Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

[Go Bama]

August 16, 2020 (Sunday)

Mrs. Richardson took the day off. On these off days she posts a paragraph just to let us know what else is going on in her life.


August 17, 2020 (Monday)


Today’s big news was the opening of the Democratic National Convention. Before it happened, though, Trump set up exactly what he stands for. Between him and the Democrats, the messaging for the upcoming election is clear.

Yesterday, Trump raised eyebrows when he retweeted an account that said: “Leave Democrat cities. Let them rot…. [Walk Away] from the radical left. And do it quickly.” His retweet sparked outrage, with British journalist Mehdi Hasan noting “If Obama had retweeted someone saying ‘leave Republican states. Let them rot’ it would have been a multi-week, multi-month political scandal requiring clarifications and apologies from every top Dem. With Trump, it won’t even register in *today’s* headlines.”
On a campaign swing in Minnesota, Trump made clear his message for the election. He repeatedly insisted that Biden “is the puppet of leftwing extremists,” who will “replace American freedom with leftwing fascism.” He harped again and again on the words “leftwing” and “fascist.” He warned that America would face “crime, chaos, corruption and economic collapse” if he is not reelected, although of course that is precisely where we are now. It is a difficult argument for an incumbent to make under these circumstances.

Trump continues to signal to his base, today by slashing business regulations. This was more to signal his values than to make changes, since today’s actions are not actually widely sought by business leaders. He overturned an Obama-era regulation on methane emissions, aimed at finding and plugging the methane leaks that annually produce about 13 million metric tons of the gas that is a primary contributor to climate change. Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil had all supported the regulations, but Trump’s new rules will stop measuring the leaks.

He also approved a plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. In 2017, Congress required the Interior Department to begin to open up the region. The new land would be a game changer, except that oil companies are doing so well in the middle of the country—Texas, North Dakota and so on—that they have little interest in undertaking expensive exploratory actions. “We may not need those resources today but we will eventually,” said Dan Eberhart, an oil executive and major Republican donor.

And Trump is focusing on culture wars. Over the course of the day, the Republicans announced some of the people who would participate in the Republican National Convention. Their numbers include Nick Sandmann, the smirking young man in a MAGA hat who faced off against a Native American activist, Nathan Phillips, outside the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019; and the St. Louis couple, Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in July 2020.

Trump also announced that he will give the speech accepting his renomination at the White House, breaking norms and probably breaking ethics laws. Likely to distract from the Democratic convention, he announced that he’s “doing a pardon tomorrow on somebody that’s very very important.” The White House press secretary says it's not his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn or Edward Snowden, who leaked highly classified information, and who has now fled for refuge to Russia. We’ll see.

But things are not going Trump’s way. While he exacerbates divisions in our society, more than 165,000 Americans have died of coronavirus. And while he has pressured schools to reopen, even willing administrators are finding his wishes cannot override reality. After great pressure to open up, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, this afternoon sent its undergraduates home after the university saw four hot spots of at least 177 positive cases.

In the past two days, important voices have deserted Trump. Yesterday, William H. McRaven, former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011-2014, warned that “President Trump is actively working to undermine every major institution in this country. He has planted the seeds of doubt in the minds of many Americans that our institutions aren’t functioning properly. And, if the president doesn’t trust the intelligence community, law enforcement, the press, the military, the Supreme Court, the medical professionals, election officials and the postal workers, then why should we? And if Americans stop believing in the system of institutions, then what is left but chaos and who can bring order out of chaos: only Trump. It is the theme of every autocrat who ever seized power or tried to hold onto it.”

Today, Miles Taylor, a member of the leadership team of the Department of Homeland Security from 2017-2019, published an op-ed in the Washington Post warning that the president governs “by whim, political calculation, and self-interest.” He has tried to turn the DHS into a political tool to serve his interests, calling, for example, for DHS to pull migrant families apart deliberately as a deterrent from asking for asylum. Trump’s “inappropriate and often absurd” requests, “at all hours of the day and night,” diverted DHS from “dealing with genuine security threats.” The president, he says, has made America “profoundly less safe.”

Adding a voice to the mounting opposition to the president, today “Anonymous,” who has occasionally written critiques of the administration, allegedly from within it, wrote that Trump is destroying our rules and regulations, and that we must get him and his ilk out of our politics.

That was a theme embraced by the Democratic National Convention, which began tonight. Held on-line because of the coronavirus, it marked a new kind of political engagement by entering the virtual world to which we have increasingly moved in the past twenty or more years. Without hoopla or crowds, the convention was intimate and interesting. There were a variety of backgrounds and people, and no interminable speeches punctuated with dutiful applause. The speeches felt more personal and less political than normal, a feeling that will serve the Democrats well after four years when absolutely everything is political and most of us are tired of it.

The DNC programming was designed to feel inclusive. The theme was “We the People,” and the evening began with the voices and pictures of young Americans from all walks of life singing. Soon they were replaced by a video of Americans working together, set to Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising.” The evening’s events focused on America’s youth and its people of color.

Their line-up tried to include everyone opposing Trump, from Ohio Governor John Kasich, who remains a Republican even though he is supporting Biden, through the political spectrum to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, billionaire executive Meg Whitman, and former Representative Susan Molinari all talked about their support for Joe Biden. They were invited to speak both to give teeth to arguments the opposition to Trump is bipartisan, and to give an off ramp to Republicans who need to have some big Republican names to follow off the Republican ticket this year.

But their speeches were less effective than testimonials from ordinary Americans who have lost family members to Covid-19, or who have been on the front lines fighting the disease, delivered from their homes. Most of Biden's rivals for the nomination spoke on his behalf, too. Emphasizing that the new Democratic Party wants to include everyone, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spoke in front of a wall of stacked wood to say that he would "work with liberals, moderates, and yes, conservatives" to protect democracy.

(Seeing Sanders in front of a woodpile, Charles Pierce tweeted: “Bernie is the candidate who took himself to the woodshed.”)

Michele Obama delivered tonight’s keynote address. She emphasized justice and empathy and the power of words to heal or destroy in a speech so powerful even the Fox News Channel had to applaud it. Her best framing for the election, though, was her sad dismissal of Trump not for any of the combative actions that his base loves so much, but rather for lack of ability. “Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can: Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country…. He is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”

The evening ended with guitarist Stephen Stills playing his famous protest song “For What It’s Worth,” with young African American singer Billy Porter singing the words. It was a vignette of the passing of the torch from one generation to another.

Conservative commentator Bill Kristol said: “I figured they’d be savvy enough to do no harm. But that was an impressive, even compelling, couple of hours."

Biden got very little airtime on this, the convention’s first night, although there were retrospectives of his life and explorations of his support for his colleagues as well as ordinary Americans. But what he did say was important: “We are the United States of America. There’s not a single thing we cannot do if we do it together.”

 

[Go Bama]

August 18, 2020 (Tuesday)


Trump today celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, protecting women’s right to vote, by announcing that he would pardon suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who was arrested in 1872 for the “crime” of voting. Scholars of suffrage note that Anthony would not want a pardon. “Anthony WANTED to be arrested and convicted and hoped to take her case all the way to the Supreme Court,” wrote historian Marjorie Spruill, “claiming that as a citizen, her right to vote was established by the 14th Amendment. However, because a well wisher paid her fine without consulting her, her case was closed and she was not able to proceed further through the court system. She was furious!”

Deborah L. Hughes, president and CEO of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House added that Anthony would oppose a pardon because it would give validity to a case she believed invalid. Hughes told Washington Post reporter Samantha Schmidt that the White House did not consult with the museum before deciding on the pardon.

That oversight might be because highlighting Anthony was designed to please a different audience than scholars and those excited about women’s participation in politics. Anti-abortion forces incorrectly see Anthony as one of their own, and claim her despite a lack of evidence she cared much about the issue at all. After appearing at Tuesday’s event at the White House, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List appeared at Tuesday’s event, then celebrated the “sweet moment,” because Anthony “fought for the rights of all, including the unborn.”

At the suffrage event, reporters asked Trump for his reaction to former First Lady Michelle Obama’s address last night at the Democratic National Convention, a speech widely seen as particularly strong.

Trump’s response was a weird self-own that showed the degree to which he focuses exclusively on media and what will make him look best in a particular moment, with no longer strategy. He said, “Well she’s in over her head, and frankly, she should’ve made the speech live, which she didn’t do. She taped it. And it was not only taped, it was taped a long time ago, because she had the wrong deaths….” Trump meant that Mrs. Obama had cited the number of Americans dead from Covid-19 as 150,000, when the number is actually now more than 170,000. Not something one would think he wants to highlight.

Today Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump loyalist and mega-donor who imposed new rules on the USPS shortly after he took office in June, was forced to announce that he will postpone his overhaul of the USPS until after the election. Americans have been outraged over mail delays and the president’s announcement that his administration’s squeeze on the USPS was designed to hurt the Democrats in November by undercutting mail-in voting. DeJoy is facing Senate hearings on Friday, and House hearings on Monday. Lawmakers will undoubtedly want to hear why the Department of Veterans Affairs has had to go to private companies like FedEx and UPS to get medication to their patients, when previously, the USPS handled about 90% of all VA mail-order prescriptions.

But DeJoy’s statement did not address that, according to an internal USPS planning document obtained by CNN, 95% of the mail sorting machines marked for removal should already be gone.

Today the Senate Intelligence Committee released the fifth and final volume from its investigation of “Russian Active Measure, Campaigns, and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election.” The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee is currently chaired by Republican Marco Rubio (R-FL), although most of the work in the report was done under Republican Richard Burr (R-NC), who stepped down as chair amid allegations of insider trading over information received in a classified briefing over coronavirus. This is a committee run by Republicans.

It concluded that there were extensive connections between Russian operatives and Trump campaign officials in 2016 that “represented a grave counterintelligence threat." Campaign chair Paul Manafort repeatedly communicated over encrypted channels with Konstantin Kilimnik, his Ukraine business partner who was also, the report establishes, a “Russian intelligence officer.” Manafort shared the campaign’s sensitive polling data with Kilimnik. The report also notes that Manafort consistently lied about his interactions with Kilimnik, and was willing to go to jail rather than tell the truth about them.

The report also established that the White House “significantly hampered” the committee’s investigation and coordinated stories before witnesses talked to the committee, and that there was “significant evidence” that WikiLeaks, which dropped emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, was “knowingly collaborating with Russian government officials.” Document drops were timed to protect Trump from bad news stories, most obviously the tape of him boasting of sexual assault.

Despite their awareness of this material, Republican Senators refused to hear witnesses at Trump’s impeachment trial, and voted not to convict him.

In any normal year, the big news of the day would have been that today was the second day of the Democratic National Convention, held tonight with actress Tracee Ellis Ross as emcee.

Tonight was the business portion of the convention, and the business at hand was for Democratic delegates to nominate former Vice President Joe Biden for president. First, delegates entered into consideration two candidates: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden (delegates for the other candidates have been allocated to either Sanders or Biden according to a complicated formula). There was much consternation when progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) seconded the nomination of Sanders instead of Biden, but only among those who have not dealt with conventions: his delegate count required a nomination and it was an honor to hold a nominating slot. AOC explained with her usual style: “If you were confused, no worries! Convention rules require roll call & nominations for every candidate that passes the delegate threshold. I was asked to 2nd the nom for Sen. Sanders for roll call. I extend my deepest congratulations to [Joe Biden] - let’s go win in November.”

The DNC managed the nomination process virtually in clever videos from each state and territory that served as reminders that the theme of this convention is “We the People.” Delegates stood in front of iconic scenes from their states and told a little of their own history in a process that clipped along much faster than an in-person convention. The virtual trip around the country started in Selma, Alabama with a tribute to the late Representative John Lewis, then traveled around the country until Biden’s home state of Delaware claimed the honor of putting Biden over the top for the nomination at about 10:19 p.m. The new system was so well-received it would surprise me if it doesn’t become the norm.

The theme of the night was leadership. The first item on the list was health care. Progressive activist Ady Barkan, who is grappling with ALS and who first endorsed Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and then Sanders, recorded a powerful spot for Biden. Then former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State John Kerry, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, all endorsed Biden’s foreign policy chops.

The convention also highlighted rising Democratic leaders, and emphasized working across differences to build coalitions. To that end, Arizona Senator John McCain’s widow, Cindy, narrated a video recalling the friendship between Biden and McCain (R-AZ), implying that it was McCain’s friendship for Biden that led to McCain’s historic vote to buck Trump and save the Affordable Care Act.

Once again, though, it was the keynote that anchored the evening. Jill Biden’s earnest recounting of individual stories of community and love were a signal moment in U.S. history. They were a direct contrast to the vignettes of individuals crushed by the government that Ronald Reagan deployed in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” the speech that launched his national political career. Reagan’s vision of the world ushered in a world of toxic individualism; the vision of Dr. Biden, a teacher, offers to reclaim community and social responsibility.

Dr. Biden used the story of her life with Biden, surviving tragedy and rebuilding, as a metaphor for the country. She highlighted the good in Americans, and reminded that “we need leadership worthy of our nation.”

 

[92tide]

August 18, 2020 (Tuesday)

Reagan’s vision of the world ushered in a world of toxic individualism;

imho, this needs to be said often. it has a lot to do with the situation we find ourselves in as a country

 

[Go Bama]

imho, this needs to be said often. it has a lot to do with the situation we find ourselves in as a country

That line caught my attention too. I like the idea of all able bodied people being responsible for their own well being. IMO, this is what Reagan meant also. Instead what has happened is more of an every man for himself attitude with Republicans. Kind of a "screw you, I have my own problems" attitude. As a result, most of the money is in just a few hands.

 

[Go Bama]

August 19, 2020 (Wednesday)


In a sign of just how rough things have been lately, I read the news today and thought, “Oh, good. Nothing much has happened today, so tonight’s Letter can focus on tonight’s Democratic National Convention.”

Here’s the “nothing much”:

This morning, Trump urged Americans not to buy Goodyear tires because of a rumor that the company had banned MAGA hats. Goodyear tweeted that its policy had been misconstrued, but Goodyear stock dropped more than 2% after the president’s tweet. The company’s headquarters are in Akron, Ohio, a city in an important swing state for the upcoming election. Goodyear employs about 63,000 people. But if his call for a boycott hurts the company, Trump said, workers will “be able to get another good job."

On Twitter, the City of Akron, Ohio responded: “Goodyear has believed in this community for generations, investing in the power, tenacity and honest people of the heartland, which is more than we can say for this president. # WeStandWithGoodyear”

At a press conference this afternoon, Trump appeared to endorse QAnon, the conspiracy-theory group that believes Trump is secretly undermining a ring of elite pedophiles and cannibals who have taken over the highest ranks of world government and economy. The FBI assesses that the spread of QAnon will likely lead to more domestic terrorism and is a threat to national security. When asked about the group, the president said “I don't know much about the movement other than, I understand, they like me very much which I appreciate.... I have heard that it is gaining in popularity ... I heard these are people who love our country." A reporter followed up: “QAnon believes you are secretly saving the world from this cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Are you behind that?” Trump responded: “Is that supposed to be a bad thing? We are actually. We are saving the world.”

Reporter Ally Mutnick in Politico today pointed out that Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image. In districts with safe Republican seats, the ticket to winning primaries this year was to cling tight to the president. As a result, the Republican ranks next year will have Trump loyalists, including QAnon supporters, where there previously were Republicans willing to criticize the president. The new Republicans’ only political principle is blind devotion to Trump.

The scandal in the United States Postal Service continued to grow, as we learned that the USPS refused to share with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) information about how its board of governors chose new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump loyalist. It appears Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was involved in the selection, suggesting inappropriate political influence.

Yesterday, DeJoy stated that he was halting further changes to the USPS until after the election, but today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed that DeJoy has no plans to replace the sorting machines and post boxes already removed on his orders.

Yesterday’s Senate Intelligence Report on connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives is beginning to attract the media notice it deserves. Authored by a Republican-dominated committee, the report established that Konstantin Kilimnik, the longtime business associate of Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, is a Russian intelligence officer. While chairing Trump’s campaign, Manafort both communicated often with Kilimnik in encrypted conversations and gave him sensitive internal polling data from the campaign. The report says Kilimnik may have been directly involved in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails and handing the stolen files to Wikileaks. The report also establishes that Trump repeatedly discussed the Wikileaks document dumps with operative Roger Stone, then lied about those discussions with investigators.

Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin today published an article titled “As it turns out, there really was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.” Norman Eisen, lawyer for the House impeachment managers, told her: “Collusion simply means Trump and those around him wrongly working together with Russia and its satellites, and the fact of that has long been apparent…. Indeed, it was clear to anyone with eyes from the moment Trump asked, ‘Russia, if you’re listening.’… The Senate report is a valuable contribution advancing our understanding, including explaining former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort’s nexus to Russian intelligence. The report further elucidates our understanding of collusion via WikiLeaks, which acted as a Russian cut-out.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi focused not on 2016 but on the present, noting that “America’s intelligence and law enforcement communities have made clear that the Russian Government is continuing to wage a massive intervention campaign to benefit the President, warning of a ‘365-days-a-year threat’ to compromise the 2020 elections and undermine our democracy.” She noted that the very first thing the Democrats did when they took a majority in the House was to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, to secure our elections, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has refused to take the bill up.

And now, tonight’s Democratic National Convention….

With actress Kerry Washington as emcee, the convention tonight first focused on the power of immigrants and investment in green energy to create jobs and protect the planet. Then it turned to a celebration of women in politics.

A hundred years after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote, American women are redirecting American democracy to a new emphasis on community and inclusion. In her segment tonight, Pelosi—the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives-- noted that there are now 105 women in the House (this number includes women delegates from American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands). Ninety are Democrats.

Tonight’s DNC emphasized issues important to women, including the provision of childcare as national infrastructure and legislation addressing domestic violence. It showed images of women who “make trouble… the good kind.”

Former Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords, shot in the head in 2011 as she held a constituent event, set the message for the evening: "Today, I struggle with speech, but I have not lost my voice. America needs all of us to speak out, even when you have to fight to find the words. We are at a crossroads. We can choose to let this continue or we can act." She implored listeners to vote.

In a somber speech, former President Barack Obama warned that, in this election, American democracy is at stake. He outlined the strengths he sees in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, then warned people not to let “this president and those in power… those who benefit from keeping things the way they are… [to] take away your power. Don’t let them take away your democracy…. What we do echoes through the generations.”
It was a powerful speech—one for the ages, really—and it set up the night’s final speaker, California Senator Kamala Harris, now the Democratic candidate for vice president.

Harris tied Obama’s theme to her own story as the American-born child of immigrants, reminding us that America is a “a beloved community where all are welcome.”

But not everyone sees America that way. “I think we need to ask ourselves, why don't they want us to vote?” she said. “Why is there so much effort to silence our voices? And the answer is because when we vote, things change. When we vote, things get better…. Years from now, this moment will have passed. And our children and our grandchildren will look in our eyes and ask us: Where were you when the stakes were so high? ... And we will tell them. We will tell them, not just how we felt. We will tell them what we did."

 

[Go Bama]

August 20, 2020 (Thursday)


Sheesh. What a day.

It began last night, while I was writing last night’s letter, when shortly after midnight we learned that Alexei Navalny, outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, has apparently been poisoned. He collapsed in pain on an airplane after drinking tea at Russia’s Tomsk airport. The plane made an emergency landing, meeting medics who raced Navalny to the hospital, where he is gravely ill. The poisoning is a chilling reminder of Putin’s tactics just days after the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election established that the Trump campaign invited his influence into our affairs.

Then, today, federal prosecutors in New York acting for a grand jury indicted Steve Bannon, Brian Kolfage, and two others for fraud and money laundering in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $25 million to build a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico. The men told donors to “We the People Build the Wall” that “100% of the funds raised… will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose,” and that “we’re a volunteer organization.” In fact, they allegedly pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, routing the money through a shell company and false invoices.

The indictment quotes text messages between the men indicating they were quite deliberately running a scam. The messages highlight how the Republican system of fundraising from small donors, pioneered by direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie in the 1960s to fund Movement Conservatives rejected by traditional Republicans, now is used to funnel money from unsuspecting marks into the pockets of people who stoke rightwing outrage.

Bannon’s arrest means that two of Trump’s 2016 campaign chairs—Paul Manafort and Bannon-- have now been indicted and arrested on charges of fraud. The third, Corey Lewandowski, was also arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge against a reporter, but while video proved the reporter’s account was accurate, the charge was dropped. The campaign’s deputy chairman, Rick Gates, an associate of Manafort, was also charged with financial crimes and conspiracy, and was sentenced to 45 days in jail after agreeing to cooperate with investigators.

Trump immediately tried to distance himself from Bannon, saying he hadn’t “been dealing with him for a very long period of time.” Bannon was the chief executive of Trump’s 2016 campaign, replacing Manafort, and upon entering the White House, Trump named Bannon to a newly created position as “chief strategist” on a level with the chief of staff. So influential in the early administration was Bannon that Trump gave him a full seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council, while pushing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence down to occasional attendees. Bannon left the White House after the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally highlighted the dangers of having an open white nationalist in the White House. Then-White House chief of staff John Kelly asked Bannon to leave. But at least for a while, Trump continued to call Bannon when Kelly was not around.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement saying Trump “has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the Administration, and he does not know the people involved with this project.” In fact, supporters of the project include Donald Trump, Jr., his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, and anti-immigrant activist Kris Kobach. Last year, Kobach said Trump had given the effort his blessing, and there is a testimonial from Trump Jr. on their website. Trump Org spokeswoman Amanda Miller said Trump Jr. had given one speech at one of their events, and they used his words as a testimonial without his permission.

Bannon pleaded not guilty and was released on a $5 million bail bond secured with $1.75 million in cash. “This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall,” he told reporters as he left the federal courthouse.

The arrests set off a tweet storm from the president. Trump also called into the show of Fox News channel personality Sean Hannity tonight, claiming again that mail-in voting will create a fraudulent election and emphasizing—in unfortunate words about sending law enforcement to polling places—that he plans to deploy all the means he can to challenge the 2020 vote.

Today a federal judge rejected the argument of Trump’s lawyers that the subpoena of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. for eight years of Trump’s tax returns is “wildly overbroad.” Judge Victor Marrero upheld the subpoena. Trump’s lawyers immediately indicated they would appeal the decision.

Meanwhile, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling last year by a federal appeals court that he may not block his critics on Twitter. The lower court said that since Trump uses the account for official announcements, he violates the First Amendment whenever he blocks someone and silences them. Today his lawyers argued that his account is his personal property and that he does not have to tolerate opposing views on it. Blocking critics would enable Trump to control what his followers see on his account, preventing visible pushback to his tweets. In effect, he could dominate the discourse in a public space.
Trump certainly has critics.

Deborah L Hughes, the director of the Susan B. Anthony museum, today rejected Trump’s pardon for Ms. Anthony, saying the pardon validated a legal process Anthony called an outrage.

Then, shortly before the Democratic National Convention kicked off tonight, more than 70 senior national security officials from the Republican Party released a letter announcing that they are supporting Biden in 2020. Their letter lists ten reasons Trump has “failed our country.” Donald Trump, they write, “is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

Tonight was the night that former Vice President Joe Biden gave his acceptance speech in response to the Democratic Party’s nomination of him as their presidential candidate.

Tonight was Biden’s, as military families and former service people testified to his support for them, 13-year-old Brayden Harrington explained how Biden helped him deal with his own stutter (huge props for this young man taking on this assignment and executing it so well), Biden’s former rivals for the nomination talked of Biden’s kindness and decency, and, above all, Biden’s family emphasized again and again that for Biden, family and faith is everything. The picture was of a fundamentally decent and moral man, a striking contrast to his Republican rival.

The Democratic National Committee has pulled off an astonishing accomplishment with this, the nation’s first virtual political convention. It was tightly choreographed, inclusive, passionate, and fun, drawing in viewers with its variety and quick pace. It demonstrated professionalism, talent, and skill even without taking into account its content.

But the content was key. Rather than weakening the event, the lack of audience created an intimacy between speakers and viewers that lent a shining new authenticity to the voices the convention highlighted.

Biden is always a better speaker than people who know him for his gaffes expect, and tonight he hit it out of the park. On FNC, Chris Wallace noted that the Trump campaign’s attempt to convince voters Biden is mentally impaired backfired badly as he delivered “an enormously effective speech.”

Rather than simply outline his plan for his presidency, Biden also gave an impassioned plea for the nation, tying his love for it to his own life and values. He treated voters not as tools to be manipulated, but as people who can be trusted to choose their own future.

“America is at an inflection point,” he said. “A time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities. We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided. A path of shadow and suspicion. Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light. This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time. Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And most importantly, who we want to be. That’s all on the ballot. And the choice could not be clearer.”

 

[Go Bama]

August 21, 2020 (Friday)


After the cascade of news in the past several days and the Democratic National Convention, today was a relatively calm day… at least in politics.

There are, though, some important stories.

The first is getting less play than it should: the nation has lately been hit by a series of environmental catastrophes. California is in the midst of a brutal heat wave, and has been hit by 560 fires, many of them sparked by lightning. Some of the fires have come together to create two dozen large and complex conflagrations. Land the size of Rhode Island has been burned over, six people have died in the fires, and one hundred thousand Californians have been evacuated from their homes. Air quality is dangerously bad.

California’s ability to fight the fires has been hampered by a lack of prison inmates, who have been used to fight fires since the 1940s. Usually the state can mobilize 192 inmate firefighting crews, but this year, the coronavirus has thinned their ranks both from disease and from release, as the state sent inmates home to relieve crowded facilities and slow the virus’s spread. Less than half the crews are available this year.
Inmate firefighters make up to $5.12 a day (that’s not a typo) and earn two days off their prison sentence for each day firefighting. Each year, they provide about 3 million hours of emergency response time to the state.

In an extremely rare weather event, two tropical depressions—Laura and Marco-- are currently developing in the Gulf of Mexico. If they become hurricanes, the event will be unique: never before in recorded history has the Gulf had two hurricanes at the same time. Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Diamond notes that the town of Chauvin, Louisiana, has the dubious honor of being located at the site where both forecast cones overlap.

Illinois and Iowa were hit with a “land hurricane” or “derecho” on August 10. The winds of up to 110 miles per hour damaged homes and businesses in Iowa and destroyed at least 10 million acres of crops. Many are still without power. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R) asked for $3.9 billion in federal aid on Sunday, and Trump tweeted that he had “Just approved (and fast) the FULL Emergency Declaration for the Great State of Iowa.”

But, in fact, he approved only about $45 million in aid to repair government buildings and utilities and remove debris from them. He did not fund assistance for homeowners or farmers. This appears to reflect the Republican conviction that the federal government has no role to play in providing a safety net for individuals.

There are a few political stories as well today.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the Senate. He acknowledged that the changes he has made at the United States Postal Service have slowed mail delivery—the LA Times had a ghastly story today about rotting parcels and shipments of dead chickens in mail facilities in California—but says he will not replace the sorting machines he has had removed because “they’re not needed.” He promises the USPS will be able to handle the expected volume of mail-in ballots this fall, and insisted he had made “no changes in any policies with regard to election mail for the 2020 election.” In fact, internal USPS documents show clearly that the USPS intended to treat ballots according to their marked postage, rather than all as first-class mail, as it has done in the past. Treating ballots as bulk mail would have slowed delivery.

The Senate hearing before the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was announced after the House Oversight Committee had arranged a hearing for Monday with DeJoy and USPS Board of Governors Chair Robert Duncan. While senators of both parties today expressed concerns over delays in the mail, the hearing was much friendlier than Monday’s, in front of a committee led by Democrats, is likely to be.

Trump’s apparent embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory has put Republicans in an uncomfortable spot. The victory of QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene in her conservative district in Georgia Tuesday means she will likely be going to Congress, along with her racism, anti-Semitism, and adherence to the belief that Trump is leading a secret crusade to purge the world of a gang of pedophiles and cannibals who have taken over governments and economies. When Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger tweeted that there is “no place in Congress” for QAnon, Greene retorted: “He’s a never Trumper who did nothing to stop the Russian collusion conspiracy/witch hunt…. America can’t afford any more RINOs!” (A “RINO” is a “Republican in Name Only," an epithet used since the 1990s to purge the party of moderates.)

“If she’s the future of the Republican party, we’re in trouble,” said freshman Representative Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who was replaced in his primary by a far-right candidate. And there’s the rub for Republican leaders: QAnon supporters like Trump, but their extremism threatens to turn off all but fellow extremists. So far, Republican leaders have been quiet about the QAnon believers in their midst, but there are rumblings of discontent from lower lawmakers at the inclusion of conspiracy theorists in their caucus.

There are signs that some Republican candidates are desperate. In Arizona, Martha McSally, who was appointed to her seat by Governor Doug Ducey in late 2018 after losing an election for Arizona’s other senate seat, is running significantly behind her Democratic challenger, former astronaut Mark Kelly. (Kelly is married to former Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords.) Tonight, news leaked that at a recent event McSally said: “We’re doing our part to catch up, you know, to get our message out. But it takes resources. So, anybody can give, I'm not ashamed to ask, to invest. If you can give a dollar, five dollars, if you can fast a meal and give what that would be.” After pushback on Twitter over the statement that people should go hungry to fund her campaign, a spokesperson said McSally had been joking.

The president’s tax returns were back in the news again today. Yesterday, Federal Judge Victor Marrero dismissed the president’s argument that the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena for eight years of his taxes was “wildly overbroad.” Marrero permitted the subpoena to stand. Trump’s lawyers then filed an emergency motion to block a grand jury from obtaining the records. The court today denied their request and scheduled a hearing about the matter on September 1. Trump’s lawyers have argued that the presidency makes Trump “constitutionally different” from other people, and thus should be treated differently than others. The court disagrees. Yesterday’s decision prompted Trump to complain, “This is just a continuation of the most hideous witch hunt in the history of our country.”

Finally, the White House has made no statement on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. European leaders as well as American politicians of both parties have condemned the attack.

 

[Go Bama]

August 23, 2020 (Sunday)


Trump is running far behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the polls. In early February 2020, at its best, his overall popularity rating hovered close to 50%. In the same month, according to a Gallup poll, 63% of Americans approved of the way he was handling the economy. To keep this economic success story going, Trump downplayed the coronavirus, leaving us wide open to its devastation. It hit the U.S. in earnest shortly after this poll was taken. The economy shut down, and we plummeted into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

But Trump is determined to be reelected, so determined that he has begun to suggest he will not accept a Biden victory as valid. There is room to speculate about why he is so obsessed with reelection that he took the unprecedented step of filing for reelection way back in January 2017, on the day of his inauguration. One possible answer is that campaign money can be used to pay for lawyers under certain circumstances. As of May, the campaign had spent more than $16 million on legal services—in comparison, George W. Bush spent $8.8 million; Barack Obama spent $5.5 million; and, in May, Biden had spent just $1.3 million. Another possible answer is that the Department of Justice maintains that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

To pull off a win Trump is trying to guarantee loyal Republican voters will show up to vote. To that end, he is favoring evangelical voters, his most loyal bloc. Last week’s posthumous pardon for Susan B. Anthony was a gift to anti-abortion activists; yesterday Trump explicitly called the attention of evangelical Christians to his lie that “The Democrats took the word GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democrat National Convention.” (They didn’t. The Muslim caucus and the LGBTQ caucus, both of which met privately, left the words “under God” out. All the public, televised events used the words.)

This morning he was more abrupt. He tweeted: “Happy Sunday! We want GOD!” And then he went golfing.

He is also trying to consolidate power over Republican lawmakers, making the party his own. The Republican National Convention starts tomorrow night, and it seems it will be the Trump Show. The convention was initially supposed to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then Trump moved it to Jacksonville, Florida, when North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, would not guarantee he could have full capacity despite the coronavirus. Finally, in the wake of the under-attended Tulsa rally, Trump recognized that the convention would have to be virtual. But this has left planners scrambling to plan a convention in four weeks, when planning one usually takes a full year. No one seems quite sure what is going to happen.

It is traditional for a candidate to put in a short appearance to acknowledge the nomination and then give a keynote acceptance speech on the last day. But the RNC’s announced line-up features Trump speaking every night in the prime-time slot. The speakers include the First Lady and all of the adult Trump children, including Tiffany, but do not include any of the previous Republican presidents or presidential nominees, which is unusual.

Trump will speak live from the White House. This raises legal questions because while the president and vice-president are not covered by the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities, the rest of the White House staff is. Further, it is against the law to coerce federal employees to conduct political activity.

Vice President Mike Pence will also speak from federal property—possibly Fort McHenry— the First Lady will speak from the newly renovated Rose Garden, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will apparently speak from Jerusalem while on an official trip to the Middle East, although secretaries of state generally do not speak at either political convention. Democrats have raised concerns about the overlap between official property and business and the Trump campaign.
The Republicans have written no platform to outline policies and goals for the future. Instead they passed a resolution saying that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” The party appears now to be Trump’s.

But….

The Republicans’ next resolution calls on the media “to engage in accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for President Trump and his Administration.” And a final resolution prohibited the Republicans from making any motions to write a new platform.

If you read that carefully, you see people trying to convince everyone that they are united, when they are, in fact, badly split.

Trump’s extremism is alienating the voters that other Republican lawmakers need to stay in power, and those lawmakers are trying to keep their distance from him without antagonizing his base. Yesterday, in Portland, Oregon, the police refused to respond as neo-fascist Proud Boys and armed militia members staging a “Back the Blue” rally attacked Black Lives Matter protesters, who fought back. It is a truism in American history that violence costs a group political support, and militia groups are angry because Facebook has banned them, hurting their ability to recruit.

Today, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officers shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back multiple times in front of his children; the shooting was caught on video and has sparked outrage.

Tell-all books are also undermining the president. Yesterday, it came out that when researching her book, Mary Trump, the president’s niece, recorded her aunt, Maryanne Trump Barry, Trump’s sister, discussing Trump. “All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said. “He has no principles. None. None.” “Donald is cruel,” she said, “he was a brat.” A new book by CNN reporter Brian Stelter shows how Trump simply echoes the personalities at the Fox News Channel. And former Trump fixer Michael Cohen is about to release his own book about his years working for Trump.

Trump also took a personal hit tonight, when advisor Kellyanne Conway announced she was leaving the White House. Both she and her husband, George Conway, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, are stepping away from the public eye to deal with family issues exacerbated by the political drama of the past several years.
And the Russia story, revived by the fifth volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, is not going away. Tonight, the Daily Beast reported that Jared Kushner—who after, all, could not get a security clearance until Trump overruled authorities-- has been using a secret back channel to communicate with a Putin representative. According to the story, Steve Bannon, who was arrested on Friday by the acting U.S. Attorney at the Southern District of New York and so now has an excellent reason to flip, knew all about it.

This afternoon, Trump tried to change the news trend when he called a press conference to announce what he called a “safe and effective treatment” for Covid-19. The FDA has approved an Emergency Use Authorization for convalescent plasma, a treatment involving giving anti-body rich plasma from those who have had the virus to those ill with it. Studies show that the treatment has some potential, but there has been little scientific study of it, and it is certainly not established as an effective treatment. Federal health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have objected to the EUA until there is more information; Trump has accused the doctors of delaying approval for political reasons. He walked out of the press conference after a reporter asked about the discrepancy between his triumphant announcement of a treatment and a doctor's explanation that plasma has potential.

So the best option for the president to win in 2020 might be to keep Biden supporters from voting. Yesterday, the House passed a bill committing $25 billion to the United States Postal Service and to stop Postmaster General Louis DeJoy from making more changes that are delaying the delivery of the mail. Today, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to take up the bill.

But Americans have figured out that they can avoid using the slowed USPS by turning to Ballot Drop Boxes. So today, Trump tweeted that “Mail Drop Boxes… are a voter security disaster,” that are “not Covid sanitized.”

Twitter slapped a warning on it: “This tweet violated the Twitter rules about civic and election integrity.”

 

[Go Bama]

August 24, 2020 (Monday)


Postmaster General Louis DeJoy appeared before the House of Representatives today to explain recent changes to the United States Postal Service. Those changes—removal of sorting machines and postboxes, and an end to overtime hours, for example—have drastically slowed mail delivery. Undelivered mail has piled up in USPS facilities, and there is real concern that the USPS will not be able to handle the volume of mail expected when large numbers of voters begin to return their mail-in ballots for the November election.

DeJoy seemed incensed that he had to answer to Congress; he rolled his eyes, laughed derisively at questions, and talked over the representatives. He claimed that he did not order the changes that have caused the back-ups, but could not say who had. He also insisted that he was not trying to sabotage the election, but refused to replace the missing machines, saying they were not needed. He committed to delivering ballots in time, despite warnings from the USPS that it is not sure it can handle the expected avalanche of ballots. Under questioning from Katie Porter (D-CA), a law professor who has won a reputation as a thorough questioner, DeJoy confessed he did not know how much most postage costs, nor how many Americans voted by mail in the last election.

Maine Senator Angus King, an Independent, tweeted: “The Postmaster General’s appearances before Congress have betrayed his lack of knowledge about the USPS, and shown his indifference towards the challenges Americans are facing as a result of his policies. Inexcusable.”
Congressional questioning of Robert M. Duncan, the chair of the USPS’s Board of Governors, confirmed a story that appeared last week in the New York Times saying that DeJoy was not on the list of 53 names a search firm provided the board as candidates for the Postmaster General position. DeJoy was apparently inserted into the process by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, suggesting political pressure over a traditionally nonpartisan office.

Former president of Liberty University Jerry Falwell, Jr., has resigned from his position after a former pool attendant, Giancarlo Granda, went public about a sexual arrangement he had with Falwell and his wife for six years, in which Granda and Becki Falwell had sex while Jerry Falwell watched. Yesterday, the Washington Examiner published a story in which Falwell claimed that he and his wife were being blackmailed because Becki had had an affair, and the fallout from the affair had driven Falwell into depression.

This is a major political story because Falwell Jr., the son of the Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr., is an important figure in the evangelical community, and his sudden and unexpected endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016 brought evangelicals to the thrice-married and unreligious long-shot candidate, rather than to Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who expected Falwell’s support. Falwell, who is a lawyer and real estate developer rather than a minister, said he was endorsing Trump out of respect for his business experience.

Now, of course, that picture looks different. There were apparently photos that reflected the Falwell-Granda arrangement in some fashion, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer, in 2015 was involved in making them go away and so got his hands on them. He also brokered Falwell’s endorsement of Trump. How exactly all that transpired is unclear, but it seems likely that Falwell’s endorsement was related to his desire to make sure the story of his unusual marital arrangement did not become public. As Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo put it: “Trump Owned Jerry and Jerry Knew It.”

Today was the first day of the Republican National Convention. The Republicans attacked the Democratic National Convention as negative and dark, and promised that they would share an optimistic, uplifting vision of America. Instead, the Republicans presented a dark fantasy vision of a hellscape where Democrats want to turn America into a war zone. In a fascinating echo of the Republican Party of the late nineteenth century, when party leaders tried to overcome voters’ dislike by claiming that the Democrats were anarchists and socialists who would destroy the nation, today’s Republicans said that the election is a choice between “church, work and school” and “rioting, looting and vandalism.” The intersection of race and gender with this vision today was striking, as the delegates nominating Trump were noticeably white, older, and male, in contrast to the diversity of the Democratic delegates last week.

As expected because of the short timeline, the convention has been disorganized with much lower production values than the DNC, but it nonetheless set out to convince Americans that, as Trump said, “We’ve accomplished more during the first three and a half years of this administration than any president in the history of our country.” As soon as delegates on video had officially nominated him, he surprised everyone by taking the stage for a largely unscripted speech that hit his usual points: the Democrats want to take way guns, religion, and U.S. energy production.

Most significant to the speech, though, was Trump’s repeated insistence that the Democrats are rigging the election, and that if they win, the results will not be legitimate. When the crowd cheered “four more years,” he urged attendees instead to cheer for “twelve more years.” This refrain has become so commonplace it can no longer be dismissed as the joke he initially claimed it was. He seems to be setting up his followers to refuse to accept a defeat at the polls.

Tonight’s program was designed to try to repair the political damage caused by the administration’s poor response to the coronavirus, which has already claimed at least 177,000 lives in the U.S. and infected almost 6 million people. The U.S. has 4% of the world’s population and we have suffered 25% of its deaths, but Trump tried to spin his response to the coronavirus as a great success. To the degree there were problems he was willing to admit, he blamed them on “ill-prepared” governors. In a taped segment tonight with Trump chatting with nurses and front-line workers—a human side of him we rarely see—Trump accepted their praise for his great leadership.

This was the sort of gaslighting we’ve come to expect from this administration. Even as he spoke, reality undercut his message. In the segment, no one was masked, and he defended the unproven treatments for the virus hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma. Today, scientists—including one who worked on the study the FDA leadership cited yesterday in Trump’s press conference—said they had no idea where Trump got the statistic that convalescent plasma had reduced deaths by 35%. They have called on the FDA to correct the statement.

Tonight’s highest profile speakers were Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), and Donald Trump Jr. Scott attacked Biden’s record on race and offered an optimistic vision of America. A Black man, Scott said that Biden’s negative picture of racial justice in America was overblown and that his own story proved wrong the idea that African Americans operate under systemic racism that hampers their success. His grandfather, who was forced out of school in the third grade to work in the cotton fields, saw his grandson elected to Congress.

Don Jr., and his girlfriend Kim Guilfoyle also spoke, and their speeches were more problematic. Both sought to rile up the base, but they tipped beyond normal behavior. Don’s appearance, especially, led to speculation that he was high, and “Cocaine” began trending on Twitter.
This was an excellent start for a convention designed to feed Trump’s base but not an auspicious start for a convention designed to appeal to undecided voters. As notable for who is speaking at the convention is who is not. Few leading Republicans are showing up, and most incumbents running in this cycle are keeping their distance, recognizing that Trump is a drag on their campaigns.

Today more than two dozen Republican former members of Congress endorsed Biden. The former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, Miles Taylor, and Elizabeth Neumann, another former senior DHS official, today announced they are organizing the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform (REPAIR) to pull together current and former administration officials who oppose Trump. They claim to have at least two current senior officials on board.

Former chair of the RNC Michael Steele joined the anti-Trump Lincoln Project today. "Today is the day where things should matter and you need to take stock of what matters to you -- and the kind of leader you want to lead in these moments. And for me, it ain't him," Steele said.

 

[TIDE-HSV]

This is dated in that Falwell has withdrawn his resignation and said that "it's up in the air"...

 

[Go Bama]

August 25, 2020 (Tuesday)


The Republican National Convention is designed to fire up the base to make sure its members vote, and to reassure wavering Republicans that they can vote for Trump without being racists but rather staunch Americans. And on both fronts, the first two days of this convention have delivered.

Yesterday, Don Jr. and his girlfriend Kim Guilfoyle offered up red meat to the base, warning that Democrats stand for “rioting, looting and vandalism,” while Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley promised that race relations aren’t really that bad in America after all.

Tonight, First Lady Melania Trump spoke soothingly of parenting and offered sympathy to coronavirus victims while offering a sanitized version of her own American dream. Trump offered American symbolism, using the might of the presidency. He was flanked by servicemen in the White House, naturalized five immigrants, pardoned Jon Ponder, a Black man who started a program that provides services for former convicts after he was convicted of robbing a bank.

The Trump team is not using half-measures; they are meeting head-on the criticisms of Trump and exacerbating them. They are campaigning by audacity. That is, after all, one of the characteristics Trump’s base likes most about him.

Tonight that audacity dovetailed with what appears to be the Trump family’s growing authoritarianism to make them broadcast that they are above the law. Tonight’s proceedings smashed all U.S. laws and traditions against using public property for partisan purposes. The power of the presidency, the physical space of the White House—the people’s house-- and the nation’s international standing are all enlisted to get this president, this one man, reelected.

Trump used the power of his office to pardon as a campaign stunt. He used a naturalization ceremony—the fundamentally non-partisan act of becoming an American citizen—to sell the idea he is not anti-immigrant. Melania Trump spoke from the White House Rose Garden, behind a podium that bore the presidential seal, to campaign for her husband. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke virtually from an official trip to the Middle East.

There is a law—the Hatch Act—which prohibits all employees of the Executive Branch except the president and the vice president from engaging in partisan political activity. It also prohibits the president and the vice president from commanding any employee to work on behalf of any candidate. The act is designed to make sure that officials cannot leverage the power of their office to enhance their own power. Since the law’s passage in 1939, presidents of both parties have scrupulously adhered to it. Members of the Trump administration have violated that act repeatedly, but tonight’s performance celebrated and extended those violations.

Pompeo’s speech made it clear the violations were no accident. One of the State Department’s own legal memos says in bold letters: "Senate-confirmed Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention.” But Pompeo not only spoke at the convention, he did it on an official overseas trip paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Former Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who spent 35 years in the foreign service, told NBC News: "People are extraordinarily upset about it. This is really a bridge too far…. Pompeo is clearly ensuring the State Department is politicized by using his position to carry out what is basically a partisan mission."

Pompeo’s appearance with some of the religious sites of Jerusalem showing behind him was intended to highlight Trump’s outreach to evangelical voters like Pompeo himself. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the other day said: “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals.”

The State Department said Pompeo addressed the convention in his “personal capacity,” but even this is out of bounds. In February, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun wrote an email to department employees saying he would not talk politics even when responding “to emails from friends.”

The State Department says that the RNC will pay for “everything” associated with the talk, but four current and former high-ranking diplomats noted that the logistics of overseas travel make that unlikely: the planes, motorcades, security, and so on required for a Secretary of State’s travels is all paid for with taxpayer money.

A State Department official told NBC News, "It is outrageously un-American for a sitting secretary of state to participate in a political convention." At least the State Department indicated a little nervousness about using taxpayer money for partisan purposes. The White House has shown no such concern.

The first two nights of the convention have ranged far from the truth, keeping weary fact-checkers working overtime. But the gaslighting is not an accident, either; it is the point. Trump is selling the classic alternative reality of authoritarians who have little actual good news to report: he claims the country is in chaos, caused by lawless “others,” and he alone can solve the problem. He will return his supporters to the positions of authority they feel they have lost, ushering back in the good old days when the country was great.

Far from objecting to Trump’s lies or his violation of the law to use of the government to win reelection, Trump’s true believers will likely applaud both. The lies are a comforting story, made better by how much they upset non-believers—those “others”—and in their minds, the power of the government actually should be used to put down Trump’s unAmerican opposition.

Trump’s plan for a second term, though, will not necessarily benefit his supporters. He appears to intend to continue to act as he has done for the past three and a half years, slashing regulations and taxes, destroying the social safety net, and privatizing infrastructure, all in the service of freeing up capital to boost the economy.

That plan was in the news today as, in response to an inquiry from leading Democrats, the Chief Actuary for Social Security crunched the numbers behind Trump’s plan to end the payroll tax. Chief Actuary Stephen C. Goss said that the plan would end Disability Insurance in mid-2021 and Social Security by mid-2023.

Payroll taxes are just that: taxes that come out of your paycheck. In this case, the tax in question is the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) payroll taxes and the Self-Employment Contributions Act (SECA) taxes. These taxes provide the money that funds Social Security and Disability Insurance. Trump has talked about eliminating the taxes, arguing that getting rid of them would put more money in people’s pockets. It would, in the short term but, as Goss explains, it would almost immediately destroy Social Security and Disability Insurance.

A disregard for social welfare laws is not limited to Trump. In the New York Times yesterday, former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen and Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Priorities, note that the Senate is on vacation while thirty million American households did not have enough food last week. “The economics of this moment are not complicated,” they write. The economy can’t recover and sustain itself until the coronavirus is under control. Until then, it is imperative for Congress to fund a relief bill to put money back into people’s pockets, both for moral reasons, and to keep the economy from grinding to a halt.

The House passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill in May, but the Senate refused to take it up. The Senate turned to writing a bill in late July, just as the federal boost of $600 a week to unemployment benefits was due to expire, along with the moratorium on evictions. Quickly, though, it became clear the Republican caucus could not agree on a bill, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell turned the problem of negotiating a new bill over to White House leaders and congressional Democrats.

With Republicans on the sidelines, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows refused to budge from their $1 trillion starting point even after the Democrats offered to meet them halfway. Trump declared the negotiations over and dramatically claimed to be handling the most crucial problems with executive actions. His use of the nation’s disaster relief fund to pay for a $300 weekly bonus in unemployment benefits to people in 30 states (so far) will not last more than five weeks, even as it drains our capacity to respond to the California and Colorado wildfires, the Iowa derecho, and the two tropical storms bearing down on Louisiana.

Reality looks a lot less triumphant than tonight’s tawdry performance in the house that has sheltered Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, and which belongs not to the Trumps, but to the American people.

 

[bama579]

August 25, 2020 (Tuesday)


The Republican National Convention is designed to fire up the base to make sure its members vote, and to reassure wavering Republicans that they can vote for Trump without being racists but rather staunch Americans. And on both fronts, the first two days of this convention have delivered.

Yesterday, Don Jr. and his girlfriend Kim Guilfoyle offered up red meat to the base, warning that Democrats stand for “rioting, looting and vandalism,” while Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley promised that race relations aren’t really that bad in America after all.

Tonight, First Lady Melania Trump spoke soothingly of parenting and offered sympathy to coronavirus victims while offering a sanitized version of her own American dream. Trump offered American symbolism, using the might of the presidency. He was flanked by servicemen in the White House, naturalized five immigrants, pardoned Jon Ponder, a Black man who started a program that provides services for former convicts after he was convicted of robbing a bank.

The Trump team is not using half-measures; they are meeting head-on the criticisms of Trump and exacerbating them. They are campaigning by audacity. That is, after all, one of the characteristics Trump’s base likes most about him.

Tonight that audacity dovetailed with what appears to be the Trump family’s growing authoritarianism to make them broadcast that they are above the law. Tonight’s proceedings smashed all U.S. laws and traditions against using public property for partisan purposes. The power of the presidency, the physical space of the White House—the people’s house-- and the nation’s international standing are all enlisted to get this president, this one man, reelected.

Trump used the power of his office to pardon as a campaign stunt. He used a naturalization ceremony—the fundamentally non-partisan act of becoming an American citizen—to sell the idea he is not anti-immigrant. Melania Trump spoke from the White House Rose Garden, behind a podium that bore the presidential seal, to campaign for her husband. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke virtually from an official trip to the Middle East.

There is a law—the Hatch Act—which prohibits all employees of the Executive Branch except the president and the vice president from engaging in partisan political activity. It also prohibits the president and the vice president from commanding any employee to work on behalf of any candidate. The act is designed to make sure that officials cannot leverage the power of their office to enhance their own power. Since the law’s passage in 1939, presidents of both parties have scrupulously adhered to it. Members of the Trump administration have violated that act repeatedly, but tonight’s performance celebrated and extended those violations.

Pompeo’s speech made it clear the violations were no accident. One of the State Department’s own legal memos says in bold letters: "Senate-confirmed Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention.” But Pompeo not only spoke at the convention, he did it on an official overseas trip paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Former Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who spent 35 years in the foreign service, told NBC News: "People are extraordinarily upset about it. This is really a bridge too far…. Pompeo is clearly ensuring the State Department is politicized by using his position to carry out what is basically a partisan mission."

Pompeo’s appearance with some of the religious sites of Jerusalem showing behind him was intended to highlight Trump’s outreach to evangelical voters like Pompeo himself. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the other day said: “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals.”

The State Department said Pompeo addressed the convention in his “personal capacity,” but even this is out of bounds. In February, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun wrote an email to department employees saying he would not talk politics even when responding “to emails from friends.”

The State Department says that the RNC will pay for “everything” associated with the talk, but four current and former high-ranking diplomats noted that the logistics of overseas travel make that unlikely: the planes, motorcades, security, and so on required for a Secretary of State’s travels is all paid for with taxpayer money.

A State Department official told NBC News, "It is outrageously un-American for a sitting secretary of state to participate in a political convention." At least the State Department indicated a little nervousness about using taxpayer money for partisan purposes. The White House has shown no such concern.

The first two nights of the convention have ranged far from the truth, keeping weary fact-checkers working overtime. But the gaslighting is not an accident, either; it is the point. Trump is selling the classic alternative reality of authoritarians who have little actual good news to report: he claims the country is in chaos, caused by lawless “others,” and he alone can solve the problem. He will return his supporters to the positions of authority they feel they have lost, ushering back in the good old days when the country was great.

Far from objecting to Trump’s lies or his violation of the law to use of the government to win reelection, Trump’s true believers will likely applaud both. The lies are a comforting story, made better by how much they upset non-believers—those “others”—and in their minds, the power of the government actually should be used to put down Trump’s unAmerican opposition.

Trump’s plan for a second term, though, will not necessarily benefit his supporters. He appears to intend to continue to act as he has done for the past three and a half years, slashing regulations and taxes, destroying the social safety net, and privatizing infrastructure, all in the service of freeing up capital to boost the economy.

That plan was in the news today as, in response to an inquiry from leading Democrats, the Chief Actuary for Social Security crunched the numbers behind Trump’s plan to end the payroll tax. Chief Actuary Stephen C. Goss said that the plan would end Disability Insurance in mid-2021 and Social Security by mid-2023.

Payroll taxes are just that: taxes that come out of your paycheck. In this case, the tax in question is the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) payroll taxes and the Self-Employment Contributions Act (SECA) taxes. These taxes provide the money that funds Social Security and Disability Insurance. Trump has talked about eliminating the taxes, arguing that getting rid of them would put more money in people’s pockets. It would, in the short term but, as Goss explains, it would almost immediately destroy Social Security and Disability Insurance.

A disregard for social welfare laws is not limited to Trump. In the New York Times yesterday, former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen and Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Priorities, note that the Senate is on vacation while thirty million American households did not have enough food last week. “The economics of this moment are not complicated,” they write. The economy can’t recover and sustain itself until the coronavirus is under control. Until then, it is imperative for Congress to fund a relief bill to put money back into people’s pockets, both for moral reasons, and to keep the economy from grinding to a halt.

The House passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill in May, but the Senate refused to take it up. The Senate turned to writing a bill in late July, just as the federal boost of $600 a week to unemployment benefits was due to expire, along with the moratorium on evictions. Quickly, though, it became clear the Republican caucus could not agree on a bill, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell turned the problem of negotiating a new bill over to White House leaders and congressional Democrats.

With Republicans on the sidelines, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows refused to budge from their $1 trillion starting point even after the Democrats offered to meet them halfway. Trump declared the negotiations over and dramatically claimed to be handling the most crucial problems with executive actions. His use of the nation’s disaster relief fund to pay for a $300 weekly bonus in unemployment benefits to people in 30 states (so far) will not last more than five weeks, even as it drains our capacity to respond to the California and Colorado wildfires, the Iowa derecho, and the two tropical storms bearing down on Louisiana.

Reality looks a lot less triumphant than tonight’s tawdry performance in the house that has sheltered Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, and which belongs not to the Trumps, but to the American people.

t t t

 

[Go Bama]

August 26, 2020 (Wednesday)


There is a profound disconnect between the reality of what is happening in America right now and what we are hearing from the White House.
Tonight, Hurricane Laura is barreling toward the coasts of Louisiana and Texas. The storm is on the verge of becoming a Category 5 hurricane, one of the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall in the continental U.S. Its winds have reached 150 miles per hour and the National Hurricane Center has warned of an “unsurvivable” storm surge of up to 20 feet, as well as anywhere from 5-10 inches of rain. Forecasters warn that half of Lake Charles, Louisiana, home to almost 80,000 people, might be submerged. More than half a million people have been ordered to evacuate the region, but this will be a tall order for the 23.3% of the population there that lives in poverty.

Iowa is trying to rebuild from the August 10 derecho which brought winds of up to 140 miles an hour, left more than 400,000 Iowans without power, and damaged homes, businesses, and more than ten million acres of crops. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds asked for about $4 billion to cover the cost of the damage; Trump approved the portion that covered federal buildings and utilities but not assistance to homeowners and farmers.

Western wildfires have burned more than 1.8 million acres in August—an area almost double the size of Rhode Island. Fourteen states, including California, Arizona, Oregon, and Colorado, have suffered from the extreme events. While firefighters are gaining control over many of the fires, red flag warnings are still in effect in Northern California, Nevada, Oregon, and Montana.

A disaster of a different sort is burning in America as coronavirus continues to spread. New CDC guidelines quietly put out on Monday no longer recommend testing for asymptomatic people even if they’ve been in contact with someone who has the coronavirus. This new rule appears to reflect Trump's frequent complaints that widespread testing is responsible for our climbing numbers of coronavirus cases. (He is incorrect.) He has repeatedly said we should slow the testing down. A White House spokesperson said the decision was science-based and not political; American Medical Association President Dr. Susan Bailey asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Department of Health and Human Services to "release the scientific justification" for the changes.

The spokesperson told reporters that the White House Coronavirus Task Force had signed off on the new guidelines, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the task force told CNN that he was not part of any such discussion. “I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is,” he said. Other members of the task force also expressed alarm about the new rules.

And there is yet another kind of fire burning. On Sunday afternoon, August 23, a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rusten Sheskey, fired seven shots into Jacob Blake’s back as he opened his car door, leaving the 29-year-old father of five gravely wounded, likely paralyzed from the waist down.

Protests erupted in the wake of the shooting of yet another Black man, with the same pattern we saw in Portland: peaceful protests by day, riots by night. Armed militia members and counter protesters rushed to Kenosha and clashed with protesters, and after rioters looted and burned businesses, civilians armed with AR-15-style rifles took to the streets claiming they would back the police and restore order. Video shows police officers thanking the armed men for their help, despite the fact they are on the streets after the city’s curfew, and handing them water bottles.

Rather than restoring order, on Tuesday, a 17-year-old white man, Kyle Rittenhouse, from Antioch, Illinois, about 20 miles southwest of Kenosha, shot and killed two people and wounded a third. Rittenhouse’s social media is full of support for “Blue Lives Matter,” and shows him posing with weapons. Video from January 30, shows him in the front row of a Trump rally in Des Moines, Iowa; video from Tuesday shows him trying to get the attention of law enforcement officers before the shooting.

This afternoon, the Milwaukee Bucks professional basketball team refused to play game five of their first-round playoff series against the Orlando Magic. This is what’s known as a “wildcat strike” because it does not have the approval of union leadership—the NBA collective bargaining agreement bans strikes. The Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder joined in, and by 5:00 the NBA postponed all the evening’s games. All the WNBA games were also called off, and several Major League Baseball teams have struck in solidarity.

In a statement, the Bucks said, “Despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action, so our focus today cannot be on basketball.” They asked the Wisconsin legislature to reconvene and pass “meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality and criminal justice reform.” They also asked people to vote. Basketball superstar LeBron James was more straightforward: “F**K THIS MAN!!!!!” he tweeted. “WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT[.]”

In Washington, tonight, at the third night of the Republican National Convention, speakers painted an image of the nation that did not square with this reality. There was scarce mention of the natural disasters that, in any other administration, would be headline news. The sentence “May God bless and protect the Gulf states in the path of the hurricane," offered by Eric Trump's wife Lara, was about the extent of it.

There was scarce attention paid to the coronavirus, either, which has, to date, killed more than 180,000 Americans. Twenty-five percent of the world's deaths from Covid-19 come from the U.S., which has 4% of the world’s people. From Fort McHenry, Maryland, Vice President Mike Pence congratulated Trump for suspending travel from China and saving “untold American lives.” White House officials continue to talk of the virus in the past tense, as if it is over. Images from the RNC of attendees sitting together, unmasked, send a signal that things are back to normal, when they are decidedly not.

There was no mention of Jacob Blake or the Kenosha shootings of Tuesday tonight, although Trump appeared to take the part of the Kenosha police and the civilian militias when he tweeted today that he was sending federal troops to Kenosha to restore “LAW and ORDER!”. (Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, instead deployed 500 members of the National Guard to Kenosha.)

From Fort McHenry, Maryland, Vice President Mike Pence talked of the “heroes” who have died in unrest around the country without mentioning the events that have sparked the unrest: the shooting of Black men and women at the hands of police officers, people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake. He lamented the death of federal officer Dave Patrick Underwood, “shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California,” implying he was killed by protesters. In fact, Officer Underwood died in a drive-by shooting by a Boogaloo supporter on a nearly empty street. And Pence claimed that Democratic nominee Joe Biden has said he would cut funding to law enforcement; this is a lie from a super PAC ad that spliced together video footage to change its meaning.

A million years ago, during the George W. Bush administration, a White House official dismissively told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community,” meaning that they believed solutions to the nation’s problems came from studying reality and finding answers. “That's not the way the world really works anymore,” the official told Suskind. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Creating their own reality might have worked for Bush’s people in 2004, but sixteen years later, with the country in conflagrations both natural and manmade, it seems that approach is no longer viable.

 

[Go Bama]

There is also a group on FB called "Heather Cox Richardson Resource and Discussion Room." Following is a post from Dan Rather that was posted the the HCRRDR.


Dan Rather
Chilling.

That is the sentiment that sticks with me this morning as I reflect on day 2 of the Republican National Convention. Even to call it a convention is to miss the point. This was propaganda, the pageantry, power, and symbolism of our federal government - OUR government, we the people - exploited by a president who feels unbound by the constitution in his desperate desire to hold on to power.

A secretary of state from foreign soil pledges sycophantic fealty to his boss with hopes of bolstering his own standing in a political party that has become a personality cult. Immigrants are used as props in the White House by a president who has demonized, restricted, and mistreated even legal immigrants and asylum seekers. Uniformed military personnel are employed in this charade. A first lady, who is an unrepentant birther, mouths teleprompter platitudes in front of an unmasked crowd of true believers during a deadly mismanaged pandemic in a re-imagined rose garden and is heralded by some for her tone.

Meanwhile, in the real America, there is death, desperation, depression, hunger, and heartbreak. Once again a Black family is thrust into the national spotlight by a police shooting. And scenes of violent protests and counterprotests sweep across our national discourse, encouraged by a president who sees personal gain in racial division.

The polls tighten, or do they? What is hitting with the public and what isn't? How are these speeches playing? These are questions for the mechanics of the horse race. They are the comfortable grooves into which campaign reporting usually falls. They are hard to resist. But they do not accurately see the full scope of the moment.

A line of attack on Joe Biden is that he would be a captive of the far left, that he is somehow a socialist. Nevermind that many of the policies of even the more liberal members of the Democratic Party would be considered mainstream center left in most European democracies. But what one doesn't hear enough in our media coverage is the term "far right." Racist and antisemtic authoritarian conspiracy theories are waved off by Republican politicians who know very well what they are about and how they are fueling support for Donald Trump. The trappings of the state are used for naked power politics. Corruption reigns. Foreign dictators are coddled. The rule of law is undermined. Voting is suppressed. This all isn't theoretical. This is happening now. All of it. And in plain sight.

With all of this power, it is rather amazing that Donald Trump isn't assured re-election. It is a testimony to the strength and durability of the majority of Americans, across a diverse political spectrum, who see the threat for what it is. Yes, this is a fight for democracy. But do not underestimate the strength and power of those who stand in opposition. Time and again, America has withstood threats - external and internal - in its uneven march to a more perfect union. And time and time again, courageous and energetic mass movements have signed up for service to this nation's higher ideals. This is a moment of testing, to be sure. It is, as I said, chilling. But it cannot be defeated unless it is clearly seen for what it is.

Know how to get your vote in, and make sure it is counted. See how you can help others have their voices heard at the ballot box. There is so much to despair about, but despair and demoralization is being weaponized by those who seek to cynically hold on to their power. Instead, try to be inspired by a movement of tens of millions across this nation who are determined that this shall not be the definition of America.

 

[CrimsonNagus]

Iowa is trying to rebuild from the August 10 derecho which brought winds of up to 140 miles an hour, left more than 400,000 Iowans without power, and damaged homes, businesses, and more than ten million acres of crops. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds asked for about $4 billion to cover the cost of the damage; Trump approved the portion that covered federal buildings and utilities but not assistance to homeowners and farmers.

Such a good right up, too bad the people that need to read it will never give it the time of day. The above portion really stuck out to me because that is Trump's base, rural, farming America. That is middle America, the people that claim Trump is there for them yet, at every turn, he does nothing to help middle America and only helps himself and big business. Still, these people sit back and believe this man is helping them. This would be like the local bum on the corner saying I am always there for him, to lend a helping hand, even though all I ever do is burn a dollar bill right in front of his face and push him down in the mud.

 

[Go Bama]

August 27, 2020 (Thursday)


Tonight was the final night of the Republican National Convention.
Having moved the RNC from Charlotte, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida, and then having been forced to cancel his plans for a huge rally due to coronavirus, Trump decided to hold tonight’s major speeches on the South Lawn of the White House. It was a flagrantly illegal move, designed to do two things: to turn the majesty of the White House into the trappings of a dictator, and to spark fury from opponents. With luck, the dramatic setting behind Trump would woo his base, while the fury of his opponents would grab attention from the ongoing crisis of the coronavirus and the economic disaster of the past few months.

It was a thoroughly Trumpian move, and to some degree, it worked. The entire convention drew on imagery from dictatorships. A parade of family members assured us Trump is wonderful, subordinates offered generic over-the-top praise, and every speaker demonized anyone who doesn’t support Trump’s continued rule. The convention had demonstrations of mercy from the president as he both pardoned a criminal and granted citizenship to five immigrants (who were apparently not told they would be part of the convention), a standard trope in the authoritarian’s handbook. And it had the trappings of dictators, from First Lady Melania Trump’s dress that evoked a Nazi uniform— almost certainly to provoke a response while appealing to the alt-right—to the cathedral ceilings of our hallowed civic temple, to the wall of flags, all evoking tradition, majesty, and might.

It was desperately sad to see the White House, the people’s house, turned into the background for a political rally, emblazoned with flags and sporting jumbotrons that spelled out “Trump/Pence.” It looked like a Biff Tannen fantasy.

The men who founded our government based it not on hereditary leadership, or on religion, or on race, because they recognized that such governments would inevitably lead to bloodshed. They knew well the history of European countries torn asunder by warring families or religious sects. Instead, they took the radical step of founding a nation on the idea that all men are created equal, that no man is any better or any worse than another, and that all must be equal before the law. They were blind to things they should have seen, of course—their “all men” excluded men of color and women—but the principle of equality before the law was a radical new idea in western history.

A government of laws, not of men, meant that no one should be able to leverage his political office to retain power, and when officials began to violate that principle, Congress in 1939 passed the Hatch Act, forbidding all federal employees except the president and vice president “from using federal property for political activities or for engaging in anything that is a partisan political act,” as political scientist Norm Ornstein, from the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, put it.

“People have been fired for sending flyers around for a municipal election that was partisan,” Ornstein says. “Every time Kellyanne Conway in her official capacity made a statement that was partisan, it was a violation of the Hatch Act. Every cabinet member, every border patrol member, every federal employee participating in the activities at the White House tonight violated the Hatch Act. This was the most blatant abuse of power and legal authority for partisan purposes by far than anything we have ever seen by a president or an executive branch.” Violations of the Hatch Act are supposed to result in removal from office, but punishment for the numerous violations in this administration has been minimal.

Indeed, disregarding the Hatch Act this week has been a demonstration of Trump’s move toward a dictatorship. In 1997, then-Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, had to defend making fund-raising phone calls from the White House despite the vice president’s exemption from the Hatch Act, but Trump is running roughshod over the law with impunity. This morning White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said that “nobody outside the Beltway really cares” about the Hatch Act, and this evening, Fox News Channel personality Dana Perino said that “it doesn’t matter” that Trump is breaking the law because “by the time they have an investigation, this election is going to be over.”

During Trump’s speech he seemed to revel in his use of the White house for partisan ends, asking rhetorically “What’s the name of that building?” referring to the White House, and going on: “We’re here and they’re not.”
But will his version of America win? Will we really replace the idea of equality before the law with a world in which a leader can declare that he and his family and friends have the right to rule over the rest of us?

I looked at the hundreds of people at Trump’s rally tonight, unmasked and older, and almost all so very white, and saw a group of people so afraid of the future they are willing to say yes, willing to throw in their lot with a malignant narcissist because he tells them they can recover a world in which they felt more relevant, a world they control.

We have been here before. In the 1850s, when the nation had to grapple with the idea of westward expansion across a continent, many reactionary Americans thought the solution to keeping an expanding nation stable was to spread human enslavement along with the American flag so that a small group of wealthy slaveowners maintained control over the government.

But Americans who believed that society worked best if every man had a right to his own labor organized under Abraham Lincoln and, rejecting their neighbors’ hierarchical view of society, restored the idea of human equality and pushed America into the future.

In the 1890s, when the nation had to grapple with the idea of industrialization, many reactionary Americans thought the solution to the growing divide between labor and capital was to create a world in which a few wealthy industrialists directed the labor of the masses.
But Americans who believed in the founding principle of human equality before the law organized under Theodore Roosevelt and rejected the idea that workers belonged to a permanent underclass. They pushed America into the future.

In the 1930s, when the nation had to grapple with a worldwide depression, reactionary Americans thought the solution was fascism, in which a few strong men organized and directed the labor of their countrymen.

But most Americans rejected the idea that some men were better than others, and they organized under Franklin Delano Roosevelt to restore the idea of equality before the law and return the government to the hands of ordinary Americans. They pushed America into the future.

Tonight’s event at the White House demonstrated that we are in another great crisis in American history. A reactionary group of older white men look at a global future in which questions of clean energy, climate change, economic fairness, and human equality are uppermost, and their reaction is to cling to a world they control.

But that world is passing, whether they like it or not. Even if Trump wins in 2020, he cannot stop the future from coming. And while the United States will not meet that future with the power we had even four years ago, we will have to meet it nonetheless. It will be no less exciting and offer no fewer opportunities than the dramatic changes of the 1850s, 1890s, and 1930s, and at some point, Americans will want to meet those challenges.

If history is any guide, when that happens, we will restore the principle of equality before the law, and push America into the future.

 

[Go Bama]

August 28, 2020 (Friday)


Hi folks:
Four nights of the Republican National Convention combined with prepping for the start of next week’s classes have just about done me in. I actually want to write about the question of who gets to commit violence in our society, but if I start now it’ll be another 4:00 morning, and I just can’t do it.
Tomorrow, okay?
H.


August 29, 2020 (Saturday)


With the end of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, the race to the November election is in high gear.

Trump has made it clear he will run on the idea that he has defeated the coronavirus and rebooted the economy, while rioters from the “radical left” are destroying American cities, aided and abetted by Democrats. But the convention’s picture of the president and the nation America were so wildly untrue that fact-checkers have stayed busy ever since.
Vice President Mike Pence rewrote history to argue that Trump managed the pandemic wonderfully. “President Trump marshaled the full resources of our federal government from the outset,” Pence said. “He directed us to forge a seamless partnership with governors across America in both political parties.”

In fact, there is really no debate over the reality that Trump did not acknowledge the magnitude of the crisis for six to eight crucial weeks, despite warnings. He refused to invoke the Defense Production Act to speed up the production of critical medical supplies and instead told states they were on their own. When states then tried to buy their own supplies, the federal government often intercepted the shipments and handed them to private distribution systems to send to places the administration determined needed them most, redistributions that were often attributed to political favoritism.

Most attendees at the president’s speech did not wear masks, and speakers at the convention referred to the pandemic in the past tense. But coronavirus has not gone away. Although the overall number of new cases is declining, hot spots remain, especially as schools and universities have reopened over the past two weeks. At the University of Alabama, 1200 students have tested positive for Covid-19 since classes resumed less than two weeks ago; Florida has seen nearly 900 students testing positive in the same period. America is still suffering close to 1000 deaths a day from Covid-19, bringing our numbers over 180,000 people.

Pence also boasted that we have gained back 9.3 million jobs in the last three months… with no acknowledgement that it is Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic that devastated the economy in the first place, or that we are still 13 million jobs down from where we were before the coronavirus.

Trump’s narrative that cities are in crisis, and the violence is caused by the “radical left,” is not supported by the evidence, either.

First of all, there is less violence than he suggests. Crime has actually been dropping in the U.S. for a decade, and protests are isolated. American cities are not in flames. On Twitter, a user claimed that: “There’s this creepy vibe in DC right now where it’s obvious how bad the city’s been destroyed by rioters, and yet people are almost afraid to point it out or oppose it. You almost have to whistle past the boarded up windows as if it’s all just normal.” Other users ridiculed him by posting photographs of peaceful city scenes, noting that a number of places closed early in the summer because of Covid, but that the only “creepy vibe” was the new fortified wall around the White House.

But Trump is likely aware that white Americans tend to associate Black Americans with crime, so he is hitting the idea that the Black Lives Matter protesters are violent. In fact, most of the violence occurring appears to be associated either with the police who, according to a new report published in The Guardian, have been infiltrated by white supremacists, or with far-right activists.

In June, ABC News obtained an intelligence bulletin from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center warning that “anarchist extremists continue to pose the most significant threat of targeted assaults against police.” They singled out violent extremists such as members of the boogaloo anarchist movement. Indeed, the police officer Pence spoke of at the convention who was killed in Oakland, California, was allegedly killed by a boogaloo supporter, not by protesters, as Pence implied. And, of course, the two people murdered and one injured in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 23 were allegedly killed by Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old white man who came to town to face down the protesters.

To the extent there is unrest in the country, Trump has no interest in quelling it. He has refused to condemn the right-wing thugs, and his supporters have championed Rittenhouse as a hero. Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson said that Rittenhouse “had to maintain order when no one else would.”

In Portland, Oregon, today, a pro-Trump caravan that included the neo-fascist Proud Boys went into the city to face down protesters there. After tensions between them and the assembled protesters escalated, caravan members began shooting people with pepper spray and paintballs, and driving into crowds. Tonight, someone was shot and killed, although who and why is unclear; the details are still sketchy.

The narrative that dangerous Black people are causing violence that white men must suppress for the good of the community serves Trump's election narrative, but it is a trope right out of Reconstruction. In 1873, for example, in Colfax, Louisiana, white southerners murdered as many as 150 of their Black neighbors, while 3 white men died, one likely shot by his own compatriots. Despite those shocking numbers, newspapers reported the events at Colfax as a riot of Black men, put down by law-abiding whites who were restoring law and order.

There is another worrisome development today. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) announced that it will no longer brief Congress in person about election security and the interference of foreign entities in our democracy. It will still provide written intelligence reports, but Congress will no longer be able to question officials about what they know.

There is a long backstory to this development. Despite all evidence—including that of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee—Trump has maintained that Russia did not interfere on his behalf in 2016. Now, despite the conclusions of our Intelligence Community that they are doing it again, he maintains they are not.

Back in February 2020, a senior career intelligence officer who worked for Joseph Maguire, then the acting DNI, warned Congress that Russia is once again targeting our election to aid Trump. The president was so angry that he fired Maguire, and replaced him first with Richard Grenell, a staunch loyalist, and then with Texas Representative John Ratcliffe, whose earlier appointment to the position had been quashed by Republican Senators because he lacked the necessary qualifications for the post. Ratcliffe made it clear he did not believe Russia was attacking our elections, no matter what the Intelligence Community said.

This summer, there has been tension between congressional Democrats and the DNI because his office has suggested that China, Iran, and Russia are all equally responsible for assaults on our election when, in fact, it is clear Russia is far and away the prime culprit. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority leader Charles Schumer (D-NY), Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner (D-VA), all members of the so-called “Gang of Eight” which hears classified intelligence, have repeatedly called on the DNI to brief Congress on the actual intelligence.

Now, Ratcliffe is saying the Office of the DNI will not brief Congress at all in person, suggesting concern over leaks. The Democrats say he is deliberately withholding information from the American people that they need before they vote. Schumer wrote: "DNI Ratcliffe has made clear he's in the job only to protect Trump from democracy, not democracy from Trump. Our intel officials have said there's an ... assault on our democratic process from Russia. Pres. Trump is simply using John Ratcliffe to hide the ugly truth."

Trump tonight confirmed that the DNI decision was designed to stop information about Russian interference from reaching the American people. He tweeted: “Probably Shifty Schiff, but others also, LEAK information to the Fake News. No matter what or who it is about, including China, these deranged lowlifes like the Russia, Russia, Russia narrative. Plays better for them. @DNI_Ratcliffe doing a great job!” (There is no evidence that Schiff has ever leaked any information.)

Tonight Trump also retweeted an advertisement for an edition of a show on One America News (OAN) that regurgitates Russian propaganda. It is the story, instigated by Russian intelligence, that Biden was involved in a corrupt bargain in Ukraine, the very story he pressured Ukraine to produce last year.

 

[Go Bama]

August 30, 2020 (Sunday)


Lots of folks are finally paying attention to the rise of authoritarianism here in the U.S. They are right to be concerned.

Scholars have seen worrisome signs all along. Trump has dismissed nonpartisan career officials and replaced them with loyalists. He has fired the independent inspectors general. He denies Congress’s right and duty to investigate members of the Executive Branch. He has used the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement officers of the Executive Branch as a private army. He has packed the courts. He has used the government to advance the interests of himself and his family, which he has installed into government positions. He has solicited help from foreign governments to get reelected. And he and his cronies are trying to undermine our election by preemptively saying the Democrats are committing fraud and by slowing down mail service when voters need to be able to mail in their ballots.

Now, Trump is clearly trying to change the national narrative from his disastrous response to the coronavirus and the economic crash to the idea that he alone can protect white Americans from their dangerous Black neighbors.

Stoking violence is a key tool in the authoritarian’s toolkit. The idea is to increase civil disorder. As violence increases, people will turn to a leader who promises “LAW & ORDER,” as Trump keeps tweeting. Once firmly in power, an authoritarian can then put down his opponents with the argument that they are dangerous criminals.

Trump is advancing just such a strategy. He and members of his administration refuse to condemn violence, and insist that legitimate protesters are all “Antifa.” They are blaming Democrats and “liberal politicians and their incompetent policies” for violent protests, although most of the injuries at the protests have been caused by police or by rightwing thugs. They are stoking white people’s fear of their Black neighbors, with Trump going so far as to talk of how he will keep low-income housing from the suburbs to protect the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.”

And they are going on the offensive, demanding that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden condemn the violence that they insist comes from protesters, while Trump is actually inciting it from rioters on the right. It is gaslighting at its finest.

America has seen this pattern before. Secessionist leaders before the Civil War needed badly to distract southern white farmers, who were falling behind in an economic system that concentrated wealth at the top, and they howled that northerners were assaulting white southerners and wanted to stamp out their way of life, based in human enslavement. They refused to permit any alternative information to reach their voters. And in the end, they succeeded in rallying their supporters to war.
But that does not have to happen here, now. We can see exactly what Trump is doing, and refuse to embrace it. Democratic leadership is calling out Trump for “willfully fanning the flames of this violence,” as Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) put it today.

Today Biden released a statement saying “the deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable. Shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable. I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right. And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same…. We must not become a country at war with ourselves. A country that accepts the killing of fellow Americans who do not agree with you. A country that vows vengeance toward one another….”

“As a country,” he continued, “we must condemn the incitement of hate and resentment that led to this deadly clash…. What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters? He is recklessly encouraging violence…. The job of a President is to lower the temperature. To bring people who disagree with one another together. To make life better for all Americans, not just those who agree with us, support us, or vote for us.”
In Wisconsin, still reeling from the shooting of Jacob Blake in the back by law enforcement officers, the Lt. Governor cited Trump’s “incendiary remarks” and attempts to create division and said that Trump should not come to Kenosha on Tuesday as he currently plans. Governor Tony Evers (D) agreed, as did Kenosha’s mayor. Evers wrote: "I, along with other community leaders who have reached out, are concerned about what your presence will mean for Kenosha and our state. I am concerned your presence will only hinder our healing. I am concerned your presence will only delay our work to overcome division and move forward together."

It is important to remember that Trump’s apparent power play is a desperate move.

More than 180,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 on his watch. We have far more deaths per capita than other advanced countries, and we still have no national testing program. The White House is now apparently taking the position that we will all just have to live with the disease and that schools and businesses should simply reopen, but Americans are not happy about Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. Today he tried to help his numbers by retweeting a thread from a far-right website saying that, in fact, only around 9000 people have died in the U.S. of Covid-19, because the rest had co-morbidities and were going to die anyway. The argument is so far off the mark that Twitter flagged it for violating rules.

Polls show Trump continuing to lag behind Biden by significant numbers. Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapproved of the programming at the Republican National Convention, and he saw no bounce from it. Trump’s overall approval rating is a dismal 31%.
And Trump remains dogged by tell-all books and lawsuits that threaten to reveal criminality. Today, the New York Times ran a story by Michael S. Schmidt, a reporter covering national security and federal elections for the New York Times. Schmidt has a book coming out on Tuesday. It reveals that in 2017 former deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein limited Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Rosenstein kept Mueller from exploring Trump’s own relationship with Russia while he was investigating Russia’s efforts to get Trump elected and Trump’s efforts to stop the inquiry. Rosenstein limited Mueller to conducting a criminal investigation and did not permit him to expand his inquiries.

Rosenstein did not tell the acting Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, that he had taken an investigation of Trump himself off the table, and McCabe did not realize it had happened. McCabe said that he was “surprised and disappointed” to hear this news, and had he known, he would have had the FBI do such an investigation “because we had information that indicated a national security threat might exist, specifically a counterintelligence threat involving the president and Russia. I expected that issue and issues related to it would be fully examined by the special counsel team.” McCabe noted that the issue at hand “was first and foremost a counterintelligence case…. Could the president actually be the point of coordination between the campaign and the Russian government? Could the president actually be maintaining some sort of inappropriate relationship with our most significant adversary in the world?”

Meanwhile, Senator Tammy Duckworth is keeping a tally of how many days it’s been since we learned that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked fighters for killing U.S. or allied soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump has refused to respond to that intelligence.

Russian troops appear to be trying to pick a fight with U.S. soldiers in northeastern Syria, the region from which the U.S. abruptly withdrew last fall. After smaller incidents, on Tuesday, in a Russian convoy sideswiped a U.S. vehicle and a Russian helicopter buzzed the convoy. Seven U.S. soldiers were injured, none seriously. The Pentagon blamed Russian forces for “deliberately provocative and aggressive behavior.” A bipartisan group of lawmakers called on the White House to “clearly communicate to the highest levels of the Russian government and military that actions like this will not be tolerated,” but so far, Trump has said nothing.

 

[Go Bama]

August 31, 2020 (Monday)


A bird's eye view of the country today sees a president seeming to slide off the rails. Trump is exaggerating the violence in cities to the point of caricature, while his supporters outright lie to try to advance his candidacy. On Thursday, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway tipped the president’s hand on “Fox and Friends” when she said that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for” a candidate running on “law and order.”

In the wake of the Republican National Convention, which failed to boost his candidacy, Trump has been tweeting at an intense pace. Between 5:49 am and 8:04 am on Sunday, he tweeted or retweeted 89 messages, many of them inflaming the conflicts between protesters and his supporters. He retweeted a post from One America News claiming that “According to the mainstream media, the riots & extreme violence are completely unorganized. However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.”

Yesterday, the president called the participants in the Portland “Trump cruise rally” “GREAT PATRIOTS!” and today called them “peaceful,” despite the fact they were shooting paintballs and pepper spray and driving vehicles into crowds. Today the president condemned what he called “the radical left,” but refused to condemn Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse, the seventeen-year-old who allegedly shot and killed two people and wounded a third with a friend’s AR-15 rifle (meaning Rittenhouse had it illegally) in Kenosha, Wisconsin last week. Trump suggested Rittenhouse, who has been charged with homicide, was “very violently attacked” by demonstrators (video does not indicate this). Trump supporters, including Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, have also defended Rittenhouse.

This afternoon, Trump claimed that Portland, Oregon “is ablaze.” Josh Campbell, a CNN law enforcement correspondent on the ground in Portland and a former FBI supervisory special agent, called this "a lie."
Campbell told CNN: "Portland is not a city under siege. Today, I went to a Starbucks downtown, ate lunch at one of the city's famous downtown food trucks, and bought a new pair of shoes at the mall. As I write this, I'm looking out of my hotel room at a bike tour riding by outside on the downtown street…. To be sure, there have been protests -- peaceful during the daytime, and some turning violent at night -- for over 90 days, but the rioting has largely been confined to one city block downtown near the federal courthouse. Last night, protesters showed up at a police precinct a few miles from downtown and were dispersed by police after some protesters started throwing eggs and rocks at police cars. There has been periodic, localized violence, but nothing widespread."

Portland firefighter Lt. Rich Chatman agreed: “WE ARE NOT ABLAZE IN PORTLAND,” he texted to CNN reporter Daniel Dale. “There is a very isolated pocket of demonstrations that have involved fire… none of which have been substantial enough to need more than 1 fire engine.”

Trump’s vision of the world is getting more and more conspiratorial.
Tonight in an interview with Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham, he claimed that “people that are in the dark shadows” are controlling Biden. He claimed this weekend there was an airplane full of “thugs” in “black uniforms,” out “to do big damage.” When Ingraham pressed for more information, he said: “I’ll tell you sometime but it’s under investigation.” Ingraham said: “That sounds like conspiracy theory.”

To push these ideas, Trump and his people are deliberately constructing a false narrative.

Trump’s YouTube channel is now home to a video featured at the Republican National Convention on Monday, showing rioting and a city in flames and implying those scenes are America in the past several months. In the film, one sister tells another that “This is a taste of Biden’s America,” as photos and videos of violence play. “The rioting, the crime. Freedom is at stake now and this is going to be the most important election of our lifetime.” In fact, the video is from Barcelona, Spain, in 2019.

Twitter has had to begin displaying warning labels on videos that have been “quote tweeted” (meaning users don’t simply retweet them, they add their own words, first), after leading Republican officials have circulated deceptively altered or edited videos, designed to hurt Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s candidacy.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise tweeted a video that spliced together footage from an conversation between Biden and progressive activist Ady Barkan, who speaks with an artificial voice because he has ALS. The video added words to what Barkan actually said to make it sound as if the two were agreeing to defund police departments (in fact, Biden has proposed to increase police funding to include more money for “social workers, psychologists, people who in fact can handle those god-awful problems that a cop has to have four degrees to handle”). To the video, Scalise added "No police. Mob rule. Total chaos. That's the result of the Democrat agenda."

Barkan tweeted to Scalise: “These are not my words. I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology.” Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo was angry on Barkan’s behalf: “[Steve Scalise] you’re a disgrace. Who even imagines the depravity of doctoring the words of a man robbed of his voice by ALS let alone stoops to do it” he tweeted.

Twitter labeled the tweet with a warning and, under pressure, Scalise took it down, but not before tweeting: “While Joe Biden clearly said 'yes,' twice, to the question of his support to redirect money away from police, we will honor the request of [Barkan] and remove the portion of his interview from our video."

Today, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media Dan Scavino also posted a manipulated video, this one supposedly showing Biden falling asleep during a live television interview. But it was a mix of an old video of singer Harry Belafonte, apparently napping before an interview while technical glitches were worked out, and Biden looking downward for a moment. Twitter had to break out another warning, and Belafonte simply said: “They keep stooping lower and lower. A technical glitch in an interview I did nine years ago now becomes another one of their lies, more of their fake news. I beg every sane American: please vote them out. I knew many who gave their life for the right to vote. Never has it been so vital to exercise that right.”

The Trump campaign wasn’t done yet, though: on Monday it also tweeted a clip of Biden saying “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” But in fact, when he said that, Biden was quoting the president and vice president. The full quotation was: “Trump and Pence are running on this, and I find it fascinating: Quote, 'You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America.' And what's their proof? The violence we're seeing in Donald Trump's America.”

Apparently trying to link Biden to a radical left, Trump continues to demand that Biden must condemn “the Anarchists, Thugs & Agitators in ANTIFA,” and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has tried to tie Biden to “the Marxist Left.” It would be a stretch to link the famously moderate Biden with any sort of far left in America in any case, but, in fact, Biden has repeatedly condemned violence across the board. “I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right,” he said Sunday. Today he added: “I want to make it absolutely clear…. Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. . . . It’s lawlessness, plain and simple, and those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it’ll only bring destruction. It’s wrong in every way.”

Biden accused Trump of “fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters.”

The message that Trump is responsible for the unrest in the country is resonating with voters. A Military Times poll showed that almost 74% of active duty military personnel opposed Trump’s desire to use them against civil unrest in urban areas, while only 22% supported that idea. That opposition seems to be translating to voting preferences: 41.3% of active duty military personnel support Biden in the upcoming election, while 37.4 support Trump.

 

[92tide]

this part below shows us a good example how disgusting and depraved the gop has become. this isn't some random whack job calling into a talk radio show, this is the house minority whip. he is part of the gop leadership

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise tweeted a video that spliced together footage from an conversation between Biden and progressive activist Ady Barkan, who speaks with an artificial voice because he has ALS. The video added words to what Barkan actually said to make it sound as if the two were agreeing to defund police departments (in fact, Biden has proposed to increase police funding to include more money for “social workers, psychologists, people who in fact can handle those god-awful problems that a cop has to have four degrees to handle”). To the video, Scalise added "No police. Mob rule. Total chaos. That's the result of the Democrat agenda."

Barkan tweeted to Scalise: “These are not my words. I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology.” Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo was angry on Barkan’s behalf: “[Steve Scalise] you’re a disgrace. Who even imagines the depravity of doctoring the words of a man robbed of his voice by ALS let alone stoops to do it” he tweeted.

Twitter labeled the tweet with a warning and, under pressure, Scalise took it down, but not before tweeting: “While Joe Biden clearly said 'yes,' twice, to the question of his support to redirect money away from police, we will honor the request of [Barkan] and remove the portion of his interview from our video."