Last Call For Clown Hall

Trump's Tuesday town hall meeting and interview with ABC's George Stephanopolous did not go well, even by Republican debate spin standards, from people like former McConnell aide and CNN GOP contributor Scott Jennings.

Donald Trump's town hall with ABC News did not go well, although I give him credit for agreeing to a road game in a hostile gym. The President had a few decent moments in Philadelphia Tuesday, but the event showed he is simply better in a pugilistic debate with an opponent than he is in addressing individual voters in a "townhall" format. 

Not that the negative interactions were all his fault. This was billed as a conversation with "uncommitted" voters, which is, charitably, baloney. Most of the questions were hostile, and several of the questioners quite clearly have no intention whatsoever of voting for Trump. 

It actually speaks to a larger question about the American electorate -- is there really anyone uncommitted at this point? There is no ambivalence about Trump. You love him or you hate him. And some people who love him are going to vote against him, because they are exhausted. And some people who hate him are going to vote for him because they see his opposition as unhinged and ridiculous. 

Trump also had to fight off relentless badgering from ABC's chief anchor George Stephanopoulos. This is Stephanopoulos' job, I guess, and Trump often says things that are so ridiculous that he invites the badgering. But this format was supposed to be about Trump and the voters and it was frequently about Trump and the anchor. This show should've been unmoderated.

If that's the best the GOP can spin it, it was an unmitigated disaster, and it was.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And the first one comes from Paul Tubiana.

Paul, take it away.

TRUMP: Hi, Paul.

TUBIANA: Mr. President, I voted for you in 2016. I’m a conservative, pro-life and diabetic. I’ve had to dodge people who don’t care about social distancing and wearing face masks.

I thought you were doing a good job with the pandemic response until about May 1st. Then you took your foot off the gas pedal. Why did you throw vulnerable people like me under the bus?

TRUMP: Well, we really didn’t, Paul. We’ve worked very hard on the pandemic. We’ve worked very hard. It came off from China. They should have never let it happen.

And if you looked at what we’ve done with ventilators, and now, frankly, with vaccines --we’re very close to having the vaccine.

If you want to know the truth, the previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine because of the FDA and all the approvals, and we’re within weeks of getting it. You know, could be three weeks, four weeks, but we think we have it. Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, we have great companies and they're very, very close.

It’s been very... it’s a terrible thing, but if you look at...as an example, are you from New York? Where are you from?

TUBIANA: Originally I’m from New York. I’ve lived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

TRUMP: I see.

TUBIANA: For 18 1/2 years. This is the longest place I’ve ever lived.

TRUMP: Well, that’s very good. It’s a good place. But actually, if you look at what we’ve done for various things -- we built hospitals. New York, we took the convention center, converted it to 2,800 rooms. We brought in the ships. I wish they would have used it, because, frankly, they would have saved a lot of people had they used it.

As Steve M. points out, Trump going straight to a pile of tangentially related arguments, one on top of the other, is classic Gish Gallop. We'll see it in all three debates, most likely.

Maybe he won't be like that in the debates with Joe Biden. Maybe he'll be the nasty attack dog of the MAGA rallies. I think it's possible that his testosterone will get the better of him (or Biden will goad him) and he'll go on the attack. If so, that will hurt him. What much of America dislikes about him more than anything is his tone.

But if he restrains himself, low-info voters might conclude that he's done what he's done the past four years out of a sense of good judgment. He'll lie and lie and lie, and Biden will be forced to pick his spots in rebutting those lies, which means most of them will get through unchallenged.

I'm not really worried. Polls suggest that there aren't very many undecided voters, and Biden appears to be comfortably ahead in enough states to win. And the press seems fed up with Trump's bullshitting.

But Trump just might sound this way in the last few presidential events most voters will pay attention to, and it might help him some, even if he's telling the same lies he always tells.

Dubya's "Catapulting the propaganda" is now a full-blown Trump orbital space strike. He'll get 42% no matter what, but will her get the 5-6% more he needs to win the electoral college?

We'll see.

Deporation Nation, Con't

The hideous, inhuman treatment of ICE detainees in the COVID-19 era by the Trump regime is far, far worse than you've imagined. These people are monsters, full stop.

A nurse who worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Irwin County, Georgia and four lawyers representing clients there are claiming that immigrant women are routinely being sent to a gynecologist who has left them bruised and performed unnecessary procedures, including hysterectomies.

Yeah, you read that right. "Unnecessary hystorectomies".  You know, goddamn Nazi-era sterilization procedures.

The doctor, who three lawyers identified as Dr. Mahendra Amin, practicing in Douglas, Georgia, has continued to see women from the Irwin County Detention Center for the past several years despite complaints from his patients.

Amin was the subject of a Justice Department investigation in 2015 for making false claims to Medicaid and Medicare. As a result, he and other doctors involved paid $525,000 in a civil settlement, according to the Justice Department.

The lawyers identified the doctor after a whistleblower complaint to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security was filed by Dawn Wooten, who worked as a nurse inside the facility. She said in the complaint that detainees were not getting Covid-19 tests and other needed medical care. The complaint was first reported by the Intercept.

Wooten worked full time as a licensed practical nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, until being demoted in July.

The complaint cites both allegations from unnamed detained immigrants and Wooten.

The facility houses immigrant detainees in the custody of ICE, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security. It also houses inmates for Irwin County and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network filed the complaint on behalf of detained immigrants at the center and Wooten.

Wooten was demoted in July from a full-time nurse to “as-needed” after missing work because she had coronavirus symptoms. She said she believes the demotion was in retaliation for raising coronavirus protocol concerns, according to the complaint.

She also said that there was not enough active testing of the immigrant detainees for the coronavirus and that the facility was not “reporting all these cases that are positive,” meaning the number of cases at the facility was possibly much higher than that reported by ICE.

Kids in cages, separated, deporting toddlers, now we have forced sterilization. I tell you what, these guys are headed for The Hague, but only if we kick them out of power first.

Getting The Band Back Together

The GOP is absolutely up to their old voter suppression tricks on a national level, and they've been attacking the integrity of the vote since it became obvious that COVID-19 was going to make voting by mail easier.They've been coordinating a national bag of dirty tricks for months, and the effort is being spearheaded by our old friend, Dubya-era voter suppression expert Hans von Spakovski and his merry crew of assholes over at the Heritage Foundation.

Starting in early spring, as the coronavirus took hold, a conservative lawyer at the forefront of raising alarms about voting by mail held multiple private briefings exclusively for Republican state election officials, according to previously unreported public records.

The lawyer, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.

Among the participants in these meetings has been an official from the office of Georgia’s secretary of state; the secretary, Brad Raffensperger, recently elevated concerns about voter fraud by contending that 1,000 Georgians had voted twice in elections this year.

GOP congressional staffers and a Trump administration appointee have also joined in these meetings, which were open to officials from states across the country, including Missouri and Nevada, the records show. No Democratic state election officials appear to have been invited.
The “goal” of the meetings, held remotely, is to “gather the chief state election officials together to strategize on advancing their shared goal of ensuring the integrity of the elections they administer in their home states,” an invitation to an early August event reads.

Most of the states declined to comment on the meetings, and it’s not clear what specifically was discussed. Von Spakovsky is highly influential in conservative circles. He has sent invitees copies of his published essays pushing for in-person voting and culling voter rolls as absentee balloting expands amid the pandemic, a situation that von Spakovsky argued will “make fraud far easier.”

The meetings come as voting access has become one of the central flashpoints of the upcoming presidential election. More Americans are expected to vote by mail this year than ever before because of the health risks posed by COVID-19. President Donald Trump has repeatedly and baselessly asserted that mail-in voting is rife with problems. Echoing von Spakovsky, he asserted on Twitter in July that the upcoming presidential vote will be the “most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
Experts have said voting by mail carries little risk of fraud. Since it is widely believed that more Democractic voters will vote by mail than Republicans, von Spakovsky’s proposals, if adopted, could suppress Democratic turnout in one of the most consequential presidential elections in a generation.

Secretaries of state, who oversee statewide voting and work with county election officials, have broad leeway to act in ways that can limit or expand the franchise. While most are partisan elected officials, they are expected to carry out policies that benefit everyone.

The Heritage Foundation did not make von Spakovsky available for an interview and didn’t address detailed questions about the meetings. In a statement, the nonprofit’s media director, Greg Scott, said election security was “crucial to our country’s future.”

“The Heritage Foundation is committed to making sure elections are free and fair,” he said. “Every eligible voter’s vote should be counted and not canceled out by fraudulent acts.”

So now we know where Trump is getting his bad info on "rampant voter fraud" from, the same Dubya/Nameless One jackasses who were doing the same 15 years ago.

They're definitely up to no good.

StupidiNews!

• UCLA medical researchers have found evidence that the COVID-19 virus was in America weeks before originally thought, as early as the week of Christmas 2019.
• A Wisconsin Republican state House candidate is backing away from retweets posted by former KKK leader David Duke after being questioned by reporters.
• Hurricane Sally has slowed to a crawl, dumping feet of rain on the Mississippi/Louisiana Gulf Coast as the storm came ashore as a Category 1 storm.
• Donald Trump says a working COVID-19 vaccine could be ready for medical personnel by mid-October, but critics say the US is far away from a working vaccine.
• Apple is going head to head with Amazon with a bundle that includes combined subscriptions to AppleTV, Apple Arcade, and Apple Music starting at $14.95.

Last Call For Skinning The Walrus

The Trump regime is now exacting bloody revenge on John Bolton's mustache, and odds are he's going to prison, and the WSJ can barely contain its glee.

Federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to former national security adviser John Bolton’s publisher and literary agent on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, launching a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton mishandled classified information.

The subpoenas, to Simon & Schuster and Javelin, requested all communications with Mr. Bolton, said the people, who declined to be named. Both companies were involved in publishing Mr. Bolton’s bestseller, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” The book, released in June, is highly critical of President Trump and relays stories about Mr. Bolton’s time in government and relationship with the president.

The Justice Department’s use of a grand jury in the inquiry hasn’t previously been reported. The agency previously filed a lawsuit against Mr. Bolton over the book’s publication.

Mr. Bolton himself didn’t receive any subpoena, one of the people said. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bolton declined to comment. An attorney for Mr. Bolton couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster, which is the book publishing arm of ViacomCBS Inc., declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. A representative for Javelin couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The development marks an escalation in the administration’s battle with Mr. Bolton, who is one of several former administration officials who have written books that recount their time in office under Mr. Trump. The president and the White House have been critical of some of those memoirs for painting a harsh portrait of him.

But the Justice Department took particular issue with Mr. Bolton’s book because he was accused of not waiting until his manuscript had received signoff from national security reviewers, the government alleged in a civil suit earlier this year filed in federal court in Washington. Such signoff is required of former officials to ensure that they don’t disseminate classified information.

Mr. Bolton responded in that civil suit that one official had cleared the manuscript after months of edits, and that the White House was improperly extending the review process to delay his book because it was embarrassing for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Bolton’s memoir sold more than 780,000 copies in all formats through its first week on sale in the U.S., according to Simon & Schuster. There are now more than 1 million hardcover copies in print.

A federal judge said John Bolton likely “jeopardized national security” and was persuaded that Mr. Bolton had violated his employment contracts that governed his access to classified information when he was Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. But the judge rejected the request to block the book’s distribution given that many of its revelations had already been made public.

The judge, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, also noted that Mr. Bolton may have committed a crime, saying: “This was Bolton’s bet: If he is right and the book doesn’t contain classified information, he [gains publicity and sales]; but if he is wrong, he stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security. Bolton was wrong.”

So the civil suit is now a Bill Barr-run criminal investigation, complete with possible indictments. Pay close attention to this one, as it's how Trump wants to deal with all his enemies, Republican and Democratic. In a second Trump term, a whole hell of a lot of people are going to prison, and none of them will be the people who actually need to go to prison.

Well, except maybe Bolton, the guy actually does deserve a few war crimes tribunals to be honest.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Pennsylvania has struck down Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's COVID-19 safety restrictions, calling them "arbitrary" and "unfettered" government overreach. 

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic restrictions that required people to stay at home, placed size limits on gatherings and ordered “non-life-sustaining” businesses to shut down are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, sided with plaintiffs that included hair salons, drive-in movie theaters, a farmer’s market vendor, a horse trainer and several Republican officeholders in their lawsuit against Wolf, a Democrat, and his health secretary.

The Wolf administration’s pandemic policies have been overreaching, arbitrary and violated citizens’ constitutional rights, Stickman wrote in his ruling.

The governor’s efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus “were undertaken with the good intention of addressing a public health emergency,” Stickman wrote. “But even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered.”

Courts had consistently rejected challenges to Wolf’s power to order businesses to close during the pandemic, and many other governors, Republican and Democrat, undertook similar measures as the virus spread across the country.

Wolf has since lifted many of the restrictions, allowing businesses to reopen and canceling a statewide stay-at-home order.

But over the summer, his administration imposed a new round of statewide pandemic restrictions on bars, restaurants and larger indoor gatherings in response to rising infection rates in some virus hot spots. The state has also imposed a gathering limit of more than 25 people for events held indoors and more than 250 people for those held outside.

A spokesperson for Wolf said the administration was reviewing the decision.

Trump of course couldn't be happier as he defied Nevada's rule on indoor gatherings over the weekend with an indoor rally of several thousand, most without masks.

After failing to arrange alternative venues in the Las Vegas area, the campaign decided to hold the rally indoors at the Xtreme Manufacturing facility, owned by his friend Don Ahern, Trump said.

“They canceled six different sites because the governor wouldn’t let it happen, all external sites,” the president said.

The evening reflected a split seen across the country between Americans who want fewer restrictions imposed by state and local governments and those who believe that Trump should not encourage his supporters to risk their health in order to express their political opinions.

Trump said in his interview with the Review-Journal that he is not afraid of getting the coronavirus from speaking at the indoor rally.

“I’m on a stage and it’s very far away,” Trump said. “And so I’m not at all concerned.”

“I’m more concerned about how close you are, to be honest,” Trump told a Review-Journal reporter who thought she was socially distanced.

Trump had no worries about if he'll be infected.

As for the thousands in the crowd?

They all signed waivers, you see.  Sorry if your cult worship kills you, or if you spread the virus to others around you. Not Trump's fault, you see. 

Hope you voted early, you will be missed.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

It's one thing when convicted (and commuted) felon Roger Stone calls for Trump to take over the country through martial law, but now we have active Trump regime members saying the same thing 50 days before the election.

Michael Caputo, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, claimed Sunday that there is a “resistance unit” of “seditious” government scientists at the CDC working to undermine President Donald Trump.

They “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump,” Caputo added. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
He made the claims, as recorded by the New York Times, in a histrionic Facebook livestream where he additionally claimed that his own life is at risk.

“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” he told his followers, building into a dramatic tangent about the “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.”

Caputo told the Times that his family had been “continually threatened” since he joined the administration in April. He did not immediately respond to TPM’s questions. Caputo has been a vocal Trump loyalist for years, and has no background in health care.

Over the weekend, reports surfaced Caputo’s attempts to massage weekly bulletins from the CDC — critical public health updates called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports — to fit Trump’s insistence that the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding. The reports, meant mostly for scientists and public health officials, are traditionally guarded as wholly apolitical and kept from political appointees until just before publication.

Caputo was reportedly helped in these efforts by Paul Alexander, an assistant professor Caputo hired to assist him with pandemic-related matters, who has reportedly called the MMWRs “hit pieces on the administration.” The two recently tried to stop the publication of a report on the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, an unproven treatment Trump has heralded as a COVID-19 cure-all. Alexander has called for a complete stop in MMWR publishing until the process is amended so “someone outside of CDC like myself” can review the reports.

The House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus announced Monday that they’re investigating the interference with the reports.

In his livestream, Caputo also dipped into conspiracy theorizing about Trump winning reelection, but former Vice President Joe Biden refusing to concede.

“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing,” he said, adding, “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

Caputo is not well. He needs to be cleaning his desk out, frankly.  But in this regime, when he's calling on Trump supporters to stock up and firearms and ammunition, in order to begin an armed insurrection against Joe Biden?

This is beyond the pale.

People are going to get hurt or killed over this, possibly a lot of people, possibly in multiple mass casualty events in the months ahead.

Please, everyone, be careful out there.

StupidiNews!

South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravinsborg apparently struck and killed a pedestrian with his car Saturday night, Ravinsborg told police he had hit what he thought was a deer.
LA police have posted a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a fugitive believed to have shot and injured two LA County Sheriff's deputies in Compton on Saturday.
Hurricane Sally has strengthened considerably off the coast of Mississippi and could strike this morning as a Category 3 storm with winds of 110 mph and what could be up to two feet of rain.
A campaign finance watchdog group has found that current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy gave $600,000 to the GOP after the position became available.
Microsoft confirms that a critical Windows update patch fixes an exploit that could allow malicious users to gain domain access to an entire network without credentials.

Last Call For Kentucky Goes Viral, Con't

As Kentucky has now passed 1,000 deaths and 57,000 COVID-19 cases, state Republican lawmakers are again openly accusing Gov. Andy Beshear of inflating the number of casualties and cases to "manipulate" and "control" Kentuckians.

On Thursday, the same day Kentucky announced its highest daily number of COVID-19 deaths — 22 — some lawmakers continued to question the accuracy of the state's data and whether the public should believe it.

Leading the criticism was Sen. Danny Carroll, a Paducah Republican and co-chairman of the Program Review and Investigations Committee, which called in Dr. Steven Stack, public health commissioner, for a second round of questions about how the state gets the COVID-19 numbers that Gov. Andy Beshear releases daily.

"What I do have problems with is the way that information is being used, not being completely accurate," Carroll said. "It's being used to manipulate our people, to make our people scared, to control our people."

Carroll said he gets daily complaints from people in his Western Kentucky district.

"Half of this state doesn't believe a word you all say when it comes to this data," he said, a repeat of his comments to Stack last month when the physician appeared before the committee.

Sen. Mike Nemes, a Shepherdsville Republican, wondered why restrictions are imposed on businesses such as bars when most of the deaths are occurring among the elderly, the majority in nursing homes.

"There's no 80-year-olds coming out of a bar at night," he said. "What are we doing to stop the elderly from dying?"

Stack told the committee that the state's numbers overall are reliable and provide an accurate picture of the spread and impact of COVID-19 in Kentucky, which he said he has stated in public repeatedly.

"The data has limitations. The data has imperfections," he said. "But even allowing for all those things, the data is incredibly valuable and incredibly informative and helps to guide decision-making when used in the proper context."
He said the elderly continue to be at greatest risk from the virus and stringent measures are in effect for nursing homes to try to limit spread. And anyone who visits a bar and gets infected has the potential to spread it to others, he said.

As at the previous meeting, the discussion broke down along partisan lines, with Republicans who control the legislature criticizing Beshear, a Democrat, and members of the governor's party defending him.

Sen. Karen Berg, a Louisville Democrat and the only physician on the panel, sounded incredulous as she accused committee members including Carroll of seeking to discredit data about COVID-19.

"I talk to constituents daily whose response is, 'Thank God, thank God, our governor is acting, thank God our administration is acting,'" she said. "Think how many more people would be dead."

Berg added she found the debate especially upsetting because "I'm on the front lines. I go to the hospital and fight this every day."

It really says something that there's only one medical professional on the General Assembly's main oversight committee. It's also astonishing to me that six months after the pandemic started, we still have state lawmakers that lack basic knowledge of epidemiology.

Lawmakers asked about recent news reports of a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found 94% of deaths linked to COVID-19 were among people with "comorbidities," other health conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

"Is COVID really the basis" (of such deaths)? asked Rep. Lynn Bechler, a Marion Republican and committee co-chairman.

Yes, Stack said. While evidence shows people with other health conditions are more likely to have serious or fatal outcomes from COVID-19, only deaths believed caused by the coronavirus are listed as such, he said.

"We've said all along people with chronic medical problems are in the highest of risk categories," Stack told the committee. "I think there are a lot of people, perhaps some people in this room, who are taking blood pressure pills, cholesterol pills, diabetes medication and are doing just fine and will continue to live for quite a few more decades."

And that's important to point out: the comorbidities have existing prevention and treatment options. COVID-19 doesn't have an effective treatment.

I shudder to think of how many thousands would be dead over the last six months if Matt Bevin were in his second term.

Biden, Su Tiempo

A lot has been made of Biden's performance with Latino voters compared to Hillary Clinton four years ago, especially in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and the biggest battleground prize, Florida. It's been a problem for Biden since the primaries, it remained a problem over the summer, Biden took steps to dramatically increase outreach in July and it hasn't gotten any better in the last three months.

The perception is that Biden is taking the Latino vote overall for granted. It's not true, but it's the perception.

Latinos are one of the largest growing demographics in the country, and their support is essential to ensuring a win that cannot be challenged or litigated – especially in key battleground states like Arizona, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

However, according to a new survey conducted by the Voter Participation Center in partnership with Voto Latino and Latino Decisions, less than 60 percent of eligible Latino voters say they definitely plan to cast a ballot in 2020 and demonstrate a low enthusiasm about the candidacy of Vice President Joe Biden.

Even though Donald Trump has no viable path to gain majority Latino support as he makes anti-immigration a foundation of his re-election, Biden’s approval among young Latinos is waning.

Today, Biden’s support is down seven points from 67 percent back in February. By comparison, during this time in 2016, Hillary Clinton enjoyed 73 percent support among Latinos.

A big issue is outreach. Most Latinos say they haven’t even heard from Joe Biden’s campaign nor the Democratic party. Just 32 percent of low-propensity Latino voters say the Democrats are doing a good job of outreach while only 27 percent of Latinos ages 18-29 agree.

On the contrary, Latino Republicans report higher levels of connectivity with their party than Democrats, with 53 percent of self-identified Republican respondents saying they were contacted by someone, compared to 43 percent of Democrats.

So why isn't Biden's Latino outreach working?

It's funny you should ask.

George Soros directs a “Deep State” global conspiracy network. A Joe Biden win would put America in control of “Jews and Blacks.” The Democratic nominee has a pedophilia problem.

Wild disinformation like this is inundating Spanish-speaking residents of South Florida ahead of Election Day, clogging their WhatsApp chats, Facebook feeds and even radio airwaves at a saturation level that threatens to shape the outcome in the nation’s biggest and most closely contested swing state.

The sheer volume of conspiracy theories — including QAnon — and deceptive claims is already playing a role in stunting Biden’s growth with Latino voters, who comprise about 17 percent of the state’s electorate.
“The onslaught has had an effect,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University.

“It’s difficult to measure the effect exactly, but the polling sort of shows it and in focus groups it shows up, with people deeply questioning the Democrats, and referring to the ‘Deep State’ in particular — that there’s a real conspiracy against the president from the inside,” he said. “There’s a strain in our political culture that’s accustomed to conspiracy theories, a culture that’s accustomed to coup d'etats.”

Gamarra, a political science and international relations professor with extensive experience polling in Latin America and Hispanic voters in Florida, pointed to recent large-sample surveys of Latinos in the state and in the Latino-heavy county of Miami-Dade. They showed Biden underperforming with this crucial Democratic leaning segment of the electorate, though he’s still running ahead of President Trump by double digits. The race overall in the state is essentially tied.

Florida’s Latino community is a diverse mix of people with roots across Latin America. There’s a large population of Republican-leaning Cubans in Miami-Dade and a growing number of Democratic-leaning voters with Puerto Rican, Colombian, Nicaraguan, Dominican and Venezuelan heritage in Miami and elsewhere in the state. Many register as independents but typically vote Democratic. Those independents — especially recently arrived Spanish-speakers — are seen as more up for grabs because they’re less tied to U.S. political parties and are more likely than longtime voters to be influenced by mainstream news outlets and social media.

Democrats fear that’s where the role of disinformation and conspiracy theories might prove effective against Biden, because it plants seeds of doubt in an otherwise-Democratic bloc of the electorate that the former vice president needs to win. The net effect would be to depress turnout, possibly enabling President Donald Trump to carry a state that is essential to his reelection.

Biden is getting worked over by Trump in social media, particularly by a widespread disinformation campaign over Facebook. And yes, it's the same QAnon conspiracy crap we're seeing out in other parts of the country, only aimed directly at Latino voters. Biden's people are missing these attacks and they are going to slip in Florida because of them if they don't start fighting back immediately.

And it's not just social media where Biden is getting hurt.

Some of the information shared in chat groups and pulled from YouTube and Facebook goes beyond hyperbolic and caustic rhetoric.

On Informativo G24, long-time Colombian news anchor Sandra Valencia brings on guests via webcam for discussions about Latin America and U.S. politics with analysis that often relies on conspiracy theories, such as how Black Lives Matter and other activist groups are planning a “siege” on the White House later this month. The site does not detail who funds it, but asks supporters to donate to a PayPal account registered to Valencia.

Valencia bills her Spanish-language YouTube page, which has more than 378,000 followers, as a channel for geopolitical analysis. But it often resembles English-language right-wing news sources, such as Infowars, sharing conspiracy theories and strong anti-globalization messages.

And unlike the conspiracy theories that circulate in English-language news media and social media, there’s relatively little to no Spanish-language media coverage of the phenomenon nor a political counterpunch from the left.

Some of the disinformation discussed on Informativo G24 has been led by Omar Bula-Escobar, a former United Nations representative and Colombian geopolitical analyst, who in recent years has become a frequent guest on various Latin American radio and television news shows to talk about globalization. Bula-Escobar, who’s also a frequent guest on Miami-based Radio Caracol — which is one of Colombia’s main radio networks and widely respected throughout Latin America — has gained an increasing amount of notoriety for pushing the claim, often seen as anti-Semitic, that billionaire George Soros is “the world’s biggest puppet master” and is the face of the American Democratic Party.

“Who’s going to celebrate the day, God forbid, Trump loses? Cuba; ISIS, which Trump ended; Hezbollah, which Obama gave the greenlight to enter Latin America; Iran; China… All the filth of the planet is against Donald Trump. So, if you want to be part of the filth, then go with the filth,” Bula-Escobar said in a recent episode of Informativo G24.

Other shared content has included a translated clip of Christian conservative pastor John MacArthur claiming that there is no pandemic and coronavirus death numbers have been wildly exaggerated.

In June, a Noticias 24, a Venezuela-focused news site that has a large following in Latin America, amplified disinformation with a story bearing the headline “social networks also accuse Joe Biden of being a pedophile.” A month later, when the lie resurfaced, “#BidenPedofilio” trended in Spain.

It's almost like there's a level of political disinformation here and voter suppression that approaches a state-sponsored scope, from a foreign actor that definitely wants to see Trump prevail in Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, to keep Texas, Ohio and Georgia, and to take Nevada, a foreign state that specializes in such political disinformation activities and has possibly run them against other Democratic party base groups in the past.

Now I can't imagine who that could be...

Stepping back though, it's important to remember that Biden is still doing very well with Latino voters overall.

A new survey released Monday morning shows Trump in deep trouble in Arizona. The survey, conducted by Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights, shows former Vice President Joe Biden leading Trump by a 52 percent to 42 percent margin.

It is the eighth consecutive public poll that has showed Biden leading in Arizona and Biden has led in 17 of the last 20 polls. A CBS News poll released Sunday showed Biden leading by a smaller three-point margin, 47 percent to 44 percent.

OH Predictive Insights, a nonpartisan firm, has showed Biden leading Trump throughout the year, by between four and ten points. In August, before either party convention, the firm found Biden ahead 49 percent to 45 percent. Biden’s current lead comes in a survey sample in which Republicans outnumber Democrats by five percentage points.

The latest poll underscores the foundations of Biden’s lead over Trump, in both national and swing-state surveys: He is winning about the same percentage of voters as Hillary Clinton did in 2016 among groups that lean toward Democrats, but he is doing substantially better among groups that chose Trump over Clinton four years ago.

Biden and Clinton pull about the same percentage of Hispanic or Latino voters, 59 percent in the current poll and 61 percent for Clinton four years ago. But where Clinton lost white voters in Arizona by 14 points, according to exit polls, Biden leads by six among those voters.

And that's the difference.  Biden is actually doing about the same with Latino voters but he's doing substantially better with white voters, in particular white college-educated voters and specifically with white college-educated women.

The conspiracy nonsense still has a chance to hurt Biden in the long run, however.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

I have to agree with Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch here, as I have several times in the past. The problem in America is not Donald Trump, but the series of enablers and broken guardrails that made the last four years possible in the first place, and there's no greater empirical proof that the American democratic process is flat busted than the fact Trump and his nutjob voters are within a couple of consecutive bad coin flips of another term.

Maybe Trump’s neo-fascist narcissism was the big story in the fall of 2016, but the bigger story in the fall of 2020 is the mass delusion of the millions who elected him once and who are within striking distance of doing it again. I’d argue that the most important journalism of the week was neither the Woodward book nor Goldberg’s Atlantic scoop but from Time’s Charlotte Alter: “How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election — and Shaking the Foundation of American Democracy.”

Alter spoke with voters in places like Ozaukee County, Wis., who almost surely weren’t watching the TV clucking about the Woodward book because more likely they were on Facebook or wherever they determined that “an evil cabal operates tunnels under the U.S. in order to rape and torture children and drink their blood.”

Voter Kelly Ferro told Time that Trump is revealing the truth and that Americans' “eyes are being opened to the darkness that was once hidden" — referring to the QAnon conspiracy theory in which an anonymous whistleblower named "Q" (who may be, some even think, a John F. Kennedy Jr. who didn’t die in a 1999 plane crash) says Trump has been sent not only to smash “the deep state” but also to break up a child-sex ring of top Democrats and Hollywood stars.

The growing belief in conspiracy theories like QAnon — and its bold move into the mainstream by hijacking legitimate concern but also deep misunderstanding about the actual issue of sex trafficking —helps explain why voters and opinion leaders on the right are less than concerned this weekend about the coronavirus death toll nearing 200,000 and more about a Netflix movie called Cuties, an acclaimed French coming-of-age film that has been conspiracy-mangled into Hollywood (and even Barack Obama, who has a deal with Netflix) promoting pedophilia.

QAnon and its tentacles are perhaps the most overt example of an electorate where suspicion, rage and resentment is far more likely to fuel public reaction to the 2020 election — and all the concurrent crises like COVID-19 or the West Coast wildfires — than the rational responses that political science majors (like me) were wrongly trained to expect.

We see it in the growing backlash against any sort of racial reckoning in America, where thousands of football fans in Kansas City loudly booed a simple moment of silent pregame solidarity among Black and white players on the Chiefs and the Texans. We see it in the growing paranoia in Oregon, where a mass tragedy such as the wildfire that calls for a communal response has instead seen militias setting up armed checkpoints because of wild rumors about antifa. And we saw it on Saturday night at a Nevada airport where thousands of Trumpists raced like lemmings, packed together and not wearing masks, in a state that’s had high rates of COVID infection, to hear their Dear Leader and pretend the virus had never existed.

It’s why Trump seems impervious to the fallout from national dysfunction that caused 20th-century incumbent presidents like Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bush I to lose elections. Neither sky-high unemployment nor a deadly pandemic has kept the polls from showing Trump in striking distance here in Pennsylvania, the state which — given the daunting Electoral College math — could prevent Biden’s rescue mission. My Inquirer colleague Julia Terruso visited the Western Pennsylvania outpost of Norvelt — a town literally created by the it-takes-a-village communalism of FDR’s New Deal — and found an electorate instead wrapped in a reality created by Fox News. “We don’t want our houses burned down,” a rural pastor told Terruso.

Trump may have broken all the rules, but will he break the rule in modern America that presidents who’ve been elected once tend to win a second time? — which is what happened seven out of nine tries since World War II. Trump’s political success in 2016 and possibly again in 2020 — with more than 40% of people supporting him no matter how many devastating books are written — is not based on America’s headlines but its national psyche, which is severely damaged. That’s why I’m so numb to whatever latest gross thing Trump has said, yet in a state of utter panic over the American voters and how their misinformation may decide our election.

In the short term, I hate to sound so cynical but there’s next to nothing that can be said in the next 50 days that will change the Trump-fried brains of voters in Norvelt or thousands of other communities like it. That doesn’t mean Biden cannot be elected — there’s a good chance he can — but it will take uncommon unity among the 55% of Americans who don’t like Trump, a massive focus on getting those voters to the polls and making sure their votes are counted, and a well-planned response for a scenario in which the president loses but tries to claim victory anyway.

The rest of us, which thankfully are a majority, have to man that wall and stand firm against the onslaught. We have decades of work ahead of us, but that work starts with electing Joe Biden and stopping Donald Trump, and even then the demonic hold that he has over his deth cult will take years to weaken, let alone to break.

There will be another Trump, with more animal cunning, with even less shame, without the baggage and the ego and the exploitable faults. And the next time, America will not escape their grasp, and we will be done.

Unless we are ready now, at this moment in history.

StupidiNews!

• At least ten people are dead as firefighters continue to battle more than a dozen wildfires in Oregon, thousands of firefighters are being used on the West Coast this fire season.
• Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are headed to California to tour fire-damaged parts of the state, five million acres have already burned across more than 20 counties.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is facing revolt by Parliament over his plan to break his own Brexit deal, EU officials say they could take legal action against London in 2021.
• Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has overwhelmingly elected Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga as party leader, Suga is easily expected to become Japan's next Prime Minister.
• Software giant Oracle has beaten Microsoft in its bid to buy Chinese social media app TikTok ahead of Tuesday's deadline to sell to a US firm or be banned by Trump as a national security risk.

Last Call For Climate Of Destruction, Con't

The worst wildfire season in West Coast history is torching millions of acres across multiple states and Californians are facing the prospect that the Golden State's golden days are permanently over.

This is the latest iteration of the California Dream, a Gold Rush-era slogan meant to capture the hopeful migration of an old nation to a new, rich West. For generations, the tacit agreement for California residents resembled a kind of too-good-to-be-true deal. Live in the lovely if often drought-plagued Sierra, or beneath the beachfront Pacific Coast cliffs, and work in an economy constantly reinventing itself, from Hollywood to the farms of the San Joaquin to Silicon Valley.

But for many of the state’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with a rapidly changing climate, a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes and a pandemic that has led to more cases of the novel coronavirus than any other state.

During the course of his term, President Trump has singled out California, a state he lost by 30 percentage points, as an example of Democrat-caused urban unrest, irresponsible immigration policy and poor forest management, even though nearly 60 percent of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government. Several are burning today, with millions of acres already scorched.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has responded specifically in some cases, but in others, he has invoked the California Dream, an aspirational noun attached to no other state. In his January 2019 inaugural address, Newsom warned that “there is nothing inevitable about” that dream.

“And now more than ever, it is up to us to defend it,” he said.

As the state’s climate has shifted to one of extremes, soaking wet seasons followed suddenly by sharp, dry heat and wind, no region has been safe from fire. This year — even before peak fire season has gotten underway — widespread fires have forced evacuations, from San Jose in Silicon Valley to the distant hamlet of Big Creek along the western slopes of the Sierra.

More than two dozen major fires are burning around the state and have consumed a record 3.1 million acres of land, more than 3,000 homes and at least 22 lives. Los Angeles has reported the worst air quality in three decades as a result of fires surrounding that city, already notorious for orange air and seasonal dry cough.

Wine Country has burned four straight years, with a number of vineyards lost. Homes have been destroyed far to the south in San Diego County, and more than 200 campers had to be airlifted to safety amid the Creek Fire, still burning hot and fast between Fresno and Mammoth Lakes.

The mountains behind Santa Barbara County, which gave way after being burned bare by the Thomas Fire three years ago, have turned a worrisome gray-brown tinder in recent weeks.

Those slopes, prepared by one of the state’s largest fires in history at the time, slid during rain-saturated mudslides in January 2018. Twenty people were killed in the wealthy enclave of Montecito, sweeping some from inside their foothill homes all the way to the sea.

The mandatory evacuation orders issued then included the home recently bought by Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, newcomers to Santa Barbara’s shifting climate.

“Hopefully, this is a wake-up call,” said Anne-Marie Bonneau, who two decades ago left her home in Ontario, Canada, for the Bay Area but misses the clean air and less-fractious political environment beyond the northern border. “What is it going to take for this country to do something about the climate crisis? Millions of people are affected by this.”

She sees what is happening in California as just the beginning of what is to come across the continent.

The Trump regime's response?  Climate change doesn't exist, and California can go extinguish itself.

David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Legates confirmed to NPR that he was recently hired as NOAA's deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. The position suggests that he reports directly to Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the agency that is in charge of the federal government's sprawling weather and climate prediction work.

Neither Legates nor NOAA representatives responded to questions about Legates' specific responsibilities or why he was hired. The White House also declined to comment.

Legates has a long history of using his position as an academic scientist to publicly cast doubt on climate science. His appointment to NOAA comes as Americans face profound threats stoked by climate change, from the vast, deadly wildfires in the West to an unusually active hurricane season in the South and East. 

A second Trump term will continue to make the effects of climate change worse as the regime will actively pollute more, burn more carbon, and spend less money on mitigation and prevention. Ironically, it's rural Trump voters who operate farms and ranches who will be the hardest hit, but they've already shown they will vote for him even as he continues to destroy their livelihoods.

It's a death cult, and we're all going to be put to the torch.

Biden, His Time, Con't

"I can't stand it, I know you planned it
I'mma set it straight, this Watergate
I can't stand rockin' when I'm in here
'Cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
So while you sit back and wonder why
I got this fuckin' thorn in my side
Oh my god, it's a mirage
I'm tellin' y'all, it's sabotage"

--Beastie Boys, "Sabotage"

If somehow we get to the point where Joe Biden is declared the winner of the election, I'm glad that his planned transition team understands that the Trump regime will do everything in its power to sabotage the country and hold America hostage in order to force the Biden administration and their allies to spare the Trumps from justice.

Joe Biden’s transition team has expanded its fundraising goal far beyond what Hillary Clinton raised in 2016, anticipating that, should they prevail in November, the Trump administration could actively work against their efforts and that the coronavirus pandemic will make a presidential changeover more difficult than ever.

The Biden transition team is aiming to raise at least $7 million by Election Day and build a staff of at least 350 people by Inauguration Day, according to a person familiar with the transition’s planning, while another person said the total fundraising goal is $7 million to $10 million.

The budget far exceeds the $2.1 million that Clinton raised for her transition planning by Election Day 2016, or the $6.5 million Trump’s transition raised before he assumed the presidency. Mitt Romney in 2012 raised $8.9 million for what is considered the most robust prior effort to plan a transition hand-off between two different parties.

Several people involved in raising money for Biden’s transition said the pitch to potential donors leans on fears that President Donald Trump will not ease the handover process if he loses. That possible complication, along with the dueling health and economic crises hitting the country, will require more staffing and resources for a Biden administration-in-waiting.
“They’re quietly organizing people to say, this is going to be a very, very difficult transition,” said a California-based strategist who advises Democratic donors and requested anonymity to detail the fundraising pitch and other sensitive conversations about the Biden transition. “Trump is going to make this extremely difficult, so we need to be prepared.”

The Biden transition team has to not just "hit the ground running".  They can't afford to move at ground speeds at all, they have to be moving at rocket speed to have a chance to even begin to correct things come January.  Trump will ruthlessly try to wreck everything in order to save his own ass. If Biden's people aren't ready to stop him and to make it clear that this may not be a peaceful transition of power in any way, we're facing a disaster.

I don't know what Trump will try, but we need every contingency plan in the book, and more importantly the resources to execute all those plans.

We'll need everything we can get to survive the next six months.

That starts with your vote for Joe Biden.

Sunday Long Read: Breonna Taylor's Life Mattered

New York Times investigative reporter Rukmini Callimachi takes a critical look at the Louisville Metro Police Department's numerous failures, the failures of Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and City Council, the failures of state Attorney General David Cameron, that still have failed to give anyone justice for the murder of Breonna Taylor here in Kentucky in March.

Breonna Taylor had just done four overnight shifts at the hospital where she worked as an emergency room technician. To let off some steam, she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, planned a date night: dinner at a steakhouse, followed by a movie in bed.

Usually, they headed to his apartment, where he lived alone and she had left a toothbrush and a flat iron. But that night, they went to the small unit she shared with her younger sister, who was away on a trip. It was dark when the couple pulled into the parking lot, then closed the door to Apartment 4 behind them.

This was the year of big plans for the 26-year-old: Her home was brimming with the Post-it notes and envelopes on which she wrote her goals. She had just bought a new car. Next on the list: buying her own home. And trying to have a baby with Mr. Walker. They had already chosen a name.

She fell asleep next to him just after midnight on March 13, the movie still playing. “The last thing she said was, ‘Turn off the TV,’” he said in an interview.

From the parking lot, undercover officers surveilling Ms. Taylor’s apartment before a drug raid saw only the blue glow of the television.

When they punched in the door with a battering ram, Mr. Walker, fearing an intruder, reached for his gun and let off one shot, wounding an officer. He and another officer returned fire, while a third began blindly shooting through Ms. Taylor’s window and patio door. Bullets ripped through nearly every room in her apartment, then into two adjoining ones. They sliced through a soap dish, a chair and a table and shattered a sliding-glass door.

Ms. Taylor, struck five times, bled out on the floor.

Breonna Taylor has since become an icon, her silhouette a symbol of police violence and racial injustice. Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris spoke her name during their speeches at the Democratic convention. Oprah Winfrey ceded the cover of her magazine for the first time to feature the young Black woman, and paid for billboards with her image across Louisville. Beyoncé called for the three white officers who opened fire to be criminally charged. N.B.A. stars including LeBron James devoted postgame interviews to keeping her name in the news.

In Louisville, demonstrators have led nightly protests downtown, where most government buildings and many businesses are now boarded up. As outrage mounted, the city fired one of the officers, pushed out the police chief and passed “Breonna’s Law,” banning “no-knock” warrants, which allow the police to burst into people’s homes without warning. Protesters say that is not enough.

Nearly six months after Ms. Taylor’s killing, the story of what happened that night — and what came before and after — remains largely untold. Unlike the death of George Floyd, which was captured on video as a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck, Ms. Taylor’s final moments remain in shadow because no such footage exists.

But a clearer picture of Ms. Taylor’s death and life, of the person behind the cause, emerged from dozens of interviews with public officials and people who knew her, as well as a review of over 1,500 pages of police records, including evidence logs, transcripts of jailhouse recordings and surveillance photos. The Louisville Metro Police Department, citing a pending investigation, declined to answer simple questions about the case or make anyone available for interviews.

The daughter of a teenage mother and a man who has been incarcerated since she was a child, Ms. Taylor attended college, trained as an E.M.T. and hoped to become a nurse. But along the way, she developed a yearslong relationship with a twice-convicted drug dealer whose trail led the police to her door that fateful night.

Sloppy surveillance outside her apartment in the hours before the raid failed to detect that Mr. Walker was there, so the officers expected to find an unarmed woman alone. A failure to follow their own rules of engagement and a lack of routine safeguards, like stationing an ambulance outside, compounded the risks that night.

While the department had gotten court approval for a “no-knock” entry to search for evidence of drugs or cash from drug trafficking, the orders were changed before the raid to “knock and announce,” meaning that the police had to identify themselves.

The officers have said that they did; Mr. Walker says he did not hear anything. In interviews with nearly a dozen neighbors, only one person said he heard the officers shout “Police!” a single time.

Sam Aguiar, a lawyer representing Ms. Taylor’s family, blames “catastrophic failures” by the police department for the young woman’s death. “Breonna Taylor,” he said, “gets shot in her own home, with her boyfriend doing what’s as American as apple pie, in defending himself and his woman.”

The biggest clue here is that the investigation has already taken six months and no arrests or charges have been filed. It's pretty clear that Louisville Metro PD and Mayor Fischer want this to go away, and that State AG Daniel Cameron will do nothing.

I guarantee that the grand jurt won't return an indictment, and after that is anyone's guess.