of authoritarian remarks President Donald Trump let loose during his disastrous performance at Tuesday night's presidential debate, one of the most alarming to voting rights advocates came at the tail-end of the 90-minute event, when the incumbent openly encouraged his supporters to "go into the polls and watch very carefully."

Though poll watching is authorized in states across the U.S., the activity is restricted by specific rules and guidelines aimed at preventing a candidate's backers from showing up at polling places and intimidating voters attempting to cast their ballots. The president's comments Tuesday night, observers warned, went well beyond a call for legally sanctioned and qualified election observers.

"He wasn't talking about poll watching. He was talking about voter intimidation," tweeted Nevada's Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford. "FYI—voter intimidation is illegal in Nevada. Believe me when I say it: You do it, and you will be prosecuted."

Asked by debate moderator Chris Wallace whether he would pledge to "not declare victory until the election has been independently certified," Trump ignored the question and repeated a lie he first spread on social media ahead of Tuesday night's event.

"As you know, today there was a big problem," the president said. "In Philadelphia, they went in to watch. They're called poll watchers, a very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia. Bad things. And I am urging my people—I hope it's going to be a fair election."

But as the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out, "there were several reasons why elections staff did not allow members of the public to arbitrarily enter their offices."

"The Trump campaign has no poll watchers approved to work in Philadelphia at the moment," the Inquirernoted. "There are no actual polling places open in the city right now. And elections officials are following coronavirus safety regulations, such as those limiting the number of people indoors."

Trump says “I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls & watch very carefully because that’s what has to happen.… https://t.co/1w1MxbFAgO

— Kristen Clarke 866-OUR-VOTE (@Kristen Clarke 866-OUR-VOTE)1601435210.0

"Trump is brazenly demanding voter intimidation from his supporters," tweeted Sean Eldridge, founder and president of advocacy group Stand Up America.

In a joint statement following the debate, during which the president also repeated a number of falsehoods about mail-in voting, Eldridge and Indivisible co-executive director Leah Greenberg said that "the confusion and doubt that Donald Trump tried to sow about the election tonight is the behavior of a desperate man and a losing candidate."

"We are building a broad network of people who are working to make sure every vote is counted and preparing to mobilize if Trump attempts to undermine the valid results. The voters will have the last word," said Eldridge and Greenberg. "While we work to resoundingly defeat Donald Trump in this election, preparing to also protect the results of this election isn't just reasonable, it's necessary."

The Inquirerreported that on Tuesday afternoon, as early voting began in Pennsylvania, "a woman approached the supervisor at the entrance of the satellite office at Overbrook Elementary School" claiming that "she was there to monitor 'the integrity of the election'" and asking to be allowed inside the building.

"The woman did not present any sort of certificate of being an official poll watcher, but calmly stated that she had a right to be inside," according to the outlet. "The woman told the Inquirer she was 'hired by the Trump campaign to oversee the integrity of the election.' She said she was paid to monitor the West Philadelphia site. She would not provide her name or any further information, and she left the area shortly afterward."

"I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully," complaining that poll workers in Pennsylv… https://t.co/rnexn9MfKU

— Jessica Huseman (@Jessica Huseman)1601433423.0

In a video posted online last week, Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, called on Trump supporters to "enlist" in the campaign's "election security operation" and falsely claimed that the president's opponents "plan to add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election."

On the second day of early voting in Virginia on September 19, Trump supporters heeded the campaign's repeated calls to show up at polling places en masse, offering a potential preview of the chaos the president is attempting to provoke across the country. As the New York Times reported, a crowd of Trump supporters gathered near a polling location in Fairfax and formed "a line that voters had to walk around outside the site."

"County election officials eventually were forced to open up a larger portion of the Fairfax County Government Center to allow voters to wait inside away from the Trump enthusiasts," the Times noted.

Bryan Graham, the chairman of the Fairfax County Democrats, tweeted at the time that "Republicans are straight-up attempting to intimidate voters at the Government Center. Circling the parking lots with their Trump flags and horns blaring."...

5 yrs jail tax fraud djt ivANKA?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/adam-schiff-accuses-trump-administration-of-obstruction-in-probe-of-dhs-whistleblower/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/author-noam-chomsky-trump-is-a-sociopathic-maniac-capable-of-provoking-a-civil-war-if-he-doesnt-win-the-electoral-college-in-november/

projection yet true

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/theyre-all-hustlers-trump-mocks-his-religious-supporters-behind-their-backs/

9/20

Drudge Report, a staple of conservative power brokers and right wing political leaders for decades, slowly turned anti-Trump starting late last year, stunning GOP stalwarts.

Following The New York Times' bombshell about the president paying just $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, and no taxes for 15 out of 20 years, the Drudge Report on Monday just destroyed Trump.

The Drudge Report is essentially a link aggregator, rewriting headlines and combining links to create a very clear picture of what they want readers to see.

Here's how it looks right now:

mental health

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/violence-studies-expert-the-essence-of-trumps-dangerousness-is-the-effect-he-has-on-his-followers/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-top-10-tricks-heres-a-useful-guide-to-have-on-hand-as-the-presidential-debates-get-underway

owes $ to russia?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/top-mueller-attorney-strongly-suggests-trump-owes-hundreds-of-millions-to-russia/

personal not trump inc taxes:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/heres-why-there-was-no-mention-of-russia-or-michael-cohen-in-nyt-tax-bombshell-trump-biographer

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/which-side-will-our-military-be-on-trump-and-gop-openly-hatch-election-theft-plot/

9/20 aha, fash-y, strong man acting alone: trump loves signing things foto op with fawning followers (he leaches gravitas, assent/ applause from them) maybe experts who look like they know what they're doing, but congress deadlocked/polarysys (in pocket of corps that want to continue extract $ HMO] and does not want to ACT, just make it look like he HAS many eg neglected but typical: gop beat up bad 2018 blue wave on pre-existing conds, to trump pretends to defend AT THE SAME TIME still trying to kill ACA that actually provides

trump mocked for finally releasing ‘health care plan’ — which is really a ‘toothless’ executive order

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 25, 2020

For at least four years President Donald Trump has been promising the American people a health care plan. He famously sat for the “60 Minutes” cameras just days after the…

trump has racked up 3,403 conflicts of interests since taking office

Lisa Newcomb / Common Dreams September 25, 2020

In its continuing research into President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest, a government watchdog group released a new report Thursday that shows the commander-in-chief has engaged in 3,403 conflicts of…

sr recent retire adm gen ltr pro biden?

pentagon officials fear Trump may order troops to put down election unrest: NYT

Brad Reed / Raw StorySeptember 25, 2020

Senior Defense Department officials have been privately discussing resigning if President Donald Trump orders the American military to put down unrest in the wake of the 2020 election. The New York…

declares vote void in advance, camp look at electors, will not pledge peaveful trans

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/get-rid-of-the-ballots-trump-badly-bungles-a-question-on-whether-hell-accept-a-peaceful-transfer-of-power/

==-

trump Praises “Good Genes” of White Audience, Cites Eugenics Theory

trump already ‘laid out the roadmap’ to cheat in the upcoming election: analyst

AlterNet Staff September 23, 2020

John Heilemann, the national affairs analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, explained how President Donald Trump has already laid out his “roadmap” to cheat in plain sight for the upcoming…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/cia-director-suppressed-information-on-russia-to-avoid-angering-trump-intel-officials/

intelligence officials are worried that CIA Director Gina Haspel is intentionally withholding information about Russian activities from the White House to avoid angering President Donald Trump.

Nine current and former intel officials tell *Politico* that intelligence on Russia “is being suppressed” because Trump simply does not want to hear about any nefarious activities being conducted by the Russians.

In fact, several sources said that Haspel has assigned CIA general counsel Courtney Elwood to review every piece of intelligence about Russia before it gets sent over to the White House, which these officials said was “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this extent.”

In fact, things have reportedly gotten so poisonous over at the CIA that one Russia specialist “quit earlier this year after Haspel accused him of lying about intelligence — an accusation that happens fairly often,” Politico’s sources say.

Trump’s anger at hearing intelligence about Russia’s efforts to interfere in American elections is well known, in the last week publicly attacked his own FBI director for saying that Russia is once again working to upend the 2020 election.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/team-trumps-response-is-now-a-worldwide-embarrassment

hunter kos

stats --> They’re laughing at us, Donald. Well, they’re laughing at you. Well, actually nobody’s laughing, there’s 200,000 Americans dead and in the ground right now and, still, the only pandemic “plans” coming out all members of Republican leadership combined ended up abandoned because they left it to Jared Kushner, and Jared Kushner got bored.

Aha: this is an extension of pinko prof brainwashing and campus conserv student silencing b/c of PC cancel culture; gin up hype in front of election (TP kirk bloody revenge coming for your kids?! also reaction to BLM for end of systemic racism.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/loving-your-country-is-not-the-same-as-loving-trump-how-the-right-makes-a-mockery-of-us-patriotism

on September 17, in a speech delivered at the National Archives Museum, President Trump announced he was signing an executive order establishing the 1776 Commission, aimed at promoting what he called a “patriotic” and “pro-America” education. The announcement was a direct attack on the 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative that explores the legacy of slavery in the United States. For Trump, teaching critical race studies is akin to committing child abuse “in the truest sense of those words.”

“Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and souls,” Trump announced. He accused the left of destroying children’s love of their country by teaching the facts of its history — facts, he claimed, wrongly “rewrite” American history as founded on oppression rather than freedom. He’s demanded that schools “teach American exceptionalism” and said that schools are teaching students to “hate their own country.”

This was just the latest show of Trump’s blatant conflation of racism with patriotismand it served as yet another example of how Trump has turned patriotism into a self-serving performance free of any connection to facts. From the start, Trump has attempted to define patriotism not as loving the country, but rather as loving Trump. All we need to do is remember that the same man who dodged military service spent over $2.5 million on a Fourth of July military parade designed to be primarily a celebration of himself.

Before analyzing the damage Trump has done to U.S. patriotism, let me be blunt: “loving” your country is stupid. Patriotism, when it is nothing more than blind adoration of a country, is idiotic at best and fascist at worst. Countries don’t need to be loved; they need to be built, critiqued, developed and improved. They need to be held to the highest ideals and they need to face their shortcomings so that they can strive to be better. The relationship citizens have to their nations may always include some affect, but real support for a nation thrives when citizens emote less and reflect and engage more. So, when patriotism is synonymous with loving your country, it is always, already a bad idea. but setting aside the question of whether it even makes sense to debate who does or doesn’t love their country, there seems little doubt that the time has come to push back on the way that the right has conflated loving the United States with loving Trump....

an 920

even Trump’s own health care advisers know nothing about the ‘mythical’ health care plan he brags about: columnist

Alex Henderson

kasowitz threat sue for atlas vs stanford

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/18/headlines/trump_patriotic_education_plan_to_counter_left_wing_indoctrination_in_schools

zinn makes kids ashamed /child abuse

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/heres-why-trump-and-his-supporters-are-so-threatened-by-critical-race-theory/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-report-shows-how-trump-businesses-took-money-from-the-government-even-while-they-closed-down/

when Donald Trump was running for president in 2016, he insisted that if he won the election, there would be a strict separation between the federal government and his business interests — that he would be “completely isolating” himself from his businesses. But according to Washington Post reporters David A. Fahrenthold and Josh Dawsey, the president’s high-end properties have “charged the U.S. government more than $1.1 million in private transactions since Trump took office” in January 2017.

Documents showing $1.1 million in charges, Fahrenthold and Dawsey report in the Post, were released by the U.S. Secret Service after the Post filed a public-records lawsuit. Those documents included receipts and invoices from Trump’s businesses, and the Post reporters note that “$188,000 in previously unknown charges” increases the Post’s “running total of payments to Trump’s properties related to the presence of Secret Service agents.”

One of those businesses is the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, which “charged the Secret Service more than $21,800 to rent a cottage and other rooms” while it was closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump, according to Fahrenthold and Dawsey, did not visit his Bedminster property while it was “closed and otherwise off limits to guests,” but his daughter, White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump, reportedly did.

Fahrenthold and Dawsey explain, “The family visited the club in April to celebrate Passover, a period that overlaps with several of the largest Secret Service charges. At the time, both the District of Columbia — where Ivanka Trump lives — and New Jersey had imposed ‘stay-at-home’ orders, telling residents to avoid travel except under limited circumstances." the Post reporters, however, note that the Secret Service does not appear to have violated New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s stay-at-home order, which employees of the federal government were exempt from.

Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the government watchdog group Public Citizen, finds it “appalling” that Trump’s businesses are profiting at the expense of taxpayers — especially in light of the toll that the coronavirus pandemic has taken on state budgets.

Gilbert told the Post, “The waste inherent in this is appalling…. They’re nickel-and-diming the American people at a moment when every penny counts.”

The Fahrenthold/Dawsey article published on Thursday isn’t the first time the Post has reported on the Bedminster business making money from taxpayers, but the Post reporters point out that “the new documents show that the rentals lasted much longer than previously known. Instead of lasting only for the summer months, when Trump usually visited, the rentals stretched from May to the end of October, the new documents show.”

According to a former Trump official, the Secret Service chose to rent out rooms for six months at a time because the president did not announce his travel schedule far in advance. That source, presumably interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Post, “We always had space reserved at Bedminster weeks before the president arrived, just in case. If he came in the Oval on, let’s say, on a Wednesday, and said, ‘I want to go this weekend,’ you have to be ready.”

an 920 mid-2021, masks best weapon [even if vax works 70%?]

trump attacks his own CDC director’s claims about coronavirus vaccines

Cody Fenwick

As the administration faced doubts about the integrity of its approval process for a coronavirus vaccine, President Donald Trump went on the attack Wednesday against CDC Director Robert Redfield’s claims…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/herd-developed-trumps-cult-would-rather-get-19-than-admit-they-were-wrong/

an 920

Herd developed’: Trump’s death cult would rather get COVID-19 than admit they were wrong

Amanda Marcotte / SalonSeptember 16, 2020

Trump was doing spectacularly bad science again, this time during a town hall in Philadelphia hosted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday night. The event went about as well for the president as anyone who has been awake during the past four years could have predicted, which raises the important question: Wasn’t his new campaign manager supposed to be *competent*?

When asked about an audio clip captured by journalist Bob Woodward in which Trump talks about the coronavirus pandemic and how much he “wanted to always play it down,” Trump slid right into his don’t-believe-your-lying-ears mode, claiming that he, in fact, “up-played it.” Whatever that means. Then the “very stable genius” currently squatting in the Oval Office rolled out his brilliant plan to lick the coronavirus problem (as transcribed by the invaluable Aaron Rupar of Vox):

TRUMP: It is going away.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Without a vaccine?

TRUMP: Sure. Over a period of time.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And many deaths.

TRUMP: It’s gonna be herd developed.

He also used the phrase “herd mentality.”

Trump’s English comprehension is garbled by decades of being unable to listen to anyone speaking about any topic that doesn’t directly concern his greatness or his personal finances. But he appeared to be talking about the concept of “herd immunity,” :{which is generally understood to:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{ require 70 to 90% of the population:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}: to be immune to a given infectious agent. This “let everyone get it” plan has been a favorite of Trump’s from the beginningof the pandemic. Recently, he has hired a borderline quack named Dr. Scott Atlas — a radiologist with no expertise in virology or epidemiology — to keep telling him it’s a good idea. But even Atlas knows this is a crackpot plan, and has so far refused to admit to reporters that he’s the source of Trump’s incoherent muttering about “herd impunity” or “herd magnanimity” or “herd it on the grapevine.” (To be clear: Kidding! He hasn’t said any of those things. At least not yet.)

right now, somewhere around 2% of Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus — which is still a whopping 6.6 million people, more than any other nation on Earth — and of that group, just over 196,000 have died as of Wednesday afternoon. I leave it to readers — who, unlike Trump, didn’t pay someone to take their SATs for them — to figure out how many more people are likely to die if we go with Trump’s brilliant plan of infecting perhaps 35 times as many people with the virus as have now tested positive.

(Or, skip the algebra and read this article from the Washington Post, which :{estimates that:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ Trump’s “good brain” plan would kill nearly 3 million people:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}:.)

Here I thought that Trump had crammed thousands of his followers, without masks, into an indoor rally in Henderson, Nevada, just because he’s a terminal narcissist who prioritizes his insatiable need for applause over the lives of the very swing-state voters he would need to win the election. But hey, it might also be that he’s using the bodies of his own supporters — who tend, on average, to be older and likelier to die of COVID-19 — for his grand experiment in “herd development.”

Move over, Burning Man: It’s time for a new desert festival! Donald Trump’s Coronafest 2020: The drugs aren’t as good, and you’re way likelier to end up dead.

The wild thing is how many people turned up for the dubious pleasures of risking their lives to hear Dr. Bleach-Injector’s whiny, singsong cadence for more than an hour. *Thousands* of people showed up at the Henderson rally, putting it all on the line to show the world that they’re willing to get sick or even die rather than admit it was a bad idea to elect a racist reality-TV host with the moral compass of a serial killer to the highest office in the land.

In the first year of Trump’s presidency, I wrote a piece warning about the powers of rationalization, and suggesting how far Trump supporters would likely go rather than admit they made a mistake in voting for the man in 2016.

“[T]he answer to the question of when Trump voters will come around is somewhere between ‘a long, long time from now’ and more likely ‘never,'” I wrote in June 2017.

I quote myself only to say that, holy yikes, did I understate the case. No matter how confident I was that Trump supporters would contort themselves into ridiculous pretzels or sign onto outrageous beliefs to justify their 2016 vote, even I had no idea how wacky things could get. Here we are, three years and change later, and this is the lengths Trump voters will go to avoid having to say, “Oops!"[twt/pix/vid?]

or check out this rally in the town of St. George, Utah,which happened a few weeks ago but has now gone viral, due to the I-can’t-believe-this-isn’t-satire aspect of it all. That report doesn’t come from a progressive media outlet of any kind, just the local news station. It features a bunch of angry white people comparing having to wear a face mask to George Floyd being killed by police in Minneapolis, or claiming that “most child molesters love” masks.

No doubt it’s tempting to dismiss these examples as nut-picking, no different than when right-wingers grab the occasional anarchist-flavored vandal at a Black Lives Matter protest and use him to demonize the whole movement. But the difference is these loons don’t actually sound much different than their beloved president.

Trump has also suggested that people only wear masks to spite him. He was clearly coached by his campaign staff to sound vaguely pro-mask during the Tuesday town hall, his true feelings came out when he kept repeating variations of “a lot of people think the masks are not good.” (When Trump says “some people” or “a lot of people” are saying something, he is just stating his own opinion and, like the incorrigible coward he is, refusing to own it.) And like that “child molester” lady, who is obviously a QAnon follower, Trump loves pushing Q-friendly conspiracy theories, even retweeting a QAnon adherent who recently accused former Vice President Joe Biden of being a pedophile.

Despite all this, Trump’s approval rating sits right around 42 to 44%, and is apparently immovable. The phrase “in for a penny, in for a pound” has never been more relevant. Apparently, anything is better than admitting that the liberals were right that voting for Trump was a bad idea — even getting COVID-19 is preferable to that. That’s why the conspiracy theories must get more baroque all the time, because trying to tell a story in which Trump voters are the good guys is harder than trying to explain to the cops why you have a freezer full of human body parts.

Hell, maybe it was a smart idea for the campaign to throw Trump on TV, thereby guaranteeing that liberals would mock him and the fools who vote for him without mercy. As the past four years have demonstrated, it just makes Trump’s supporters more defensive, and more determined than ever to stick it to the libs one more time. Because heaven forbid that Trump’s 2016 voters should demonstrate a conscience by acting like realgood guys would: Sucking it up, admitting they were wrong and making better choices this November.

920 an

Stewart joins veterans in DC to demand attention for a deadly policy killing US troops

Aysha Qamar / Daily Kos

trump thinks he gets to be president of just the Republican states — but they’re a total mess

Bob Cesca / SalonSeptember 15, 2020

Donald Trump appears to be seceding from the Union, which is bizarre given his status as the president of it. Make no mistake: Trump appears to be deliberately marginalizing himself…

Liar-in-chief’ Trump has broken the last vestiges of trust Americans had in their government

Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly September 15, 2020

For the last four years, the busiest people in journalism have been the fact-checkers who compile Trump’s lies, which total well over 20,000. Early in this administration, there were discussions about what…

wa mo

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-and-his-cronies-must-be-brought-to-justice-but-more-will-be-required/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/americas-enemies-perceive-weakness-in-donald-trump-foreign-policy-expert-explains-how-the-president-squandered-us-exceptionalism/

no lnx audio

c de v

bot line chaotic makes him weak/played

president of the United States takes the following oath at his or her inauguration: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Donald Trump has repeatedly betrayed this promise, and should long since have been removed from office for doing so.

The Constitution deems that the president is commander in chief of the military. As revealed in famed journalist Bob Woodward’s new book “Rage”, Donald Trump believes that members of the U.S. military who have been wounded or killed in battle are “suckers” and “losers” for not being as selfish and cowardly as he is. Trump also believes that disabled veterans should not be seen in public because they somehow shame or embarrass the country.

Trump also has no respect for the United States military’s role as defender of the country’s democracy from threats both foreign and domestic. To that end, he attempted to order military commanders to attack Americans who were (and are) exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed civil rights by protesting against his regime in response to the police killing of George Floyd, as well as in support of social justice more generally.

Fortunately, military commanders put the institutional legitimacy of the armed forces ahead of the president’s whims by deflecting his orders. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also apologized for appearing alongside Trump on the streets of Washington.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that he is likely ignore the results of the 2020 election, and may seek to use the military to quell protests or other acts of resistance, perhaps by invoking the Insurrection Act.

Trump has also pardoned accused or convicted war criminals because he idolizes cruelty and lawlessness. Trump and his regime, in fact, views war criminals as useful tools in his authoritarian campaign against American democracy.

Many of the United States’ most senior retired military personnel, members of the intelligence community and diplomats, as well as other elites in the national defense community, have publicly condemned Donald Trump as an extreme threat to the country’s safety, security and democracy.

Overall, Donald Trump has made the United States less safe, less respected, less powerful, less influential, and less respected as a world power. In the Age of Trump and the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. has become a pariah nation, shamed before the world.

Is there any strategic logic to Trump’s decision-making about the United States and its role in the world? How do Trump’s ignorance, selfishness and authoritarian beliefs, combined with his conviction that his own personal interests are identical to the nation’s, imperil our safety and security? Does the Trump regime’s contempt for the truth and empirical reality endanger the long-term future of our nation?

In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Jim Sciutto, CNN’s chief national security correspondent and co-anchor of “CNN Newsroom.” Sciutto previously served as ABC News’ senior foreign correspondent and during his extensive career has reported from more than 50 countries, including Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. His new book is “The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World.”

At the end of this conversation Sciutto warns that the consensus among many of the country’s senior defense and intelligence professionals is that Donald Trump idolizes Vladimir Putin, and is somehow personally bound to him. If this is true, Trump’s fealty to a foreign leader has fatally compromised his ability to make decisions in the best interests of the United States and the American people.

You can also listen to my conversation with Jim Sciutto on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below.

How are you feeling, given all that is happening and has happened with Donald Trump and his administration?

I’m feeling stress for my country. That is not a political sentiment. I love my country. I’ve spent a lot of time outside of it for professional reasons. As a foreign correspondent, you end up loving America more because you live in places where they do not have our freedoms or institutions, many of which we take for granted. When I see those institutions being undermined here in the United States and people losing confidence in their own country, I am very concerned. I am still an optimist, but there is much to be concerned about here in the United States because of Donald Trump and all that has happened.

How does America look from abroad?

There is not a lot of respect right now for the United States. I do not want to overstate that because, frankly, there are many countries in the world with much bigger problems than this country right now.

For example, the COVID outbreak. The U.S. has certainly been one of the worst in terms of responding to it. That is not a political statement. It is based on the data. Europe is doing much better for example than the United States with the pandemic and its deadly consequences and other problems.

The state of the country’s political discourse is also not good. Is the United States able to solve problems in the way it did not too long ago? Pew polling shows that the world’s opinion of the United States has greatly diminished. The world is viewed much worse than it was during another low point, which was during George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

How are career diplomats and other public servants reacting to the Trump regime and its assaults on norms and values? These are government professionals who have served in multiple administrations. How are they making sense of this tumult?

Here is what is different. There have always been disagreements about policy and how best to accomplish those goals. What is different now is that there is an assault on the truth. There is not an agreed-upon set of facts. At first, I thought that maybe having to confront a pandemic would do that. Another example would be Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. There was a bipartisan judgment that Russia interfered, and that the Russians did so to help Trump win.

It came out of committees, as well as the intelligence agencies. Trump attacked those findings and took them personally. That was a consensus not just of a bipartisan committee but the country’s intelligence community as well. Intelligence findings can be attacked more easily because it is still a matter of interpretation.

But in the middle of a pandemic, there are hard facts. People are dying. You can count the number of people dying. You can count and document the positive infection rates.

You can count the number of infections. One can easily disprove Donald Trump’s claims that cases are only rising because there is more testing, because the percentage of people testing positive is also going up. But not in this environment where even the facts are disputed. Conspiracy theories existed well before Donald Trump, but he has super-turbocharged them to the point where they are leaking more and more into mainstream conversation. Democracy cannot operate without an agreed-upon set of facts and the country is miles down that rabbit hole right now.

Does Donald Trump have an ideology? Is his administration guided by some overriding principle that orients its approach to the world?

He has an approach and a view of the world. It is an open question as to whether he has a strategy — and that is a question raised by people who worked for him. For my new book, I spoke only to people who worked for Trump and were appointed by him at the highest levels.

When I asked those officials to describe Trump’s view of the world it was described as transactional: “What can you do for me? I scratch your back. You scratch mine.” Trump has done that equally with adversaries and allies. Trump has no worldview beyond that. There is no understanding of the ancillary benefit of friendships and alliances.

[Former national security adviser] H.R. McMaster told me how much trouble he had convincing Trump that there was more to alliances than just some sort of quid pro quo bottom line.These include shared history, shared values, a shared interest in the rule of law, sharing of intelligence to fight terrorism and other understandings. Trump does not see the world and alliances in that way. As such, Donald Trump will just as easily upend a friendship as he will antagonize a competitor. The United States is on a path of confrontation with China. But the United States also has highly antagonistic relationships now with our closest allies in Europe. With South Korea, the president is demanding they quintuple their contribution to the deployment of U.S. forces there and is threatening to take those forces away in the midst of the worsening standoff with North Korea.

Or even consider Canada, arguably one of our closest allies. Trump has used national security powers to impose economic sanctions on them including tariffs. In essence, Donald Trump has labeled Canada a national security threat.

Donald Trump does not read. He is proudly ignorant. He is a malignant narcissist. How is it even possible to have a coherent foreign policy with such a president?

Trump’s national security advisers knew and realized that he was not reading any of the briefing notes. So early on, McMaster’s team came up with the idea of boiling the briefings down to note cards with just three bullet points, thinking that would get through to Trump....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-faceplants-with-a-scientifically-illiterate-claim-about-climate-change/

no lnx twt

trump faceplants with a scientifically illiterate claim about climate change

Written by Cody Fenwick September 14, 2020

[California Natural Resources Secretary @WadeCrowfoot: "We've had temperatures explode this summer..."

President Trump: "It'll start getting cooler, you just watch."

Crowfoot: "I wish science agreed with you."

Trump: "I don't think science knows, actually."]

President Donald Trump refused to accept the scientific consensus on the existence of climate change at a meeting about the California wildfires, preferring to blame the crisis on poor forest management.

California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot spoke about the issue, addressing the president directly and calling out the need for federal leadership.

“As the governor said, we’ve had temperatures explode this summer. You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley, 130 degrees,” he said.

At this point, Trump smirked and look away from Crowfoot.

“But even in greater LA, 120-plus degrees. And we’re seeing the warming trend make our summers warmer, but also our winters warmer as well,” Crow foot continued. “So I think one area of mutual agreement and priority is vegetation management. But I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests. And actually work together with that science, that science is going to be key. Because if we ignore that science and put our heads in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting California.”

“OK,” Trump said. “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”

“I wish science agreed with you,” said Crowfoot.

“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said, laughing.

It’s was an embarrassing display of ignorance. The science of climate change is extremely well-established, and while uncertainty remains, the trend we’ve been headed in is clear. As the chart from NASA below shows, the increase in temperatures is a decades-long trend scientists have observed since the ’60s.

“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director Gavin Schmidt said in January in a statement naming 2019 as the second-warmest year ever recorded. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”

Trump’s comments were particularly galling because he claimed to know the temperatures will actually get cooler. This is bolder than even many climate denialists, who often say that future temperatures are wildly uncertain. No, Trump’s claim is not only that climate scientists have no idea what they’re talking about, but that he somehow has enough information that contradicts the profession’s broad consensus. It requires a stunning level of arrogance to make this claim.

But it is consistent with what Trump has probably been hearing on Fox News. HostTucker Carlson has repeatedly cast doubt on climate change, including in connection with the California wildfires.In a recent broadcast, he said: “So are we climate change deniers if we point out that the state of California has failed to implement meaningful deforestation measures that might’ve dramatically slowed the spread of these wildfires? Does that make us deniers? Because in 2018, a state oversight agency in California found that years of poor or non-existent forest management policies in the Sierra Nevada Forests, had contributed to the fires.”

Carlson didn’t mention, however, that the very report he was referring to explicitly listed poor management policies alongside climate change as the key causes of the crisis.

best for AA too 920 ew

President Trump told a crowd in Jupiter, Florida Tuesday that he is an environmental president, claiming that "it's true: number one since Teddy Roosevelt. Who would have thought Trump is the great environmentalist?" according to the White House transcript of the speech. He added, "And I am. I am. I believe strongly in it."

omfg

wi scotus, roger coup

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-gop-is-staging-chaos-on-the-way-to-a-coup/

wi scotus, roger coup

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-gop-is-staging-chaos-on-the-way-to-a-coup/

d a wamo

Two news stories story that almost speak for themselves without the need for commentary.

First, the 4-3 conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court has made a bizarre, nonsensical ruling that will throw Wisconsin’s entire election into disarray for no good reason.

Then the Wisconsin Supreme Court stepped in. On Thursday afternoon, by a 4–3 vote divided along partisan lines, the court issued a strange, cryptic order that could throw the election into chaos. The conservative majority directed the Wisconsin Elections Commission to turn over a massive amount of information it did not actually have. These justices then halted the mailing of more absentee ballots while they consider nullifying every ballot that has been printed or mailed and forcing the state to start over. Their stunning eleventh-hour intervention could force election officials into an impossible position: either comply with the court’s order or violate both state and federal law.

Essentially, the Green Party failed to submit proper documents in Wisconsin. They refused to state reasons, or to seek redress in a timely manner. Then they asked the state at the last minute to place the Green Party on the ballot, anyway, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of ballots had already gone out to voters.

A responsible court would have rejected this challenge for two reasons: Hawkins and Walker waited an unreasonably long time to bring it, and it has no plausible legal basis.But instead of dismissing the case, the infamously irresponsible court ordered the commission to reveal who has requested absentee ballots, who has been mailed a ballot already, and when these ballots were mailed. It also demanded to know who requested the ballots to be printed, implying the existence of some conspiracy to rush them out. In the meantime, the conservative majority effectively shut down the state’s election machinery, suspending the printing of more absentee ballots. Its order suggests that four justices are seriously considering a decision in favor of the Green Party.Such a ruling would compel the state to throw out every existing ballot and begin the entire, grueling, monthslong process anew.

There is no plausible rationale for the decision, and no way to implement it in a manner that won’t throw the election into chaos. The Wisconsin Supreme Court was made very well aware of this, and the conservative Koch-purchased majority choose this course of action, anyway. Nor was the cynical Green Party acting alone:

Hawkins suggested in an interview that Trump supporters had helped the Green Party ticket with its legal claim before the state Supreme Court. The party’s petition was filed by attorneys from the Milwaukee-based von Briesen & Roper law firm, which has a history of representing Wisconsin Republicans.

“You get help where you can find it,” Hawkins told The Washington Post when asked whether Republicans had financed the legal action. “They have their reasons and we have ours.”

If the presidential election is at all close, everything may hinge on the outcome in Wisconsin. And if Wisconsin is beset by legal challenges from thousands of voters casting legally received ballots prior to a court order demanding that different ballots be sent, even if those ballots go out later than the legally mandated deadline, you have a recipe for a chaos of litigation that will ultimately only be resolved by Justice Roberts of the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s pardoned felonious close advisor and Russia-Wikileaks conduit Roger Stone just told Alex Jones that Trump should seize total power in a coup should he lose the election:

Roger Stone is making baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and is urging Donald Trump to consider several draconian measures to stay in power, including having federal authorities seize ballots in Nevada, having FBI agents and Republican state officials “physically” block voting under the pretext of preventing voter fraud, using martial law or the Insurrection Act to carry out widespread arrests, and nationalizing state police forces.

We know that Trump listens to Stone as the closest person he still has in his orbit to his beloved Roy Cohn, and cares enough about him to have sprung him out of jail. And he’s recommending this course of action:

Beyond Nevada, Stone recommended that Trump consider several actions to retain his power. Stone recommended that Trump appoint former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) as a special counsel “with the specific task of forming an Election Day operation using the FBI, federal marshals, and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity.”

Stone also urged Trump to consider declaring “martial law” or invoking the Insurrection Act and then using his powers to arrest Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, “the Clintons” and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity.”

Even if Trump doesn’t actively take any of these measures–and there is a great deal of evidence that he might–right-wing groups may well take some of these matters into their own hands.

The context for all of this upheaval is that conservatives know they have lost the argument and the culture. The nation’s greatest problems, from police racism to inequality to climate change to the pandemic itself, simply do not lend themselves to conservative “solutions.” Conservatism itself would have to change to adapt to the moment, and it is unwilling to do so.

Meanwhile, the Right is losing the culture wars, evangelicals are declining as a percentage of the population, and older social conservatives are aging out of the electorate, replaced by young progressives. White supremacists know that whites are declining as a percentage of the population, Black Lives Matter is broadly popular, and the country is also slowly coming to grips with some of the consequences of toxic masculinity. Universal healthcare, taxing the rich and even previously radical solutions like an income floor funded by taxes on Wall Street speculation are increasingly mainstream.

And finally, they know that the consequence of McConnell’s brinksmanship and Trump’s norm destruction is that Democrats are increasingly unafraid to actually wield power and govern in a way that finally maximizes majoritarian power: eliminating the filibuster, adding states to the union, bypassing the Electoral College, changing the composition and size of the courts, enacting broad voter rights and gerrymandering reforms, and much else. If they do, the conservative movement as it currently exists may not be able to hold national power again–not because the Democrats staged a coup, but rather because they simply undercut the apartheid structures that prevented the voice of the majority from being heard and implemented into law.

The conservative response to all this is to create as much chaos as possible, with a view toward seizing power in a coup–thereby short-circuiting the consequences of failing to secure the legitimacy of popular will.

The Republican Party has become the Chaos Party. And it will take all citizen hands on deck to resist them, overwhelm them at the ballot box, and move the country forward in a stable and more progressive direction.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/there-has-to-be-retribution-trump-openly-endorses-extrajudicial-s-of-suspects-by-law-enforcement/

no lnx pix twt vid

discussing the recent police killing of a self-described anti-fascist suspected of fatally shooting a far-right activist in Portland, Oregon, President Donald Trump openly endorsed extrajudicial executions in a Fox News interview Saturday, declaring that “there has to be retribution.”

“I put out, ‘When are you going to go get him?’ And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him,” the president told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, referring to Michael Forest Reinoehl. “This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something—that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”

Trump’s comments came days after an ordained minister who lives in an apartment complex near where Reinoehl was shot and killed by members of a law enforcement task force earlier this month in Lacey, Washington said it was not at all clear that Reinoehl was armed when police gunned him down.

As the Washington Post reported, the witness alleges that “Reinoehl was clutching a cellphone and eating a gummy worm as he walked to his car… That’s when officers opened fire without first announcing themselves or trying to arrest him.” The witness account contradicts the law enforcement narrative that Reinoehl “produced a firearm” when officers attempted to arrest him.

In VICE interview before he was killed by police, Reinoehl said he was acting in self-defense late last month when he fatally shot Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer.

Watch Trump’s remarks:

Lawmakers and other observers immediately raised alarm at Trump’s celebration of the police killing of Reinoehl, which the president explicitly characterized as retaliatory.

“State violence to advance the end of ‘retribution’ is death squad logic,” tweeted Brian Beutler of Crooked Media.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) noted that “extrajudicial killings are something many Republican U.S. senators oppose if they happen outside of the United States.”

“But they won’t say anything about this,” Schatz added. “Every single member of the Senate who talks about the rule of law needs to speak up, or forever hold their peace.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-used-a-surprisingly-effective-trick-to-hide-his-disastrous-foreign-policy/

// to xl dapl announce ignored flood/hurricane?

American west is burning — and Trump doesn’t care

Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams September 11, 2020

Climate action advocates and journalists are calling out President Donald Trump’s silence for nearly three weeks, as historic wildfires have torn across the western United States, devastating communities that were already struggling…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-report-exposes-how-trump-used-19-to-enact-a-dangerous-right-wing-mission

...

Weakening EPA rules on methane emissions.
Relaxing the Volcker Rule, which was enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to prevent banks from acting like hedge funds.
Reducing regulations on trains transporting extremely flammable materials.
Loosening restrictions on predatory payday lending companies.
Revoking Health and Human Services Department nondiscrimination protections for transgender people and people seeking abortions.
Easing rules on dark money disclosure by groups including the National Rifle Association and AARP.
Limiting states’ power to reject fossil fuel projects.
Eviscerating protections for asylum-seekers.

Among the administration’s proposed rollbacks are: revoking protections for unhoused transgender people, redefining critical wildlife habitats, revising the Clean Air Act, weakening pipeline safety rules, and removing barriers on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Sea.

“Instead of using their regulatory and enforcement powers to implement a national pandemic response, Trump officials have sabotaged or obliterated essential health, safety, environmental, anti-discrimination, and financial safeguards for the American public,” said Matt Kent, a regulatory policy associate for Public Citizen, in a statement....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-fears-that-fox-news-doesnt-have-his-back-as-election-day-draws-closer-and-had-a-humongous-blowup-with-rupert-murdoch/

Fox News is full of Trump sycophants, from Sean Hannity to Tucker Carlson to Laura Ingraham to Jeanine Pirro —and the right-wing cable news outlet is stridently pro-Trump more often than not. But for President Donald Trump, any criticism at all from Fox News or Fox Business is way too much. And journalist Gabriel Sherman, in Vanity Fair, addressesTrump’s fears that Fox News will be insufficiently supportive of him as Election Day draws closer.

Two of the people at Fox News who haven’t been shy about criticizing Trump at times are Andrew Napolitano, a libertarian, and Chris Wallace — who, on September 29 in Cleveland, will be hosting the first of three presidential debates.

Sherman explains, “Perhaps anticipating a grilling by Wallace, Trump has been ratcheting up his anger at Fox. Last week, Trump called on Fox to fire national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin after she appeared on air and confirmed parts of Jeffrey Goldberg’s explosive Atlantic story detailing Trump allegedly making disparaging comments about America’s war dead. Trump has also taken to promoting fringe Fox competitor One America News, which has provided glowing coverage of the president and amplified pro-Trump conspiracy theories.”

Trump, according to Sherman’s sources, is even complaining about Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch. An anonymous source described by Sherman as a “Republican close to the White House” told Vanity Fair, “Trump definitely thinks Rupert is not in his corner.” And another source told Vanity Fair that Trump screamed at Murdoch during a phone conservation earlier this summer.

"They had a humongous blowup,” according to that source. “Trump yelled that Fox’s coverage is unfair and the polling is fake. Rupert defended the network’s standards and polling.”

Some of Trump’s sycophants at Fox News, Sherman reports, wish that Wallace weren’t moderating the first Trump/Biden debate. A source described by Sherman as a “pro-Trump Fox personality” told Vanity Fair, “Chris hates Trump. He’s a passionate Democrat” — which is misleading. Although Wallace is a registered Democrat, he leans conservative and has said that he has a long history of voting for Republicans. But Wallace registered as a Democrat in order to vote in primary elections in Washington, D.C., where Democrats dominate the city government.

“The Trump campaign had hoped that the Commission on Presidential Debates would choose Bret Baier or Martha MacCallum — Fox anchors who are seen as less aggressive than Wallace,” Sherman reports. “Sources close to Trump are worried that Trump is unprepared to handle what Wallace could throw at him.”

A source described by Sherman as a “former West Wing official” told Vanity Fair, “Any Republican who thinks Wallace will go easy on Trump is badly mistaken. He’s no joke.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/donald-trump-says-ted-cruz-yes-that-ted-cruz-is-on-his-list-of-potential-second-term-supreme-court-picks

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/fbi-is-sitting-on-classified-intelligence-that-could-destroy-trump-ex-agent-peter-strzok/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-grifter-in-the-oval-office-is-ripping-off-his-donors-and-the-american-people/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/evangelical-explains-how-the-movement-swooned-for-donald-trump-and-betrayed-its-own-ideal-of-masculinity/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-lies-cost-tens-of-thousands-of-american-lives-and-bob-woodward-has-the-proof-on-tape/

schmucks // losers? cohen

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-detests-christians-and-he-deceived-pastors-and-mocked-them-after-they-left-trump-tower-michael-cohens-disloyal/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/former-fbi-agent-on-the-mueller-team-says-trump-was-badly-compromised-in-2016/

peter strzock

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-campaign-s-biden-for-going-to-church-and-his-sons-grave/

omg

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-administration-plans-250-million-ad-buy-telling-voters-not-to-worry-so-much-about-the/

Trump administration has given up on any serious attempts to curb the nation’s ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As U.S. deaths inch towards the 200,000 mark, outside experts are now warning Americans to ignore the “dysfunctional” Centers of Disease Control and Prevention after the agency issued new, Trump-favored guidelines to reduce testing, rather than expand it. There is no federal contract tracing effort. There is no standard, expert-based pandemic policy—each state has been left to its own devices, with federal officials ignoring even the most serious state outbreaks.

Don’t worry, though. It’s not like the Trump-led federal government is entirely asleep at the wheel. The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking bids for a new quarter-*billion* dollar communications contract, reports Politico. No, not to encourage Americans to social distance, wear masks, or get tested—don’t be stupid. The new publicity campaign will instead “defeat despair and inspire hope,” advising businesses how to operate “in the new normal” and instilling “confidence to return to work and restart the economy.”

Yeah, we’re all going to die.

You will note, dear tired reader, that this language sounds very much like Trump’s own anti-pandemic anti-policy. Rather than taking more aggressive steps to curtail the pandemic—as nearly every other nation on the planet has—the new publicity campaign will presume we live in a “new normal.” It will be based, says “a senior HHS official” who for some reason would not go on the record to say these embarrassing things, on “defeating the mental health challenges of the coronavirus,” which sounds explicitly like Trump’s own insistence that it’s depression over social distancing that’s killing people, not the deadly disease marked on the death certificates.

so instead of a new testing program or, say, mailing out masks to every American household, we’re getting an advertising campaign meant to “defeat despair.” Oh, and Politico reports thecontract will be managed by Trump ex-campaign guy Michael Caputo.

Odds that Trump loyalist Michael Caputo is going to sign off on a $250 million ad campaign telling Americans to “defeat despair” through the remarkably effective practice of wearing masks, against Donald Trump’s personal wishes? Zero. Less than zero. Zero minus the square root of Ivanka.

Anyhoo, the idea that the Trump-led federal government is, immediately before the (cough) November elections, going to be combatting the COVID-19 pandemic via an ad campaign telling Americans to maybe just stop being sad about it is … well, let’s be honest. It’s so on-brand it hurts.

It’s the “Be Best” of infectious disease campaigns. Sorry, we still need to limit testing—but here’s some tips on how you can restart the economy, fellow patriots. Nothing inspires “hope” like getting your unmasked face back to work, unless it’s getting legislation passed immunizing your employer from consequences if you die afterword. Now that’s inspiring.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-white-house-asked-va-secretary-to-run-pentagon-if-president-fires-dods-esper/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/nightmare-scenario-senator-warns-trump-is-laying-groundwork-for-election-result-mayhem

bernie:

with the pandemic and a massive increase in mail-in voting, state legislatures must take immediate action to allow for votes to be counted before Election Day, as they come in;
The news media needs to prepare the American people to understand there is no longer a single Election Day and that we may not know the results on November 3;
:{Social media companies must finally get their act together and stop people from using their tools to threaten and harass election officials and spread disinformation; and

We need Congressional hearings with local officials to learn how they plan to handle the Election Day process and the days that follow.

Trump’s Climate Change Record Has Been a Boon for Oil Companies, and a Threat to the Planet

BY: MARIANNE LAVELLE

Pursuing an unrelenting fossil fuel agenda, Trump has scaled back or eliminated over 150 environment measures, expanded Arctic drilling, and denied climate science.

wow

trump steps off the golf course and takes a swing at John McCain

Mark Sumner / Daily Kos September 6, 2020

With the news cycle exploding over reports that Donald Trump called American soldiers who died to stop a German attack on Paris “losers” and “sucker,” it’s obvious that Trump had…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-a-fraud-trade-deficit-soars-to-12-year-high-despite-the-presidents-promises/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-payroll-tax-ploy-ploy-endangers-social-security-and-it-will-have-to-be-paid-back-next-year/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-church-of-white-masculinity/

the week before last, we watched Americans respond to the altar call at the church of white masculinity. During the Republican National Convention, speakers humbly prostrated themselves at the foot of white masculinity, arguing that the rejection of a white male savior would be our ruin. The disciples of white masculinity preached that feminists were coming for the unborn, the LBGTQIA community was coming for our children and racial minorities were coming for the rest of us. Furthermore, the RNC paraded women and speakers of color to state that President Trump was not racist, he was right —and those who refused to convert were deviants seeking the destruction of the nation.

This altar call is not much different from Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” or D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” which both portrayed white men as the saviors of civilization. Today it manifests itself in the sanctification of white men who embrace their privilege with religious zeal. In Rep. Ted Yoho’s flaccid apology for verbally abusing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he cloaked his attack in holiness, stating, “I cannot apologize for my passion, or for loving my God, my family and my country.”

The disciples harken back to a perceived golden age of America, when the racial and gender power structure were correctly set, before the chaos caused by the recognition of the rights of racial minorities, women and the LBGTQIA community. This threat to white masculinity has intensified with the election of the nation’s first Black president, a female speaker of the House, a Latina on the Supreme Court, marriage equality, the MeToo movement, and the possibility of a female president. The alt-right and neo-Nazis embody these fears, arguing that white America is losing to immigrants and racial minorities and questioning the manhood of any white people who criticize them.

A 2016 PRRI/Atlantic survey finds a quarter of whites (24.9%) believe that diversity has come at their expense and that society has become too soft and feminine.Further, 93.1% of whites who agree with both of those statements reported voting for Trump. More than a third of white evangelicals (35.6%) agreed with both statements, followed by less than a quarter of white Catholics (23.7%) and mainline Protestants (23.1%).

when examined along gender lines, the data show white evangelical men (45.1%) are significantly more likely to agree with these statements than their female counterparts (24.5%). Among women, however, white evangelical women are significantly more likely to agree with these statements than white mainline Protestant women (19.8%) and white Catholic women (12.1%).

As Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues in her recent book, “Jesus and John Wayne,” white evangelical culture has focused on the declining sanctity of white manhood. This is why Donald Trump captured 78% of the white evangelical vote in the face of numerous claims of sexual misconduct and racism. And, in the 2017 Alabama Senate race, former judge Roy Moore, who had also been accused of sexual misconduct, received 80% of the white evangelical vote.

As ordained bishop of the church of white masculinity, President Trump has attempted to impose his masculinity by questioning the masculinity of his male opponents and showing disgust for his female adversaries. In the face of a call for social justice, the president has sacrificed free speech at the altar by dispatching federal officers and troops to stop peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park for a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church. He proclaimed the sanctity of his white masculinity by rebuking the suggestions of scientists and downplaying the harm of the COVID-19 virus. He resisted wearing a mask to show the world his strength. In suit his followers have harassed protesters and questioned the masculinity of those who take precautions against the virus.

The actions of Trump and his worshippers, among most other Americans, are considered deplorable. At the church of white masculinity, these behaviors are saintly.

9/20 trump sez POW MIA KIA losers and suckers ~ gen lost dad VN pilot dog tag you are no patriot

voices of vets video/ad powerful, quick so accused of staged by organized ppl w/ agenda?

1st time ever active duty majority vote dem?

5 plans to steal election

no lnx

‘Trump is showing us his playbook’: The president tips his hand on the plan to exploit the ‘red mirage’

Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams September 2, 2020

President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning openly embraced a theory put forth by analysts earlier this week that he would try to misdirect the American people on election night by claiming a “landslide” victory that doesn’t exist—leading grassroots organizers to begin planning for a chaotic post-election period during which the president is liable to claim that the counting of mail-in ballots is evidence of cheating by the Democratic Party.

While getting the details and implications of the story exactly backward, Trump tweeted the phrase “Rigged election?” along with a link to an article at right-wing website The National Pulse, titled “WARNING: Democrat Data Firm Admits ‘Incredible’ Trump Landslide Will Be Flipped By Mail-In Votes Emerging A Week After Election Day.”

The article presented a right-wing narrative regarding what political data firm Hawfish this week called a “red mirage”—election night results which could give the appearance of a Trump victory before mail-in ballots have been tallied.

As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, Josh Mendelsohn, CEO of Hawkfish—founded by former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg—warned that as in-person votes are counted on November 3, the president could claim victory as he appears to be in “a stronger position than he actually is.”

Almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans plan to vote by mail to prevent the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, according to recent surveys, and Trump has been sowing doubt about the validity of mail-in ballots for months as it became apparent their use would skyrocket amid the coronavirus pandemic—despite the fact that the president himself voted by mail as recently as last month.

The National Pulse attempted to turn Hawkfish’s warning on its head, claiming an election night victory by Trump—one that would not include millions of mail-in ballots—could be unfairly “flipped” after all of the votes are counted.

Natalie Winters of The National Pulse compared Hawkfish’s projections with a warning from far-right British politician Nigel Farage about “‘dark art operatives in the Democrats’…intent on ‘abusing’ mail-in ballots to secure a victory for [Democratic presidential candidate Joe] Biden.”

“It’s called counting votes,” tweeted journalist Thor Benson in response to Trump’s promotion of the article.

By twisting Hawkfish’s warning to suit his own narrative about an election he says he is bound to win—despite the fact that his approval ratings have never risen above 49% during his presidency according to Gallup, and just 39% of Americans approved last week of his handling of the pandemic that’s killed more than 850,000 people in the U.S.—”Trump is showing us his playbook,” said Sarah Dohl, co-founder and chief communications officer at Indivisible.

“He’s signaling that he may try to exploit the confusion surrounding this unique election cycle to declare a premature ‘victory’ when the counting of ballots has only just begun,” Dohl told Common Dreams.

To counter Trump’s narrative, pro-democracy grassroots organizers say, voters—36% of whom currently believe results will be available on November 3, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll released Tuesday—should shift their understanding of election night and begin preparing for an “election period” during which all the ballots must be counted.

“The fact is that we will not get results on election night—it may take days or even longer for states to count the unprecedented number of mail-in ballots needed to conduct a safe election after Trump botched the response to the coronavirus,” Ryan Thomas of Stand Up America told Common Dreams. “The baseless charges being spread by Trump’s allies and right-wing media about the election results is not only damaging to the foundation of our democracy, it’s wholly un-American.”

Stand Up America, Indivisible, and other advocacy groups are incorporating into their voter outreach efforts information about how the pandemic has created a situation which won’t allow for all votes to be counted on election night.

“Donald Trump is not running a re-election campaign. He’s running a power grab,” said Ben Wessel, executive director of NextGen America, which joined the coalition. “We must be prepared to protect the integrity of this election and ensure that the voices of the people determine the outcome.”

The organizations on Wednesday unveiled Protect the Results, a coalition that will mobilize Americans “should Donald Trump contest the election results, refuse to concede after losing, or claim victory before all the votes are counted.”

“For months Trump has ignored democratic norms and threatened to reject the results of the 2020 election,” said Liz Butler, vice president of organizing at Friends of the Earth Action, in a statement. “It is no surprise that a man who embraces brutal authoritarian dictators would question the legitimacy of our elections. Trump has used his position to benefit himself and his corporate cronies at the expense of our communities, and he’s desperate to hold onto that power. His words are not bluster, and we must be prepared in November for this potential attack on our democracy.”

Along with Trump’s sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service, which millions are expected to rely on to mail in their ballots, and his baseless claims that the use of mail-in ballots will invite fraud, “This is just one more reason: we need to be ready to mobilize to protect the legitimate results of the election,” said Dohl.

“He’s laying the groundwork now to steal the election; we need to lay the groundwork now to fight back,” she added.

sow chaos? de-legit vote ~ mail in

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ag-barr-repeatedly-claims-he-doesnt-know-if-its-illegal-to-vote-twice-when-confronted-with-trump-comments/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/donald-trump-and-william-barr-plan-to-defund-americas-cities-using-authority-they-just-made-up/

huckabee kim wink take 1 for team

trump’s latest conspiracy theory seems to echo Facebook ‘antifa panic’ — and Rudy Giuliani’s BLM paranoia

Roger Sollenberger / SalonSeptember 2, 2020

President Trump pushed a baseless and bizarre conspiracy theory on Monday that a plane “almost completely loaded with thugs” was sent to disrupt the Republican National Convention, a claim that appears almost identical to a rumor…

an 920

trump slammed for suggesting Barr must prosecute critics like Obama to become ‘greatest’

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 2, 2020

President Donald Trump is telling Bill Barr he must prosecute the president’s critics, like former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in order for him to…

scott atlas herd immunity

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/white-house-cover-up-new-report-show-trump-and-pence-withheld-truth-about-19-as-they-spread-lies/

knew big problem in June

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-signal-to-his-followers-is-clear-violence-and-chaos-are-my-only-hope/

no twt vid link

prez trump’s signal to his followers is clear: Violence and chaos are my only hope

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon August 31, 2020

President Trump was having a normal one on Sunday morning, tweeting and retweeting 89 times over the course of three and a half hours. Many of them were tweets of polling numbers from obscure firms showing him in the lead after the Republican convention. But most of the tweets and retweets were incitement to violence among his true believers and complaints about “Democrat cities,” an ongoing mantra which he seems to think is a slam dunk to get him re-elected.

He repeatedly insulted and mocked Joe Biden, of course, and Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler will undoubtedly have to change his phone number after the president of the United States posted it on Twitter so his followers could call and demand his resignation.

He also showed support for one of his fans in Wisconsin:

[]

It was a manic tweet spree and one that couldn’t have show the president’s state of mind any more clearly. Biden has said Trump is “rooting for violence,” and I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue with that.

In fact, Trump’s surrogates are saying it right out loud. Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump whether she agreed with White House counselorKellyanne Conway’s assertion that “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.” Lara answered, “Well, I think it paints a very clear picture.” She might as well have said, “You go, boys!”

On CNN on Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., agreed with Trump that the shootings by a 17-year-old Trump fan last Tuesday night in Kenosha were understandable:[]

What the president did was he offered to surge manpower and resources so the violence could end. The governor did not accept that that day, that night tragically two people lost their lives because citizens took matters into their own hands. I’m not for vigilantism. I’m not sure that’s what was happening. People felt, because the governor — local officials were looking for help.The governor did not accept the help, and so there was not the resolve to end the rioting, and so people took matters into their own hands, and that’s what ended up happening. People die.

Johnson is confused about everything, as usual. Trump publicly berated Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for failing to call in the National Guard hours after Evers had already done so, telling his followers that Evers wasn’t protecting the city. Johnson basically said that people felt they needed to take matters into their own hands because the president had lied to them and told them the governor wasn’t protecting them. Yet somehow he’s against vigilantism. Everything about that is a grotesque inversion of anything one could call “law and order.”

Trump was at it again later on Sunday, tweeting in response to a press conference by Wheeler, the Portland mayor. Trump called him a “dummy” and ranted on, saying, “He would like to blame me and the federal government for going in, but he hasn’t seen anything yet. We have only been there with a small group to defend our U.S. courthouse, because he couldn’t do it.”

Conway’s little gaffe in which she admitted that the White House and the Trump campaign believe street violence is good for them illuminates the president’s fanning of the flames. He has finally grasped that he cannot unilaterally sending in a bunch of federal cops, as he did in Washington to stage his photo-op last June. Instead, he’s not-very-subtly signaling to his gun-toting fans that they are going to have to take action on their own if they hope to scare people into voting for him. Leave the propaganda to him, just ramp up the chaos.

He tweeted that MAGA “protesters” who came to Portland in a caravan on Saturday night were “Great Patriots!” and later explained why their behavior was understandable:

The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein wondered on Twitter whether “suburban voters look at these pictures and say, ‘yes, where I belong is in the same political coalition as men who crowd into pickup trucks w/guns, as in Bosnia 1998 or a Third World dictatorship?'” (Those huge flags flying behind them reminded me of men crowded “into pickup trucks w/guns,” as in news photographs of ISIS fighters.)

It’s a jarringly familiar sight, but it doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen in America before.

There was an actual shooting that night and someone died. It’s unclear what exactly happened. But it is very clear that this kind of confrontation is something that Trump and his henchmen are actively stoking for political gain.

As I wrote on Friday, this is hardly the first time Trump has deployed crude, racist fear-mongering. He’s been doing it for years, going all the way back to the full-page Central Park Five ad. If it isn’t marauding gangs of Black teenagers, it’s Muslim terrorists or Mexican rapists or left-wing anarchists. There’s always some bogeyman coming to get you.

The only thing he knows how to do is point a finger at “the other” and then promise people that he’s the only one who can save them. He feels confident that he’s got the troops to back him up, one way or the other. He gave an interview with Breitbart back in 2019 in which he made this explicit:

You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.

Yes, it would be very bad. The question is whether or not anyone will believe that Donald Trump is the man who can save America from all this mayhem he is creating. After all, he’s been promising to do that ever since he came down that elevator. Here he is at the 2016 Republican convention:

I guess that’s yet another promise he’ll fulfill after he makes America Great Again — Again.

see magical thinking? power of pos think invoked at rnc many times crit= unAmerican = bad luck / lack of prosperity in future?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-trump-radical-republicans-convention-message-its-all-wonderful/

DC rept

no lnx

Trump blames the sudden appearance of the COVID-19, and the stubborn effects it has created, for blowing the country’s economic success – and for damaging his promised American Greatness.

As a result, we’ve seen an endless parade of announcements to forego safety concerns to go back to work, of would-be treatments and vaccine possibilities, of re-opening efforts that run aground anew as disease spreads.

A basic message in the Republican National Convention this week is that but for the pandemic, Trump had this country on a roll

A basic Republican message in the Republican National Convention this week is that but for the pandemic, Trump had this country on a roll—without mentioning that the roll had begun under his predecessor. Return him for another four years, wink away the pandemic and all that’s ahead is more economic greatness.

Sure, we had low unemployment, and lots of industries seemed to be doing well, though it was unbalanced and hard for lots of people at the lower end of the economy. The sentiment hardly addresses millions out of work.

In any case, it seems horribly unrealistic to just assert that everything is about to bounce back and keep growing. What will emerge is something new that will take a lot of new plans and promises, not the same old ones—regardless of who wins the election.

Now, even that statement belies a lot of anguish in the system: At its best, the successful Trump economy has been tilted heavily toward those already pretty well off – the wealthy, corporations, financial markets and developers.

So, the natural Trump policy has been to cut taxes, regulations and boost private investment and profits that eventually result in more jobs all through the system. Limit health care to those with jobs, cut food stamps and social services and incent those left behind to take underpaid jobs or part-time work to qualify for health care.

Axios.com published a list of Trump economic promises from four years ago that is a useful gauge of progress – or not. The simple truth here is that we might judge Trump’s delivery on those promises even without the effects of the pandemic.

What Trump Promised

It’s a fair question if Trump is seeking another four years since his vague promise is to make more of those achievements in the future. He wants to drop payroll taxes and capital gains taxes, for example, make his tax cuts permanent and repeats never-fulfilled promises for a middle-class tax cut, child-care tax credits, and more economic war on China.

Here is some of what Axios reported:

Trump vowed to “double our growth and have the strongest economy anywhere in the world.” He promises to grow the economy by 4% per year, though in reality, the U.S. economy grew by an average of 2.5% during Trump’s first three years, topping out at 3% in 2018 and falling to 2.2% for 2019.

Trump said he would reduce the national debt, and eliminate it entirely within eight years. Even before the pandemic, it increased.

Trade was an important set of promises. Trump did renegotiate NAFTA, a bilateral trade agreement with South Korea, and pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There is disagreement about whether the changes were as extensive as described. Trump promised to decrease the trade deficit, but the national trade deficit has been larger in each of Trump’s first three years in office than it was for 2016, per the U.S. Census Bureau. Trade deficits with both Canada and Mexico grew substantially, while the trade deficit with China decreased slightly.

Tariffs on Chinese imports and the end of theft of American trade secrets have proved more difficult than promised. After two years of tit-for-tat tariffs and stalled trade negotiations, the Trump administration signed a “Phase 1” trade deal earlier this year short of the administration goals.

Trump said he would “bring back”U.S. manufacturing jobs.U.S. manufacturing jobs rose from 12.36 million in 2016 to 12.87 million in 2019. It’s unclear how many of those jobs came back from overseas, though overall, as of July, there were fewer Americans employed in the manufacturing industry than in 2015. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index rose and is now contracting.

Despite promises to put miners and steelworkers back to work, the U.S. coal mining industry gained just 200 net jobs between 2016 and 2019. The number of U.S. steel and ironworker jobs increased by 10.3% in that time. A promise that Apple would start manufacturing here has not come about.

And, so?

Nor has the country been drawing promised foreign investment, nor improved climate control measures, nor appreciably increased the ranks of the middle-class. Poverty numbers are up, hunger is up, health coverage is down. The stock market, which Trump often uses as a measure of success, has proved much more volatile.

I’m one who believes that the president of the United States may be a powerful office, but it may not have full control over whether the economy improves overall. There are too many other factors, from weather to markets to, as we now see, pandemics.

But since these economic matters are the fundamental reason to support Trump in particular, and his Republican supporters, it seems useful to know that the promises are a lot more hit-and-miss than Trump will own.

Pandemic surely has at least temporarily reversed some of Trump’s promised economic advancements.

But overall, there is plenty of objective evidence that the promises – even if they were aimed at creating a certain kind of success that leaves many behind – have not been as good as advertised.

As usual, be careful about what you say you support.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/cnn-reporter-unleashes-a-brilliant-fact-check-on-the-deluge-of-rnc-lies-its-hard-for-me-to-know-where-to-start/

convention

The lies and distortions at the 2020 Republican National Convention have been numerous, including claims that President Donald Trump had a first-rate response to the coronavirus and claims that he has tried to protect health coverage for Americans with preexisting health conditions. In response to this dishonesty Wednesday night, CNN’s Daniel Dale launched into a brilliant stream of fact-check of the mendacious event.

Dale told his colleague, Anderson Cooper: “There is just so much dishonestly and inaccuracy at this convention. It’s hard for me to know where to start. It’s not just big things like this broad revisionism on the response to the pandemic — it’s little inaccuracies, carelessness.”

Dale noted that Lara Trump, who is married to one of the president’s sons, Eric Trump, use a “fake Abraham Lincoln quote” — adding that “a number of tonight’s false claims came from the vice president, Mike Pence. He repeated one of Trump’s own favorite lies. He said that because of them, we now have Veteran’s Choice. As I’ve said over and over, (President Barack) Obama signed that Choice law in 2014.”

Dale explained that while Trump signed a 2018 law that “modified and expanded the Choice program,” he “did not create it.” And Dale went on to point out that “Pence boasted twice that Trump suspended all travel from China. He didn’t; he imposed a partial travel restriction that contained multiple exemptions.”

Pence, at the 2020 RNC, claimed that former Vice President Joe Biden supports open borders, but Dale noted, “Biden does not support completely unrestricted migration.”

Dale slammed Rep. Elise Stefanik, another RNC speaker, for saying that the impeachment of Trump by House Democrats in 2019 was illegal — and told Cooper, “Come on, it’s legal. Impeachment is in the constitution. And like Trump himself, we had Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany claiming that Trump stands by Americans with preexisting conditions. Look, Trump has repeatedly tried to get bills passed to weaken Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions. And he is currently in court fighting to get the entirety of Obamacare overturned.”

this was fallback on hydroxychlor, stall for time on vaccine?

trump called FDA deep state on announcement, relative vs absolute

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-his-fda-commissioner-grossly-misrepresented-data-on-blood-plasmas-benefits-in-treating-19-patients-scientists/

neumann plan 15 yrs pandemic, https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/youve-absolutely-failed-former-trump-dhs-official-delivers-damning-takedown-of-presidents-leadership-ss/

utter fail on incomp criminal

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-epa-2647067465.html

toxic 10 epa rollbacks

820

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-epa-2647067465.html

toxic 10 epa rollbacks ewg

From the beginning, the Trump administration has aggressively slashed environmental regulations. A New York Times analysis identified 100 environmental protections that have been reversed or are in the process of getting rolled back. The administration's record on chemical safety has been especially hazardous for the health of Americans, especially children.

One year into President Trump's term, EWG detailed how the Trump administration has stacked the Environmental Protection Agency with industry lawyers and lobbyists, undermined worker safety and cooked the books on chemical safety assessments. Midway through his second year, we reported how the EPA reversed a ban on a brain-damaging pesticide, delayed chemical bans and killed a rule to protect kids from toxic PCBs in schools. Last year, we reported that the EPA had rescinded safety rules at chemical plants, rubber-stamped untested new chemicals and silenced researchers.

As Trump's first term nears its end, things are even worse. Here are 10 more ways the Trump administration has continued to make life more toxic for Americans.

1. Failed to Aggressively Regulate Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

The toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS contaminate more than 2,200 sites across the nation. Because they never break down in the environment, PFAS are often called "forever chemicals." They build up in our bodies and are linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental harms and reduced effectiveness of vaccines.Even though the EPA has known about the risks from PFAS chemicals since at least 1998, they remain virtually unregulated.

In February 2019, the EPA released a toothless PFAS "action plan" that lacked deadlines for action and failed to address the use of PFAS in everyday products, contamination from PFAS air emissions or disposal of PFAS waste, among other concerns. A year and a half later, key goals from the plan, including regulating PFAS under the Superfund law and setting drinking water standards, remain unfulfilled.

When Congress stepped in and sought to designate PFOA and PFOS – the two most notorious and well-studied PFAS – as "hazardous substances" and to set deadlines for agency action, Trump threatened a veto.Trump's EPA also weakened a rule designed to regulate PFAS in consumer products.

2. Allowed a Rocket Fuel Chemical to Stay in Drinking Water...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/donald-trump-and-americas-cartoon-masculinity-is-a-desperate-attempt-to-cling-to-a-fading-ideal-author/

[long-ish]

There are moments when merely following the news replicates how it must feel to enter a portal into a surreal realm of hallucination, where dropping acid is an act of redundancy and Lewis Carroll reads like the newspaper. Take the following sentences from a professional journalist in a serious publication, Vox, on the unique resistance many American men have against wearing face coverings in public during a pandemic involving an airborne virus:

It would seem that the obvious way to get more men to wear masks would be to make the manliest version of a mask possible. Maybe put guns on it, or a football team, or make a mask that makes men feel like a super-soldier spliced from Rambo and Captain America.

Nike and Under Armour, according to the same Vox story, are marketing masks similar to those that comic book heroes would wear to fight crime, and the leading men’s fashion magazine, GQ, recommends a particular mask that will make its wearers resemble gladiators in the video game Mortal Kombat.Donald Trump, forever arrested in the mindset of an evil six-year-old from a Stephen King novel, boasted that he looked like the Lone Ranger in his mask, prompting many Americans to wonder if he was wearing it incorrectly.

Epidemiologists and other doctors, insistent on ruining everyone’s fun, caution against several of the macho, costume-party masks. Because they are often made with more porous material than standard facial coverings, and feature “cool looking” valves, they may be less effective in preventing COVID-19 transmission.

If the United States were a sane society, the revelation that many seemingly functional adults require the enticement of looking like a video-game monster to observe public health protocols would provoke sustained soul searching and institutional deliberation to determine exactly where and how it all went wrong. How are families, schools and conduits of public information failing so miserably to raise men of minimal competence, maturity and compassion?

the inquiry becomes even more urgent when one considers the sad reality that the Batman-impersonators are not even the worst culprits of failed manhood. According to several polls, 20 percent of men never wear masks — but only 8 percent of women. A significant amount of American men are willing to risk the deaths of their neighbors to avoid looking “weak” or “afraid.” In high numbers among this group of dangerous fools are police officers, bikers and conservatives, or to use Trump’s proud assignation, “the tough people.”

Given that the “tough people,” including Trump himself, appear as frightened as kittens in a thunderstorm at the mere thought of women holding power, black families moving into suburban neighborhoods or Mexicans crossing the southern border, their posturing and preening, unlike their pandemic behavior, is the ultimate mask. The motorcycles, the guns and the eagerness to violate “political correctness” fail to conceal their obvious insecurity and frailty.

Donald Trump is the ultimate symbol of the sad state of American manhood.

Characteristically unable to advance in the 21st century, the United States has frozen into a form of primitive masculinity. Tom Digby, a philosopher and author of the brilliant book, “Love and War: How Militarism Shapes Sexuality and Romance,” identifies this largely obsolete conception of manhood as “warrior masculinity.”

When I asked Digby about Trump and the increasingly bizarre outbursts of his supporters, he responded that it’s impossible to comprehend this president without considering the desperation of attempting to maintain a rapidly fading masculine ideal.

Donald’s masculinity is a cartoon version of masculinity – it is all bluster. Donald is all about bravado; he never demonstrates actual bravery. From his reliance on fake bone spurs to avoid the Vietnam War to his present attempt to escape political defeat by sabotaging the Postal Service, Donald has consistently demonstrated a total absence of courage.

The notion of masculinity that prevails in the U.S. derives from the warrior ideal. Above all, the warrior needs not only to demonstrate courage by risking death or injury,but also to readily inflict such harm on others. The warrior must be able to manage the capacity to care about his or her suffering, as well as the suffering of others. The part of warrior masculinity that Donald gets right is not caring about the suffering of others. He actually seems to delight in inflicting harm on other people.

But Donald is an utter failure regarding the other side of the coin of warrior masculinity. Indeed, instead of playing the warrior, he plays the perennial victim. He continually whines about how he is treated by the press and political opponents. He thus consistently fails a core expectation of warrior masculinity — that one must always be ready to risk harm, and to endure suffering. Indeed, Donald routinely lies and cheats to fend off what he perceives as harm to himself (even straightforward reporting of what he has said or tweeted).

As for that other aspect of warrior masculinity, the suppression of caring about the suffering of others, one need not be playing the warrior role to do that. One can be a sociopath, as Donald appears to be. For Donald, disregarding the suffering of others is easy. It is automatic.

The evidence of Trump’s pathological inability to acknowledge the pain of his fellow human beings is on gruesome display every hour as the COVID-19 death count rises — this weekend we passed another dreadful milestone, at 175,000 deaths — and he refuses even to simulate empathy and sensitivity, much less demonstrate the leadership skills necessary to help the people he supposedly serves.

“It is what it is,” Trump said in a recent interview when reacting to reporter Jonathan Swan’s reminder that roughly 1,000 Americans are dying every day of this pandemic, while most European and Asian nations have daily death counts at less than one-tenth of that number. The statement encapsulates Trump’s solipsistic disregard for lives other than his own — from the children in cages at the Mexican border due to his own immigration policies to the coronavirus patients taking their final, labored breaths alone in hospitals and nursing homes across the country.

It also summarizes the “warrior masculinity” ethos.

This kind of calculation is contemptible, but one can understand that Trump, as an incumbent president seeking re-election, benefits from minimizing the danger of covid-19. It is more perplexing to consider why legions of “proud American” men identify with Trump, especially given who he actually is — a whiny trust-fund baby from New York City who perennially complains that life is unfair to him. In the abstract, he’s someone they would despise if they somehow met him in a bar.

Trump’s “cartoonish masculinity,” Digby believes, offers a vicarious thrill to men who wrestle with similar kinds of insecurities:...

omg trump swallowed gop and now he has been swallowed by qanon?!

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/foxs-whitewash-trumps-qanon-endorsement-helps-explain-how-it-happened-first

Trump’s Wednesday endorsement of the deranged and dangerous QAnon movement as people who “love this country” thrilled its supporters while horrifying observers, who pointed out that his validation of an extremist ideology linked to violent acts would swell its ranks. But during his first interview following those remarks on Thursday night, the president faced no questions about his praise for unhinged pro-Trump conspiracy theorists who claim that he is on the verge of unraveling a global pedophile ring of Satan-worshipping Democrats and celebrities. As Fox News host Sean Hannity provided the president with his typical mix of sycophancy and softballs over the course of the half-hour phoner, Trump’s embrace of QAnon never came up.

Hannity’s decision to ignore the story put a capstone on Fox’s lackadaisical response to the president’s praise for advocates of a bizarre conspiracy theory that the FBI has termed a domestic terror threat. Fox News political analyst Karl Rove garnered press attention on Wednesday for calling QAnon supporters “nuts and kooks” and saying the president “ought to disavow them” on Special Report, and that program ran a segment on the “conspiracy theory” the following day. But none of the network’s highly rated prime-time hosts have mentioned Trump’s remarks at all, and by Thursday morning, Fox & Friends was decontextualizing part of the president’s comment as an anodyne reference to his administration “saving the world.”

Trump backing the QAnon movement seems like a natural fit -- the president is a notorious conspiracy theorist who finds it nearly impossible to disavow even his most reprehensible supporters. But his praise for the group can’t be separated from Fox’s unwillingness to try to establish guard rails for the Republican Party by denouncing it. Trump relies on Fox for news and information, and its coverage constantly shapes his worldview. If Fox’s hosts had condemned the QAnon movement in the years since it first emerged, it’s hard to imagine that the president would be praising it today -- or that it would have metastasized through the GOP to the extent that it has.

But Fox has largely kept discussions of the QAnon movement and its violent and unhinged ideology off its airwaves, even as its spread within the Republican Party has ensured that the network has repeatedly ended up promoting its supporters. I noted last week, after one of its adherents received the GOP congressional nod for a blood-red district, that QAnon has been referenced on only eight broadcasts on the network’s weekday evening programming over the previous two years -- almost all passing references that failed to describe the conspiracy theory’s dangers. The network’s on-air talent have alternately denied knowing anything about the movement and played footsie with it, engaging with its followers on social media, downplaying its extremism, and even praising aspects of it on Fox shows. Meanwhile, the network’s executives hired a prominent QAnon-supporting influencer to host a cooking show on Fox’s streaming service.

We know what it looks like when Fox tries to destroy the credibility of a movement with its audience, and that isn’t it. Fox hosts and personalities highlighted the Black Lives Matter movement during 288 weekday evening broadcasts over the same two-year span, building on racist and unhinged smears the network has deployed against its supporters since its founding.

In recent months, as the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor drove new attention to Black Lives Matter’s campaign against racial injustice and police brutality, Fox hosts redoubled their efforts to delegitimize it. Network star Tucker Carlson, perhaps the Fox host with the most influence on Trump right now, turned his program into a nightly assault on the group. He called it a “totalitarian political movement” and denounced Republican leaders who expressed support for it.

Trump got the message. He repeatedly lashed out at Black Lives Matter this summer, at times in direct response to segments he was watching about it on Fox. The president was particularly aggrieved by an anti-police chant that members of a Minnesota-based Black Lives Matter group used during a march in 2015 -- one that Fox has highlighted dozens of times in the years since.

If Fox had devoted even a fraction of the venomous demonization it launched at Black Lives Matter activists to QAnon conspiracy theorists, the network could have warned off its millions of viewers -- including the president -- from the movement. But Fox has not chosen that path, which would require trying to curb the excesses of the radicalized Republicans whose anti-Democratic fervor powers the network’s ratings.

Instead, Fox sold out its viewers to a cult. The longer the network held its fire, the more vulnerable its audience was to the movement’s entreaties, and the harder it became to pry Trump supporters away from its conspiracy theories. Now QAnon’s ranks have swelled, its supporters have effectively become a key GOP constituency, dozens are running for Congress, and at least one will likely be elected to the House in the fall. With the president himself signing on as a validator, it may be too late to keep QAnon away from the levers of power.

QAnon may garner criticism here and there from some at Fox who, like Rove, find the spectacle of the president cozying up to “kooks” too much to bear. But I doubt very much that the network as a whole will engage in the full-spectrum denunciation needed to curtail QAnon’s growth. Instead, the days to come will likely bring a range of responses from Fox personalities, from ignoring the movement, to downplaying its importance and extremism, to condemning its critics for attacking Trump supporters. The press will be hammered for covering the story. Some network figures will claim that the QAnon movement makes some good points, perhaps even outing themselves as full-fledged supporters. Others will rely on whataboutism, with the president’s defenders pushing back against reporting on QAnon by demanding to know why the media isn’t asking Democrats to condemn antifa or Black Lives Matter.

Fox is a Republican propaganda outlet that is deeply devoted to Trump. As long as that party and its leader are standing by the QAnon cult, the network won’t dare to stand up to it.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-says-he-didnt-approve-of-border-wall-project-but-these-key-players-bragged-of-his-approval

bannon bust

Trump blames ‘showboaters’ for border wall fraud — and desperately tries to distance himself Jen Hayden / Daily Kos

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-goes-all-in-on-ugly-white-grievance-politics/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/they-like-me-very-much-trump-gives-a-horrifying-answer-when-pressed-on-qanon/

mis-spoke? made up extreme exec priv or somesuch? that chosen one was a goof/joke?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/former-dhs-staff-trump-claimed-magical-authorities-to-break-the-law/

no lnx

no lnx twt text

Former DHS staff: Trump claimed ‘magical authorities’ to break the law

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 19, 2020

Of all the Never Trump groups that have organized to defeat the president, the one that has impressed me the most is Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT). They’ve asked lifelong Republicans to videotape themselves explaining why they refuse to support Trump.

Because I know quite a few conservatives, I’m aware that many of them are uncomfortable with this president—even though they won’t admit it openly. Hearing from Republicans about their refusal to support Trump can provide a permission structure that allows them to confront their partisan tribalism and begin to surface their distaste for having a narcissistic bully in the White House.

But the latest video from RVAT goes a step further and brings us a voice from inside the Trump administration about what’s really going on behind the scenes. It is as terrifying as we’ve all imagined.

The former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security says that the president wanted to exploit DHS “for his own political purposes and to fuel his own agenda.” For example, in the middle of the wildfires in California, Trump told FEMA to cut off funding for assistance to that state because the people who lived there didn’t support him. That lends credence to the story from Katherine Eban that Trump and Kushner were content to allow tens of thousands of Americans to die from COVID-19 as long as they were from Democratic states and counties.

But here’s the really terrifying part of that video: the president didn’t want to hear that his directives were illegal, saying he had “magical authorities.” What the hell does that mean?

On the same day that this video was released, an op-ed by Miles Taylor was published at the Washington Post in which he states:

Like many Americans, I had hoped that Donald Trump, once in office, would soberly accept the burdens of the presidency — foremost among them the duty to keep America safe. But he did not rise to the challenge. Instead, the president has governed by whim, political calculation and self-interest.

Frankly, there were other people in the room when Trump claimed “magical authorities” to break the law (I’m looking at you Kirstjen Nielsen). They now need to step up to the plate for their country to back up what Taylor is saying … That’s because the stakes are so high. At the end of the video above, Taylor says that people who are still serving in this administration have told him, “Just wait until the second term. It’ll be no holds barred, it’ll be shock and awe, we’ll do what we want.”

Taylor ends by saying that, despite having policy differences with Joe Biden, he will vote for the Democratic ticket in November. That’s because he understands the difference between what Adam Gopnik called “toxic enemies and honest opponents.”

What’s needed against Trump now is…not an ideologically narrow, politically focussed opposition but the widest possible coalition of people who genuinely value the tenets of democracy, meaning no more than the passionate desire to settle differences by debate and argument, rather than by power and cruelty and clan.

I’d say that, given their latest ad, the Lincoln Project knows the difference too. Above and beyond policy differences, it all comes down to character.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-white-evangelical-christians-are-bonded-by-sadism/

XO BS

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-white-evangelical-christians-are-bonded-by-sadism/

cooch chad appt illegal; pendley put back door in to head blm?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/dont-be-hoodwinked-by-trumps-uae-israel-peace-deal-its-a-sham/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/how-donald-trump-has-constructed-a-legal-infrastructure-of-fascism/

the debate over whether Donald Trump is a fascist is no longer confined to a narrow segment of the far left. It is now out in the open. Even mainstream columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg and the Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor and influential Democratic politicians, such as Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, have come to use the “F” word to describe our 45th commander in chief....

avoid crim prosec increase resist to go?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/a-product-of-gross-negligence-why-this-ex-federal-prosecutor-thinks-trump-must-be-prosecuted/

birther redux kamala

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/donald-trump-has-a-long-history-of-questioning-the-citizenship-of-non-white-politicians/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/christian-nationalists-are-willing-to-toss-the-constitution-aside-because-trump-gave-them-exactly-what-they-want/

no lnx twt

Christian nationalists are willing to toss the Constitution aside because Trump gave them exactly what they want

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 11, 2020

On Sunday, Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro attempted to justify the president’s memorandum on coronavirus relief by suggesting that God had something to do with creating executive orders.[twt]

The narrative is that congress is simply a “swamp” and so Trump took action via something that was created by God and our founding fathers to bypass the legislative body. Of course, that is the opposite of what was written into the Constitution when it describes three separate, but equal branches of government. In a sense, Navarro is claiming that our founding fathers created a mechanism for the president to act as king. He backs that up with the idea that God was involved with doing so.

None of that is going to be a concern for Trump’s base among Christian nationalists. Over the weekend, Elizabeth Dias published a piece in which she reminded us of that one time when Trump actually told the truth by saying that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and his supporters wouldn’t abandon him. She noted that it was during that same speech at a Christian college in Iowa that Trump said this:

“I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Trump said.

Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country, he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: “And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.”

If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger.

“Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.”

Over the last four years, we’ve heard endless attempts to explain why Christian nationalists have been so loyal to a man who has lived the opposite of everything they have claimed to value. But there you have your answer: he promised to give them power. That is precisely why Katherine Stewart titled her book about Christian nationalists, The Power Worshippers. She explains that we miss the mark if we assume that this movement is all about the so-called “culture wars.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/why-arent-journalists-holding-trump-and-his-allies-accountable-for-their-lies-and-distortions/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-just-admitted-on-live-television-he-will-terminate-social-security-and-medicare-if-he-wins-reelection/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/white-house-concocted-a-positive-feedback-loop-to-mislead-trump-into-thinking-hes-doing-an-excellent-job-on/

...“If the administration’s initial response to the coronavirus was denial, its failure to control the pandemic since then was driven by dysfunction and resulted in a lost summer,” the newspaper explained.

“Under mounting pressure to improve the president’s reelection chances as his poll numbers declined, the White House had what was described as a stand-down order on engaging publicly on the virus through the month of June, part of a deliberate strategy to spotlight other issues even as the contagion spread wildly across the country,”The Post reported. “It was only in July, when case counts began soaring in a trio of populous, Republican-leaning states — Arizona, Florida and Texas — and polls showed a majority of Americans disapproving of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, that the president and his top aides renewed their public activity related to the virus.”

The controversial White House coronavirus model has awful news for Trump as the election approaches.

“Yet the virus rages coast to coast, making the United States the world leader, by far, in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths. An internal model by Trump’s Council on Economic Advisers predicts a looming disaster, with the number of infections projected to rise later in August and into September and October in the Midwest and elsewhere, according to people briefed on the data,” the newspaper reported. “The forecast has alarmed the president and his top aides, even as some have chosen not to believe it, arguing that some previous projections did not materialize.”

According to a former administration official, White House chaos is “an unmitigated disaster.”

Amid the dysfunction, aides have found a way to trick Trump into thinking he’s an effective leader.

“What’s more, with polls showing Trump’s popularity on the decline and widespread disapproval of his management of the viral outbreak, staffers have concocted a positive feedback loop for the boss. They present him with fawning media commentary and craft charts with statistics that back up the president’s claim that the administration has done a great — even historically excellent — job fighting the virus,” the newspaper explained.

The newspaper quoted a “senior administration official involved in the pandemic response.”

“Everyone is busy trying to create a Potemkin village for him every day. You’re not supposed to see this behavior in liberal democracies that are founded on principles of rule of law. Everyone bends over backwards to create this Potemkin village for him and for his inner circle,” the official explained.

The newspaper flushed out who makes up that inner circle.

“Although Fauci, Birx and other medical professionals sit on the coronavirus task force, many of the more pressing decisions lately have been made by the smaller group that huddles in the morning and mostly prioritizes politics. The cadre includes Meadows, senior adviser Jared Kushner andstrategic communications director Alyssa Farah,” the newspaper reported....

an 820

...That is particularly true as the president seems to have simultaneously launched an initiative to suggest that Biden is against the Bible and God. For example, during a “telerally” with Pennsylvania voters on Sunday, Trump said, “Joe Biden, the radical Democrats are against fracking, they’re against guns, and they’re against the Bible, essentially, they’re against God.”Here is what he said in Ohio on Thursday

is it as simple as, dems won on this in 2018 so i'll just co-opt it, tho central to aca which raga and doj actively constantly trying to kill for year? ppl lose healthcare w/ jobs, so helps the, how?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-campaign-thought-their-huge-news-on-pre-existing-conditions-had-democrats-cornered-but-it-backfired-spectacularly

During a bizarre Friday evening press conference at his private golf club in New Jersey, President Donald Trump vowed to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions.

Of course, Trump does not need an executive order to accomplish such a goal, as it is already federal law in the Affordable Care Act, that was passed a decade ago by congressional Democrats and then-President Barack Obama.

Trump campaign advisors soon took to Twitter to praise Trump’s promise as “huge news.”

“Huge news just now – [Trump] announces upcoming EO to cover pre-existing conditions. Big, big, big news,” campaign senior advisor Jason Miller tweeted.

Campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn believed it was such “HUGE NEWS” that he tweeted it between to flashing red sirens.

There was just one problem, which was pointed out by trial lawyer Max Kennerly, who pointed out it conflicted with a brief the administration recently filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here’s what others were saying:...

720 cancelled meeting w/ maduro?! al j

an 820

Trump launches delusional and bewildering rant against Biden: ‘He’s against God!’Cody Fenwick

an 820

medical experts speak out as Trump repeats false claim that children are ‘virtually immune’ to COVID-19

Jake Johnson / Common DreamsAugust 6, 2020

Medical professionals were compelled to speak out Wednesday after President Donald Trump defended and doubled down on his claim that children are “virtually immune” to Covid-19, a dangerous falsehood the…

an 820

A new report published Wednesday details months of wilful failures to confront the coronavirus pandemic by the White House and paints President Donald Trump’s authoritarian tactics during that national crisis as an overt assault on the nation’s democratic institutions ahead of elections in November.

The report by Common Cause—titled “Intentional Disregard: Trump’s Authoritarianism During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” (pdf)—highlights Trump’s coronavirus response as part of a larger effort by the president to attack U.S. democracy.

As evidence to support its thesis, Common Cause points to the president’s repeated claim that mail-in voting—favored by 58% of Americansaccording to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday—will result in a “rigged” election. The report also shows how the administration is actively undermining the U.S. Postal Service by naming a top GOP donor with no USPS experience as postmaster general.

“The Trump administration’s failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented public health crisis leading to a worsening economic crisis. What is becoming clearer each day is President Trump’s intent to use this chaos to create a crisis for our democracy,” said Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn....

dirty tricks gerry

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-dirty-republican-plan-to-cut-the-census-short-is-potentially-illegal/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-s-on-the-postal-service-are-hurting-democracy-and-thats-the-point/

calabrisi

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trump-supporter-and-co-founder-of-the-federalist-society-says-the-presidents-latest-tweet-is-grounds-for-impeachment

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-conservative-legal-establishment-lays-down-a-red-line-for-donald-trump/

dn 720 dog whistle to suburbs // lindsey g pix?

hmmn, could this affect 2020 election?

Teachers’ Union Prepared to Strike If Schools Aren’t Made Safe from Coronavirus

dn 720

an 720 kos good fail

Even in states long associated with coal production, the plants are closing. At what was once the largest coal powered generating plant in the world, Paradise Steam Plant in western Kentucky, the last of three huge turbines has made the switch to natural gas. That switch means that Paradise will still produce greenhouse gases, but it will no longer generate millions of tons of coal ash for the surrounding communities, or throw out a plume of both mercury and uranium that reaches a thousand miles to the sea.

The declining cost of renewables also means that what coal companies once viewed as the industry’s savior—exported coal—is also in decline. Coal exports were actually down 29% in the first five months of 2020. Companies have actually dropped several of the efforts to build export facilities as overseas markets evaporate even faster than those in the United States.

The industry crash also means that the efforts to save coal through “next generation” plants has completely crumbled. It’s been almost three years since what was supposed to be the nation’s first “clean coal” plant announced that it would not burn coal at all, ending a $6 billion experiment in failure. And on Tuesday, the only remaining commercial scale clean coal project in the United States was cancelled. As Oilprice.com reports, Petra Nova, which was supposed to capture carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant near Houston, has been “mothballed.” There is another project out there—North Dakota’s “Project Tundra”—but it exists only on paper and is unlikely to ever move forward.

As with many industries, coal mining employment has fallen sharply during the pandemic, but even before COVID-19 made the news, mining jobs were already in a steep decline.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/axios-reporter-reveals-most-shocking-revelations-trump-made-in-interview-about-russian-bounties/

aha doh trump does what about both siderism all the time on issues he wants to duck? eg russian activ meas, we do it too

Travis Gettys / Raw Story July 29, 2020

President Donald Trump admitted he never confronted Russia’s president Vladimir Putin about bounties on U.S. troops, but the reporter who interviewed him said that wasn’t even the “most shocking” revelation he made.

Axios reporter Jonathan Swan interviewed the president about the bounties allegedly placed on U.S troops in Afghanistan and his recent call with Putin, but he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” what shocked him the most about their conversation.

“In some ways, the most shocking part of that clip is actually not the first part where he admits for the first time on the record that he hasn’t raised the issue of the bounties with Vladimir Putin,” Swan said. “That’s the least shocking part of that call, because actually, frankly, you know, you could have a debate within policy circles about whether it’s the appropriate thing.”

“I mean, that there are dissenting opinions within the intelligence community about this intelligence,” he added. “It certainly is serious intelligence, being taken seriously by the allies, and there is a very good argument for why the president should raise it with Putin.”

But that wasn’t the most surprising revelation Trump made, Swan said.

“The second question is actually more important, which is, fine, you don’t believe this intelligence, or you’re skeptical of it,” Swan said. “Let’s try and take the most good-faith interpretation of it. But you know that Russia has been supplying weapons and money to the Taliban because the man who ran your forces in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, under your administration, said this on the record when he worked for you, and for him to say then, well, I didn’t — I don’t know if I’ve heard about this, never reached my desk, and by the way, we gave them weapons, too.”

“I mean, like in a different era,” he added. “I just — honestly, it was one of the most shocking — I’ve covered president Trump for five years. I think it’s one of the most shocking exchanges I’ve ever had with him.”

hmmn, it's been bad in red states fr a while (but not mdwest?)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trump-was-content-to-let-people-suffer-from-covid-19-in-blue-states-until-infections-soared-among-our-people-in-republican-states-report/

proof of effect?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/how-the-so-called-champion-of-american-business-fought-to-protect-profiteering-and-endangered-millions

As hospital intensive care units overflow again, and delays in COVID-19 testing reports reach record levels in many cities, a conversation I recently with Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, reminded me that I had forgotten something utterly critical: Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally disarm America in the face of the coronavirus invasion was urged upon him by an ostensible defender of American business: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

When the pandemic reached America, we weren’t ready — any more than we were ready when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But Trump had the tools to do what the U.S. has often done: make up for lack of preparedness. The crucial gaps to fill in March were supplies for testing to limit the spread of the virus, and medical equipment to treat those who got sick — testing kits, swabs, reagents, masks, gowns and gloves — by the billions. Government health agencies estimated that if the pandemic took hold, the country would need, for example, 3.5 billion N95 medical masks. We had 12 million.

Presidents have available, and have routinely used, the Cold War-era Defense Production Act to overcome such critical supply shortages— not just in wartime, but also to ensure adequate relief supplies after natural disasters. DPA can be used to put emergency purchases at the head of a supply chain, but also to require factories to convert their output to provide needed equipment in adequate volumes. Members of Congress urged Trump to appoint a military official as DPA czar to coordinate production and distribution of essential pandemic-related medical supplies, as was done in the Korean War.

In March, Trump was leaning towards robust use of the DPA, fashioning himself as a wartime president and the battle against the coronavirus as America’s “big war.” He invoked the DPA to require General Motors to speed up its production of ventilators. But he quickly discovered that he had an enemy within — not the virus as such, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Within days of Trump’s announcement that he would mobilize as if for war and use the DPA, the Chamber of Commerce’s lobbying army swung into action. Among the Chamber’s arguments: DPA would impose “red tape on companies precisely when they need flexibility to deal with closed borders and shuttered factories.” Unstated: if the government took charge of the supply chain for tests, masks and gowns, it could also prevent bidding wars from competing hospitals and states that would, and did, drive prices — and profits — through the roof.

In response, labor unions representing nurses, hospital staff and other frontline workers who were unable to be tested, or to obtain masks or gowns, protested and urged the Chamber to join a national mobilization to defeat the coronavirus. The appeal was not answered. On March 23, Markey and his Massachusetts colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, wrote to the Chamber demanding an explanation. The Chamber’s response: Defense Production Act reliance was unnecessary, because “American companies will do whatever it takes to support America’s response to the pandemic and shore up the economy.”

But what the workers had feared — insufficient production, soaring prices and profits, chaotic delivery mechanisms — took over the health care market during the first wave of virus spikes in the Northeast. Some hospitals were paying 15 times the usual price for masks.

The Chamber continued its strenuous opposition to enabling the government to ensure an adequate supply of tests and PPE. Even Trump conceded that profiteering had taken over the market, and ultimately he did invoke the DPA to prevent it — but when it came to the export market.

Supplies increased, but often at exorbitant prices. Only when the shutdowns of most of the American economy brought the number of hospitalizations down sharply did supply and demand come into temporary balance. Americans believed that if there was a second wave later in the year, at least health care workers on the front lines would have the tools they needed.

Trump, denied by Chamber opposition of an easy pathway to acting like a heroic wartime president, seemingly lost interest. By June his focus had shifted from fighting the virus to reopening the economy and then reigniting the culture wars. Media headlines proclaiming his lack of interest didn’t even provoke “fake news” tweets from the East Wing of the White House.

The virus had a longer attention span. With major states like Florida, Texas and Arizona opening rapidly and prematurely, the holes in the jerry-built testing, tracing and quarantine systems each state had fashioned without federal guidance gave the virus its chance.

Cases — although not, initially, fatalities — began to soar. Suddenly, what any nationally coordinated effort would have been tracking and resolving all along — that the nation had stepped up production of tests, masks and gowns to meet the needs of an economy in shutdown, but had nowhere near the level of supplies for a massive second wave — came home to roost. By early July, new cases were flooding the hospital capacity of even some of the nation’s major health care centers, such as Houston.

In New Orleans, testing centers had to close eight minutes after they opened. In 100-degree heat in Phoenix, lines at testing centers were eight hours long. San Antonio and Austin were forced to limit testing to those with symptoms, leaving the system utterly unable to detect asymptomatic cases, when research suggests that to 40% of infections take place. Wait times for test results soared with caseloads, so that even those who got tested might not find out they were positive until they were well past the contagious stage.

Nurses were again forced to use one N95 mask for weeks at a time. Prices for what was actually available soared. States reported they could only fulfill 10% of their orders. Even now, in July, the U.S. has nothing like the 3.5 billion N95 masks that we knew in January we would need. Indeed, how could we? No manufacturer could have guessed in March how severe the crisis would be by fall. With no one managing the system, it was clearly foolish for any private company to produce, on speculation, several billion masks. Market signals cannot prepare America for the massive increase in possible scale required by such a pandemic. Nor can individual cities and states trigger the necessary ramp-up of supplies. Only a systematic national plan designed to ensure that we were ready for the worst-case scenario could have protected us.

Inevitably, the “market solutions” favored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have failed America not once but twice. In failing, they have taken the nation’s economy over the precipice into a deep, long, economic decline. That the loudest voice claiming to represent U.S. business chose to defend profiteering, embrace short-term thinking and risk the collapse of the American health care system and economy is both shameful and shocking.

And that most Americans, including me, had already forgotten this is scary. This is not the first time the Chamber has successfully pursued policies that put us enormously at risk — for years it has been one of the major forces preventing Washington from adopting even the most modest efforts to accelerate a transition off fossil fuels to save lives and protect the climate. But if the Chamber can get away once again with having caused massive economic damage while risking the health of millions, and with its public reputation unscathed, it’s unlikely to change its behavior.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-white-house-is-trying-to-throw-republican-governors-under-the-bus-by-rewriting-history

wtf? someone alluded to Chines active measures could rival ussr? i thot trade war was over; they PO'd on kung flu and Honk Kong?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/houstons-chinese-consulate-abruptly-ordered-to-close-by-trump-administration/

Anna Fifield, The Washington Post

“Houston’s Chinese Consulate abruptly ordered to close by Trump administration” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

CHANGSHA, China — The United States has ordered China to close its consulate in Houston by Friday, an abrupt move that opens up a new front in a battle for supremacy between the world’s two biggest economies.

Beijing immediately vowed to retaliate for the “unprecedented escalation,” leading to speculation it could order the closure of the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan, which has been shuttered since the coronavirus epidemic spread across the city in January.

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The confrontation in the diplomatic sphere widens a conflict that already incorporated trade and technology, freedom of the press and religion, students and scientists, as well as the novel coronavirus and the race for a vaccine.

Analysts on both sides say that bilateral relations are at their worst since before 1979, when the United States formally recognized the People’s Republic of China.

“At this rate, I wouldn’t even be surprised if Trump decides to sever diplomatic relations with China someday,” said Chu Shulong, a professor in American politics and diplomacy at Tsinghua University, suggesting that this was part of President Trump’s reelection strategy.

“Trump has no limits, no principles and no morals, and that’s why he can stoop so low and yet few bother to raise an eyebrow,” Chu said.

The Trump administration decided to order the closure of China’s Consulate in Houston, which was opened in 1979 and is situated in an area with a large Chinese community, “in order to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Wednesday.

“The United States will not tolerate the PRC’s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs and other egregious behavior,” she said, using the abbreviation for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

The State Department did not elaborate on the alleged infractions, but Ortagus suggested that China had violated the Vienna Convention, which governs diplomatic relations between states. Under the convention, diplomats must “respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State” and “have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State.”

In Copenhagen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when asked by a journalist about the order to close the Houston consulate, cited the reporter’s question that noted the United States had “long complained” about alleged Chinese intellectual property theft.

“Your point that this has been going on for a long time makes our point,” Pompeo told the journalist. “President Trump has said ‘enough.’ We’re not going to allow this.”

The first sign of the American order came when Houston NBC affiliate KPRC2aired video showing people in the courtyard of the consulate apparently burning documents after 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday.

Police and fire officials went to the scene in response to calls from neighbors but, in accordance with diplomatic rules, did not enter the building, the television station reported.

Witnesses in nearby apartment buildings told police that people were burning paper in what appeared to be trash cans, a police official told the Houston Chronicle. The consulate staff had been told they would be evicted from the building at 4 p.m. Friday, the paper quoted the unnamed official as saying.

In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry responded angrily to the order. The U.S. government “abruptly informed” China on Tuesday that it had to immediately close its consulate in Houston, Wang Wenbin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters Wednesday.

“The U.S. has far more diplomatic missions and staff working in China. So if the U.S. is bent on going down this wrong path, we will resolutely respond,” Wang said.

Analysts expect the Chinese government to respond by ordering one of them closed. Beijing was particularly incensed that the United States evacuated its consulate in Wuhan in January, as the virus began spreading rapidly across the city.

It has still not reopened, and the embassy and other consulates are operating with skeleton staffs, according to American officials.

Hu Xijin, the firebrand editor of the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times newspaper who often shares information on Twitter that has not been officially announced, revealed the 72-hour time frame

“This is a crazy move,” he wrote.

The Global Times started polls on Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo, asking: “Which US consulate general in China is most likely to be closed?” It gave four options: “Hong Kong and Macao, Guangzhou, Chengdu or other.”

The order came amid American attacks on China’s political system, its harassment of Chinese diplomats and its intimidation of Chinese students, Wang said.

He said the consulate had been getting prank phone calls and even received a bomb threat on Monday. He added that U.S. authorities have opened China’s diplomatic pouches and searched Chinese diplomats’ property.

The United States and China have been locked in a tit-for-tat battle for supremacy that began at the start of the Trump administration, centered on trade and technology. Both sides have expelled journalists this year and have been slapping sanctions on each other’s officials.

But the hostilities have become much more serious with Trump’s efforts to blame the Chinese government for the coronavirus that emerged from Wuhan at the end of last year and retaliatory actions over journalists in the two countries.

U.S. officials on Tuesday accused China of sponsoring criminal hackers, including two former engineering students, who were targeting biotech firms around the world working on coronavirus vaccines and treatments.

The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday renewed its travel warning for Chinese students in the United States, advising them to be aware of arbitrary interrogations, the confiscation of personal belongings and possible detentions.

Wang Yong, a professor of international studies at Peking University, said certain people in Washington seem hellbent on promoting a cold war between China and the United States and the complete decoupling of the two countries, not just in the economic arena but across the board.

“I think they have political considerations, mainly around the election,” Wang said. “They are taking such a tough approach, demonizing and turning hostile to China, making China an enemy, to mobilize people domestically and reverse the unfavorable situation of President Trump in the election.”

This would lead to international instability, he said. “In the end, it will harm U.S. interests and harm China. It won’t benefit the United States.”

Chu, the Tsinghua professor, agreed that there was potential for further tension.

“China could always evict a U.S. Consulate in retaliation, and that could go on and on,” he said. “If the eviction stays a largely technical move, then the two governments should be able to reach a compromise in the next few months; but if it turns out to be strategic, then this risks escalating into Cold War 2.0.”

Many analysts in China view Trump’s campaign against the country as part of an effort to boost his chances of winning second term.

“China is an easy target, and a ‘big bad guy’ that Trump is all too eager to open fire on in order to win conservatives over in his reelection campaign,” Chu said.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/22/houston-chinese-consulate-close-donald-trump/.

capital gains cut

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/nytimes-investigation-finds-trump-administration-was-desperate-to-shift-blame-for-a-crisis-of-its-own-creation/

Conducting over two dozen interviews with senior administration and public health officials, and consulting a cache of previously unavailable documents, the *New York Times* has uncovered what now seems obvious to everyone except perhaps Trump’s dwindling and ignorant base of supporters: the Trump administration deliberately sought to shift blame for its botched handling of the Covid-19 pandemic to the states, in what the Times authors aptly characterize as a “catastrophic policy blunder” and “one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.”...

2009 climategate Copenhagen:

After three weeks of relentless Climategate coverage, the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, which was intended to lay the groundwork for an international agreement to slash emissions, began. It was supposed to be an inflection point, in which the world would move past debating long-settled science and take serious steps to solve the problem. In the lead-up to the talks, even Trump signed on to a full-page ad in the Times calling on President Barack Obama and other leaders to take bold action to combat climate change. Instead, the negotiations broke down—a diplomatic failure that set climate action back years.

For Julian Gregory, the Norfolk, England, detective in charge of investigating the hack, the timing was obvious. The Climategate emails “were selectively taken and portrayed in a way…intended to undermine the scientists and therefore the validity of their science,” he later told Climatewire, after a second batch of stolen emails was released shortly before another round of climate talks. “The conclusion you are led to is that it was done with the intention of influencing the outcome of those conferences.”

The hack probably wasn’t the primary reason the Copenhagen talks collapsed. Even before the emails surfaced, there were warning signs that diplomats could be headed for an impasse. Former US officials who participated say they don’t remember Climategate coming up during negotiations. Instead, the Obama administration and other governments simply hadn’t done enough to bridge the divides between the United States, China, and the developing world.

But the scandal provided a convenient talking point for those seeking to block climate action. Days before the conference began, Mohammad al-Sabban, the lead negotiator from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, told the BBC that the emails would have a “huge impact” on the talks. “It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change,” he said. James Inhofe, the Senate’s leading climate denier, traveled to Copenhagen, where he told throngs of reporters that Climategate was proof of what he’d been saying all along: Global warming was a hoax.

The most obvious fallout was in the United States, where the emails played an outsize role in the media’s coverage of climate change. According to a study by Matthew Nisbet, then a professor at American University, more than 20 percent of the news and opinion stories about climate change published by five major outlets in December 2009 mentioned the hacked emails.

Perhaps even more significantly, the scandal seemed to have a big impact on US public opinion, helping climate change denial and obstructionism become even more entrenched on the right. After Climategate, notes Podesta, “you see attitudinal change [in] people’s willingness to believe the scientific community that climate change is happening.” It’s no coincidence that Trump publicly reversed his own views on the issue just three months later, when he joked that Al Gore’s Nobel Prize should be rescinded and cited the stolen emails. He’s been an outspoken denier ever since....

june 2016

https://grist.org/politics/donald-trump-climate-action-new-york-times/

As negotiators headed to Copenhagen in December 2009 to forge a global climate pact, concerned U.S. business leaders and liberal luminaries took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for aggressive climate action. In an open letter to President Obama and the U.S. Congress, they declared: “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”

One of the signatories of that letter: Donald Trump.

Also signed by Trump’s three adult children, the letter called for passage of U.S. climate legislation, investment in the clean energy economy, and leadership to inspire the rest of the world to join the fight against climate change.

“We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today,” the letter tells the president and Congress. “Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet.”

[pix of whole ad]

In every conceivable way, the letter contradicts Trump’s current stance on climate policy. On the campaign trail, Trump has said he is “not a big believer in man-made climate change.” Last fall, after Obama described climate change as a major threat to the United States and the world, Trump said that was “one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics — in the history of politics as I know it.”

The 2009 ad also argues that a shift to clean energy “will spur economic growth” and “create new energy jobs.” But these days, Trump contends that U.S. action to limit greenhouse gas emissions would put the country at a competitive disadvantage. In 2012, he went so far as to claim: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

The Copenhagen conference that inspired the open letter was part of the same two-decade-long U.N. negotiating process that led to a global climate deal in Paris last year. But whereas in 2009 Trump supported the process via the ad, now he wants to sabotage it, promising recently to “cancel” the Paris accord.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Trump’s signature on the ad, which ran in the Times on Dec. 6, 2009, stands out on a list dominated by liberal media and business figures, including the founder of Patagonia, the cofounders of Ben & Jerry’s, the president of CREDO Mobile, the executive producer of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, celebrity chef Tom Colicchio, actors Kate Hudson and Adrian Grenier, media heavyweights Martha Stewart and Graydon Carter, and New Age author Deepak Chopra.

None of the signers that Grist interviewed this week could recall who had organized the letter or knew who had asked Trump to sign. The website of the group listed on the ad, businessleaders4environmentalchange.us, is now defunct, and no information was available on who had registered it.

[pix/doc]

Beyond the Times ad, Trump has supported climate causes and expressed concern about global warming at least twice before. In 2014, Trump sent a $5,000 check to Protect Our Winters, a climate advocacy nonprofit for skiers and snowboarders, after a Celebrity Apprentice contestant requested his support.

The second time was when climate change hit The Trump Organization’s bottom line: His golf course in Ireland is threatened by coastal erosion, so the company recently applied for a permit to build a seawall to protect the property from “global warming and its effects.”

Other than that, Trump has been fairly consistent in his views on climate change — or consistent for Trump. Two months after signing the open letter, he told members of the Trump National Golf Club that Al Gore should be stripped of his Nobel Prize because that winter had been cold. “Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less,” he said. “It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.”

Now that sounds more like the Republican nominee.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/deregulations-deadly-consequences-report-breaks-down-how-trumps-assault-on-government-exacerbated-pandemic/

Trump’s ongoing efforts to roll back regulations designed to protect the environment, workers, and public health likely played a significant role in the spread of Covid-19 in the United States.

That’s according to a new report released Tuesday by New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), a nonpartisan policy think tank.

The 45-page report titled “Weakening Our Defenses” (pdf) details how Trump’s far-reaching deregulatory push has exacerbated several major risk factors for contracting and spreading Covid-19, such as high levels of air pollution, hazardous working conditions, and lack of adequate health insurance.

“President Trump’s deregulatory agenda has affected all those factors, and, therefore, the disproportionate racial and economic justice impacts of deregulation are now most likely compounding in deadly ways in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the report says.

“Even before the pandemic,” the report continues, “those regulatory decisions collectively were already causing dire consequences for public health and safety, the environment, and economic conditions—but we now know that those regulatory decisions have likely also increased our collective susceptibility to Covid-19."

[twt]

the report cites the Trump administration’s rollback of restrictions on nearly 2,000 forms of hazardous air pollution in 2018, weakening of the Clean Power Plan, and gutting of vehicle fuel efficiency standards in 2020 as examples of environmental deregulatory actions that left the U.S. more vulnerable to Covid-19. The U.S. currently has the most confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in the world.

“These rollbacks have put all of us—especially low-income communities, Black people, and people of color, and essential workers—at higher risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19,” said Gina McCarthy,former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and current president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The report also points to the Trump administration’s weakening of workplace safety standards at meatpacking plants, which have become major Covid-19 hotspots.**According to**the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16,200 meat and poultry processing workers have contracted Covid-19 at 239 facilities in the U.S.

“In October 2019, the Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture finalized a rule to ‘modernize’ swine slaughter inspections,” IPI’s report says. “The new program, which pig processing plants may opt into, reduces the number of food safety inspectors in plants and removes caps on pig slaughter line speeds.”

By forcing workers to perform their jobs in close proximity to one another, the report notes, the prioritization of speed over safety forces “likely puts meat processing workers at greater risk for Covid-19.”

The Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the Affordable Care and limit Medicaid eligibility by approving state-level work requirements also may have contributed to the spread of Covid-19, according to the new report.

“Though some of these state requirements have since been invalidated by the courts, other state programs could yet be implemented, and even the temporary loss of coverage in some states could be significant—particularly during a pandemic,” the report says.

Dr. Kathleen Rest, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that the Trump administration’s “failure to listen to and act on the best available science is irresponsible and dangerous.”

“From day one, the Trump administration has attempted to roll back not only existing public health protections, but the scientific basis on which all public health protections are based,” said Rest. “That’s short-sighted and foolish at the best of times, but they have continued to dismantle safeguards even as the country faces the threat of Covid-19, one of the biggest public health crises in our history.”

an 720

From the full Editorial Board of the Washington Post:

THERE ARE no doubt thousands of people in federal prison who deserved a presidential commutation more than Roger Stone. But after President Trump’s intervention on Friday, Mr. Stone will serve none of his prison sentence. The president may have had the power to help his longtime friend. But that does not make it any less a perversion of justice — indeed, it is one of the most nauseating instances of corrupt government favoritism the United States has ever seen.

***

The United States is supposed to be a place in which laws apply equally to all. And while it never has — and never will — live up to that ideal in full, no modern president before Mr. Trump has so clearly renounced it. The president seems to be doing his best, within the confines of the U.S. constitutional system, to emulate the gangster leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man whose ruinous reign Mr. Trump has always admired. If the country needed any more evidence, Friday confirmed that the greatest threat to the Republic is the president himself.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/here-are-some-of-trumps-friends-and-family-who-were-cleared-for-millions-in-small-business-bailout-fund

Businesses tied to President Donald Trump’s family and associates stand to receive as much as $21 million in government loans designed to shore up payroll expenses for companies struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal data released Monday.

A hydroponic lettuce farm backed by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., applied for at least $150,000 in Small Business Administration funding. Albert Hazzouri, a dentist frequently spotted at Mar-a-Lago, asked for a similar amount. A hospital run by Maria Ryan, a close associate of Trump lawyer and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, requested more than $5 million. Several companies connected to the president’s son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, could get upward of $6 million.

There’s no ban on businesses connected to Trump’s orbit receiving money. Democrats added a provision to the CARES Act excluding government officials and their family members from receiving some bailout funds, but not those from the PPP.

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

The firms sought funding under the Paycheck Protection Program, one of the Trump administration’s sweeping pandemic relief efforts. Created in late March by the CARES Act, it allowed small businesses — generally, those with fewer than 500 employees — to apply for loans of up to $10 million. The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities.

The program paid out $521 billion to almost 4.9 million companies in an effort to provide relief for small businesses and their workers amid the sudden economic shock brought on by the pandemic. As applications slowed after the initial rush, $132 billion remained unspent, and Congress voted to extend the program.

After resisting releasing the names, the government bowed to pressure from critics and watchdog groups. On Monday, the administration disclosed only those entities that were approved by banks for loans over $150,000. A consortium of news organizations, including ProPublica, has sued the administration under the Freedom of Information Act to release the full list of recipients and loan details.

The program has been criticized for including some loan recipients, particularly large, publicly traded companies, and for favoring wealthier businesses that had existing relationships with banks. In some cases customers could essentially skip the line. Overall, however, many economists praise the PPP for having gotten billions to companies relatively quickly.

The New York Observer, the news website that Kushner ran before entering the White House and is still owned by his brother-in-law’s investment firm, was approved for between $350,000 and $1 million, data shows. A company called Princeton Forrestal LLC that is at least 40 percent owned by Kushner family members, according to a 2018 securities filing, was approved for $1 million to $2 million. Esplanade Livingston LLC, whose address is the same as that of the Kushner Companies real estate development business, was approved for $350,000 to $1 million. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The loans to Kushner-related companies were first reported by The Daily Beast.

In addition, up to $2 million was approved for the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, a nonprofit religious school in Livingston, N.J., that’s named for Jared Kushner’s grandfather and supported by the family.

....

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump planned to visit Mt. Rushmore National Memorial on Friday for a Fourth of July celebration that was expected to draw an estimated 7500 people. When Julian Bear Runner, president of the Ogala Sioux Tribe, appeared on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” on Thursday night, he explained to host Lawrence O’Donnell why he believed the president’s plans for the event were disrespectful of Native Americans.

“I sent out a letter today to Mr. Trump advising him and stating reasons why he is not permitted to enter the treaty territory at this time due to the lack of consultation with the sovereign leaders of the Great Sioux Nation,” Runner noted. “There’s been no correspondence from his staff or himself to ever attempt to sit down, diplomatically, with the leaders of the Great Sioux Nation to obtain that permission or to contingently seek a plan on how to go about his Independence Day celebration. Right now, for me, it’s very hard for me to remain diplomatic in times like this due to the lack of consultation.”

Runner went on to tell O’Donnell, “My people, it is in our DNA to fight for these lands, to defend these lands — and to protect what is sacred. And Mt. Rushmore is carved on one of our most sacred mountains within the Black Hills, and the people are angry. All I can do as a leader is stand back and support them.”

In addition to criticism from Runner, the event has drawn criticism from health experts who are warning that an event of that size should not be held at a time when coronavirus is infecting so many Americans.

Trump’s ‘delusional’ GOP enablers are finally shaken by Bernstein’s reporting on president’s ‘uninformed’ calls with foreign leaders

putin paid KIA am 720

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-day-he-was-briefed-about-russian-bounties-trump-was-busy-meeting-actors-for-play-about-peter-strzok-and-lisa-page/

putin paid KIA

Trump’s disastrous record on foreign policy: Lost wars, new conflicts and broken promises

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/pa-county-commissioner-joe-gale-shows-the-absolute-intellectual-emptiness-of-trumpism-and-the-gop

tom petty family cease and desist to trump oklahoma 1st rally in covid era, "Won't Back Down"

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trumps-incendiary-language-ive-documented-12-kinds-of-communication-that-lead-to-acts-of-violence-the-president-has-used-them-all

omg in wake of milley and sec at st john 180, this pow #3?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trump-nominee-for-key-pentagon-position-accused-is-an-islamophobic-conspiracy-theorist-who-called-obama-a-terrorist-leader/

trump nominee for key Pentagon position accused is ‘an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist who called Obama a terrorist leader’

Written by Alex Henderson June 16, 2020

President Donald Trump has nominated retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata for a key position in the Pentagon, but Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to CNN, have vowed to oppose the nomination in light of Tata’s history of hateful anti-Islam rants.That includes Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the leading Democrat on the SASC.

In 2018, CNN reported, Tata described Islam as the “most oppressive violent religion I know of” and called former President Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader” for — as he saw it — being overly pro-Islam. Tata was vehemently critical of the Obama Administration’s deal with Iran and claimed that it came about because ofObama’s “Islamic roots.” Obama, Tata claimed, did more to “help Islamic countries than any president in history.”

Anthony J. Tata

@ajtata

If true, and it appears to be, #Obama and #Clinton are guilty of sedition and/or treason 18 U.S. Code 2384 #MAGA #trump2020 #ComeyMemos #Kanye2024 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384 … https://twitter.com/_vachellindsay_/status/988616258022076416 …

8:31 PM - Apr 23, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Anthony J. Tata's other Tweets

In addition to Reed, Senate Democrats who have told CNN they will oppose Tata’s nomination include Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Gary Peters of Michigan. Warren told CNN, “An Islamophobic conspiracy theorist who called President Obama a ‘terrorist leader’ should not be #3 at the Pentagon. Anthony Tata is by far Trump’s most unqualified and ill-suited senior defense nominee.”

In May 2018, Tata attacked former CIA Director John Brennan and tweeted, “Might be a good time to pick your poison: firing squad, public hanging, life sentence as prison b*tch, or just suck on your pistol. Your call. #Treason #Sedition #crossfirehurricane #Obamagate.”

andrew kaczynski??

@KFILE

Replying to @KFILE

The "Manchurian candidate" Obama conspiracy article shared and endorsed by Tata claimed that Obama let ISIS grow on purpose in Iraq and Libya, saying the "deviousness of the Obama sedition runs deep."https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/politics/tata-pentagon-nominee-kfile/index.html …

Democrats on key Senate committee oppose Pentagon pick as more inflammatory tweets emerge

Several Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Monday that they would oppose the nomination of retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata to oversee the Pentagon's policy shop.

cnn.com

andrew kaczynski??

@KFILE

Tata accused Obama administration remembers of treason several times, saying former CIA chief John Brennan should "pick your poison: firing squad, public hanging, life sentence as prison b*tch, or just suck on your pistol. Your call."https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/politics/tata-pentagon-nominee-kfile/index.html …

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter...

an 620

Trump threatens John Bolton with ‘criminal liability’ to keep him quiet

Jon Queally / Common Dreams

President Donald Trump on Monday claimed that any conversation between himself and former National Security Advisor John Bolton is “highly classified,” threatening his far-right former top advisor with “criminal liability”…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trump-has-no-grand-strategy-and-hes-going-all-in-with-losers/

ms 13

wa mon tim scott, key note spkr

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/what-republicans-really-mean-when-they-talk-about-law-and-order/

meh

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/how-donald-trump-killed-america/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trumps-administration-has-ripped-away-any-connection-with-truth-and-the-real-victim-is-democracy-itself/

meh

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/bill-barr-is-running-law-enforcement-like-a-middle-school-bully-because-he-used-to-be-one-op-ed/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/with-trump-in-charge-america-is-going-back-to-more-hostile-times

tj alien theconv

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/heres-the-outrageous-oan-segment-that-led-trump-to-falsely-smear-a-75-year-old-protestor-as-an-antifa-provocateur/

also 70 yr old head wound via oann;

Trump takes a swing and a miss at Romney for joining Black Lives Matter protest Igor Derys

https://theconversation.com/trumps-use-of-religion-follows-playbook-of-authoritarian-leaning-leaders-the-world-over-140050

It was a striking moment: Donald Trump, Bible in hand, posing for photos in an apparent moment of political theater made possible by the dispersal of protesters through the use of tear gas.

The president’s visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church, known as “the Church of the Presidents,” came immediately after giving a Rose Garden speech framing himself as “your president of law and order” and threatening to send federal troops to “restore security and safety in America.” The next day, Trump made another high-profile visit to a place of worship, this time Washington’s St. John Paul II National Shrine.

Coming at a time of social turbulence, critics accused Trump of following authoritarian-leaning world leaders by sidling up to religion to reinforce an image as a strongman defending a particular brand of tradition. Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington Mariann Budde said as much, commenting that Trump used the Bible at St. John’s “as if it were a prop or an extension of his military and authoritarian position.”

As a scholar who has researched the interaction of politics and faith for decades, I know how potent religion can be as a political tool.

A powerful tool

Religion creates meaning in our lives by articulating values about how we relate to one another. But just as it can unite us, religion can also be a source of division – used to “other” people who are not of the faith and don’t share the same traditions and rituals.

When enough people perceive – or can be convinced – that traditional elements of the social fabric are at risk, religious signaling through the use of symbols and images can help would-be authoritarians cement their power. They present themselves as protectors of the faith and foes of any outsider who threatens tradition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sunbathes with a cross on display over his bare chest. Alexey Nikolsky/AFP via Getty Images

In Russia, this phenomenon is seen in President Vladimir Putin’s forging of a strategic alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church. For his part, Putin presents himself not just as a commanding leader, but also as a devoutly religious Russian. When he appears shirtless, for example, the large cross he wears around his neck is always visible. Meanwhile, the Church promotes traditional moral values and maintains a distance from the rest of the worldwide Orthodox Christian community, thereby separating the “truly Russian” from the outsider. In their most recent collaboration, Putin and the Church proposed amendments to the Russian constitution that would enshrine Russians’ faith in God, define marriage as the union of a man and a woman and, tellingly, proclaim “the great achievement of the [Russian] people in defense of the Fatherland.” These changes, all of which are intended to reinforce Putin’s base of support, would be jarringly nationalistic additions to the constitution.

Putin benefits from this insider-outsider dynamic in advancing his goal of restoring Russia to his vision of its past territorial glory. In justifying the Russian incursion into Crimea, Putin argued that the region had “sacral importance for Russia, like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the followers of Islam and Judaism.” Defending and expanding Russian territory is a much easier sell if it is framed as the defense of the holy.

Religious imagery

We see a similar dynamic in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grip on power relies in large part on his embrace of a version of Hindu nationalism that elevates Hindus as “truly Indian” insiders and singles out Muslims as outsiders.

Like Putin, Modi wraps himself in religious imagery. He makes high-profile visits to remote Hindu temples while electioneering and never wears green because of its association with Islam.

Then-prime minister candidate Narendra Modi visits a shrine on horseback while electioneering in 2014. Strdel/AFP via Getty Images

Modi’s Hindu nationalism cements his popularity among devout Hindus and builds public support for anti-Muslim policies, such as stripping the only majority-Muslim state in India of its autonomy and enacting a controversial new law preventing Muslim migrants from attaining Indian citizenship.

Trump as savior

Trump has stumbled in attempts to portray himself as personally devout, declining to name a favorite passage from the Bible and stating that he has never sought forgiveness from God for his sins.

Nevertheless, public opinion polls have consistently shown that white Christians comprise the core of Trump’s base, although there are recent signs of a dip even among this key group.

And while it is important to note that many white Christians do not support Trump, 29% of evangelicals go so far as to say they believe he is anointed by God.

Where Trump succeeds is in presenting himself as a Christian nationalist, much as Putin and Modi style themselves as the stout defenders of their countries’ dominant religions.

One way Trump achieves this end is by making statements such as this one on the campaign trail earlier this year: “We’re going to win another monumental victory for faith and family, God and country, flag and freedom.”

In their new book “Taking America Back for God,” sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry contend that many of Trump’s white Christian supporters see him as their long-awaited savior – not just the protector of traditional religion, but also the defender of a bygone way of life.

In that imagined past, white men ruled the roost, families went to church every Sunday and outsiders knew their place. A deep-rooted desire for a return to that past may have been why Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan has proved so potent. As Yale scholar Philip Gorski has argued, that phrase can be interpreted to mean “making white Christianity culturally dominant again.”

As such, we should not be surprised that in the current moment of crisis Trump is attempting to use religion to reinforce differences between his supporters and his opponents. Like Putin, he is posing as the defender of a particular version of a glorious past. And echoing Modi, he is doing this by building support through the denigration of the outsider.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/romney-joins-growing-protests-as-more-prominent-republicans-disavow-trump/

Protests are expected to continue Monday after a weekend in which the tide continued turning away from Donald Trump’s attempts to promote division and violence, while a viewing is being held in Houston ahead of the third memorial service for George Floyd, to be held Tuesday. Also Monday, former officer Derek Chauvin will be appearing in court. Through the weekend, protests continued to grow in many places, while the police response became less vicious, resulting in fewer conflicts and less violence.

One such protest included Republican Sen. Mitt Romney marching with hundreds of evangelical Christians and saying he was seeking “a way to end violence and brutality, and to make sure that people understand that Black lives matter.” Trump, of course, couldn’t resist an angry tweet. Several Democrats, including widely cited vice presidential prospects Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have joined protesters, but Romney is the first Senate Republican known to have done so.

Romney’s embrace of protest wasn’t the only sign this weekend of trouble for Trump among elite Republicans. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he will vote for Joe Biden, while former President George W. Bush said he wouldn’t vote for Trump, though he didn’t go so far as to say he’d vote for Biden. If Trump gives a speech on race, as he is reportedly considering, how many more will join them?

It’s unlikely that anyone in Trump’s base will be moved by Bush or Powell—even though many of these same people had a fervent devotion for Bush 15 years ago—but their defections may continue to shift media coverage if nothing else.

in other news:

Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, changed his story again about whether he ordered the attack on protesters outside the White House to enable Trump’s walk to St. John’s Church. Not a good look. Again.
The Minneapolis City Council announced it plans to dismantle the police department and instead have “community-led public safety.”
New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet resigned as a result of the horrifying op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for military action against protesters.

~EJ

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04062020/trump-pipeline-sign-amid-racial-justice-coronavirus

With the nation convulsed by multiple crises, President Donald Trump returned to a favorite stand-by of his presidency—asserting his authority to sweep aside environmental restraints and speed up construction of oil and gas pipelines.

But the executive order that he signed Thursday night—the third of his presidency aimed at expediting pipelines—is destined to spur more of the type of litigation that has rendered his previous directives ineffective so far.

The White House invoked the same legal authority the president has to expedite hurricane and flood response actions to declare an "economic emergency," that requires the waiving of environmental reviews and other regulations.

"This order will be a sitting duck for the sorts of legal challenges that have been so successfully brought against other Trump environmental rollbacks," said Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. "Few developers or lenders will risk millions on starting construction in reliance on this order surviving in court."

The White House provided few details on the order before the scheduled signing at 4:30 p.m. "I can tell you it does have to do some of the permitting and energy as it relates to rebuilding this country," said presidential spokesman Hogan Gidley in a brief noon appearance before reporters.

By 6 p.m., the White House had provided no copy of the order. There was no live streaming of any signing, nor any public appearance by Trump at the White House, where workers spent the day erecting tall metal barricades around the perimeter of the complex. Outside, crowds of protestors flanked the presidential residence in one of the demonstrations for racial justice that have proliferated in cities across the nation since the police killing of George Lloyd.

Finally, after 6:15 p.m., the White House made copies of the order available.

"From the beginning of my Administration, I have focused on reforming and streamlining an outdated regulatory system that has held back our economy with needless paperwork and costly delays," Trump said in the document. "Antiquated regulations and bureaucratic practices have hindered American infrastructure investments, kept America's building trades workers from working, and prevented our citizens from developing and enjoying the benefits of world-class infrastructure. The need for continued progress in this streamlining effort is all the more acute now, due to the ongoing economic crisis."

The president's critics were quick to point out that his order was poorly timed, since minority communities would be disproportionately affected by his move to waive the environmental review mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

"Today President Trump is dealing another blow to the Black community, during a worldwide pandemic and nearly a week into nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and structural racism," said Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, in a statement. "Gutting NEPA takes away one of the few tools communities of color have to protect themselves and make their voices heard on federal decisions impacting them."

The second executive order of Trump's presidency, issued in January 2017 (after his plan to repeal Obamacare), was a directive to expedite oil and gas pipelines. In his speeches, he often repeats a line about creating 48,000 jobs in his first week in office by reviving the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and the Dakota Access pipeline in the midwest.

In fact, environmental opponents of the Keystone project have so far been successful in preventing its advance with legal challenges to its water permit. And although the Dakota Access pipeline was completed, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in March won a court order for a sweeping new environmental review of the project; the judge is now considering whether the flow of oil should be stopped while the review is completed.

Legal experts expressed doubt that Trump's latest order could directly affect the outcomes in the Keystone XL or Dakota Access litigation. In the future, such litigation by states and tribes may be made more difficult by rules that the Environmental Protection Agency finalized this week in response to a 2019 Trump executive order.

Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.), the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement that it was clear that Trump is seeking to cut communities out of the process.

"By allowing projects to plow ahead without public engagement or input, this executive order will fast-track projects that could tear through communities, harm air quality, endanger drinking water sources, destroy critical habitats and threaten endangered species," said Carper. "Under the guise of immediate relief, this executive action will cause long-term damage that will not be easily undone."

Legal experts noted that Trump's use of the economic downturn to invoke environmental waivers was unprecedented. "These emergency exemptions have traditionally been used for necessary fast responses to disasters, such as clearing away debris after a hurricane, or building field hospitals," said Gerrard in an email. "They have not been used as a backdoor way of creating construction jobs."

Jayni Foley Hein, natural resources director at New York University Law School's Institute for Policy Integrity, said Trump's novel legal theory could have an effect that is precisely the opposite of what the White House intends. "In a strange way, this could create more uncertainty for project developers, as their approvals will be on shakier legal footing," Hein said.

"It's hard to say if it's bluster and posturing or if it's wishful thinking or some combination," Hein said.

But so far at least, despite his repeated efforts, Trump has been singularly unsuccessful in building pipelines with a stroke of his pen.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

one out of 3 Americans used bleach ‘in non recommended high-risk practices’ to battle coronavirus: CDC

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

One third of Americans used bleach or other household disinfectants “in non-recommended high risk practices” in attempts to reduce the spread of the deadly coronavirus, a new CDC survey finds.…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/we-are-witnessing-the-birth-of-a-movement-and-the-downfall-of-a-president/

They almost always begin to right wrongs: illegitimate wars; decades of discrimination on the grounds of gender or racial or sexual identity; killings of innocents by police or gun-toting lunatics; oppression by governments wielding unequal laws; the deeply embedded legacy of centuries of racism.

This article first appeared in Salon.

They are imperfect. Arising out of rage, they can be unfocused, inchoate, contradictory. Protesting violence, they often involve violence. Protesting oppression, they sometimes oppress by destroying public spaces, small businesses, even entire neighborhoods.

But sometimes they are large enough and powerful enough and righteous enough to bend the arc of history. We are in such a moment. There has been a turning. A protest against the murder of a black man by police in Minneapolis has become a movement. Demonstrations, which began almost two weeks ago, are ongoing. They are huge. They are nationwide. They are peaceful. They show no signs of stopping.

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

Among the extraordinary things about this moment is the fact that every single person who has taken to the streets to demonstrate is risking his or her life. People who only days ago were huddled inside their homes, afraid of a virus that has taken in excess of 110,000 lives in this country, are putting on their face masks and gathering by the tens or even hundreds of thousands, unafraid of the virus or the forces arrayed on the streets against them. They are protesting the death of a man who should not have had to die, and they are protesting the man who seemingly gave permission for him to be murdered by the intolerance and racism he has openly promoted for more than four years.

If we had any doubts that our fellow citizens would turn out to vote in November because they would be afraid of the virus or intimidated by attempts to block their votes, we have our answer. More people will turn out to vote, not less, and this has Trump very, very worried.

The show of courage on the streets has frightened Trump and his allies in the Republican Party. If you have any doubts, all you have to do is watch the scene of _{Republican senators scurrying away from MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt}_ on Capitol Hill when she asked them to comment on Trump’s disgusting and disreputable photo-op at St. John’s Church on Monday.

Trump has turned Washington into an armed camp. He has built a three-mile-long wall around the White House and cowered in a basement bunker as protests grew on the streets outside. But Trump’s threat to use active-duty soldiers to suppress dissent has encountered some profound pushback from an unexpected source: the United States military.

It began with a _{statement by former Secretary of Defense James Mattis}_ in reaction to the use of force, including National Guard soldiers, to clear peaceful demonstrators from a street near the White House so Trump could make his now-infamous “walk” to St. John’s Church for his Bible-waving photo-op. “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis wrote in The Atlantic:

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation. We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

And then something extraordinary happened. Mattis’ clarion call was joined by more senior military figures, beginning with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who had been the object of strong criticism for standing next to Trump during his Bible photo-op. Esper held a press conference at the Pentagon on Wednesday and announced that he was against invoking the Insurrection Act, which would (hypothetically) authorize the deployment of active-duty military on the streets of America. Trump is said to be very, very unhappy with Esper and reversed his order for elements of the 82nd Airborne Division to return to their base in North Carolina. By week’s end, however, Esper had prevailed, and the 82nd was on the way home.

Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Barack Obama, was next. He wrote a piece for The Atlantic entitled, “_{I cannot remain silent}_.”

“t sickened me yesterday to see security personnel — including members of the National Guard — forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump’s leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.

Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.”

Retired General John R. Allen weighed in next, _{writing ominously in Foreign Policy magazine}_, “The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.”

More retired generals weighed in later in the week, including two former chairs of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey and Richard Meyers. Both were critical of Trump’s handling of protests and opposed the use of the military to suppress dissent.

But even more extraordinary than the retired officers who spoke out was the letter from the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark A. Milley, which was _{leaked to conservative pundit Bill Kristol}_ on Thursday.Milleyis said to have had a contentious meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on Monday before joining him in his infamous “walk” down the street cleared by police and National Guard soldiers. According to _{David Ignatius of the Washington Post}_, Milley, “whose temper can match Trump’s…was vocal in reiterating his advice to the president against mobilizing troops, according to three knowledgeable sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.” That is Washington-speak for “they were yelling at each other.”

Sent to all of the other chiefs of staff for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard and commanders of combatant commands, Milley’s letter is unlike anything I have seen, and I’ve been around the military since I was born in an Army field hospital in occupied Japan in 1947.

He reminded everyone in uniform of their oath to support and defend the Constitution. I’ve never seen that done before. All service members take the same oath, but they don’t go around reminding each other about it. Milley wrote of the Constitution, “This document is founded on the essential principles that all men and women are born free and equal, and should be treated with respect and dignity. It also gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly. We in uniform — all branches, all components, all ranks — remain committed to our national values and principles embedded in the Constitution.” He went on to note specifically that the National Guard “is operating under the authority of state governors.”

For a military man, this comes close to a call for insurrection. Milley’s message is written in a code that everyone in uniform will understand implicitly. By reminding every member of the military that the soldiers currently deployed on the street around the country are not there under the authority of the president, and by reminding them of their oath to the Constitution, he is telling them that the military will not be carrying out any un-American orders issued by Donald Trump. Late Friday, Secretary of Defense Esper disarmed the National Guard doing riot duty in Washington, ordering them to turn in their weapons and ammunition. He also ordered all active duty troops amassed outside the capital earlier in the week by the White House to be sent home. He issued both orders without consulting the White House.

These generals are not politicians, but all their statements are as political as any I’ve ever seen by senior officers, retired or active duty. It’s the equivalent of lining up howitzers on Pennsylvania Avenue and aiming at the White House.

I’ll bet Trump rues the day he appointed “Mad Dog” Mattis as secretary of defense. They don’t go out and make statements like this without talking to one another. Mullen and Mattis were said to have been aware of Milley’s confrontation with the president at the time they wrote their articles on Tuesday and Wednesday. Milley and his fellow generals and admirals are giving a clear sign that the military leaders are turning against Trump. Colin Powell will reportedly be next, in an appearance on one of the Sunday morning shows.

The military is the most reliably conservative institution this country has. But inside the military establishment, the signals are being sent. They have announced that they are more reliable as defenders of the rights of their fellow citizens than the police. Without stepping over the line into insubordination, they have made it as clear as they can that their loyalty isn’t to the president. It’s to the Constitution.

I don’t think we have to worry about the military following illegal orders from Trump. At least for now, they’re on our side.

620 an raw story

Donald Trump is losing support from his evangelical base as he lurches from one crisis into another.

Numerous polls show that religious Americans, like most other Americans, disapprove of the president’s performance, and that could imperil his re-election chances, reported the New York Times.

Nearly 80 percent of white evangelicals — a group that’s already shrinking as a share of the electorate — approved of Trump’s performance in March, but his handling of the coronavirus pandemic has bled 15 points from their support, according to a new poll from Public Religion Research Institute.

“He had an opportunity in March when people were looking to him,” said Robert Jones, the institute’s chief executive, “and then within four weeks he squandered it.”

Those losses could be offset by efforts from activist group’s such as Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition, which plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to identify and register new religious conservative voters and rallying right-wing Christians.

And another PRRI poll from last year found that 31 percent of white evangelical voters said there was almost nothing Trump could do to lose their support.

i do not usually do psych stuff but

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trumps-american-fuhrer-fantasy-yale-psychiatrist-says-the-presidents-displays-of-false-strength-foreshadow-plan-to-question-election-results/

a Yale psychiatrist who has repeatedly sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s mental health warned that his “displays of false strength” foreshadow his reaction to the November election if he loses.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine, author of the textbook “Violence,” and editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” Lee, who heads the World Mental Health Coalition, focuses on public health approaches to violence prevention and has led various think tanks that seek to “draw connections between individual, community, and societal violence, as they are interrelated.”

Lee spoke to Salon after Trump threat this week to deploy the U.S. military onto American streets to quell protests and staged a photo-op in front of a church after federal forces stormed peaceful protesters outside the White House.

“He may not start culture wars, or pandemics, but his psychological structure will occupy them and turn them far deadlier,” Lee warned in an interview with Salon.

she also about Trump’s threats, the president’s enablers and what this all means for the upcoming election. Lee stressed that she speaks only for the World Mental Health Coalition, as its president, and not for Yale.

Trump declared himself an ally of peaceful protesters on Monday before federal authorities tear-gassed protesters so he could get a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church holding a Bible. What were your takeaways from the cognitive dissonance on display?

Approximately nine months ago, I devised a formula for “translating” Donald Trump’s tweets, based on long-term, repeated, real-time testing of theories about his psychology. Part of it was that mere mention indicates a reality that is important to him and one he wishes to suppress by stating the opposite. This is not just cognitive dissonance but serious disorder of psychology: when he says he is “president of law and order,” he is actually “telling us” he is president of illegality and chaos.

This means he is no ally of “peaceful protesters” but their enemy, eager to designate them as “professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others” — as he did in the next sentence. First, they are standing up for their rights, and democracy does not exist within a worldview where everyone must be an instrument of his “total authority.” Second, police brutality is something he enjoys and encourages, as when he said to a group of police officers, “When you guys put somebody in the car, please don’t be too nice.” Third, he is obviously itching for an excuse to federalize the military and step in to rescue the day. His followers have been responding to his cues and many police have been gratuitously aggressive, never mind that the protests are against police brutality.

This is how he keeps and expands illegitimate power, stays out of prison and declares himself American Führer — what he actually calls himself does not matter. A member of Congress said the president had declared war on millions of Americans and the First Amendment, and I must agree. As far as I have assessed, he declared war on reality and life itself long ago.

You’ve previously talked about Trump projecting his own flaws onto others. Was his attack on governors, decrying them as “weak,” after he retreated to the White House bunker amid protests an example of that?...

blm --> anti trump protest, loot--> shoot, "ominous force"

cohen plus macho BS, see retaliation

some say work for doj?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/department-of-justice-deploys-rogue-force-of-unidentified-armed-militia-to-patrol-dc

white house dark like hiding from trick or treat?

Trump claims he was rushed to White House bunker for an ‘inspection’ — not for fear of protesters

David Edwards / Raw StoryJune 3, 2020

President Donald Trump on Wednesday insisted that fear of protesters did not prompt him to be ushered into a White House bunker. Instead, the president said that he visited the…

st john's photo op fail

defense Secretary Esper splits from Trump: ‘I do not support invoking the insurrection act’

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

In a rare move Secretary of Defense Mark Esper split from President Donald Trump on the use of the U.S. Military in American cities.

no lnk an 620

Inside Trump’s DC military operation: 2100 soldiers in riot gear armed with bayonets for operation ‘Divine Law and Order’

President Donald J. Trump walks from the White House Monday evening, June 1, 2020, to St. John’s Episcopal Church, known as the church of Presidents’s, that was damaged by fire during demonstrations in nearby LaFayette Square Sunday evening. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement June 3, 2020

President Donald Trump hasn’t stormed U.S. cities across the country yet but as Washington. D.C. is not a state, and therefore has no governor, he can pretty much do as he pleases.

That includes a military operation on the streets of the nation’s capital, called “Operation Themis.”

“In Greek mythology,” the Associated Press reports, “Themis was a titaness of divine law and order, whose symbols are the scales of justice.”

Trump, who fancies himself a “wartime President,” as he has claimed, on Monday told America, “I am the President of law and order.”

Up to 2100 U.S. military troops in riot gear will be mobilized to maintain that “divine FElaw and order.” They will be armed, and have bayonets as well.

Walter Shaub

@waltshaub

You may think it's only a small thing that the military used helicopters to intimidate American civilians in the nation's capital. It's not. A line was crossed tonight. There will be other lines. This is Trump conditioning them to cross those lines.

no lnx

ivanka Trump ‘urged’ president’s church photo-op — which could become a ‘defining moment’ of his time in office: NYT

President Donald J. Trump and Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump arrive to attend event supporting our nation’s small businesses through the pay check protection program Tuesday, April 28, 2020, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Bob Brigham / Raw Story June 3, 2020

First daughter and senior White House advisor Ivanka Trump “urged” her father to take part in a controversial photo-op with a Bible according to a new report from The New York Times.

“After a weekend of protests that led all the way to his own front yard and forced him to briefly retreat to a bunker beneath the White House, President Trump arrived in the Oval Office on Monday agitated over the television images, annoyed that anyone would think he was hiding and eager for action,” the newspaper reported.

“He wanted to send the military into American cities, an idea that provoked a heated, voices-raised fight among his advisers. But by the end of the day, urged on by his daughter Ivanka Trump, he came up with a more personal way of demonstrating toughness — he would march across Lafayette Square to achurch damaged by fire the night before,” the newspaper reported.[9/11 rubble b43 redux?]

Hope Hicks was reportedly the brains behind the photo-op.

Paula Chertok??

@PaulaChertok

Ivanka Trump carried the Bible prop Trump posed with in her $1,540 Max Mara designer handbag in infamous photo-op 'masterminded by Hope Hicks'https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8381977/Ivanka-Trump-carried-Bible-Donald-Trump-posed-1-540-Max-Mara-handbag.html … #Maddow

Ivanka carried Bible Donald Trump posed with $1,540 Max Mara handbag

Ivanka Trump carried the bible President Donald Trump brandished in his controversial photo-op in her designer purse as she joined administration officials in the walk to St. John's Church.

dailymail.co.uk

“The only problem: A plan developed earlier in the day to expand the security perimeter around the White House had not been carried out. When Attorney General William P. Barr strode out of the White House gates for a personal inspection early Monday evening, he discovered that protesters were still on the northern edge of the square. For the president to make it to St. John’s Church, they would have to be cleared out. Mr. Barr gave the order to disperse them,” the newspaper reported.

“The scene of mayhem that preceded the walk — barely 1,000 feet from the symbol of American democracy — evoked images more commonly associated with authoritarian countries, but that did not bother the president, who has long flirted with overseas strongmen and has expressed envy of their ability to dominate,” The Times reported. “But critics, including some fellow Republicans, were aghast at the use of force against Americans who posed no visible threat at the time, all to facilitate what they deemed a ham-handed photo opportunity featuring all white faces. Some Democratic senators used words like ‘fascist’ and ‘dictator’ to describe the president’s words and actions.”

“And when the history of the Trump presidency is written, the clash at Lafayette Square may be remembered as one of its defining moments,” the newspaper noted.

Read the full report.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/george-floyd-protests-trump-puts-top-us-military-officer-in-charge.html

no lnx

waASHINGTON — In a contentious call with the nation’s governors Monday, President Donald Trump said he was putting America’s highest-ranking military officer “in charge” as protests over the death of George Floyd rock the United States for a seventh day.

“General Milley is here who’s head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, a fighter, a warrior, and a lot of victories and no losses. And he hates to see the way it’s being handled in the various states. And I’ve just put him in charge,” Trump told governors, according to audio obtained by NBC.

It was not immediately clear what Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley would be tasked with as it relates to the domestic unrest across the nation. The Pentagon added few details. “The chairman will continue to advise the secretary of Defense,” Pentagon spokesperson U.S. Army Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell said.

“As of this morning, 23 states and the District of Columbia had mobilized personnel in support of state and local authorities. Combined, they provided over 17,000 National Guard troops in support,” Mitchell added.

When asked to elaborate, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she would not “get ahead of any actions that will be announced” on the matter.

“There will be additional federal assets deployed across the nation and there will be a central command center in conjunction with the state and local governments that will include general Milley, [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper and [Attorney General William] Barr, but I won’t go any further in announcing any actions,” McEnany said during a White House press briefing.

NBC News reported that Trump has considered using the Insurrection Act, which was adopted in 1807. Under the move, he would deploy troops to respond to the demonstrations. The law was last invoked during the 1992 Rodney King riots in California, at the request of then-Gov. Pete Wilson, according to NBC.[afte 63 kia? up to 1 bill$ damage?]

The latest revelation comes as Trump called for governors on Monday to use force when confronting protesters, who have taken to the streets across the U.S. to protest Floyd’s death as well as police brutality. Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. The officer was charged with third-degree murder. An independent autopsy found that asphyxiation was the cause of Floyd’s death.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trump-tells-mayors-and-governors-most-of-you-are-weak-during-teleconference-rant-about-unrest-you-have-to-dominate/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/listen-heres-the-leaked-audio-of-trumps-unhinged-call-with-governors-and-says-they-need-to-crack-down-on-protesters/

global protests erupt in solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters in US

Julia Conley / Common Dreams

People in a number of international cities violated bans on large gatherings over the weekend to show solidarity with protests against police brutality.

an 620

trump can’t bail himself out by stoking white people’s fear of rioting ‘thugs’

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ex-fbi-official-slams-bill-barr-for-ignoring-the-right-wing-boogaloo-bois-infiltrating-protests/

Ex-FBI official slams Bill Barr for ignoring the right-wing ‘Boogaloo Bois’ infiltrating protests

Written by Bob Brigham / Raw Story May 31, 2020

Attorney General Bill Barr was slammed by the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday for misleading Americans about the source of violence at the protests over the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

“There’s evidence developing, Brian, that the organization we’re seeing of the most violent protesters is coming from a couple of disturbing places,” both, by the way, there’s disparate in terms in being from the right or the left. here’s what those who monitor these groups and sites are seeing.

“We’re seeing a far-right group, one group for example known as the Boogaloo Bois, who on their private Facebook page and social media outlets are calling for violence, calling for people to show up,” Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC’s Brian Williams.

“We’re seeing evidence in the protests that right-wing dangerous militia groups are there. We’ve seen flags and symbols that come from both Boogaloo Bois and dangerous militia groups,” he warned. “On the far-left, we’re seeing some evidence developing of global anarchists showing up.”

“So we’re seeing a strange alignment occurring by some groups who are anti-government on the right and therefore anti-police because they think the police are too oppressive to them, aligning themselves with people like Black Lives Matter and saying, ‘hey, we’re one because we both don’t like the police,’ but I’m here to tell you they are not one, their intention is to destroy government and the system of justice, as opposed to calling for justice within the system.”

“What do we do about it?” Williams asked.

“Well, ordinarily we’d rely on our system and mechanisms and rule of law, but here’s two things significant that happened today that caused me to be deeply troubled about the summer ahead. The attorney general, William Barr held a press conference where he chose selectively just the intelligence that indicates there’s far-left agitators within the protest groups,” Figliuzzi noted.

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

AG Barr: it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups, far left extremist groups using Antifa like tactics... it is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting

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“He politicized intelligence. We shouldn’t be surprised by it, but we should be disturbed that the whole truth is not getting out about all the groups that pose a threat because that goes toward whether or not law enforcement will take effective action against all groups that are violent and be allowed to take such action,” he explained.

“And then the second thing that should disturb us today is within the last hour, the president of the United States has tweeted he wants to use the unlimited power of the military with regard to these protests. Well, let me remind our viewers that we have laws in the United States that prevent the military from turning into law enforcement on the streets of America,” he reminded.

“Yet we see a direction of where this is headed: politicizing the intelligence so that only the far-left becomes the bad folks here, and then a president who seems inclined to use the military on our streets,” Figliuzzi warned.

“It’s scary stuff,” Williams said.

Watch:

no lnx twet pix

mma 520

after the president threatened to massacre civilians, Fox News focused on Twitter’s warning sticker on the tweet

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 05/29/20 10:25 AM EDT

Shortly after midnight, President Donald Trump tweeted about the ongoing civil unrest in Minneapolis, following protests over the police killing of an African-American man, George Floyd: “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

On the Friday morning edition of Fox & Friends, however, the big story about the inflammatory tweet was this: Twitter soon hid that message behind a warning, declaring it violated the service’s rules about “glorifying violence,” but still allowed the message to be viewed after the user pressed a button on the screen.

One discussion over Twitter placing a flag on the tweet lasted for over eight minutes...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/how-a-notoriously-stupid-fox-news-host-inadvertently-let-slip-trumps-corrupt-plan-media-reporter/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4673

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/how-a-notoriously-stupid-fox-news-host-inadvertently-let-slip-trumps-corrupt-plan-media-reporter

twt vi9d]

although President Donald Trump has used Twitter incessantly to promote himself, he has been furious with the social media outlet this week for fact-checking two of his tweets — so furious that on Thursday, he issued an executive order targeting social media companies and claimed that he did so to “defend free speech.” Twitter hasn’t removed any of Trump’s tweets, but flagged or hidden them as inaccurate or violent. While legal scholars have been asserting that the order cannot withstand legal scrutiny, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz stresses that it serves a useful purpose for Trump nonetheless — and that purpose has been identified by the “notoriously stupid” Fox News host Steve Doocy.

“President Donald Trump capped off a multi-day tantrum at Twitter for appending a mild fact-check to one of his false tweets by retaliating with the power of the federal government,” Gertz explains. “The executive order he signed Thursday is slapdash and incoherent, rooted in a false premise, hypocritical and potentially unconstitutional, legally unenforceable yet dangerously authoritarian, with sections that read like a Fox News screed. But to analyze the executive order’s flaws is to miss the point entirely.”

That purpose, according to Gertz, is “raising the cost of defiance until his perceived enemies break” — and the executive order “forces Twitter to expend resources fighting it, but if the company bends to Trump and does what he wants, maybe it will just go away.”

“Steve Doocy of all people — the notoriously stupid ‘Fox & Friends’ host who is one of the president’s favorite cable news personalities — (inadvertently) nailed it on Wednesday,” Gertz notes. “Social media companies would face ‘a big headache’ if Trump tried to repeal the section of federal law that the executive order targets, he exclaimed, so ‘they might think twice about putting a footnote on a tweet from the president of the United States.’”

Gertz emphasizes that with his executive order, Trump is “drawing a line between companies that defy him and are punished and those that work to benefit him and receive praise.” Trump, Gertz observes, “lauded Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for criticizing Twitter’s decision to fact-check him.”

“Zuckerberg is the poster child for what Trump wants from the head of a social media company,” according to Gertz. “The Republican political operatives he hired to run Facebook’s policy wing have carved out exemptions from the site’s rules for Trump and his media allies. Trump is making clear that it is in the interests of other social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube to adopt that same corporate strategy — and he will continue to raise the temperature until they do.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/donald-trump-just-issued-his-most-serious-threat-yet-to-free-speech

salon

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-trolls-the-libs-with-100000-dead-and-39-million-out-of-work-and-his-fanboys-love-it/

memorial Day weekend will likely be remembered by history as one marked by unimaginable tragedy. The official count of people dead from COVID-19 approached 100,000 — a milestone that will surely be passed on Tuesday or Wednesday — and the actual death toll is likely much higher. The weekend kicked off with new reports of soaring unemployment, putting the number of Americans who have filed benefit claims at 38.6 million, nearly one of every four workers in the United States.

Donald Trump, who currently occupies the White House despite losing the 2016 popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million, could not care less about all this suffering among the people he is purportedly there to serve. We know this, because he spent his weekend ranting on Twitter about pretty much anything — including obviously false conspiracy theories about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough — except the crisis he prefers to pretend isn’t happening at all.

What’s equally upsetting is the soul-deadening knowledge that Trump’s voters, who could well hand him another electoral victory even in the face of a near-certain popular vote defeat, also don’t appear to care about his sociopathic behavior. On the contrary, many of them seem to relish the fact that Trump continues to “trigger the liberals,” even as the nation falls apart around him.

Over the weekend, Trump, who isn’t exactly svelte himself,retweeted a conservative pundit mocking rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams for her weight. Trump also retweeted the same man calling Hillary Clinton a “skank” and claiming that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ugly. Sexualized harassment of women, of course, is easy to psychoanalyze away with the entirely correct assertion that pathetic men try to cover for their own inadequacies. Trump is the supposed president of the United States, however, which puts the lie to long-standing but always untrue claims that ignoring such harassment robs it of its power.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-trolls-the-libs-with-100000-dead-and-39-million-out-of-work-and-his-fanboys-love-it/

memorial Day weekend will likely be remembered by history as one marked by unimaginable tragedy. The official count of people dead from COVID-19 approached 100,000 — a milestone that will surely be passd on Tuesday or Wednesday — and the actual death toll is likely much higher. The weekend kicked off with new reports of soaring unemployment, putting the number of Americans who have filed benefit claims at 38.6 million, nearly one of every four workers in the United States.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-is-waging-a-war-on-reality-because-its-his-one-real-chance-at-reelection-columnist/

alex h

following Memorial Day Weekend on Tuesday, the United States was moving closer to a grim milestone: 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers in Baltimore. But President Donald Trump seemed oblivious, calling for states to reopen non-essential businesses sooner rather than later. Journalist Greg Sargent, in his Washington Post column, stresses that Trump’s salesman-like cheerleading is a key part of his game plan — and that he is pretending that “normalcy” is right around the corner.

“Coronavirus deaths in the United States are rapidly closing in on 100,000,” Sargent asserts. “The economic depression is stretching out ahead of us as far as the eye can see. Joe Biden is holding a steady lead in polls. So, President Trump has decided he has only one real chance at reelection: to bet mostly on his magical ability to create the illusion that we’re rapidly returning to normalcy, rather than taking the difficult concrete steps that would make that more likely to happen.”

Sargent goes on to cite some examples of Trump’s “war on reality” — such as “new rage-tweets” aimed at North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper over “whether a full” Republican National Convention “will be held under coronavirus conditions,” and a “new federal testing blueprint that largely casts responsibility on the states.”

“All these things, in one way or another, show that Trump’s war on reality has veered into a new place,” Sargent explains. “Trump is responding to our most dire public health and economic crises in modern times with a concerted, far-reaching effort to concoct the mirage that we’re racing past both.”...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ralph-nader-here-is-trumps-top-betrayal/

...Devastating critics like Dana Milbank, Republican Michael Gerson, Eugene Robinson, Margaret Sullivan, and conservative Max Boot of the Washington Post, or Charles Blow, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times have cogently taken Trump apart on very serious matters since 2017, yet they leave their readers without the obvious conclusion -Trump has to go. A clear daily peril to innocent Americans “I’m in total control”, why not try bleach, etc. The country cannot wait until January 2021 – assuming dictatorial Donald and his determined GOP don’t criminally suppress enough votes to postpone Trump’s departure until January 2025.

,,,

authoritarian

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-goes-ballistic-over-twitters-fact-check-but-he-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about

That didn’t take long.

Around 5:30 PM Twitter slapped a label on two of President Donald Trump’s tweets, inviting social media users to “get the facts about mail-in ballot.” It’s the first time Twitter has placed what some are calling a “warning label” on any individual tweet.

And while others say it’s not sufficient – Trump lies remain and the label isn’t especially strong – Trump went ballistic just two hours later.

Despite the fact that Trump was engaging in voter suppression, he is accusing Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election."

'They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post.”

Actually, his tweets are filled with lies and falsehoods, no fact-checking required.

But Trump did not stop there.

In yet another example of his belief that he is all powerful, Trump decreed, “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

The President, who has never read the U.S. Constitution and little to no understanding of it, does not comprehend that he is using a private platform operated by a private company, and the only “free speech” guarantee is when the government “stifles” it.

Twitter can do what they want. And they have.

cody f

Twitter finally took a minor step to address the deluge of distortions, lies, and blatant disinformation flowing from President Donald Trump’s account.

Now, following a pair of Trump’s bogus tweets sent Tuesday morning spreading lies about mail-in voting, Twitter has inserted an alert telling readers to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” as seen below:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/twitter-finally-takes-a-step-to-counter-trumps-online-disinformation

...[twet] Clicking the link brings readers to a page that addressed Trump’s falsehoods. It explained:

On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.

It continued:

Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to “a Rigged Election.” However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud.

– Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots.

– Though Trump targeted California, mail-in ballots are already used in some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nebraska.

While it’s important to rebut Trump’s attempt to manipulate the election and mislead the population about the integrity of American democracy, it’s easy to see how this solution from Twitter will raise further problems.

Conservatives will undoubtedly be outraged by the fact-check. Given how social media outlets have caved to faux and unjustified conservative outrage in the past, it’s easy to imagine that Twitter will respond poorly to these attacks.

It also creates the problem that the rest of Trump’s Twitter feed remains littered with disinformation and lies, including smears about President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden and a horrendous conspiracy theory insinuating baselessly that former Rep. Joe Scarborough murdered a congressional staffer. Correcting some lies and not others could create the appearance that Twitter is putting its seal of approval on misinformation.

Some, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), have advocated that Twitter ban Trump completely because of his abuse of the platform. Ultimately, someone like Trump leaves companies like Twitter in an incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, situation. The best solution is to get reckless spreaders of disinformation out of power.

wa mo economy

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/heres-how-trump-sabotaged-americas-recovery-before-covid-19-even-began

new Lancet study on hydroxychloroquine shows Trump ‘as usual, is dangerously wrong’ on COVID-19 guidance

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Trump demanded churches re-open after polls found ‘staggering decline’ in support from Christian conservatives:{:(style="font-weight:normal"):}:David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

atl mo unmanly op -ed

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-pegged-as-the-least-masculine-president-in-modern-times-by-naval-war-college-professor-in-scathing-op-ed

President Donald Trump’s supporters think of him as the ultimate alpha male, but a scathing op-ed in *The Atlantic* makes the case that he’s “the least masculine man” to be elected president in modern history.

Tom Nichols, a conservative professor at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, writes that he is baffled that blue-collar white men continue to support Trump even as the president has whiny tantrums about being treated unfairly in the media.

“Courage, honesty, respect, an economy of words, a bit of modesty, and a willingness to take responsibility are all virtues prized by the self-identified class of hard-working men, the stand-up guys, among whom I was raised,” he writes. “And yet, many of these same men expect none of those characteristics from Trump, who is a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard.”

The most damning aspect of Trump, writes Nichols, is his utter refusal to take any responsibility for his actions.

"In this category, he exhibits one of the most unmanly of behaviors: He’s a blamer,” Nichols writes. “Nothing is ever his fault. In the midst of disaster, he praises himself while turning on even his most loyal supporters without a moment’s hesitation. Men across America who were socialized by team sports, whose lives are predicated on the principle of showing up and doing the job, continually excuse a man who continually excuses himself.”

Read the whole editorial here.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/jeff-sessions-hits-back-at-donald-trump-after-the-president-endorses-senate-opponent/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/can-lindsey-graham-win-reelection-as-a-trump-enabler/

omfg baaaaaaccckkk!?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-terrifying-return-of-karl-rove-a-republican-character-assassin-joins-trumps-team/

digby

There have been many rumors in recent weeks that the Trump campaign is starting to disintegrate. This is not surprising. All you have to do is read Trump’s Twitter feed to see that the president does not like bad news and he will kill any messenger who brings it to him. Lately, there has been a whole lot of bad campaign news.

The New York Times has reported that Trump has been getting so angry at the decaying poll numbers that he yelled at campaign manager Brad Parscale and threatened to sue him during a heated phone call. (Parscale reportedly replied, “I love you too,” and flew up to Washingon right away to mend fences.)

Indeed, the polls have not been looking good for Trump, but then they haven’t looked very good his entire term. An impeached president whose approval rating has always hovered around 42% doesn’t have a lot of room for error to begin with. Now that he’s shown what a disastrous leader he is in a crisis, there very little prospect that it’s going to improve.

Naturally, Trump blames his campaign operatives for this because he will never accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Parscale has been just a bit too high-profile recently, even getting celebrity treatment from the New York Times, which is the sort of thing that makes the boss very angry. He doesn’t like to share the spotlight, particularly with someone who seems to be making buckets of money while working for him.

The Never Trumper PAC known as The Lincoln Project yanked Trump’s chain with that information this week, running another one of its ads pointedly designed to get under the president’s thin skin.[vids death star ]

setting aside the macabre tastelessness of calling your campaign operation the “Death Star” while your candidate is recklessly mismanaging a runaway epidemic that has killed close to 100,000 of his own people, even as a pop-culture reference it’s absurdly off-base. Does Parscale know that things didn’t end well for the Death Star?

Parscale has cultivated a close relationship with Jared Kushner, the son Trump never had, so he’s probably safe. But you never know with Trump. His 2016 campaign cycled through a number of campaign operatives, some of whom are now either in prison or awaiting sentencing. There have been whispers that Trump might bring back Corey Lewandowski or Steve Bannon, but Javanka never cared for either of them so they’re probably off the table. If things get really desperate, I suppose he can always pardon Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and bring them back on board.

The sad fact is that Trump’s options are limited. While the entire Republican establishment has not just capitulated to Trump but now eagerly supports him, it’s interesting to note that so many high-profile GOP campaign strategists have gone the other way. There simply aren’t very many experienced people Trump can call for help.

But there is one guy: Karl Rove, the man they used to call “Bush’s Brain,” whom George W. Bush affectionately dubbed “Turd Blossom.” Rove has backed away from active campaigning in recent years, preferring to drop his pearls of wisdom on Fox News and advise the dark-money super PAC American Crossroads, which he founded back in 2010. But reports this week suggest that despite Trump’s antipathy for the Bush family, Turd Blossom may be back in the saddle, advising Trump on how to salvage those swing states he sees slipping away.

According to NBC News, Rove has been quietly worming his way into the campaign for some time:

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has consulted Rove since the 2018 midterm elections, per three people familiar with the discussions. Before the pandemic, Rove had advised the Trump campaign it could be modeled, in some ways, after the Bush 2004 re-election race.

Of course he did. He certainly wouldn’t want to remind anyone of his total meltdown on Fox News on election night in 2012, when he refused to accept that Republican nominee Mitt Romney had lost Ohio, and with it the election, insisting that his own numbers were more reliable. Romney’s family had to call and tell Rove to back down so the candidate could concede with some measure of dignity.

In fact, Rove is a perfect addition to the Trump team. For all his reputation as a “data guy” and number-cruncher,he’s really just an old-fashioned Republican character assassin. The New York Times has reported that Rove had a recent meeting with Trump and warned him “that he had fallen behind in the task of damaging [Joe] Biden, people familiar with the meeting said.” That’s the kind of tactic in which Rove specializes.

Rove first came to national attention as George W. Bush’s campaign manager in 2000. According to James Moore and Wayne Slater’s book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” Rove was personally behind one of the most scurrilous episodes in GOP campaign history. He allegedly came up with the infamous push poll used in South Carolina to undermine support for Sen. John McCain with outright racist innuendo: “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”

But then, Rove was a Lee Atwater protégé, so what else would one expect?

Crudely tearing down the opponent isn’t the only way in which Rove is particularly suited to be a Trump adviser. He was always exalted among the Beltway press for his supposed genius in figuring out that you should attack your opponents on their perceived strengths. For instance, the Bush campaign attacked John Kerry over his Vietnam War record in the 2004 election, when that was considered Kerry’s ace in the hole. In reality, Rove was always projecting his own candidate’s weaknesses onto his opponent. In that election, Bush had had to contend with the fact that he had started a useless war in Iraq and had himself dodged the draft, so the campaign’s best recourse was to make Kerry look like a liar and a coward.

I hardly have to tell you how Trumpian that is. If Rove can get Trump to actually listen to him — which he probably won’t, since Trump won’t listen to anyone — it could be a formidable partnership.

Karl Rove won elections through the clever manipulation of the media with lots of talk about “the math,” the supposed inevitability of Republican victory and his own inflated mystique. In that regard, he mirrors Parscale, the high-living Trump campaign manager who has snookered the press into believing he’s a high-tech genius possessed of secret knowledge and endless resources. Both of them managed to slip their clients into a first term with a dubious Electoral College victory and a popular-vote defeat. It remains to be seen if Parscale can replicate Rove’s second-term victory in 2004, in which Bush won the popular vote, but almost lost the Electoral College.

Bush’s Brain and Trump’s ego are going to ride Brad Parscale’s Death Star into November. Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy flight.

Trump is screwing up so badly he may finally lose older voters Nancy LeTourneau / Washington mo520 an

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/another-trump-con-now-hes-cheating-frontline-workers-and-national-guard-troops/

89 day deploy? trms

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-knows-most-americans-dont-want-to-re-elect-him-so-hes-cheating-like-crazy/

amanda

despite his off-the-charts narcissism, Donald Trump knows on some level that the majority of Americans don’t want him to be president and he cannot win in a fair election. He didn’t beat Hillary Clinton in the popular vote in 2016 — she got nearly 3 million more votes — and only won because of the outsize influence of smaller, rural states in the Electoral College. He has only grown less popular since then and is now well behind former Vice President Joe Biden in most national polls, usually by a margin of 5 to 8 points.

But Trump has had a plan to win in 2020, ever since his re-election campaign kicked off the second he was inaugurated: Cheat like crazy.

Trying to cheat in the presidential election is, of course, what Trump was impeached for in December, which no doubt feels like ancient history, due to the rising death tolls and exploding unemployment rate over which our “very stable genius” of a president has presided since then. So here’s a refresher: Trump, anticipating (apparently correctly) that Biden would be his Democratic opponent, leveraged the power of the State Department in an effort to blackmail the Ukrainian president into publicly backing right-wing conspiracy theories about Biden, threatening to withhold military aid unless Ukrainian officials announced “investigations” into Biden. The idea was to create the 2020 version of “Clinton’s emails” by using phony investigations and innuendo to paint Biden as corrupt, even though there’s no evidence Biden did anything corrupt in his dealings with Ukraine.

Impeachment did a lot to shut down that scheme (though I have no doubt they’ll keep trying), but that doesn’t mean Trump has given up the hope that he can rig some kind of victory, even in an election when strong majorities of Americans oppose him. Since shamelessness and callousness are among Trump’s central qualities, he’s perfectly happy to exploit the coronavirus crisis to do it. Yep, that same crisis that he made exponentially worse with his negligence and open hostility to science — now he wants to use it to deprive American voters of their chance to kick him out on his keister in November.

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For obvious reasons, a numerous states have decided to dramatically increase the ability of voters to vote by mail in November, especially after the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court forced in-person voting in April, leading to a spike in coronavirus cases in the weeks afterwards. No one can assume that the virus won’t still be a threat this fall, and it’s better to prepare now for the possibility that people won’t be able to vote in person in November.

but Trump is certain — and for good reason — that if more people get to vote, he’s likely to lose. So he’s freaking out. He’s particularly sweating the possibility that voters in swing states will be able to vote by mail in large numbers, since he knows his best chance of winning those states lies in making sure that as few people vote as possible.

“Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday, in typical hyperventilating style. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”

He deleted and reposted the tweet later to reflect it was ballot applications that were sent, not ballots themselves, but kept the more disturbing false claim that it’s illegal to mail ballot applications to voters. He also threatened Nevada in similar fashion.

As Jack Holmes of Esquire pointed out, Trump is threatening two U.S. states in exactly the same way he threatened Ukraine: Claiming he will withhold funds authorized by Congress if the recipient doesn’t help him cheat in the 2020 election. This is election fraud and blackmail, but this time directed at Americans.

Not only are these tweets an effort to blackmail the states, but they are also a direct effort to scare ordinary citizens out of voting.

As political analyst Judd Legum pointed out in his newsletter, Popular Information, “Telling someone that an absentee ballot application they receive was sent to them ‘illegally’ could dissuade them from voting.”

Indeed, the tweets themselves are arguably voter intimidation, since Trump is literally trying to scare people into thinking they may be prosecuted if they fill out an application for a mail-in ballot.Voter intimidation is a federal criminal offense that could lead to jail time — except that Trump is hiding behind “executive privilege,” which has been used to argue against legal punishment for all his criminal behavior.

Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan literally warned the nation about this possibility during Trump’s impeachment hearings.

Karlan: “What would you think if, when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has provided, the President responded, ‘I would like you to do us a favor.’ I’ll... send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal."

[karlan vid]

well, the day is here and Trump isn’t even being coy about it, but belligerently trying to use the pandemic to scare people into not voting, while threatening Democratic-led states with the loss of federal funding. To justify this, Trump told more lies Wednesday afternoon, claiming that “voting is an honor” (it is in fact a right) and that “they” mail in “thousands and thousands of fake ballots,” an utterly false claim with zero evidence behind it.

What Trump is doing is illegal, and congressional Democrats know it. Sen. Kamala Harris of California noted on MSNBCthat, “it is a federal crime to withhold money from states with the purpose of interfering with people’s right to vote.”

Even threatening to do that is arguably a criminal act, especially if, as noted above, these threats are meant to scare people out of voting. Either way, it’s an abuse of power for the purpose of cheating in an election, which is precisely what Trump was impeached for last December.

I find myself physically exhausted even thinking about it, but it must be said: Democrats must consider the possibility of impeaching Trump again, and soon. What he’s doing now isn’t just as bad as what he did to Ukraine — it’s much worse, since he’s directly attacking American citizens and their constitutional right to vote. This is the Ukraine scandal on steroids. (And the Ukraine scandal was Watergate on steroids!)

It’s a terrible thing to think about, especially since Senate Republicans, who don’t care what crimes Trump commits, would just acquit Trump again. And it’s hard to imagine what another round of impeachment hearings, much less another impeachment vote, would look like in the age of the coronavirus.

Still, we know one thing about the first impeachment: It worked. It blew up Trump’s scheme to blackmail the Ukrainian president, and exposed the fraudulent nature of the conspiracy theory against Biden so thoroughly that the even Trump-curious reporters like Ken Vogel at the New York Times have been scared away from pretending there’s anything serious to these conspiracy theories about Biden.

As difficult and disheartening as another round of impeachment might be, it could be the only way to keep Trump from using the coronavirus to cheat in the 2020 election. If Democrats can impeach him for blackmailing Ukraine in this way, surely they can impeach him for blackmailing the governors of Michigan and Nevada in exactly the same way.

More important still, Trump has made no secret of his desire to cheat. He does it right out in the open, on Twitter, and will only continue to escalate these threats if there are no real consequences. A second impeachment, ugly as it will be, may be the only way to ensure a free and fair election during this pandemic.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-executive-order-directs-all-agencies-to-gut-business-regulations-amid-covid-19-the-corruption-is-on-full-display/

no lnx

trump executive order directs all agencies to gut business regulations amid COVID-19: ‘The corruption is on full display’

President Donald J. Trump arrives in the House chamber and is greeted by members of Congress prior to delivering his State of the Union address Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams May 20, 2020

In a move watchdog groups decried as an effort to reward big corporations at the expense of public health and safety, President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order directing the heads of every federal agency to “waive, suspend, and eliminate” all regulations that they consider unnecessary obstacles to economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

“And we want to leave it that way,” Trump said during a press briefing, indicating he would like to make the sweeping deregulation permanent. The president’s order could have enormous implications for workplace safety rules, environmental and labor policy, consumer protections, food and drug regulations, and more.

Robert Weissman, president Public Citizen, said the executive order shows that “instead of real, direct help for the tens of millions of Americans struggling financially due to the pandemic, or a real plan to reopen the economy safely based on the best public health expertise, Trump wants to keep giving handouts to corporate interests.”

“Trump’s corporate-friendly executive order aimed at rolling back even more regulations that protect the public isjust the latest sign that his solution to the pandemic is the opposite of what the public needs,” said Weissman. “The corruption of this administration is on full display as it uses this crisis as an excuse to further its corporate agenda while distracting the public from its utter failure to fight the virus.”

Public Citizen

@Public_Citizen

Trump is using this crisis as an excuse to further his corporate agenda while distracting the public from his utter failure to fight the virus.

The corruption is on full display. https://twitter.com/cbsnews/status/1262828680943939586 …

CBS News

@CBSNews

President Trump says he will sign an executive order directing all federal agencies "to use any and all authority to waive, suspend, and eliminate unnecessary regulations that impede economic recovery"

"And we want to leave it that way," he adds http://www.cbsnews.com/live

Embedded video

Trump’s deregulatory push amid the Covid-19 pandemic is a continuation of his administration’s policy of hacking away at as many restrictions on big business as possible prior to the crisis.

As Common Dreams reported, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has already used the coronavirus pandemic to suspend reporting rules and other requirements for the fossil fuel industry, which green groups warned gives oil companies “a green light” to pollute the nation’s air and water with impunity.

The president’s executive order instructs agency heads to “determine which, if any, [deregulatory actions] would promote economic recovery if made permanent,” giving the EPA and other agencies the go-ahead to indefinitely lift regulations on big polluters and other corporations.

“Remember when the EPA got all ‘how dare you’ about anyone saying their rollbacks were permanent? Well, now there’s an executive order that makes them so,” tweeted climate journalist Amy Westervelt. “There will be many, many more. Oil and gas royalties? Bye. Restrictions on offshore drilling? Buh-bye. This is unbelievably bad, reckless, and a complete fuck-you to democracy.”

While Trump presented his administration’s sweeping assault on regulations as an attempt to accelerate economic recovery from the coronavirus emergency, economists have disputed the longstanding right-wing notion that deregulation necessarily boosts activity and growth.

“This sounds exactly like the type of opportunistic political move that absolutely should not be attempted right now,” Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the Washington Post last month. “Correlations between regulations and economic activity are far shakier than they assume, and I don’t believe this idea will help at all.”

several stories on flaunt rule of law; author pal eg tropic top 4 of 5 covid fails

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/an-8-billion-saudi-arms-deal-a-revolving-door-lobbyist-and-a-fired-inspector-general-is-pompeo-in-trouble

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trump launches 'despicable' last-minute attack on Social Security

trump adviser Pam Bondi falters under pressure from Fox & Friends on ‘fake ballot’ claims

an 1020 incampaign call, Trump attacks Dr. Fauci and ‘these idiots’ who keep talking about COVID-19

judge strikes down Trump effort to slash food stamps for 700,000 Americans: Victory for 'basic human decency'

trump's latest harebrained election scheme goes up in smoke

pentagon officials fear Trump may order troops to put down election unrest: NYT

trump already ‘laid out the roadmap’ to cheat in the upcoming election: analyst

Alex Henderson

trump thinks he gets to be president of just the Republican states — but they’re a total mess

trump’s latest conspiracy theory seems to echo Facebook ‘antifa panic’ — and Rudy Giuliani’s BLM paranoia

1. Failed to Aggressively Regulate Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

2. Allowed a Rocket Fuel Chemical to Stay in Drinking Water...

Trump blames ‘showboaters’ for border wall fraud — and desperately tries to distance himselfJen Hayden / Daily Kos

Trump launches delusional and bewildering rant against Biden: ‘He’s against God!’Cody Fenwick

medical experts speak out as Trump repeats false claim that children are ‘virtually immune’ to COVID-19

A powerful tool

Religious imagery

Trump as savior

after the president threatened to massacre civilians, Fox News focused on Twitter’s warning sticker on the tweet

Trump demanded churches re-open after polls found ‘staggering decline’ in support from Christian conservatives:{:(style="font-weight:normal"):}:David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

Trump is screwing up so badly he may finally lose older votersNancy LeTourneau / Washington mo520 an

Trump blames ‘showboaters’ for border wall fraud — and desperately tries to distance himself Jen Hayden / Daily Kos

Trump is screwing up so badly he may finally lose older voters Nancy LeTourneau / Washington mo520 an