Last Call For Trump Goes Viral, Con't

Remember folks, the shutdowns over COVID-19 were not only necessary, but they saved countless lives and prevented literally tens of millions of infections.

Shutdown orders prevented about 60 million novel coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study published Monday that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion.

A separate study from epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimated the shutdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries, including 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and dropped infection rates by an average of 82 percent, sufficient to drive the contagion well below epidemic levels.

The two reports, published simultaneously Monday in the journal Nature, used completely different methods to reach similar conclusions. They suggest that the aggressive and unprecedented shutdowns, which caused massive economic disruptions and job losses, were effective at halting the exponential spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Without these policies employed, we would have lived through a very different April and May,” said Solomon Hsiang, director of the Global Policy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, and the leader of the research team that surveyed how six countries — China, the United States, France, Italy, Iran and South Korea — responded to the pandemic.

He called the global response to covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, “an extraordinary moment in human history when the world had to come together,” and said the shutdowns and other mitigation measures resulted in “saving more lives in a shorter period of time than ever before.”

The two reports on the effectiveness of the shutdowns come with a clear warning that the pandemic, even if in retreat in some of the places hardest hit, is far from over. The overwhelming majority of people remain susceptible to the virus. Only about 3 percent to 4 percent of people in the countries being studied have been infected to date, said Samir Bhatt, senior author of the Imperial College London study. 

“This is just the beginning of the epidemic: we’re very far from herd immunity,” Bhatt said Monday in an email. “The risk of a second wave happening if all interventions and precautions are abandoned is very real.” 

COVID-19 remains a marathon effort, not a sprint, but 60 million COVID-19 cases, nearly a fifth of the US population, would have resulted in millions of deaths and the collapse of our health care system as a whole.

Thankfully, America's governors (mostly) did the right thing and saves lives.  Lord knows Trump would have let us all die if it were up to him.

Stay safe out there.

 

The Heir To The Golden Toilet

The Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Hughes seems really keen on Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton's "fascism without Trump's bungling criminality getting in the way" and believes he might be the man to carry the burning banner of white supremacist America in the years ahead.

Sen. Tom Cotton has been a longtime adviser to President Trump, both echoing the chief executive’s bare-knuckled rhetoric on subjects like immigration and China and at times pushing him to take even more aggressive positions.

Last week, the Arkansas Republican and the president were again making different versions of the same argument amid protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd while in police custody. While Mr. Trump weighed whether to invoke an 1807 law to send active-duty military in response to largely peaceful demonstrations that included bursts of looting and other violence, Mr. Cotton was more definitive, explicitly calling in a New York Times op-ed for an “overwhelming show of force” by federal troops and local law enforcement. That column led to the resignation Sunday of the news organization’s editorial page editor James Bennet.

Mr. Cotton’s willingness to court controversy by backing—or exceeding—the president’s agenda puts him in the spotlight as Republicans jockey to influence Mr. Trump, and as a potential carrier of the president’s banner when he eventually leaves the White House.

“Tom Cotton is indeed setting himself up to be the heir to Trumpism,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, director of political studies at the Washington-based think tank Niskanen Center, who studies Republican politics. “In some ways, I think his case to lead the Trump wing of the party after this era has only been strengthened by this past week.”

Back in Arkansas, Mr. Cotton’s supporters believe he is destined for bigger things. In 2015, Republican Bart Hester, a state legislator, helped put into state law a measure to enable Mr. Cotton, 43, to run for the presidency while simultaneously serving in the Senate.

“He always has a very valid basis for what he believes and why he believes it, and I think he has the best for all Americans in mind at all the time,” Mr. Hester said.

Although the senator and president have foreign-policy differences—Mr. Cotton is more hawkish and in favor of keeping troops in northern Syria, while Mr. Trump ordered a withdrawal, for example—they are frequently on the same page. Mr. Cotton’s op-ed calling for the president to invoke the Insurrection Act was just the latest example of the two men running on parallel tracks.

Oh good, all the straight cartoon fascism without the cuddly senior events and wacky temper tantrums. As I keep saying, Trump is the worst president since the Civil War mainly because there are other, worse Republicans who haven't become president yet, and Tom Cotton is definitely on the top of that particular list.

Oh, and Cotton is up for reelection this November.  The lone Democratic candidate in the primary dropped out six months ago, so Cotton is basically running unopposed.

Keep an eye on this guy.

He's dangerous as all hell. A competent version of Trump would absolutely be the end of America.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The country to melting down along with Trump, and Trump is considering...rebranding!

Amid nationwide protests and a historic economic contraction, President Trump is running for reelection to “Keep America Great” — at least according to the hats he sells on his campaign website, the signs waved by his supporters and the television ads he’s airing in key states.

But in recent weeks he has retreated to contradictory slogans with a less triumphant ring, repeatedly reviving his 2016 motto “Make America Great Again!” and trying out new catchphrases like “Transition to Greatness!” and “The Best Is Yet to Come,” a Frank Sinatra lyric etched on the crooner’s tombstone.

Phrases such as “Promises Made, Promise Kept,” once a cornerstone of the reelection campaign, have been subsumed by current events. Economic messaging still used by the campaign online, including boasts about low unemployment, is now woefully out of date.

The search for a slogan, which Trump confidants say he is likely to resolve in the coming weeks, is a symptom of the president’s larger problem: The booming economy that he assumed would be his chief argument for reelection has foundered for the moment, a casualty of a coronavirus crisis he initially downplayed and more recently has sought to move beyond.

On issues compelling to most Americans — health, economy and national unrest about police violence — Trump has offered few new proposals, relying on pointed warnings that Democrats and their liberal ideas would make the country worse. On Friday, asked whether he had a plan to address systemic racism that has sent millions of Americans to the streets — some in view of the White House — he replied: “That’s what my plan is: We’re going to have the strongest economy in the world.”

The president and his top political advisers met Thursday afternoon to discuss how Trump should make his case and how he could improve his standing among voters, a person familiar with the meeting said. Participants included senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, campaign manager Brad Parscale, his recently elevated deputy Bill Stepien and campaign pollsters. Trump was also presented with “tough” swing state polls from his political team in the Oval Office.

How about "Hitler, Only Better!"

I'm sure that will resonate with the base.

Trump even wants to address the nation, but because he can't help but make things about himself, I'm hoping he'll be talked out of it.

After a weekend of massive peaceful protests around the country, White House officials are currently deliberating a plan for President Donald Trump to address the nation this week on issues related to race and national unity, as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson hinted in an interview with CNN on Sunday and a senior administration official said was under serious consideration. 

Many allies of the President spent the last week distraught as they watched Trump fumble his response to the police killing of George Floyd, only to follow his perceived silence on the resulting racial tensions with a federal law enforcement crackdown on the protesters near his fortified doorstep. 

Aides and allies were not comforted by the backlash over his decision to have federal officers aggressively clear Lafayette Park in front of the White House to facilitate a widely-panned attempt at a photo-op in front of St. John's Church. And the rest of the week continued on a downward spiral, as protests across the country grew and Trump faced an onslaught of well-known conservatives, generals and former Trump administration officials who excoriated his response and called for new leadership come November. 

Carson suggested during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" that the President this week would further address Floyd's killing and the tensions it exposed. 

"I believe you're going to be hearing from the President this week on this topic in some detail. And I would ask you maybe to reserve judgment until after that time," Carson said.

If you need time still to judge Trump, you're part of the damn problem.

The Biden folks on the other hand should be using "Trump is Out of Control".

80% of the country now think things are completely out of control in America.

Eight out of 10 voters believe that things are out of control in the United States, with majorities still concerned about the spread of the coronavirus, pessimistic about the economy's returning to normal before next year and down on President Donald Trump's ability to unite the nation.

Those are the major findings of a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that was conducted May 28 to June 2, during the aftermath of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, as the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 100,000 and after millions of people have lost their jobs.

But the survey was conducted before Friday's surprising jobs report, which found the unemployment rate declining to 13.3 percent and the economy adding 2.5 million jobs in May.

"Out of control — that's America in 2020," said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who helped conduct the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff and his GOP colleagues at Public Opinion Strategies.

Rebrand all you want, Don. Things are going very badly for you.

As protesters gather daily near the White House and the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the American public is souring on President Donald Trump. A new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS finds Trump's approval rating down 7 points in the last month as the President falls further behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, whose support now stands at its highest level in CNN polling. 

The survey also finds a growing majority of Americans feel racism is a big problem in the country today and that the criminal justice system in America favors whites over blacks. More than 8 in 10 also say that the peaceful protests that have spread throughout the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers are justified. Americans now consider race relations as important a campaign issue as the economy and health care, according to the survey. 

Overall 38% approve of the way Trump is handling the presidency, while 57% disapprove. That's his worst approval rating since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval ratings for Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their reelection years. Both went on to lose the presidency after one term. 

In the race for the White House, among registered voters, Trump stands 14 points behind Biden, who officially secured enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination in CNN's delegate estimate on Saturday. The 41% who say they back the President is the lowest in CNN's tracking on this question back to April 2019, and Biden's 55% support is his highest mark yet.

Joe Biden's going to need to be ahead by double digits to win and top Trump's cheating, Russian interference, and voter suppression efforts.  This election can't be close, because Trump will never leave the White House voluntarily. He has to be forced out, and that means he has to lose so badly that Republicans finally abandon him.

But having said all that...Biden is well on his way.

StupidiNews: Birthday Bash Edition

It's my birthday today, and while I don't ask much from ZVTS readers at all and that some of you have been very generous over the years, if you could click on the PayPal donation button today it would be really appreciated.

Times are tough all around, I know, believe me.

Even a couple bucks would be useful right now if you can.

If you can't, that's perfectly okay. Thanks for being a reader after all these years.  It's been a wild ride since 2008, hasn't it?

Really wild.

Thanks for being here, guys. I don't say that nearly enough.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Steve M. asks if the debate over demilitarizing the police is going to cost Biden his lead among suburban women.

Biden is lucky, because while Trump and his allies have the opportunity to portray themselves as the sensible center, and to portray the demonstrators as the extremists, they're misreading the public mood. Trump's team has sprinkled his speeches with pro forma defenses of peaceful protest and expressions of dismay about injustice, and if he could persuade us that that's what he really believes, he might be able to position himself as the reasonable man in the middle. Instead, it's clear that what really gets Trump's juices flowing is the idea of violently crushing protests. Shouts of "LAW AND ORDER!" worked in 1968, but this isn't 1968.

First, Trump is the incumbent -- if there's unrest, it's happening on his watch. In 1968, when Richard Nixon ran as a law-and-order candidate, Lyndon Johnson was president. (Nixon also had George Wallace on his right, which made him appear more moderate. Trump has no one on his right.)

Beyond that, political unrest in 2020 isn't accompanied by an uptick in crime; the two were linked in many people's minds in 1968. I also suspect that more Americans felt ties to the cities where protests and property destruction were taking place. Early in the George Floyd protests, I saw many right-wingers decrying the damage in Manhattan -- "They're looting Macy's!" In 1968, many people from suburban New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut regularly shopped at Macy's. Now they barely shop at local malls. (No one's looting Amazon.)

The downside:

But the slogan will make life harder for Biden. He'll lose the support of young progressives when, inevitably, he makes a statement like Frey's, saying that he supports serious reform but not "defunding" or "dismantling" police departments -- even though some who use that language are describing reforms Biden might be willing to endorse (and many Americans might approve of), as in Minneapolis:

Council Member Jeremiah Ellison, one of the most vocal critics of the city’s response to the protests and riots that followed Floyd’s death, tweeted Thursday: “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.”

[City Council president Lisa] Bender, a few hours later, issued her own tweet repeating that message and adding that they will “replace it with a transformative new model of public safety.” ...

Speaking only for herself and not for the council as whole, Bender said [in an interview that] she would support shifting from a traditional police department to a wider public safety department oriented toward violence prevention and community-based services.

In that kind of scenario, it’s possible that social workers or medics could respond to some calls now being handled by police. 

But the slogan will sound dangerous to a portion of the electorate, the way "Abolish ICE" sounded dangerous even to many people who oppose the Trump administration's immigration policies. On the other hand, "Abolish ICE" didn't prevent Democrats from scoring big victories in the 2018 midterms, so let's hope this slogan isn't too much of a drag on Biden in November.

I don't think it'll hurt Biden at all for the reasons Steve laid out at the top.  Trump will find a way to blast his own foot off with a mortar by, I don't know, demanding military troops patrol the streets.

In a heated and contentious debate in the Oval Office last Monday morning, President Trump demanded the military put 10,000 active duty troops into the streets immediately, a senior administration official told CBS News. Attorney General William Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley objected to the demand, the official said.

In an attempt to satisfy Mr. Trump's demand, Esper and Milley used a call with the nation's governors later that morning to implore them to call up the National Guard in their own states, the official said. If these governors didn't "call up the Guard, we'd have (active duty) troops all over the country," this official said.

That same day, the Pentagon started bringing in 1,600 active-duty troops to bases just outside the District of Columbia. Late that afternoon, Esper and Milley were on their way to the FBI's Washington Field Office, where the command center for the military and law enforcement response to the protests was located, the official said. En route, they received a call to come to the White House to give the President an update.

"Demilitarize the police" is something that should have taken place years ago, and under Obama it did.  It was immediately reversed by Trump. But Trump, as Steve said, is going to hang "get rid of the cops and let the thugs and the criminals get your women" on Biden no matter what.

Biden shouldn't be afraid.

Sunday Long Read: The Cool Revolution

More than ever, Esquire Magazine's 1968 interview with James Baldwin on race relations is prescient, relevant, and distressingly frustrating in what little has changed in the last fifty years.

Can we still cool it? 

That depends on a great many factors. It's a very serious question in my mind whether or not the people of this country, the bulk of population of this country, have enough sense of what is really happening to their black co-citizens to understand why they're in the streets. I know of this moment they maybe don't know it, and this is proved by the reaction to the civil disorders. It came as no revelation to me or to any other black cat that white racism is at the bottom of the civil disorders. It came as a great shock apparently to a great many other people, including the President of the United States. And now you ask me if we can cool it. I think the President goofed by not telling the nation what the civil-disorders report was all about. And I accuse him and the entire administration, in fact, of being largely responsible for this tremendous waste and damage. It was up to him and the Vice-President to interpret that report and tell the American people what it meant and what the American people should now begin to think of it. Now!It is already, very very late even to begin to think of it. What causes the eruptions, the riots, the revolts- whatever you want to call them- is the despair of being in a static position, absolutely static, of watching your father, your brother, your uncle, or your cousin- no matter how old the black cat is or how young- who has no future. And when the summer comes, both fathers and sons are in the streets- they can't stay in the houses. I was born in those houses and I know. And it's not their fault. 

From a very short-range approach, what should the federal government do, right now, to cool it off? 

What do you mean by the federal government? The federal government has come to be, in the eyes of all Negroes anyway, a myth. When you say the federal government, you're referring to Washington, and that means you're referring to a great many people. You're referring to Senator Eastland and many people in Washington who out of apathy, ignorance or fear have no intention of making a move at all. You're talking about the people who have the power, who intend to keep the power. And all they can think of are things like swimming pools, you know, in the summertime, and sort of made up jobs to simply protect peace and the public property. But they show no sign whatsoever of understanding what the root of the problem really is, what the dangers really are. They have made no attempt, whatever, any of them, as far as I know, really to explain to the American people that the black cat in the streets wants to protect his house, his wife and children. And if he is going to be able to do this he has to be given his autonomy, his own schools, a revision of the police force in a very radical way. It means, in short, that if the American Negro, the American black man, is going to become a free person in this country, the people of this country have to give up something. If they don't give it up, it will be taken from them. 

You say that existing jobs are just make-work jobs. What kind of job program should be adopted? 

It's very difficult to answer that question since the American Republic has created a surplus population. You know it's created not only people who are unemployable but who no longer wish to be employed in this system. A job program involves, first of all, I would think, a real attack on all American industries and on all American labor unions. For example, you're sitting in Hollywood. And there are not any Negroes, as far as I know, in any of the Hollywood craft unions: there is no Negro grip, no Negro crew member, no Negro works in Hollywood on that level or in any higher level either. There are some famous Negroes who work out here for a structure which keeps Negroes out of a union. Now it's not an Act of God that there aren't any Negroes in the unions. It's not something that is handed down from some mountain; it's a deliberate act on the part of the American people. They don't want the unions broken, because they are afraid of the Negro as a source of competition in the economic market. Of course what they've made him is something much worse than that. You can't talk about job programs unless you're willing to talk about what is really holding the structure together. Eastman Kodak, General Motors, General Electric- all the people who really have the power in this country. It's up to them to open up their factories, their unions, to let us begin to work.

They would have to begin, say, on-the-job training programs for those... 

Yes, and by the way, I know a whole lot of Negroes on the streets, baby, that are much brighter that a lot of cats dictating the policies of Pan American. You know what this country really means when it says on-the-job training programs is not what they are teaching Negroes skills, though there's that, too; what they're afraid of is that when the Negro comes into the factory, into the union, when he comes, in fact, into the American institution, he will change these institutions because no Negro in this country really lives by American middle-class standards. That's why they pick up half-dozen Negroes here and there, and polish them up, polish them off, and put them in some ass-hole college someplace, and expect those cats to be able to go back to the streets and cool the other cats. They can't. The price in this country to survive at all still is to become a white man. More and more people are refusing to become a white man. That's the bottom of what they mean by on-the-job training. They mean they want to fit you in. And furthermore, let's tell it like it is. The American white man does not really want to have autonomous Negro male anywhere near him. 

In on-the-job training programs, the white American structure wants a worker who is trained, who shows up regularly at eight-thirty in the morning and works till five in the afternoon. 

Yeah, well I know an awful lot of cats that did that for a long, long time. We haven't got to be trained to do that. We don't even have to be given an incentive to do that. 

Would you say, then, that many black people have been able to go nowhere, so they've lost any feeling that it's worth working regularly? 

That is part of what we're talking about. Though it goes deeper than that, I think. It's not only that. What is happening in this country among the young, and not only the black young, is an overwhelming suspicion that it's not worth it. You know if you watched your father's life like I watched my father's life, as a kid much younger than I watches his father's life; his father does work from eight to five every day and ends up with nothing. He can't protect anything. He has nothing. As he goes to the grave, having worked his fingers to the bone for years and years and years, he still has nothing and the kid doesn't either. But what's worse than that is that one has begun to conclude from the fact that maybe in this Republic- judging now on the evidence of its own performance- maybe there isn't anything. It's easy to see on the other hand what happens to the white people who make it. And that's not a very attractive spectacle either. I mean I'm questioning the values on which this country thinks of itself as being based. 

What you are calling for, then, is a radical change in thinking by government and industry. 

Yes. 

And given the inertia plus... 

Fear. 

…and fear and whatever else there may be, any such changes seem… 

…seem improbable. 

Certainly they will come slow. A union will not throw open its doors and bring on several hundred people from the black community right away. Now my question is… 

You've answered your question.

There are some differences between 1968 and now, but for the life of me the same basic problem that existed then is why we're in the streets again now, finally.

Zee Germans Are Nervous

Trump continues to do everything possible to make Vladimir Putin ecstatic, and it's coming at the cost of every other nation on earth, including the US. The latest obvious pro-Russian move: Trump is withdrawing a third of our troops in Germany to punish Chancellor Merkel and the EU.

President Donald Trump’s directive to pull 9,500 troops from Germany hits home hard for friends of America like Edgar Knobloch, whose Bavarian town has been home to U.S. service members for seven decades.

Like Chancellor Angela Merkel, the mayor of Grafenwoehr was caught off guard. It’s the latest sign of the U.S.’s deterioration of ties with a loyal ally, one that not only hosts most of its troops in Europe but also has seen them fuel the local economy.

This medieval town, with a tiny population dwarfed by the size of the American military presence, shows just what a shadow the U.S. has cast over Europe after World War II and what its retreat symbolizes in the eyes of locals and international observers. Another troop cut would signal a further break with a legacy of two generations.

Located near the former East German border, Grafenwoehr is a place where overseas U.S. military infrastructure and community bonds survived the end of the Cold War. Locals celebrate Thanksgiving and enjoy spare ribs. Every year, they turn out by the thousands for the German-American Folk Festival to share beer, bratwurst and country music with the roughly 11,000 U.S. troops based at NATO’s biggest training area in Europe.

“They’re completely integrated here,” Knobloch, 55, said in an interview. “Restaurants are bilingual. There are mixed marriages, mixed families. You often hear from the older members of the community: ‘The Americans liberated us.’”

There hasn’t been much nostalgia between Trump and Merkel, who have clashed repeatedly over trade and Germany’s slow timetable for meeting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s defense spending target. Last month, Merkel snubbed Trump on his plan to hold an in-person Group of Seven summit in June which he’d like Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend.

While Trump has taken aim at Germany’s economic might, Merkel — the longest-serving G-7 leader after 15 years in power — has stared him down across a broad front, from defending the rules-based global economy to policy disputes such as defense spending. A physicist by training, Merkel also contrasted with Trump in her science-based approach to reopening Germany from its coronavirus lockdown.

Lawmakers and government officials in Berlin criticized Trump’s troop decision, which would cut U.S. forces in Germany by slightly more than a quarter, as a snub.

“These plans demonstrate once again that the Trump administration neglects a central element of leadership: the involvement of alliance partners in the decision-making process,” Johann Wadephul, deputy head of Merkel’s parliamentary caucus, said in an emailed statement.

Trump’s decision and the way it was communicated hint at how much Germany’s relations have cooled with a U.S. president who has publicly questioned NATO’s value. By mid-day Saturday, the German government had no official word from Washington on the drawdown plan.

There's no doubt that the withdrawal is 100% related to Merkel rejecting Trump's ask to give Putin what he wants more than anything: back into the G-7 as the eighth member with his dictatorship given all the legitimacy in the world. Merkel said no, and Putin had juuuuuust the perfect suggestion to Donald if she turned him down, which of course Putin knew she would.  Let's not forget that when Donny was hiding in his bunker earlier this week, the person he called for advice was Vlad himself.

That's where the G-8 idea came from, and this is where the withdrawal idea came from, an idea to remind Germany that Russia is a lousy neighbor with the largest army in Europe still.

Besides, Vlad definitely wants a disgruntled German youth to question why the US is there, and maybe ask why Russia shouldn't be closer.

German neo-Nazis have been getting military-style training at camps run by a far-right Russian terrorist organization, German media reported Friday, in the latest sign of deepening international cooperation between white supremacist networks.

Citing intelligence sources, German news magazine Focus reported that the extremists had attended a camp held near Saint Petersburg, where they were shown how to use weapons and explosives, and received close combat training.

The training camp, known as Partizan, is run by the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), an ultranationalist, quasi-paramilitary organization which claims to be fighting for the “predominance of the white race.”

The U.S. government added RIM to its list of specially designated global terrorist groups in April — the first time it had taken such action against a white supremacist organization — saying it had “provided paramilitary-style training to white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Europe.”

The Russian government considers RIM to be extremist, but has not banned the group.

The German extremists who attended the camp belonged to the youth wings of two fringe German political parties widely considered to be neo-Nazi movements: the National Democratic Party and The Third Path. The Focus report did not provide further details of their attendance at the camp, but said that extremists from Sweden and Finland had previously attended the camps and gone on to fight in pro-separatist militias in eastern Ukraine.

Experts told VICE News that the German attendance at the camp highlighted the growing cooperation between white supremacist groups internationally, as they sought to build relationships with allies in other countries.

“It signals that RIM is a critical node in the transnational white supremacy extremist movement,” said Mollie Saltskog, intelligence analyst at The Soufan Group. “RIM is going beyond networking and ideology, and is actually providing paramilitary training to individuals who adhere to this violent ideology."

Vlad is playing a very long game here and he figures he'll be around for a long, long time in order to see it through. And at the end of that game?

Well, let's just say a reconstituted Soviet Union is the least of our worries.

Hickenlooper's Huge Hiccup

Colorado Democratic candidate and former governor John Hickenlooper has been nailed on ethics violations while in office as the state's chief executive in 2018, and that's not good news on the "retke the Senate" front for Team Blue.

Former Gov. John Hickenlooper violated state ethics laws when he allowed large corporations to cover the cost of a private jet trip to Connecticut, a Maserati limousine ride, and several ritzy dinners in 2018, the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission ruled Friday.

The commission considered six allegations against Hickenlooper. The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate was found to have not violated Amendment 41, the state’s ban on gifts to public officials, in four instances.

Hickenlooper testified for several hours Friday morning after the commission found him to be in contempt Thursday for refusing to comply with a subpoena. His attorney had argued that the subpoena was a violation of his due process rights, in part because the video conferencing program is glitchy, but Friday’s testimony occurred without technical difficulty.

The commission agreed unanimously that that Hickenlooper violated the gift ban in June 2018 when he attended secretive Bilderberg meetings in Italy. He paid a flat fee of $1,500 that he said he believed covered the cost of a hotel stay, limousine transportation, meals and more. The event’s sponsor, Fiat-Chrysler, has said the $1,500 fee did not include the limousine rides.

“At that time, I felt I was paying the full cost and complying in every way with Amendment 41,” Hickenlooper testified before the vote Friday.

The commission voted 4-1 to find Hickenlooper violated Amendment 41 when he accepted a flight and exclusive high-end dinners from MDC Holdings in March 2018.

“I’m concerned that if we allow this kind of special, privately financed treatment for elected officials, it just accentuates the cynicism that led to Amendment 41,” Commissioner Bill Leone said before that vote.

The commission will meet June 12 to consider what penalties to place on Hickenlooper for the two ethics violations, as well as his contempt citation.

Four of the six allegations were discarded due to exceptions to the ban for gifts from friends and gifts on special occasions. The commission voted 5-0 that Hickenlooper’s acceptance of a flight from billionaire friend Ken Tuchman was not a violation. It also unanimously determined flights on his chief of staff’s private jet on two occasions were not violations. 

Now, the good news for Democrats is that the Senate primary is at the end of the month on June 30. Hickenlooper has a massive poll lead in both the general election against Cory Gardner and in the primary against Democrat Andrew Romanoff, the former State Speaker of the House. Romanoff and Hicklooper face off on Tuesday in a debate.

How the ethics violations will affect Hickenlooper's chances in the primary and in the general, I don't know. I do know however that if this were a Republican, I'd be predicting their demise in this climate.

Having said that, the Democrats still have a number of paths to 51 seats (or 50 + Biden's VP) to take back the Senate, even without Gardner's seat. It just becomes a lot easier with a win here.

We'll see how he answers this week.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

As Saturday protests around the country get started, it's important to note that the Trump regime is doing everything it can to make the price of protesting too high to pay.

Federal agents on Friday morning released boxes of cloth masks that Black Lives Matter organizers mailed to cities across the county to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 during nationwide demonstrations against police brutality.

Four boxes of the masks were shipped to Washington, St. Louis, New York City and Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon, and were supposed to arrive in each city by Thursday. But until Friday morning, the boxes of 500 masks apiece that read “stop killing Black people” and “defund police” never left Oakland, California, because they were seized by the government. Federal agents with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service were involved with the seizure.
“These packages were originally set aside for further investigation because there were indications that they contained non-mailable matter,” the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in a statement to HuffPost on Friday afternoon. “Once Postal Inspectors confirmed the contents of the packages were in fact mailable, they were immediately placed back in the mail stream to be delivered at their intended destinations without further delay.”

The USPIS, responding to a follow-up question about what kind of non-mailable material they suspected the packages contained, said that “specific investigative methods used by Inspectors are sensitive and must remain confidential, but they are effective in helping to locate non-mailable matter of all kinds.”

Mark Jamison, a retired postmaster, told HuffPost that he suspects that an outside law enforcement organization was involved in the investigation, which the U.S. Postal Service Inspection Service denied. The U.S. Postal Service logs mail for law enforcement, and Jamison believes at least one of the organizers who was set to receive a package of masks was of interest to law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for the Movement for Black Lives, which paid for the masks, called the USPIS statement “insufficient and a cause for concern.”

“Cloth masks are mailable items. And they admit clearly that they received faulty intelligence about what was in the packages,” said Chelsea Fuller. “So the question remains: which agency moved to use the Postal Service as a domestic surveillance tool?”

Yes, the Trump regime is now acting like a regime in earnest, complete with secret police under Trump's direct control, exposed by leakers.

A leaked Trump administration document details the federal law enforcement and military personnel squaring off against protesters in Washington, D.C., including a 1,300-strong force currently deployed to the south side of the White House.
Thousands of federal law enforcement and military personnel have been called to Washington to respond to growing demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who was killed by Minneapolis police on May 25, but the Trump administration has so far refused to disclose many of the details about who is policing the nation’s capital.

An internal report obtained by Yahoo News shows which agencies are involved.

The show of force outside the White House is a task force operation that includes U.S. Secret Service, National Guard, Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Park Police, according to the internal Department of Homeland Security report, dated June 4. They aren’t the only ones in town: Border Patrol, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Administration, National Guard, Coast Guard, Federal Protective Service and more have been called in, says the document, which details DHS component deployments to Washington and elsewhere around the country in response to protests over the death of Floyd.
Thousands more — from at least a dozen federal agencies or divisions — have been deployed across the capital region and to cities big and small across the U.S. where peaceful protests have been held or are expected.

Elite SWAT teams from the Border Patrol and sniper-trained units from ICE have also descended upon Washington. TSA’s air marshals arrived too, and three of the agency’s “VIPR teams,” which have previously faced criticism for not coordinating well with local law enforcement. Eight Coast Guard investigators were deputized by the Department of Justice upon arrival in Washington, though it remains unclear how they are being deployed.

You don't deploy snipers against protestors unless your goal is specifically to kill.

And will Mark Esper talk to Congress?  No.

NEW: Defense Sec. Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley won't appear before House Armed Services next week. HASC Chair Adam Smith had requested they testify at a hearing on the military's role in responding to domestic protests. https://t.co/yzgbYTWmDd

— Connor O'Brien (@connorobrienNH) June 5, 2020

It's a regime in reality now, not just a name I've been using for more then three years.

Actually, it was a regime in reality three years ago.

Last Call For Race To The Bottom, Con't

And just to complete the "Yes, this is absolutely 1968" references, we now have cross burnings in 2020.

Deputies in Alabama are investigating a cross burning after a wooden cross lit ablaze was found by drivers passing alongside a bridge.

The burning cross was first seen stationed on top of a bridge over Interstate 85 in Macon County Thursday night, Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson told WRBL-TV.

John Bolton, one of the people who saw the burning cross, told the news outlet what "looked like a shadow" fled from the scene as he ran toward the blaze with two other men who were with him. He then called 911 while "one of the guys climbed up to the bridge to knock the cross down," Bolton said.

A few minutes later, deputies arrived and helped extinguish the fire, Sheriff Brunson said. Once the fire was gone, Bolton said they saw a tire and a fuel canister had also been set on fire.

Cross burnings have historically been used by racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to rally supporters and terrorize black people in the South and elsewhere. So far, there are no suspects in the case, Brunson said.

Probably never will be, either. Nobody's gonna turn these good ol' boys in. Not without being forced to do so.

Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

So, Kudlow was right, it's a V-shaped recovery, the Trump Depression is over and we're all fine, right?

Employment stunningly rose by 2.5 million in May and the jobless rate declined to 13.3%, according to data Friday from the Labor Department that was far better than economists had been expecting and indicated that an economic turnaround could be close at hand.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting payrolls to drop by 8.33 million and the unemployment rate to rise to 19.5% from April’s 14.7%. If Wall Street expectations had been accurate, it would have been the worst figure since the Great Depression.

As it turned out, May’s numbers showed the U.S. may well be on the road to recovery after its fastest plunge in history.

“It seems the damage from the nationwide lockdown was not as severe or as lasting as we feared a month ago,” said Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman.

Trump dropped a surprise news conference to gloat about the figures and declared the economic depression over before it began.

So is he right? And will this win him reelection in November if the economy adds back the remaining 19.5 million jobs lost this spring?

Well, it does prove that reopening businesses during a pandemic forced enough Americans back to work that job hemorrhaging was stanched. The problem with tourniquets that tight is they can still cause you to lose a limb.

This is telling. Look at the where the jobs were gained v. lost in May

GAINS
Restaurants: +1.4 million
Construction: +464,000
Healthcare: +312,000
Retail: +368,000
Manufacturing: +225,000
Business: +127,000

LOSSES
Government: -585,000
Hotels: -148,000
Air transport: -50,000

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) June 5, 2020

The gigantic "if" here is "If the recovery can continue like this."

I don't think it will.  I think this is the biggest Dead Cat Bounce in job numbers history.

Once again, the Labor Department acknowledged making errors in how it classified people as employed and said the real May rate is worse than the numbers indicate. But the government made the same mistakes in April, and together the figures still show the job market is improving.

Friday's report made it clear the government continues to struggle with how it classifies millions of workers on temporary layoff. The Labor Department admitted that government household survey-takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million temporarily laid-off people as employed.

The government doesn't correct its survey results for fear of the appearance of political manipulation.

Had the mistake been corrected, the unemployment rate would have risen to 16.1 percent in May. But the corrected April figure would have been more than than 19 percent, rather than 14.7 percent.

Oops.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Let's not forget for a moment that white supremacist domestic terrorists are attempting to turn recent Black Lives Matter protests into terrorist attacks that will foment national martial law and the deaths of thousands.

Federal prosecutors in Las Vegas have charged three men alleged to be members of the far-right extremist "Boogaloo" movement with multiple state and federal violations of conspiracy to cause destruction during protests in Las Vegas, as well as possession of Molotov cocktails.

Charging documents say Stephen T. Parshall, aka "Kiwi," 35; Andrew Lynam, 23; and William L. Loomis, 40, all of Las Vegas, were arrested Saturday on a state criminal complaint alleging conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, material support for committing an act of terrorism and multiple explosives violations. The plot was foiled with help from an informant, authorities said.

The "Boogaloo" movement, which federal prosecutors describe as a "term used by extremists to signify a coming civil war and/or collapse of society," has been linked to some online posts about protests over the death of George Floyd.

NBC News reported last weekend that members of the "Boogaloo" movement were seen at protests in states including Minnesota and Texas, as well as in Philadelphia.

The movement, which says it wants a second civil war organized around the word "boogaloo," includes groups on mainstream internet platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit, as well as fringe websites including 4chan, according to a report released Tuesday night by the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit organization of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.

These guys want a race war, and they believe they will win, and be allowed to butcher as many black and brown folk as they please, and that any effort on our part to defend ourselves will be met with lethal military force.  They've wanted this for years.They are closer to that terrible goal than they have ever been.

A big part of that reason is Donald Trump, who is now openly declaring protesters to be, in fact, terrorists.

President Donald Trump on Thursday shared a letter on Twitter that referred to the peaceful protesters who were forcibly dispersed from a park near the White House on Monday evening as "terrorists." 

The letter from veteran attorney and former Trump lawyer John Dowd appears to be addressed to former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and rebuts Mattis' Wednesday statement castigating Trump's response to the nationwide protests after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. 

"The phony protesters near Lafayette were not peaceful and are not real," Dowd's letter claimed, without citing any evidence. "They are terrorists using idle hate filled students to burn and destroy. They were abusing and disrespecting the police when the police were preparing the area for the 1900 curfew." 

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on the description of the protesters as "terrorists." 

The President's decision to share the letter and its shocking description of Americans exercising their constitutional rights comes as he continues to lean into his strongman approach to the ongoing demonstrations. On Monday, he declared himself "your President of law and order" as the peaceful protesters just outside the White House gates were dispersed with gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets, apparently so he could visit a nearby church. 

He remained at the boarded-up building, brandishing a Bible for the cameras, for only a matter of minutes before returning to the White House. 

The letter drew condemnation from the Modern Military Association of America, a nonprofit organization for the LGBTQ military and veteran community. 

"Donald Trump just crossed a very serious line that demands swift and forceful condemnation by every Member of Congress," said the group's interim executive director, Air Force veteran Jennifer Dane. "Promoting a letter that labels American citizens peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights as 'terrorists' is an egregious breach of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Now more than ever, it is absolutely crucial that Trump be held accountable for his reckless actions."

I hate to say that I warned people about this exact situation for years now, but here we are. I desperately hoped that I would be wrong, that the Republicans would drive Trump out, and instead they backed him 100%.

It feels like everything is going to come to a grim conclusion soon, and I fear what history tells us will be coming next.

StupidiNews!

• The Congressional Black Caucus will be introducing new House legislation addressing police brutality and racial injustice on Monday, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's blessing.
• Las Vegas casinos have reopened after months of public health closures due to COVID-19, despite evidence that the pandemic is increasingly spreading in the state.
• Australian officials are trying to stop a planned Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney on Saturday, citing public health issues over COVID-19.
• The Trump regime is considering a $1 trillion "Phase 4" COVID-19 stimulus bill for July, but the White House is already getting pushback from Senate Republicans.
• State-backed hackers from China and Iran are targeting both major party political campaigns according to Google, who has noticed a major increase in phishing activity.

Last Call For Stone Cold Pardon, Con't

And on top of everything else, Donald Trump is now openly boasting that Roger Stone won't serve time for his crimes, committed in the name of Donald Trump's 2016 election.

President Donald Trump on Thursday promised his longtime informal political adviser Roger Stone would not serve time in prison, revealing the convicted Republican provocateur “can sleep well at night” and reprising his fiery criticisms of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

The pledge from the president came on Twitter, after Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, wrote Tuesday that Stone “will serve more time in prison than 99% of these rioters destroying America” — referring to the ongoing nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by a Minneapolis police officer.

“This isn’t justice,” Kirk added. “RT for a full pardon of Roger Stone!”

Trump went on to share the tweet Thursday morning, writing in his own accompanying message: “No. Roger was a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the greatest political crime in history. He can sleep well at night!”
The president’s social media post represents his latest intervention in Stone’s case and comes after Trump and Attorney General William Barr were widely rebuked by congressional Democrats and career Justice Department officials for involving themselves in the federal law enforcement matter just a few months ago.

Federal prosecutors had urged in February that Stone be sent to prison for roughly seven to nine years for impeding congressional and FBI investigations into connections between the Russian government and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

But after Trump blasted the prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation in a tweet as a “horrible and very unfair situation,” the Justice Department submitted a revised filing that offered no specific term for Stone’s sentence and stated that the prosecutors’ initial proposal “could be considered excessive and unwarranted.”

The four attorneys who shepherded Stone’s prosecution proceeded either to resign or notify the court that they were stepping off the case.

Last month, about 2,000 former Justice Department officials signed a letter urging Barr to resign over his actions in the federal cases of Stone and Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who was also ensnared by Mueller’s probe.

Although Barr’s Justice Department has moved aggressively to quash the case against Flynn, it is unclear how the attorney general will respond to the president’s interference Thursday. Despite his efforts to lessen Stone’s sentence, Barr described the case in a February interview as a “righteous prosecution” and said, “I was happy that he was convicted.”

I'd say that we'd see Barr give yet another series of interviews that would calm the storm here as he has several times in the last few months, but he's too busy running Trump's paramilitary response in the streets of DC.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The silver lining to the psychically exhausting GOP practice of "saying the quiet part out loud" in America is that it makes it very, very easy to identify the fascists in our midst who should never be allowed to have political power whatsoever. It also means there are Republicans worse than Donald Trump in 2020, like Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton.

This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.

New York City suffered the worst of the riots Monday night, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by while Midtown Manhattan descended into lawlessness. Bands of looters roved the streets, smashing and emptying hundreds of businesses. Some even drove exotic cars; the riots were carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements.

Outnumbered police officers, encumbered by feckless politicians, bore the brunt of the violence. In New York State, rioters ran over officers with cars on at least three occasions. In Las Vegas, an officer is in “grave” condition after being shot in the head by a rioter. In St. Louis, four police officers were shot as they attempted to disperse a mob throwing bricks and dumping gasoline; in a separate incident, a 77-year-old retired police captain was shot to death as he tried to stop looters from ransacking a pawnshop. This is “somebody’s granddaddy,” a bystander screamed at the scene.

Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.

But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.

These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives. Many poor communities that still bear scars from past upheavals will be set back still further.

One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law.

Cotton goes on to say that the Insurrection Act, a law created nearly two centuries ago to give the US Army the power to put down slave rebellions, is needed.

Chief Propaganda Minister Kayleigh McEnany agrees.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday defended the use of chemical agents and projectiles used by law enforcement officials to clear crowds of racial justice demonstrators in Lafayette Square on Monday — a move that was widely criticized as an excessive use of force on a peaceful protest.

“They had no other choice,” McEnany responded when asked if law enforcement officials under the direction of Attorney General Bill Barr had overstepped in their attempts to forcibly remove protesters from the park in preparation for President Trump’s walk to a photo op at the St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Those responsible for increasing the perimeter for Trump as he made his way to the church used the most “minimal force” possible, McEnany said. Contrary to reports from the scene, McEnany described groups of “rioters” who had grown violent and were launching bricks and water bottles at police officers.

Protesters were given three warnings, the press secretary said, before members of the National Guard, park staff and other law enforcement officials escalated the encounter to an “appropriate level,” dispensing chemicals into the air and shooting projectiles to drive protesters away.

Very soon I expect Trump to fire, replace, or cow Defense Secretary Mark Esper into making the call to use the Insurrection Act in DC at the very minimum, and for Republican governors to go along in order to placate Trump.

I also expect hundreds, if not thousands of Americans to die.

Tom Cotton is calling for a military coup, followed by a functional dictatorship. Let's get this out of the way right now, Cotton wants Trump to use military force to kill Americans over the objections of Governors, state law enforcement, and local law enforcement.  It is absolutely vile, and 100% fascist. Cotton should be made to resign over this in a heartbeat. But he won't.

And millions of Americans back him, because they figure they are somehow safe from the tanks and bombs that will annihilate them regardless. They want fascism, because it will keep black and brown bodies in line, and cement us as the permanent slave class.  They've wanted it all their lives.

It was never Donald Trump who was the true threat.   

It was the people who enabled him.