StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump's doctors say he's "not out of the woods yet" but he did return to the White House after spending three days at Walter Reed Medical Center for COVID-19.
• A team of three US and British scientists have won this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine for work on the Hepatitis C virus, allowing much more accurate testing and reduction in the disease.
• In an unsigned ruling the US Supreme Court sided with South Carolina Republicans in reinstating a witness signature requirement for all mail-in ballots for the November election.
• Eric Trump testified under oath in a deposition before a New York court in the state's probe of the Trump Organization's finances, Trump tried to delay the deposition until after the election.
• British archaeologists have confirmed the burial site of a 6th-century Anglo-Saxon warrior's grave near Berkshire, buried with bronze bowls, weapons, and metal fittings.
  

Last Call For It Just Took A Couple Decades Is All

Quite a bit of garbage has been heaped upon John Judis and Ruy Teixeira's The Emerging Democratic Majority over the years, the 2002 book that predicted "demography as destiny" in Sun Belt states becoming purple, if not outright blue, as they gained more Black and Hispanic voters. What the book failed to predict is that Rust Belt states would become redder at the same time for the opposite reason: more white voters.

But even RealClearPolitics columnist Bill Scher sees the writing on the wall here. Judis and Teixeira were right, just the timeframe was 15-20 years off the mark.

 

Biden is running a campaign based on de-polarization, treading very lightly on divisive cultural issues and eagerly welcoming support from Republicans tired of Trump. However, Biden’s shift from the last two Democratic campaigns is in tone, not substance. He hasn’t diluted the party’s position on abortion; he just talks about it infrequently. He’s subtly inviting pro-life voters who have soured on Trump to feel more comfortable crossing party lines.

Recently the New York Times interviewed just such a Republican voter. “You’d think I’d be glad to hear that [Trump] nominated a judge who is pro-life,” this voter said. “But I think what we need more than anything else is someone who is broadly pro-life, not just worried about the unborn, but about the living.”

Politico talked to two women at an event for a Michigan Democratic congresswoman who described themselves as longtime Republicans primarily because of their abortion views, but have since rethought their party affiliation. “I’ve had it with this idea that you’re only pro-life if you fight against abortion,” said one. “I can’t be that single-issue Republican anymore.” With Biden turning down the temperature on abortion, even in the face of a hotly contested Supreme Court nomination, some pro-life voters are finding it easier to voice nuanced views and shed any sense of obligation to choose a political team based on one’s abortion position.

Biden can be quite blunt when talking about race, even calling Trump a “racist” to his face in last week’s debate. But he consistently balances his rhetoric on racism with reminders of his own white working-class roots. During a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania last month, Biden was asked if he benefited from “white privilege.” Biden responded without hesitation, “Sure, I've benefited just because I don't have to go through what my black brothers and sisters have had to go through.” But recognizing that many in the white working class bristle at the notion that they are privileged, Biden quickly added, “Grow up here in Scranton, we're used to guys who look down their nose at us. … We are as good as anybody else. And guys like Trump, who inherited everything and squandered what they inherited, are the people that I've always had a problem with.” Without crudely equating the black and white working-class experiences, Biden is attempting to display understanding of both and close the racial divide.

If Biden’s de-polarization strategy works as intended, and polls show it is, he will win with a geographically broad coalition. In fact, if Biden wins everywhere he is leading in the RealClearPolitics averages as of Saturday, he will win 375 Electoral College votes, 10 more than Obama did in his historic 2008 victory.

A President Biden would certainly have challenges in maintaining a big tent party while being pressed by his left flank to move, and speak, aggressively on a slew of fronts. But if successful, the Republican Electoral College advantage would be no more.

The Republican skew manifested first in 2000, as Al Gore’s environmental and gun control record -- and Bill Clinton’s personal behavior -- eroded gains Clinton had made in the Sunbelt and the Midwest. Even though Gore won the popular vote, with the help of the Supreme Court he lost Florida and the Electoral College.

But Democrats are not without their own Electoral College advantages. In 2004, if 60,000 Ohioans who voted for George W. Bush had voted instead for John Kerry – out of 5.6 million votes cast – Kerry would have become president without a popular vote majority. Democrats have won 20 states, and Washington, D.C., three times in row, totaling 232 electoral votes. Democrats may have “wasted votes” in densely populated states like California, New York and Illinois, but that also gives Democrats a big head start in any election year.

Republicans have won 22 states three times in row, but only get 179 electoral votes out of them. And some of those Republican states — Arizona, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina — have shown signs of shift, with Democratic House or Senate gains in 2018 and surprisingly close margins in presidential or Senate trial heat polling. If one or more of these states turns firmly blue, while no currently blue states becomes less so, the Republican Party will be at a massive disadvantage, irrespective of the small shift in electoral votes that will come after the 2020 census.

Perhaps American democracy would be better off without the Electoral College, but that day is highly unlikely to ever come, as both parties would have to see the wisdom in abolishment at the same time to enact the necessary constitutional amendment, or adopt any sort of workaround on a state-by-state basis. Fortunately for Democrats, they are perfectly capable of winning the Electoral College this year. And after 2020, if Democrats can continue to avoid the pitfalls of polarization, winning may become even easier.

 

Right now the most obvious candidate is a Blue Arizona. If Mark Kelly wins and Biden takes the state, the GOP is in real trouble in the future if Democrats can hold the Upper Midwest. 

How big of an "if", well, we'll see.

Actual Pro-Life Catholicism

Pope Francis has officially committed the Catholic Church to ending the death penalty with a new papal encyclical on Sunday.

Pope Francis’ new encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” does something that some Catholics believed could not be done: It ratifies a change in church teaching. In this case, on the death penalty.

In 2018, Pope Francis ordered a change in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official compendium of church teaching, when he termed the death penalty “inadmissible.” Today the pope placed the full weight of his teaching authority behind this statement: The death penalty is inadmissible, and Catholics should work for its abolition. A papal encyclical is one of the highest of all documents in terms of its authority, removing any lingering doubt about the church’s belief.

“There can be no stepping back from this position,” says Francis, referring to the opposition to capital punishment expressed by St. John Paul II. “Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the Church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.”

Helen Prejean, C.S.J., author of Dead Man Walking and a long-time opponent of capital punishment, whose work helped to alter the catechism, praised today’s news.

I rejoice in Pope Francis’s ringing proclamation of the inviolable dignity of all human life, even the life of murderers, and I am heartened by the church’s unequivocal opposition to governments’ use of the death penalty in all instances. In killing chambers, I’ve seen close-up the torture and suffering of human beings, rendered defenseless and killed by the state, their lives stripped of all dignity. I rejoice that now this clarity of church teaching will help end this unspeakable suffering and spark the Gospel of Jesus to be lived in its fullness: restoration of human life, not humiliation, torture and execution.

In past centuries, the church was generally accepting of the death penalty. Both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas declared it licit not only for the sake of punishment, but also as a way for the state to protect itself, ideas that took hold in the church and influenced civil society. In the Roman Catechism, written after the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the church supported the death penalty for those two reasons: “Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent.”

As recently as the 1990s, the Catechism of the Catholic Church said that the state could still use capital punishment to protect people from violent criminals: “The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.”

In 1995, however, in his encyclical "Evangelium Vitae," St. John Paul II tightened the restrictions, saying that the times that the state needed to use capital punishment to protect other citizens were “very rare, if not practically non-existent.” Four years later, he called for its abolition. So did Pope Benedict XVI, in 2011. The door to the death penalty was gradually closing. Today it was shut. It is a clear example of the development of doctrine over the centuries.

In his new encyclical, Francis also traces a lesser known counternarrative, showing a theological thread that has always been against the death penalty: “From the earliest centuries of the Church, some were clearly opposed to capital punishment,” he writes and includes commentary from St. Augustine, who argued for mercy in the case of two assassins.

In “Fratelli Tutti,” the pope grounds his opposition to capital punishment not only in mercy, perhaps his most characteristic spiritual theme, but also in opposition to revenge. “Fear and resentment can easily lead to viewing punishment in a vindictive and even cruel way, rather than as part of a process of healing and reintegration into society,” he writes.

 

This is, as both Zandardad and Joe Biden would put it, a Big Effing Deal.

 

Zandardad introduced me to the works of Sister Helen Prejean long ago, and it's how he got involved with the Southern Poverty Law Center. I know the Catholic Church has been in real trouble over the last couple of decades (centuries?) but there are still good liberal, actual, merciful, "teachings of Jesus" Catholics out there and my parents (and Joe Biden) are some of them, and to see that Pope Francis is doing the right thing here reminds me that just for a millisecond, not all Church officials are bad all the time.

 

Some still have faith in a better world, driven by people making a difference, one life at a time, even if I'm not really one of them. 

Maybe that's okay.

 

The Blue Tsunami's Future

Even should the Democrats perform beyond my wildest dreams in the Senate this year, and they run the table on all the GOP seats in play (NC, SC, IA, MT, ME, AZ, CO and both GA seats) and Doug Jones keeps his seat in Alabama? The Dems would be up 56-44 in the Senate, still a long way from a 60-seat majority in 2008, and probably less so as we'd have quite a few folks lining up to be mavericks like Kyrsten Sinema, America's favorite Democratic Senator who sided with Trump more often than not in her first four years in office.

Having said that, 2022 does present another map where Republicans are on the defensive in the Senate, and one of the big fights will be for Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey's seat, because Toomey apparently won't be there to defend it.

Sen. Pat Toomey has decided not to run for reelection or for governor of Pennsylvania in 2022, according to two people familiar with his plans, a surprise decision by the Republican with significant implications for the state’s next elections.

He will serve out his current Senate term but won’t run for either of those offices, seemingly ending his career in elected office, at least for now. A formal announcement is expected Monday.

Toomey’s office on Sunday neither confirmed nor denied the senator’s plans. The people familiar with his plans spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

As the only Republican now holding statewide office other than judges, Toomey was widely seen as the likely Republican favorite for governor in 2022. His decision not to run for that office or for Senate could create two wide open contests on the Republican side, while depriving the party of running its most established current political figure in Pennsylvania.

It will also open a prime Senate target for national Democrats, regardless of who controls the chamber after this year’s election.

Most political insiders had expected that Toomey, 58, would wait until after the 2020 election to decide his political future. It was not immediately clear why he had decided to make an announcement now, weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Toomey’s surprise decision comes at an already tumultuous and perilous time for Republicans in Washington. President Donald Trump is hospitalized with the coronavirus. Three GOP senators have also contracted the virus, which could hamper the party’s push to install Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court. And Trump and fellow Republicans face increasingly dire poll numbers, threatening their holds on both the White House and Senate.

“It’s incredibly surprising,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican consultant in Harrisburg. “It throws dozens of wild cards into the mix.”

 

As I said,  Republicans will have at least 20 out of 34 seats to defend, including Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Richard Burr, Roy Blunt, Todd Young, and Toomey, all winnable seats. Dems on the other hand will have to defend tough races in Nevada (Catherine Cortez Masto), New Hampshire (Maggie Hassan), and Colorado (Michael Bennet).

Toomey's impending retirement could be very important two years from now.

We'll see.

 

StupidiNews!

• Only Texas, Missouri, and South Carolina reported a decrease in new weekly COVID-19 cases from last week, nationally the country has topped 54,000 daily cases for the first time since August.
• The Biden campaign reports both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris continue to test negative after Biden's exposure to COVID-19 with Donald Trump's illness at the debate last week. 
• British authorities are planning a possible three-stage lockdown if the country cannot get COVID-19 cases under control, PM Boris Johnson denies any suggestion that current measures aren't working.
• Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer says that it's not safe to hold Senate proceedings with three GOP senators reporting COVID-19, Republicans say the Senate will reconvene on Oct. 19.
• A group of hackers that stole data from an "unidentified federal agency" in May appear to be Russia's GRU-sponsored Fancy Bear team, behind much of the 2016 election and DNC hacking.
  

Last Call For Lindsey Faces The Graham Cracker

Sen.  Lindsey Graham's debate with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison didn't go well at all for the Republican, as Slate's Jim Newell explains:

Towards the end of Saturday night’s first Senate debate between South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and his Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, the candidates were asked on what issues they would dissent with their parties. Graham, who’d been sticking for most of the hour to a controlled strategy of reciting warnings against what Democrats would do with power, seemed to loosen up.

“How long do you have?” Graham said. “So, Lindsey ‘Grahamnesty’ is my name on talk radio.” He spoke about how he’d worked for “over a decade to get a comprehensive immigration solution.” He’d worked on climate change, and when he voted for Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, he “got the crap beat out of me here at home by Republicans.

“When it’s talking about working with the other side, it’s not just talk with me,” he said. “And I’ve got the political scars to prove it.”

It was less self-flattery than reminiscence. Graham was waxing nostalgic about a once-prominent version of himself that hasn’t been seen in recent years. Following the 2016 election, Graham rebuilt himself from a Trump skeptic to a vocal and loyal ally of the president, and those moments of working across the aisle at significant personal risk stopped coming. He’s now a partisan warrior who broke an airtight vow against confirming a Supreme Court nominee in the last year of President Donald Trump’s first term.

Harrison had said in his opening statement that Graham would likely “scare you to vote for him.” The once freewheeling senator, indeed, had straitjacketed himself into that strategy, drawing from a grab bag of fears about the left at each opportunity.

In Graham’s own opening statement, he observed that “this is a big-choice election between me and Mr. Harrison: capitalism versus socialism, conservative judges versus liberal judges, law and order versus chaos.” This apocalyptic vision was everywhere. Responding to a question about whether teachers and students should be asked to return to an in-person, five-day school week without rapid COVID-19 testing available, Graham ended with a warning about how Democrats would pass “Medicare for All” and stack the Supreme Court. After fleshing out his position on enhanced unemployment benefits, Graham warned, again, that Democrats would pack the Supreme Court and eliminate the Electoral College. Graham said the worst thing that could happen to Myrtle Beach’s economy is a Democratic administration and Congress that would tax and regulate it.

When Harrison hammered Graham on his reversal over filling a Supreme Court seat in the final year of Trump’s term, Graham’s strategy required him to just take it.

“Senator, how good is your word when you made a promise to the American people—even more, you made a promise to the folks in South Carolina—that you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing right now?” Harrison said. “And that’s the problem that I have, the greatest heresy that you could do as a public servant is to betray the trust of the people that you took an oath to serve.

“Just be a man about it,” he said, “and stand up and say, ‘You know what? I changed my mind. I’m going to do something else.’ But don’t go back and blame it on somebody else for a flip-flop that you’re making yourself.”

 

Ouch.

 

I expect we'll see at least a few more polls in SC for the Senate race, and I also expect they are not going to be good numbers for Graham.  We'll see in the weeks ahead, but in case Cal Cunningham crashes and burns next door in NC, we'll need Harrison's win here in SC to help take the Senate back.

Vote!

Biden, His Time, Con't

The post-debate polls are in and Biden has gotten a significant boost this week. Reuters/Ipsos now has him up by 10 points over Trump.

 

Democrat Joe Biden opened his widest lead in a month in the U.S. presidential race after President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, and a majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided infection if he had taken the virus more seriously, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.

The Oct. 2-3 national opinion poll gave little indication of an outpouring of support for the president beyond Trump’s core group of followers, some of whom have gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where the president has been hospitalized.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the severity of the pandemic as something that would disappear on its own, chiding Biden as recently as last week for wearing a protective mask, even as the coronavirus infected millions of people and forced businesses and schools to close.

Among those adults who are expected to cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election, the poll found that 51% were backing Biden, while 41% said they were voting for Trump. Another 4% were choosing a third-party candidate and another 4% said they were undecided.

Biden’s 10-point edge over Trump is 1 to 2 points higher than leads Biden posted over the past several weeks, though the increase is still within the poll’s precision limits of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

 

It's even worse news for Trump in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll this week. 

Joe Biden’s national lead over President Donald Trump nearly doubled after Tuesday’s presidential debate, with voters saying by a 2-to-1 margin that Biden has the better temperament to be president, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The poll was conducted in the two days after the unruly and insult-filled Sept. 29 debate, but before Trump tested positive for Covid-19 and was hospitalized Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

The Democratic nominee is now ahead of Trump by 14 points among registered voters, 53 percent to 39 percent — up from his 8-point lead in the previous poll before the debate.

That 14-point advantage represents Biden’s largest lead in the NBC News/WSJ poll during the entirety of the 2020 presidential campaign; his previous high was 11 points in July.

 

Having said all that, remember the polls had Clinton ahead by a similar margin (12 points) as late as October 23, 2016. 

We all know how that turned out. 30 days is a lifetime in politics.

Take nothing for granted, and vote early.

 

Sunday Long Read: The Watchmen, Watching

New Yorker Magazine's Patrick Radden Keefe gives us this week's Sunday Long Read, where in 2020 corporate espionage isn't about how good your spies are, it's how good your counter-spies are. The private investigator is just as much a tool of law enforcement and detective work as police and federal agents are, and their services are a lot more accessible for Americans in a digital world where analog criminology still matters.

One day in 2016, a Manhattan private investigator named Tyler Maroney went to doorstep a seasoned criminal. In this era of the ubiquitous smartphone, even an unscheduled call can feel like an intrusion; showing up unannounced at someone’s house can seem outright belligerent, and a bit antique. But Maroney, who is a careful student of human interaction, figured it’s easier to hang up on someone than it is to slam a door in his face. The man he was looking for, Bill Antoni (a pseudonym), had a rap sheet that included charges for assault, burglary, and attempted manslaughter. He had recently been released from prison, and Maroney consulted a proprietary database to find his new address. When Maroney arrived at Antoni’s apartment building, he found that the buzzer was on the fritz, so he waited until another tenant walked out, then slipped inside. As he was climbing the stairs, Maroney ran into a man who was walking out. He had tattooed arms and wore a gold chain around his neck.

“Mr. Antoni?” Maroney said.

In such encounters, some investigators adopt what is known as a “pretext,” telling a fib about the purpose of their visit, or assuming a fake identity. Occasionally, the ruse is more elaborate, involving a fictitious business, with phony business cards, e-mail addresses, and social-media accounts. But Maroney takes a dim view of such subterfuge. “I’m a private detective,” he said to Antoni. “I’m here to ask for your help on a case.”

He had rehearsed this overture, hoping to make Antoni feel enlisted, rather than antagonized. “My client is a man who spent more than ten years in prison for a crime he did not commit,” Maroney said. “He was a victim of police misconduct, and you may have information that can help.”

Antoni had a sideline as a police informant, and, two decades earlier, he had offered sworn testimony to help convict Maroney’s client of murder. Now the man was suing city authorities, and his attorneys hired Maroney, who runs a detective agency called QRI, to find the jailhouse snitch and see if he might recant.

Antoni invited his visitor in. A good sign. Prior to becoming a private investigator, Maroney had worked as a journalist, and he had an eye for detail. Surveying the apartment, he noticed moldings blurred by layers of accumulated paint, a CCTV camera, and, on a table, a holstered Glock. One wall was decorated with a homemade collage of J.F.K. memorabilia: photos of Jackie Kennedy, Hyannis Port, the grassy knoll. Unprompted, Antoni declared, “Kennedy was the last great American.” And, when he said that, Maroney knew: this guy was going to talk.

People talk to a detective for different reasons. Sometimes they want absolution, or credit, or justice. Sometimes they’re lonely, seduced by a sympathetic ear. Antoni revealed that he had been induced to supply fraudulent testimony in the case by crooked cops who offered him a break on his prison sentence. Maroney’s client ended up receiving nearly ten million dollars in a settlement. A third of that went to the lawyers. Maroney’s firm got seventy-five thousand dollars.

More than thirty thousand private investigators now work in the United States, Maroney reports in his new book, “The Modern Detective: How Corporate Intelligence Is Reshaping the World” (Riverhead). They engage in a dizzying variety of low-profile intrigue: tracking missing people, tailing cheating spouses, recovering looted assets, vetting job applicants and multibillion-dollar deals, spying on one corporation at the behest of another, ferreting out investment strategies for hedge funds, compiling opposition research. Contemporary private eyes, Maroney explains, are often “refugees from other industries,” including law enforcement, journalism, accounting, and academia. One hallmark of the business is discretion—like spy agencies, private eyes must often keep their greatest triumphs secret—so it is notable that Maroney would write a book like this. In a disclaimer, he says that he has had to change names and alter some details, presumably to protect client confidentiality. But “The Modern Detective” is not an exposé. It is part memoir, part how-to guide, a celebration of the analytical and interpersonal intelligence that makes a great investigator. When Maroney showed up for work at the giant detective firm Kroll, back in 2005, he e-mailed an executive to ask where that executive’s office was, hoping to introduce himself. 

 

“You’re an investigator now,” the man replied. “Find me.” 

 

Private investigators are the information warfare side of the private mercenary company mentality that corporations, the very rich, and even regular Americans can access. No matter how complex technology gets, old-fashioned detective work, psychology, and information gathering never goes out of style. And these days, the PI's world is the Wild West of intel work.

As Tom Clancy once wrote, news organizations are the real intelligence agencies of our era. 

 

And like everything else in 2020, it's become decentralized gig economy work.

Last Call For Just As Corrupt As Trump

Republicans are just as corrupt as Trump, never forget that. The major takeaway from a Justice Department run by Bill Barr is that Republicans are assured they'll never be caught. Well, short of being turned in, that is.

Top aides of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have asked federal law enforcement authorities to investigate allegations of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential crimes against the state’s top lawyer.

In a one-page letter to the state agency’s director of human resources, obtained Saturday by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, seven executives in the upper tiers of the office said that they are seeking the investigation into Paxton “in his official capacity as the current Attorney General of Texas.”

The Thursday letter said that each “has knowledge of facts relevant to these potential offenses and has provided statements concerning those facts to the appropriate law enforcement.”

Paxton, a 57-year-old Republican, was elected in 2014. His office said in a statement Saturday evening: “The complaint filed against Attorney General Paxton was done to impede an ongoing investigation into criminal wrongdoing by public officials including employees of this office. Making false claims is a very serious matter and we plan to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law.”

The statement did not elaborate.

The letter to human resources was signed by Paxton’s first assistant, Jeff Mateer, who resigned Friday, as well as Mateer’s deputy and deputy attorneys general overseeing divisions that include criminal investigations, civil litigation, administration and policy.

“We have a good faith belief that the attorney general is violating federal and/or state law including prohibitions related to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses,” the letter states.

 

Also, let's not pretend anyone who voluntarily works for someone like Ken Paxton is a good person, either. The main whistleblower, Jeff Mateer, may have resigned, but he's just as terrible.

Their decisions to report possible illegal activity involving their employer represents a stunning development in an agency that prizes loyalty, particularly from within Paxton’s inner circle. It places a renewed spotlight on Paxton, who is already under indictment for alleged securities fraud.

The complaint concluded by saying that they notified Paxton in a text message Thursday that they had reported the alleged violations to law enforcement.

The whistle blowers, who notified human resources to protect their jobs, offered no other details about the allegations and do not describe what they believe Paxton did that was illegal. Efforts to reach them were unsuccessful Saturday.

Mateer’s inclusion in the complaint letter, and his departure as Paxton’s second in command, was particularly significant, coming from a political ally who shared a conservative Christian perspective on many social and legal issues.

When President Donald Trump tapped Mateer to become a federal judge in 2017, Paxton lauded him as “a principled leader — a man of character — who has done an outstanding job for the State of Texas.”

Mateer’s nomination was later withdrawn after revelations of anti-LGBT remarks, including calling transgender children part of “Satan’s plan.”

 

Ken Paxton is leading the charge to destroy the ACA and take health care coverage for tens of millions of Americans away. He is a monster. And he's so corrupt, not only is he facing securities fraud charges, he got ratted out by his own office for taking bribes. 

Never forget that Donald Trump is just the orange face on a nationally corrupt and evil political party of racist psychopathic assholes.

Trump Literally Goes Viral

Donald Trump has COVID-19, he's been hospitalized at Walter Reed, he's 74 years old, obese, and most likely has a number of health issues.  His odds are not great. Republicans are getting very, very worried. 

 

President Trump’s vital signs were concerning over the last day and he was not out of danger, a person close to the situation said on Saturday, even as doctors mounted an aggressive effort to treat him and the coronavirus infected an ever widening swath of the president’s aides and allies.

While doctors maintained during a televised briefing that Mr. Trump was “doing very well” after a night at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, they refused to provide critical details and left open the impression that the president was known to be sick a day earlier than previously reported.

Shortly after the upbeat briefing by the doctors, a person familiar with the president’s health gave a more sober assessment to reporters at Walter Reed on the condition of anonymity. “The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care,” this person said. “We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”

Two people close to the White House said in separate interviews with The New York Times that the president had trouble breathing on Friday and that his oxygen level dropped, prompting his doctors to give him supplemental oxygen while at the White House and decide to transfer him to Walter Reed where he could be monitored with better equipment and treated more rapidly in case of trouble.

Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House physician, told reporters outside Walter Reed that the president was not currently on supplemental oxygen on Saturday but repeatedly declined to say definitively whether he had ever been on oxygen. “None at this moment and yesterday with the team, while we were all here, he was not on oxygen,” he said, seeming to suggest that there was a period on Friday when he was.

Dr. Conley likewise seemed to suggest that the president was first diagnosed with the virus on Wednesday rather than Thursday night when Mr. Trump disclosed that he had tested positive on Twitter. While describing what he said was the president’s progress, he said Mr. Trump was “just 72 hours into the diagnosis now,” which would mean midday on Wednesday. 

 

The bigger problem is that Trump basically spent a week infecting people. Three GOP senators and multiple White House staffers are now ill.

 

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has tested positive for coronavirus after being exposed to someone with the virus earlier this week, according to his spokesman, making him the third GOP senator to test positive in 24 hours and threatening the quick confirmation prospects of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sit on the Judiciary Committee, tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday -- just days after attending a White House event where President Donald Trump nominated Barrett. Multiple attendees of that event, including Trump, have tested positive in the week since the ceremony, which featured many people not wearing masks and not observing social distancing protocols.

Johnson did not attend the Barrett nomination ceremony — where several people appeared to have been exposed to the virus — because he was quarantining from a prior exposure, during which he twice tested negative for the virus, according to the spokesman.
Unlike Democratic senators, Senate Republicans meet three times a week for lunch. And while they sit in a large room, they remove their masks to eat and to speak. Johnson, Lee and Tillis all attended Senate GOP lunches this week.

If the three senators remain out this month, it would effectively prevent Barrett from being confirmed to the Supreme Court until they return, which could be after Election Day during a lame-duck session. A lame-duck confirmation is a situation that GOP leaders are eager to avoid in case they lose control of the chamber next month.

 

This is where things get very chaotic.  I don't know where Trump is going to be in 24, 48, 72 hours health-wise. I don't know how many more Republican members of Congress and executive agency heads are sick and may still test positive in a few days. I don't know if Joe Biden is 100% okay, although it looks like he is.

 

And this week's Vice Presidential debate suddenly became exponentially more important.

Some Unfortunate Cal On California Action

Wouldn't be an election cycle without at least one Democratic candidate blowing an important and winnable race, in 2018 it was Claire McCaskill, and in 2020 it's apparently going to be NC Senate candidate Cal Cunningham.

North Carolina U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham, a married father of two, sent text messages of a sexual nature to a woman who is not his wife, his campaign confirmed Friday night.

The text messages between Cunningham and Arlene Guzman Todd, a public relations strategist from California, were first reported Thursday night by NationalFile.com.

The report included pictures of the text messages, in which Cunningham and Guzman, who is also married according to the report, talked about kissing each other and more.

“Would make my day to roll over and kiss you about now,” said one text message from Cunningham.

In one text from Guzman, she says: “I have flexibility this month — done with school, training, big RFPs, etc. So the only thing I want on my to do list is you.”

The Cunningham campaign confirmed the authenticity of the text messages.

Cunningham, who has been leading in polling in his pivotal U.S. Senate race against Republican incumbent Thom Tillis, said Friday night that he is not dropping out of the race.

“I have hurt my family, disappointed my friends, and am deeply sorry. The first step in repairing those relationships is taking complete responsibility, which I do. I ask that my family’s privacy be respected in this personal matter,” Cunningham said in a statement sent to The News & Observer.

“I remain grateful and humbled by the ongoing support that North Carolinians have extended in this campaign, and in the remaining weeks before this election I will continue to work to earn the opportunity to fight for the people of our state.”

National File is a dirtbag right-wing nutjob site, but somebody handed them the goods and Cunningham is most likely going to lose now in a race he was ahead by 5-10 points.

If this ends up costing Democrats control of the Senate, well, now that's the point, isn't it? 

Pretty mild stuff frankly, but Dems get held to standards and Republicans don't, and that's all that it will take to put this race into a tailspin and maybe keep Mitch McConnell in charge of the Senate down the road.

Thom Tillis, the Republican senator that Cunningham is trying to beat, just tested positive for COVID thanks to Trump's superspreader event for Amy Coney Barrett at the White House last Saturday, so that may keep the Tillis campaign from being able to take full advantage of the huge opening they've just been given, but short of something really bad happening to Tillis as a result (or Trump!) this is going to be on every TV for the next 30 days in NC.

The other thing Cunningham has going for him is that NC's early voting has already taken off like a rocket and hundreds of thousands of votes have already been cast.

We'll see if it's enough to beat Tillis, but the larger problem is somebody sure as hell got a hold of Cunningham's phone messages and gave them to a right-wing tabloid political site, knowing full well the consequences.

The even larger problem remains though that Cal Cunningham showed very poor judgment, hurt his wife, and it could become a serious issue down the line for all of America escaping from the GOP.

Last Call For A Supreme End To Voting

The US Supreme Court today agreed to hear two Arizona voting cases that could spell the complete end of the Voting Rights Act, and the end of the Democratic Party. Ian Millhiser calls it the biggest direct threat to voting in decades:

The specific issue in the Democratic National Committee cases concerns two Arizona laws that require certain ballots to be discarded. One law requires voting officials to discard in their entirety ballots cast by voters who vote in the wrong precinct (rather than simply not counting votes for local candidates that the voter should not have been able to vote for).

The other law prohibits “ballot collection” (or “ballot harvesting”) where a voter gives their absentee ballot to a third party, who delivers that ballot to the election office. (Arizona is one of many states that impose at least some restrictions on ballot collection.)

Both of these laws disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color. As a federal appeals court explained in an opinion striking down the two laws, “uncontested evidence in the district court established that minority voters in Arizona cast [out of precinct] ballots at twice the rate of white voters.” And Hispanic and Native American voters are especially likely to rely on a third party to ensure that their ballot is cast.

One reason for this disparity is that some parts of the state require voters to cast their ballot in counterintuitive locations. Some Maricopa County voters, for example, were required to “travel 15 minutes by car (according to [G]oogle maps) to vote” in their assigned polling location, “passing four other polling places along the way,” according to an expert witness.

In addition, according to the appeals court, many Arizona voters of color lack easy access to the mail and are unable to easily travel on their own to cast a ballot. As the appeals court explained, “in urban areas of heavily Hispanic counties, many apartment buildings lack outgoing mail services,” and only 18 percent of Native American registered voters have home mail service.

Meanwhile, Black, Native, and Hispanic voters are “significantly less likely than non-minorities to own a vehicle” and more likely to have “inflexible work schedules.” Thus, their ability to vote might depend on their ability to give their ballot to a friend or an activist who will take that ballot to the polls for them.

The legal rules implementing the Voting Rights Act are complicated. And the specific legal rules governing these cases are impossible to summarize in a concise way. Courts have to consider myriad factors, including “the extent of any history of official discrimination” in a state accused of violating the Voting Rights Act, and “the extent to which voting in the elections of the state or political subdivision is racially polarized.”

In any event, a majority of the appeals court judges who considered Arizona’s two laws determined that they violate the Voting Rights Act.

 

Of course this means that given Chief Justice John Roberts and his notorious hatred for voting rights, there's already 5 votes on SCOTUS to overturn this and allow states to make voting as difficult as possible for Black, Hispanic, and Native voters.

 

And that's the point.

Congress Goes Viral, Con't

Mitch McConnell may be willing to sacrifice the Senate GOP in order to hurt Democratic voters in need of COVID-19 relief, but the Senate GOP may not be willing to jump off this particular cliff.

With their majority on the line, Senate Republicans are beginning to fret about the prospect of facing voters in the final weeks of the campaign without a new round of coronavirus aid being enacted.

As the talks between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin teetered Thursday on the verge of collapse, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to stay outside the blast zone. Many of his members up for reelection say it would be a mistake for the Senate to adjourn for the election without taking action to give people some relief.

“There’s no reason we shouldn’t all be here until the election if that’s what it takes to pass a follow up to the CARES Act,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is in a tight race with Democrat Cal Cunningham. The pair were scheduled to face off in a debate on Thursday night.

“I do not think we should recess without a coronavirus package,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is facing Sara Gideon, the Democratic Maine state House speaker. “We're not that far apart.”

Heading into the election empty-handed would surely be a drag on vulnerable senators and House members in both parties. The U.S. economy is mired in a recession, the coronavirus is continuing to spread across the country with no signs of relenting and massive layoffs are being reported daily. Congress is in line to shoulder much of the blame for not offering any relief to the crisis since the spring.

The Senate appears to be sticking around for at least another week, if not more, to keep the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett moving forward. Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on Barrett are set to begin Oct. 12. And the House can always reconvene to process a bill if there’s any deal. But it might take a push from those most at risk of losing their jobs in a month to get any deal over the finish line.

The effort to get Pelosi and Mnuchin back to the table started among moderate Democrats in the House. And it’s clear Senate Republicans in tough races are getting similarly antsy, even as they criticize Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for refusing to accept a slimmer stimulus bill in September.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), facing challenger MJ Hegar this fall, said what worries him most is that a vaccine “will be delayed because of the lack of funds because of no deal.”

“This should’ve been done three weeks ago,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who narrowly leads Democrat Jon Ossoff. “Yeah, I’m very frustrated by that. Mnuchin and [Pelosi] have been talking this week about some sort of compromise. … I’m hopeful. We’re coming back next week, and frankly, I don’t think we should leave until we get it done.”

Vulnerable Senate Republicans, though, aren’t blaming McConnell for the failure to reach an agreement. McConnell offered a roughly $500 billion package several weeks ago, only to see Schumer reject it as woefully inadequate to the needs facing the country. Democrats ultimately blocked the measure from advancing.

McConnell and his leadership team have been resolute that their conference is so divided over how much to spend that they have to keep spending levels as low as possible to generate maximum GOP support. But Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another Republican facing a surprisingly tough challenge this year, said his party is warming to the $1.6 trillion number set forth by the administration.

“We need a package. But it’s got to be something that’s reasonable. It doesn’t help me to throw money at the problem, it does help me to put money where it matters,” said Graham, who is narrowly leading Democrat Jaime Harrison. “Half of us would vote for a package. Maybe more now, if it’s reasonable."

 

If you still needed proof that Collins, Tillis, Perdue, Cornyn and Graham are all in real trouble in their internal polling, you have to look no further. And Nancy Pelosi just plunged the knife in with a $2.2 trillion package passed Thursday by the House that now leaves the Senate holding the bag with roughly 30 days to go before judgement. Mitch may be able to save himself, but he'll lose control of the Senate at this rate and he knows it.

Besides, Trump wants a deal. He clearly wants to bribe people to vote for him, and he so badly wants all the credit for the government doing things. He may go over Mitch's head on this one, especially with him still down 7 points with just a month to go.

I'm still convinced that no relief will come until after the election, and nothing may come at all as long as Mitch controls the Senate. But if he doesn't, or Trump gives him an ultimatum, we'll see just where this goes.

Retribution Execution, Con't

GOP senators have threatened for a while to take up the Trump regime's battlecry on social meadia "fairness" in order to make social media stop policing their white supremacist allies and to go after marginalized groups to silence them permanently, and now they are bringing the force of subpoenas and legislation to bear just in time for the election.

 

The Trump administration is pressuring Senate Republicans to ratchet up scrutiny of social media companies it sees as biased against conservatives in the run-up to the November election, people familiar with the conversations say. And the effort appears to be paying off.

In recent weeks, the White House has pressed Senate Republican leaders on key committees to hold public hearings on the law that protects Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies from lawsuits over how they treat user posts, three Senate staffers told POLITICO. They requested anonymity to discuss private communications.

And action is following. Senate Commerce Chair Roger Wicker held a vote in his committee Thursday to issue subpoenas to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google to testify about how they police content on their platforms. That's after Democrats initially prevented the Mississippi Republican from pushing through subpoenas that could have compelled the CEOs to testify with only a few days' notice.

Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), meanwhile, last week introduced new legislation to address alleged bias on social media and the same day scheduled a markup of the bill for Thursday — a move that would have made it the fastest any bill on tech's liability protections has moved from introduction to a markup on Capitol Hill in recent memory. Graham announced Thursday that consideration of the measure had been tabled.

Both committees are targeting liability protections that have been credited with fueling Silicon Valley's success. The provision — enshrined in a 1996 law known as Section 230 — has allowed online businesses to grow without fear of lawsuits over user posts or their decisions to remove or otherwise moderate users' content.

Both lawmakers have reason to want to get in the White House's good graces. Graham, a prominent Trump ally, is facing the fight of his political life to hold onto his South Carolina seat against Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison. And Wicker will want to maintain a firm hold on his gavel, which gives him jurisdiction over most legislation targeting Section 230.

The congressional actions mark a sudden and dramatic escalation of efforts by Senate Republicans to revamp the legal shield — particularly with a Congress readying for elections and embroiled in negotiations over Covid relief. But Republicans say Section 230 has allowed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative viewpoints with impunity. Tech companies deny any such bias, and the administration itself has noted there's limited academic data to back up the concerns.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a top Trump ally on tech and longtime critic of Section 230, called the recent surge of activity by his colleagues "a sea change." President Donald Trump, he said, has been a driving force in rallying them.

“There’s hardly a conversation I have with the president where this doesn’t come up, where Section 230 does not come up, usually raised by him,” Hawley said in an interview. “It is much on his mind and I think his strong stance on this issue has had a big effect in opening the eyes of some of my Republican colleagues to realize this is a major issue.”

 

There are multiple reasons as to why Trump and the GOP want to go after social media giants, and frankly they are way too powerful and unaccountable.  But the real goal here is to force Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other media platforms to knuckle under the GOP and serve as their digital media arm, or the GOP opens the floodgates for these corporations to be sued out of existence.

It's also a chilling reminder that if they don't stop tagging Trump's lies and disinformation as such in the final weeks of the election, the price they will pay will be in the tens of billions.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump and Melania Trump have both tested positive for COVID-19, Trump announced his status on Twitter early Friday morning after aide Hope Hicks tested positive earlier this week.
  
•  A federal judge has ruled that the Barr Justice Department "improperly" redacted parts of the Mueller Report and must release the full version to the public.
• House Democrats have passed a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 aid package after negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin fell apart this week.
• Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is facing angry Senate Democrats who say she did not reveal the fact she signed onto a political ad calling for the overturning of Roe v Wade.
• Mississippi says AT&T took nearly $300 million to deploy rural broadband services in the state but has yet to actually start on the job, the state is investigating possible fraud.