Kushner's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Trump's scummy son-in-law Jared Kushner is making the final pitch to Black voters ahead of Election Day, and like most rich bigot white guys who inherited millions from his family and married wealthy, he doesn't understand why lazy Black folk simply don't choose to be not poor anymore.

 

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said Black people must “want to be successful” in order for his father-in-law’s policies to help them.

“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,” Kushner said Monday on “Fox & Friends.” “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”

Kushner’s remarks drew criticism on Twitter, where Democrats said he was implying that many Black people don’t want to be successful.

Trump’s campaign believes he’s drawing more Black support for his re-election than in his 2016 run, thanks to policies including a law he signed reducing prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, increased spending for historically Black colleges and universities and new tax benefits for investors in low-income communities.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement saying “internet trolls” had taken Kushner’s remarks out of context.

“From criminal justice reform and record HBCU funding to record low Black unemployment and record high income increases, there is simply no disputing that President Trump accomplished what Democrats merely talked about,” McEnany said.

Trump lost among Black voters by about 82 percentage points in 2016 but has closed the gap in support to about 71 points this year, according to an analysis of polling data FiveThirtyEight.com published last week. He’s improved particularly with Black men, cutting his disadvantage from 72 to 57 percentage points.

 

Unfortunately, as the article indicates, there's evidence Trump could get 12-15% of the Black vote this time around instead of 8%.  That alone would be enough to give Trump the electoral college victory by assuring Trump wins in NC, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan. The same goes for Trump doing better than he did in 2016 with Latinx voters as well.

 

Fortunately for Biden, he's doing much better than Clinton did in 2016 with white college-educated voters, seniors, and women overall. And there's plenty of evidence Biden has cut into the huge margins Trump had with white non-college voters too. That will more than make up for Trump's gains with Black and brown voters.

The point remains though that Trump regime's years of bashing Democrats and telling Black voters that the Democrats have done nothing for you (which Trump and Mitch McConnell have all but made sure is the case) is working to some extent.

Even though, as Jared Kushner demonstrates, they hold us in contempt, well beneath them.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

His name was Walter Wallace, Jr. and he was murdered in front of a dozen witnesses, shot ten times by two Philly cops, killed in the street in front of his family by monsters who made no effort to de-escalate the situation, and it was all caught on video.

Police officers fatally shot a 27-year-old Black man armed with a knife during a confrontation Monday afternoon in West Philadelphia, an incident that quickly raised tensions in the neighborhood and sparked a standoff that lasted deep into the night.

Late Monday into early Tuesday, police struggled to respond to vandalism and looting along the commercial corridor of 52nd Street, an area that was the scene of clashes between police and protestors earlier this summer. At least one police vehicle was set on fire Monday night and destroyed

By morning, an officer was hospitalized in stable condition with a broken leg after being struck by a pickup truck, police said. About 29 other officers suffered mostly minor injuries from being struck by rocks, bricks, and other projectiles, police said in a preliminary report.

Authorities detained 10 people overnight near 55nd and Pine Street, police said, and those people were set to be released pending possible charges of assaulting police or rioting. Police said officers arrested about 20 people in relation to looting at various stores in West Philadelphia, University City, Overbrook Park, and Center City, some of which were not near the protest.

Hours earlier, shortly before 4 p.m., police said, two officers responded to the 6100 block of Locust Street after a report of a man with a knife. Family members identified him as Walter Wallace Jr.

A video posted on social media showed Wallace walking toward the officers and police backing away. The video swings briefly out of view at the moment the gunfire erupts but he appeared to be multiple feet from them when they fired numerous shots.

Police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp said the officers had ordered Wallace to drop the weapon, and he “advanced towards the officers.” Gripp said investigators are reviewing footage of what happened. Both officers were wearing body cameras.

He said both officers fired “several times.” After the man was shot, he fell to the ground, and Gripp said one of the officers drove him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died.

Walter Wallace Sr., the man’s father, said his son appeared to have been shot 10 times.

The video shows the cops drawing down on Wallace as he comes around between two parked cars. They back away and when Wallace continues forward they empty their clips into him from 15 feet away.

He had a knife though, so I guess that means summary execution, since apparently no cop has ever received training on how to handle a knife without going into full murder mode. And it wasn't just one cop, both of them blasted him like he was a video game villain.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of people saying "But he had a knife and should have listened to the cops, oh well another dead n-----" and laughing while they scroll on past the story.

We've learned nothing as a country since George Floyd.

Black Lives Still Matter, though.

 

StupidiNews!

• Senate Republicans have confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court with a 52-48 vote, all Democrats and Susan Collins of Maine voted no.
• Virginia Military Institute Superintendent Gen. JH Binford Peay has resigned from leading the military college after Black students and graduates shared incidents of racism on campus.
• In a 5-3 decision, the US Supreme Court has sided with Wisconsin Republicans to block a request by Democrats to extend the state's vote-by-mail ballot acceptance deadline past Election Day.
• British PM Boris Johnson is facing a revolt by northern Tory lawmakers demanding a plan to end the lockdown in the UK, along with a major economic recovery plan for jobs and businesses.
• A new study finds link preview messages on your mobile device messaging apps could be major security risks for your data, especially Facebook Messenger and Instagram.
  

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Trump regime is throwing as much poop at the walls as it can crap out, and none of it is sticking to Joe Biden or the Democrats as even Rupert Murdoch's boys are bailing on the Tangerine Trashmaster.

By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Trump’s re-election campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Va., to launch one.

The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Herschmann knew the subject matter they were there to discuss. He had represented Mr. Trump during the impeachment trial early this year, and he tried to deflect allegations against the president in part by pointing to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. More recently, he has been working on the White House payroll with a hazy portfolio, listed as “a senior adviser to the president,” and remains close to Jared Kushner.

The three had pinned their hopes for re-electing the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski. Mr. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son’s activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.

The Journal had seemed to be the perfect outlet for a story the Trump advisers believed could sink Mr. Biden’s candidacy. Its small-c conservatism in reporting means the work of its news pages carries credibility across the industry. And its readership leans further right than other big news outlets. Its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, recently remarked at a virtual gathering of Journal reporters and editors that while he knows that the paper often delivers unwelcome news to the many Trump supporters who read it, The Journal should protect its unique position of being trusted across the political spectrum, two people familiar with the remarks said.

As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal exposé, the newspaper did its due diligence: Mr. Bender and Mr. Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Mr. Areddy interviewed Mr. Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.

Then things got messy. Without warning his notional allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for President Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew’s carefully laid plot. Mr. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance — but containing some of the same emails — to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Mr. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Mr. Giuliani’s complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story — as did The Post’s reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son’s activities.

 

Hanlon's Razor -- "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately explained by stupidity" -- in the era of Trump requires Zandar's Addendum: "Sometimes it's both." The Trump White House had an orderly plan to sell the Hunter Biden garbage dump to the Wall Street Journal, and then Rudy Giuliani got wind of it and crashed through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

Needless to say, the story fell apart over the weekend, with the NY Times delivering the final blow on Sunday night.

There is no evidence in the records that Mr. Biden was involved in or profited from the joint venture.

Encrypted messages, emails and other documents examined by The New York Times do not show Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing any role for the former vice president in the project.

Mr. Biden’s tax returns, which he has released, show no income from any such venture. There is nothing illegal about doing business in China or with Chinese partners; Mr. Trump long pursued deals in China, had a partnership with a government-controlled enterprise and maintained a corporate bank account there.

The Biden campaign has rejected all assertions that the former vice president had any role in the negotiations over the deal or any stake in it.

Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, said the former vice president never had any stake in the project. “Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever,” he said.

At the second presidential debate on Thursday, Mr. Biden said, “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”

The messages produced by Mr. Bobulinski appear to reflect a meeting between him, the former vice president and James Biden in May 2017 in Beverly Hills, Calif. The messages do not make clear what was discussed.

Mr. Bates did not answer questions about Mr. Bobulinski’s claim that he met with the former vice president. But Mr. Bates said the Chinese deal never was discussed by Mr. Biden with members of his family. “He never had any conversations about these issues at all,” Mr. Bates said.

One email sent on May 13, 2017, by another member of the venture discusses how the various partners in the deal could theoretically split up the equity and makes reference to whether “the big guy” might get 10 percent. The document does not specify who this person is, saying only “10 held by H for the big guy ?”

Mr. Bobulinski has said the reference was clearly to the former vice president.

Mr. Bates said Mr. Biden “has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”

 

And what makes this easy to confirm is that Joe Biden has openly released his tax returns for decades. The evidence is clear that there's nothing there, and this story is just as bogus as it was ten months ago when the Trump regime tried to cover up their Ukraine quid pro quo by screaming HUNTER BIDEN and taking a huge dump on the carpet.

It didn't work then. It's not working now.

That's the biggest difference from 2016.

Retribution Execution, Con't

A Trump second term means the replacement of much of his cabinet with yes men who will aid the republic's transition to a fascist autocratic police state, starting with law enforcement, intelligence services, and the military.

If President Trump wins re-election, he'll move to immediately fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and also expects to replace CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, two people who've discussed these officials' fates with the president tell Axios.

The big picture: The list of planned replacements is much longer, but these are Trump's priorities, starting with Wray. Wray and Haspel are despised and distrusted almost universally in Trump's inner circle. He would have fired both already, one official said, if not for the political headaches of acting before Nov. 3.

Why it matters: A win, no matter the margin, will embolden Trump to ax anyone he sees as constraining him from enacting desired policies or going after perceived enemies. Trump last week signed an executive order that set off alarm bells as a means to politicize the civil service. An administration official said the order "is a really big deal" that would make it easier for presidents to get rid of career government officials. 

There could be shake-ups across other departments. The president has never been impressed with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, for example. But that doesn't carry the urgency of replacing Wray or Haspel. The nature of top intelligence and law enforcement posts has traditionally carried an expectation for a higher degree of independence and separation from politics.

Be smart: While Trump has also privately vented about Attorney General Bill Barr, he hasn't made any formal plans to replace him, an official said. Trump is furious that Barr isn't releasing before the election what Trump hoped would be a bombshell report by U.S. Attorney John Durham on the Obama administration's handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. 

Durham's investigation has yet to produce any high-profile indictments of Obama-era officials as Trump had hoped. "The attorney general wants to finish the work that he's been involved in since day one," a senior administration official told Axios.

Behind the scenes: "The view of Haspel in the West Wing is that she still sees her job as manipulating people and outcomes, the way she must have when she was working assets in the field," one source with direct knowledge of the internal conversations told Axios. "It's bred a lot of suspicion of her motives." 

Trump is also increasingly frustrated with Haspel for opposing the declassification of documents that would help the Justice Department's Durham report. A source familiar with conversations at the CIA says, "Since the beginning of DNI's push to declassify documents, and how strongly she feels about protecting sources connected to those materials, there have been rumblings around the agency that the director plans to depart the CIA regardless of who wins the election.”

As for Wray, whose expected firing was first reported by The Daily Beast, Trump is angry his second FBI chief didn't launch a formal investigation into Hunter Biden's foreign business connections — and didn't purge more officials Trump believes abused power to investigate his 2016 campaign's ties to Russia. 

Trump also grew incensed when Wray testified in September that the FBI has not seen widespread election fraud, including with mail-in ballots. A senior FBI official tells Axios: "Major law enforcement associations representing current and former FBI agents as well as police and sheriff's departments across the country have consistently expressed their full support of Director Wray's leadership of the Bureau."

Trump soured on Esper over the summer when the Defense secretary rebuffed the idea of sending active-duty military into the streets to deal with racial justice protests and distanced himself from the clearing of Lafayette Square for a photo op at St. John's church. 

Trump indicated to Axios then that he "really wasn't focused on" firing Esper. One senior official cautioned that others who want the Pentagon job could be driving speculation to undercut Esper. But one source, who discussed options with Trump, told Axios he urged the president to wait until post-election to replace him. Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement that Esper "has always been and remains committed to doing what is best for the military and the Nation.”

 

Both Trump and Bill Barr will have free reign to start arresting Democrats in a second term, especially if Mitch McConnell keeps control of the Senate.  The decent to fascism will come quickly should Trump prevail in the election.

For the first time, I think Biden will win, he's held on to a big lead for long enough and there's just too many battleground states for Trump to play defense in right now for him to win them all like he did in 2016, when he was on offense, and Biden's leads in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania continue to be statistically significant, and Biden is above 50% in all three states.  That's all he needs to pick up from 2016 in order to top 270 electoral votes, and the odds are he'll win at least one or two of the other six battleground states (GA, TX, OH, NC, AZ, and FL) on top of those three.

Trump is running out of time to win this, but if he does, America is absolutely out of time.

We're done as a free nation if Trump wins.

I implore you to vote if you haven't already.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

Even Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal can no longer hide the multiple abject failures of the Trump regime on COVID-19, as the atrocities are documented. Remember the $250 million CDC advertising plan to "instill hope in America" on the virus, which was widely panned as a quarter-billion dollar slush fund for the government to campaign for Trump? It failed even worse that we could have imagined, turns out...

 

A federal health agency halted a public-service coronavirus advertising campaign funded by $250 million in taxpayer money after it offered a special vaccine deal to an unusual set of essential workers: Santa Claus performers.

As part of the plan, a top Trump administration official wanted the Santa performers to promote the benefits of a Covid-19 vaccination and, in exchange, offered them early vaccine access ahead of the general public, according to audio recordings. Those who perform as Mrs. Claus and elves also would have been included.

The Department of Health and Human Services said Friday the Santa plan would be scrapped. The deal was the brainchild of the official, Michael Caputo, an HHS assistant secretary, who took a 60-day medical leave last month. The rest of the campaign now is under an HHS review.

The Santa “collaboration will not be happening,” and HHS Secretary Alex Azar had no knowledge of Mr. Caputo’s outreach discussions, an HHS spokesman said. Mr. Caputo didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, called the news “extremely disappointing,” adding: “This was our greatest hope for Christmas 2020, and now it looks like it won’t happen.”

 

In fact, the White House has now completely given up on containing the pandemic, and wants all of America to know that you're all on your own, and whatever happens, it's not Donald Trump's fault, so deal with it.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows conceded that the Trump administration had given up in containing the coronavirus crisis that has killed over 225,000 Americans, admitting on Sunday morning that the White House is “not going to control the pandemic” and instead going to just hold out hope for a vaccine. 

Amid another COVID-19 outbreak at the White House, this time in Vice President Mike Pence’s office, Meadows appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, and anchor Jape Tapper immediately pressed the chief of staff on reports that he tried to keep news of the positive coronavirus tests from going public.

“Why would you do that? Is it because it’s another sign the way the White House has failed to contain the virus?” Tapper wondered aloud, prompting Meadows to falsely claim that wasn’t reported.

“That was in the New York Times story,” Tapper shot back.

Meadows, meanwhile, justified the attempt to keep the outbreak under wraps by saying that “sharing personal information is something we should do” before claiming that the White House also has an “obligation to let people know to contact trace” when there is a positive case.

Tapper reminded the chief of staff that the administration didn’t do that during the previous outbreak that resulted in President Donald Trump’s hospitalization, noting that Chris Christie said he was never contacted despite his own battle with the virus.

The CNN anchor went on to press Meadows on Vice President Chief of Staff Marc Short’s diagnosis, asking why Pence isn’t quarantining and out on the campaign trail considering his close contact with Short in recent days. Meadows dismissed the need for Pence to follow CDC guidelines, saying Pence is an essential worker and “he’s not just campaigning, he’s working.”

After asserting that Pence is wearing masks in public and socially distancing when possible, Meadows then expressed doubt that large gatherings cause the spread of the virus, citing recent reports that small groups and family events are leading to an increase in infections. Tapper pointed out that the virus is coming from many different places because the pandemic is out of control.

“Here is what we have to do,” Meadows declared. “We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas.”

Tapper, for his part, pressed Meadows on why we couldn’t get control of the pandemic, prompting the chief of staff to respond that it was due to it being a “contagious virus just like the flu.”

“Why not make efforts to contain it?” Tapper retorted.

“Well, we are making efforts to contain it,” Meadows insisted.

“By running all over the country and not wearing a mask? That’s what the vice president is doing,” the CNN anchor shot back.

 

Got that? Containment and mitigation are no longer options. Millions, perhaps tens of millions will get sick and hundreds of thousands will die, but as soon as the Trump regime gets that vaccine, everything will be fine.

Also, the Trump regime has no real vaccine plan either. They were going to use mall Santas to demonstrate the vaccine if they had it in time, which of course was never going to happen.

Most likely it will be another six months before a viable, effective vaccine is ready, and thanks to the Trump regime, half of America will refuse to take it anyway and scream about MAH FREEDUMBS.

The larger, more immediate problem is the White House Chief of Staff just went on live TV a week before Election Day and admitted there's no regime plan to contain a pandemic that has already sickened millions and has killed 230,000 Americans, and that they just do not care.

 

They never cared about America, they never cared about you or your family, they never cared about anyone or anything except grifting as much money from the gig as they could and helping the rest of the GOP burn down the country. 

And the country is burning already. El Paso is in lockdown for two weeks. Utah is now moving to triage, like Arizona did in the first few months of the pandemic.

With new coronavirus cases shattering records on a daily basis, Utah’s hospitals are expected to begin rationing care in a week or two.

That’s the prediction of Greg Bell, president of the Utah Hospital Association, who said administrators of the state’s hospitals confronted Gov. Gary Herbert on Thursday with a grim list: Criteria they propose doctors should use if they are forced to decide which patients can stay in overcrowded intensive care units.

Under the criteria, which would require Herbert’s approval, patients who are getting worse despite receiving intensive care would be moved out first. In the event that two patients' conditions are equal, the young get priority over the old, since older patients are more likely to die.

‘We told him, ‘It looks like we’re going to have to request those be activated if this trend continues,’" Bell recounted, “'and we see no reason why it won’t.'"

Hospitalizations normally rise after the number of new cases increases, and Utah repeatedly set new records for daily case totals last week. At least two Utah hospitals have opened overflow ICUs this month.

The state’s hospitals can shift patients around to free up bed space, Bell said, and the state has long planned to open a field hospital at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy if necessary.

But one of the defining features of intensive care is access to doctors and nurses with specialty training — and opening new beds does not mean those health care workers can staff them.

Bell said it’s now all but inevitable that hospitals will need to enact their triage protocols, known as “crisis standards of care.”

“I haven’t said, ‘It’s gonna happen’ — until [Thursday] night,” Bell said. “I told the governor, ‘It’s gonna happen. We’re going to be back here asking for crisis standards.’ ”

 

Expect more cities to go into lockdown and more states to follow hospital crisis triage protocols in November after the election.

If Donald Trump wins, we will have COVID-19 with us for every day of his second term.

And millions of us, maybe tens of millions, won't make it through to the end.

StupidiNews!

• The US Navy has confirmed two female aviators were killed in an aircraft training accident in southern Alabama on Sunday, no civilians were injured by the crash.
• The Trump campaign is counting on local TV news owned by Republican-friendly corporate donors in order to make up for advertising as Democrats continue to outraise the GOP in 2020. 
• The White House is petitioning the Supreme Court to block North Carolina's COVID-19 vote-by-mail ballot extension as Amy Coney Barrett could be confirmed by the Senate GOP Monday.
• Pope Francis has named Wilton Gregory as the first Black cardinal in the Church's US history, Gregory was the Archbishop of Atlanta's diocese and has openly supported Black Lives Matter.
• The FDA has approved remdesivir for treatment of COVID-19 just days after the World Health Organization's largest global study on the drug found no benefit for patients.
  

Last Call For The Veep Goes Viral

At least five members of Mike Pence's campaign staff have tested positive for COVID-19 in the last few days, and as far as I can tell, nobody on Pence's staff is going to do anything differently, because "it's just like the flu" or something.

At least three top aides to Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive for the coronavirus in the last few days, people briefed on the matter said, raising fresh questions about the safety protocols at the White House, where masks are not routinely worn.

Devin O’Malley, a spokesman for Mr. Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, said that the vice president’s chief of staff, Marc Short, had tested positive. A person briefed on the diagnosis said it was received on Saturday.

“Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence both tested negative for Covid-19 today, and remain in good health,” Mr. O’Malley said. “While Vice President Pence is considered a close contact with Mr. Short, in consultation with the White House Medical Unit, the vice president will maintain his schedule in accordance with the C.D.C. guidelines for essential personnel.”

The statement did not come from the White House medical unit, but instead from a press aide. Two people briefed on the matter said that the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had sought to keep news of the outbreak from becoming public.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

A Trump adviser briefed on the outbreak, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Pence adviser Marty Obst also tested positive earlier this week. Mr. Obst’s positive test was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Another person briefed on the developments, who also was not allowed to speak publicly, said that three additional Pence staff members had tested positive. Mr. O’Malley did not immediately respond to a question about others who have tested positive.

Mr. Pence’s decision to continue campaigning, despite his proximity to his chief of staff, is certain to raise fresh questions about how seriously the White House is taking the risks to its staff members and to the public as the pandemic has killed nearly 225,000 people in the United States.

Again, and I really can't stress this enough, all the evidence points towards the US being smack in the middle of a major new wave of COVID-19 infections, and not only is the Trump regime literally not doing anything about containing itit, they are actively spreading the virus through their actions.  Trump, Pence, and their infected campaign staffs are criss-crossing the country and will continue to do so for the next ten days, drawing crowds of thousands of unmasked people daily who actively refuse to take safety precautions.

There's already evidence Trump's hate rallies are spreading the virus, and we'll almost certainly pass 100,000 cases per day next month. Hospitals are filling, people are ignoring masks, and nobody seems to me mentioning the need for a lockdown again.

Maybe after the election, I guess.

Another hundred thousand dead by the end of the year won't really matter, will it?

Orange Meltdown, Con't

In public, at his hate rally/COVID-19 super-spreader events, Trump is guaranteeing a win. In private with the people who give him money, he's predicting a much different outcome, especially for the Senate GOP.

 

President Donald Trump made a prediction about the GOP's control of the Senate at a fundraiser this week, privately telling donors that it will be "very tough" for Republicans to keep control of the chamber in the upcoming election, namely because Trump refuses to support some senators, The Washington Post reported on Saturday. 

"I think the Senate is tough actually. The Senate is very tough," Trump said, according to an attendee who shared the President's comments on condition of anonymity with the Post. "There are a couple senators I can't really get involved in. I just can't do it. You lose your soul if you do. I can't help some of them. I don't want to help some of them." 

Trump's comments were made at a closed-door gathering held in Nashville, Tennessee, before the last presidential debate, according to the Post, where he said that he thinks the GOP will "take back the House." 

Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, pushed back on the notion that Trump doesn't support some Senate Republicans, according to the Post.
"The Republican-led Senate and President Trump have had a great partnership over the last four years, highlighted by the fact the chamber is poised to confirm a third Trump Supreme Court nominee in the coming days," Hunt said Saturday. 

Hours after the Post released its story, Trump told reporters that he hopes the GOP maintains control of the Senate. 

"I hope to hold the Senate, we do. I think from a presidential standpoint we're winning a lot of states including this one. I think we're doing very well here. The crowd is certainly enthusiastic. I hope that we do. I think we're gonna take back the House because people are tired of Nancy Pelosi. I think we'll take back the House," Trump told reporters after emerging from Air Force One before holding a rally Saturday night in Wisconsin.

 

Sure, man.  You'll take back the House.

 

 

 

Look, even Nate Silver has the presidential race tightening over the last week, but right now that means Biden has a nine-point lead rather than a nearly 11-point lead.  Unless something catastrophic happens in the next 10 days, Biden is going to be in position to win this.

 

 

Sunday Long Read: The Foxiest Of Cons

Our Sunday Long Read this week is how Donald Trump and Scott Walker allowed Taiwanese tech company Foxconn to scam Wisconsin taxpayers out of billions with a massive 13,000 job tech factory that never got built and never will be, and left the state holding the bag for a generation.

HOPES WERE HIGH among the employees who joined Foxconn’s Wisconsin project in the summer of 2018. In June, President Donald Trump had broken ground on an LCD factory he called “the eighth wonder of the world.” The scale of the promise was indeed enormous: a $10 billion investment from the Taiwanese electronics giant, a 20 million-square-foot manufacturing complex, and, most importantly, 13,000 jobs.

Which is why new recruits arriving at the 1960s office building Foxconn had purchased in downtown Milwaukee were surprised to discover they had to provide their own office supplies. “One of the largest companies in the world, and you have to bring your own pencil,” an employee recalls wondering. Maybe Foxconn was just moving too fast to be bothered with such details, they thought, as they brought their laptops from home and scavenged pencils left behind by the building’s previous tenants. They listened to the cries of co-workers trapped in the elevators that often broke, noted the water that occasionally leaked from the ceiling, and wondered when the building would be transformed into the gleaming North American headquarters an executive had promised.

The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.

Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones

Even the handful of jobs the company claims to have created are less than real: many of them held by people with nothing to do, hired so the company could reach the number required for it to get tax subsidy payments from Wisconsin. Foxconn failed at that objective, too: last week, Wisconsin rejected the company’s subsidy application and found it had employed only 281 people eligible under the contract at the end of 2019. Many have since been laid off.

Foxconn did not return repeated requests for comment.

It’s not unusual for either the Trump administration or Foxconn to make announcements that prove hollow. But for Foxconn, the show went on — for two years, the company, aided by the vocal support of the Wisconsin GOP, worked to maintain an illusion of progress in front of a business venture that never made economic sense.

That illusion has had real costs. State and local governments spent at least $400 million, largely on land and infrastructure Foxconn will likely never need. Residents were pushed from their homes under threat of eminent domain and dozens of houses bulldozed to clear property Foxconn doesn’t know what to do with. And a recurring cycle of new recruits joined the project, eager to help it succeed, only to become trapped in a mirage.

Months after the 2018 groundbreaking, the company was racing to hire the 260 people needed to receive the first tranche of payments from the lucrative subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. Recruiters were told to hit the number but given little in the way of job descriptions. Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones. The reality of their situation became impossible to ignore. Multiple employees recall seeing people cry in the office. “The best is when you’re in the elevator with somebody and then they just scream out of nowhere,” said an employee who experienced this several times. “They’ve had enough, because things don’t make sense here.”

“Imagine being in a job where you don’t really know if it’s real or not. Or you know it’s not real, but you don’t know it’s not real. It’s a constant thing you’re doing in your head day after day,” said one employee, who returned to the rented building Trump had spoken at, where workers had been assembling TVs, only to find the line shut down and the lights dimmed a couple of weeks after the photo op was over. “I think all of us were on the verge of a major breakdown.”

It was just the beginning. Foxconn would spend the next two years jumping from idea to idea — fish farms, exporting ice cream, storing boats — in an increasingly surreal search for some way to generate money from a doomed project. Frequent leadership changes, a reluctance to spend money, and a domineering corporate culture would create an atmosphere employees described as toxic. Many of the employees The Verge spoke with have since left the company, and all of them requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. It has been a baffling ordeal for the people who thought they were building the Silicon Valley of the Midwest — “Wisconn Valley,” Walker called it — all the more so because so many others still believe the vision.

“All people see is the eighth wonder of the world,” said an employee. “I was there and it’s not real. I mean, it’s not. This is something I can’t talk about ever again, because people think you’re crazy, like none of this could ever happen. How could this happen in the US?”

 

The project was a disaster from the beginning.

 

Key Findings:

• Foxconn said it would build a 20 million-square-foot LCD complex. Instead, it constructed an empty building 1/20th that size it calls the “Fab.” Records show Foxconn recently changed the intended use of the building from manufacturing to storage.
• The company said it would aim to employ 5,200 people at the end of 2020, a number that was to grow to the promised 13,000 jobs. At the end of 2019, Wisconsin found Foxconn employed only 281 people eligible under the terms of the contract.
• Foxconn attempted to exploit a loophole in its contract with the state by hiring a sufficient number of employees to receive subsidies just before the end of the year. Employees were hired with no actual work to do. Many were laid off after the deadline passed.
• One recruiting program targeted foreign recent graduates on student visas. Employees say these workers were targeted because they would work longer hours for lower pay, and their immigration status was used as leverage.
• Employees describe a toxic workplace, where supervisors often berated and publicly humiliated employees. Many of the original Wisconsin hires have quit or been laid off.
• Despite publicly insisting it was building an LCD factory, as early as 2018, Foxconn employees had been asked to figure out a business plan for the company in Wisconsin.
• Foxconn’s search for a viable business led it to consider everything from fish farming to exporting dairy to renting storage space. Almost every idea collapsed in corporate infighting and a reluctance to spend money.
• Very little manufacturing ever occurred with the Foxconn project. Recently, the company set up a small manufacturing line for servers.
• Foxconn raced to finish buildings and set up an assembly line in time for a visit from Trump during the 2020 campaign. It obtained a temporary occupancy permit for the empty factory building and tried to finish a glass sphere, which had no clear business purpose, before falling behind.

 

It's a failure of Trumpian proportions, and more economic carnage like this is coming to your state in a Trump second term.

 

Let's make sure that doesn't happen.

Biden, His Time, Con't

Doesn't look like Joe Biden is hiding in his basement to me. It looks like he's on the road during the final week of the campaign ready to deliver the coup de grace to Trump's Southern states, and quite possibly help put Mitch McConnell out of his Senate majority leader's office to boot.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden is headed to Georgia on Tuesday, part of a late effort by the campaign to flip a state that Republicans have carried in every White House contest since 1996.

The former vice president will deliver remarks Tuesday afternoon in Warm Springs on “bringing Americans together to address the crises facing our nation,” his campaign said, before an evening drive-in rally in Atlanta to encourage Georgians to cast their ballots during the last week of early voting.

It is Biden’s first trip to Georgia as his party’s nominee, and it comes as Democrats are pushing to expand the battleground map. Recent polls show Biden and President Donald Trump deadlocked in Georgia, and a defeat here would likely doom the Republican’s reelection chances.

There’s little surprise that Biden’s visit would include metro Atlanta, home to the broad majority of the state’s Democrats. But Warm Springs is off the beaten path.

The west Georgia town of roughly 400 was the home of former President Franklin Roosevelt’s private retreat, known as the “Little White House,” and it’s where he died in 1945. Biden’s campaign said his remarks there will focus on how “Americans have always come together to triumph and overcome, and that we can, must and will again now.”

State Democratic officials also hope his visit sends a signal to voters outside of Atlanta, which has drawn the lion’s share of campaign visits.

“That itty-bitty town was the center of the world between 1933 and 1945, and it’s incredible that he’s going down there,” said Seth Clark, a Democratic commissioner-elect in Bibb County.

“The reason you saw people like my grandfather vote Democratic down the ticket was because Georgia was saved by Roosevelt’s New Deal,” said Clark. “And Roosevelt pushed the most progressive policies the party has ever pushed from little old Warm Springs.”

Georgia Democrats have long urged Biden to compete in Georgia, where Republicans have clung to narrowing margins of victory due partly to struggles in Atlanta’s suburbs. Biden’s visit would also likely promote Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, the top Democratic challengers to two U.S. Senate seats that could determine control of the chamber.

Stacey Abrams wrote last year it would be “strategic malpractice” for Democrats to bypass the state in the race for the White House. On Saturday, she said she was “thrilled” with the news that Biden was focusing on flipping Georgia in the final week of the campaign.

“GA is a battleground state,” she said in a tweet, “and our 16 electoral votes are up for grabs.”

 

Biden's not hiding from a damn soul. 

 

👀 pic.twitter.com/zDdJCWqtNG

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) October 24, 2020

 

Trump's in trouble. They're down to the most desperate of dirty tricks to win this now.

President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was offered salacious photos and other documents belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter in the spring of 2019, earlier than previously known, according to one of Giuliani's closest former associates.

And the alleged offer came from an intriguing source: a Ukrainian oligarch looking for help with a potential legal jam.

The claim made by Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born businessman who was indicted last year on campaign finance charges, raises new questions about the provenance of the materials Giuliani has said he obtained recently from a computer repair shop in Delaware — and that he is now touting to accuse the Democratic nominee of corruption.

Parnas, who collaborated with Giuliani on the former New York mayor’s quest to find damaging information on the Bidens beginning in late 2018, now says that similar materials were being offered to Giuliani just weeks after Joe Biden launched his presidential run.

“It was May 30, 2019 when we first heard about this stuff,” Parnas said in an interview this week.

Democrats and former intelligence officials have raised questions about the Biden documents, alleging the leak of the materials could be part of a wide-ranging Russian effort to interfere in American politics on Trump’s behalf. Neither Hunter Biden nor his lawyer have confirmed the materials are real, though the FBI has indicated it now has custody of the younger Biden’s laptop hard drive.

But Parnas’ narrative suggests Giuliani might have first learned about at least some of the content on the so-called “the hard drive from hell” through other means — from a Ukrainian contact searching for help in fending off any legal issues with the Justice Department. And as Giuliani embarked on a mission to get his hands on the materials, other actors in Ukraine were trying to profit from them, according to a person who was approached by someone trying to sell the explicit photos and emails for millions of dollars.

 

They've had this fake garbage on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden for almost 18 months now, nobody wanted to touch it because it was so obviously fabricated and we're only now seeing it put into play because Donald Trump is down 10 points with 10 days to go.

 

The problem for Trump is that nearly 60 million Americans have already voted.  These guys are the worst scumbags on Earth, and if we're ever going to be free of them, we have to tosds them out on their asses.

 

Voting ends in ten days. Make yours count.

Last Call For A Supreme Suppression

With Senate Republicans all turning into cowards and expected to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court as early as Monday, the GOP plan to steal the election and engineer a coup is now clear. Pennsylvania Republicans are petitioning to have their recent 4-4 decision on extending the voting by mail deadline to Friday heard a second time once Barrett is confirmed, meaning there could be five votes to issue a broad ruling that states cannot count any votes received after Election Day, and giving the Trump regime every dark reason to jam up the postal service for the last week of the election, disenfranchising possibly tens of millions of Democratic voters.

 

Pennsylvania Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court again late Friday to overturn a mail ballot deadline extension ordered by the state’s high court, quickly returning to an issue on which the Supreme Court had only just deadlocked and raising the prospect of a different outcome after a new justice is installed next week.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered last month that ballots be counted if county elections officials receive them in the mail by 5 p.m. on Nov. 6, and are either postmarked by the Nov. 3 Election Day or have no or illegible postmarks. State law requires ballots to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted, but the state court changed that deadline because of concerns that mail delays would disenfranchise voters.

In a filing Friday night with the nation’s high court, the state Republican Party made essentially the same argument it had unsuccessfully presented earlier to the same court: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling allows ballots to be cast and counted after Election Day, the GOP said, violating the federal law setting one single Election Day across the country, and is unconstitutional because it takes away the state legislature’s power to decide how elections are run.

In a 4-4 split Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court did not grant that previous emergency request to step in and block the deadline extension. Friday night’s filing differs in that it is asking the court to take up the case itself and decide whether the state court ruled properly. And Monday’s all-but-certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court could tip the balance in deciding the new request.

The GOP on Friday night also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to fast-track the case, given that Election Day is just over a week away.

Also late Friday, the party asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to order any ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day be kept separate from the other ballots. That would allow them to be affected by a court ruling after Election Day. Otherwise, once ballots are counted and mixed together, there would be no way to remove them from the results.

 

The problem is what happens if the Supreme Court does decide to take up the case, with a week before the election, with Barrett on the high court. University of Kentucky law professor Joshua A. Douglas explains:

Normally, a state supreme court has the last word on state laws. So the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision should have ended the matter. The US Supreme Court's 4-4 decision rejected the appeal, but if the Court had accepted the Pennsylvania Republicans' argument, we would have been in for a whole new wave of federal judicial oversight over election rules. That would spell bad news for state constitutional protection for the right to vote, which is broader than the safeguards afforded under the US Constitution. It could have also thrown Election Day and any post-election disputes into further chaos. 

The Court declined that invitation with its 4-4 tie. Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the three liberal justices, but the four most conservative members of the Court, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, would have granted the request. Add expected-to-be Justice Barrett as the fifth vote, and the Supreme Court's doors could be wide open to undermine the protections for the right to vote embedded within state constitutions. 

The US Constitution does not affirmatively grant the right to vote. Instead, the founding document construes the right to vote in the negative: states may not deny the right to vote based on certain characteristics, including race, sex, inability to pay a poll tax and age. In addition, the US Supreme Court has recognized the right to vote under the federal Equal Protection Clause, albeit, in my opinion, too narrowly. 

State constitutions, on the other hand, more robustly protect the right to vote. Forty-nine of the 50 state constitutions affirmatively grant the right to vote by saying that citizens "shall be qualified to vote," "shall be entitled to vote" or similar language (only Arizona's does not). In addition, about half of the state constitutions have a provision saying that elections shall be "free," "free and open," or "free and equal." 

Pennsylvania's constitution includes a "free and equal" clause, and the state supreme court has invoked that provision to provide more protection to the right to vote than federal courts do under the US Constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had issued a ruling that extended the absentee ballot receipt deadline to November 6, three days after Election Day, so long as the ballots were postmarked by November 3 or, for ballots without a postmark, there was no evidence that they were mailed after Election Day. 

Normally, the state supreme court would have the final say on state law. But Republicans made a bold argument: the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision unconstitutionally took away power from the state legislature. Article II of the US Constitution provides that states shall appoint presidential electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." Similarly, Article I of the US Constitution grants authority to state legislatures to determine the "times, places, and manner" of holding congressional elections, subject to congressional oversight. 

The Pennsylvania Republicans argued that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision, which altered the statutory language to extend the absentee balloting deadline because of the pandemic, effectively took away the power of the state legislature to determine the "manner" of running elections. 

Three justices bought into a similar argument in 2000 in Bush v. Gore. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, along with Justices Scalia and Thomas, argued that the Florida Supreme Court's decision in that case was so out of bounds that it took away authority from the state legislature to determine the "manner" of appointing presidential electors. But the other two conservative justices in the 5-4 majority did not sign on to that opinion. 

A vote from a new Justice Barrett, who might eventually agree with her fellow conservatives on this point, could open the floodgates to the US Supreme Court potentially regulating every aspect of the election process. Any decision from a state court that involves a federal election -- which is to say, virtually all rulings from state courts about any aspect on how we vote -- would be subject to federal oversight. 

So an overly broad ruling literally days before the election could instantly disenfranchise millions of voters, and absolute worst-case scenario, if states don't sequester mail votes that arrive late, SCOTUS could declare that the elections are tainted and send things to the House where Trump would win, even if Biden was clearly ahead.

It would be a nightmare. The country would come apart.

This is far from over.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The enduring story surrounding the reaction by Minneapolis to George Floyd's murder for the last several months has been "Antifa and Black Lives Matter took over the MPD 3rd Precinct, looted it, and burned it."  Every right-wing outlet has been pushing that narrative, all the way up to and including Donald Trump.

Only one problem though. It wasn't Antifa or Black Lives Matter being charged this week in federal court with those crimes, but a member of the white supremacist terrorist group Boogaloo Bois trying to start a race war.

In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday.

A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s death while in police custody.

Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramping up violence during the protests in Minneapolis on May 27 and 28. According to charges, Hunter, wearing a skull mask and tactical gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Minneapolis police headquarters while people were inside. He also looted and helped set the building ablaze, according to the complaint, which was filed Monday under seal.

Unrest flared throughout Minneapolis following Floyd’s death, which was captured on a bystander’s cellphone video, causing Gov. Tim Walz to activate the Minnesota National Guard. As police clashed with protesters, Hunter and other members of the Boogaloo Bois discussed in private Facebook messages their plans to travel to Minneapolis and rally at the Cub Foods near the Third Precinct building, according to federal court documents. One of the people Hunter coordinated with posted publicly to social media: “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off,” the complaint states.

Two hours after the police precinct was set on fire, Hunter texted with another Boogaloo member in California, a man named Steven Carrillo.

“Go for police buildings,” Hunter told Carrillo, according to charging documents.

“I did better lol,” Carrillo replied. A few hours earlier, Carrillo had killed a Federal Protective Services officer in Oakland, Calif., according to criminal charges filed against him in California.

On June 1, Hunter asked Carrillo for money, explaining he needed to “be in the woods for a bit,” and Carrillo sent him $200 via a cash app.

Five days later, Carrillo shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz when authorities tried to arrest him, according to charges filed in California. Authorities say he then stole a car and wrote “Boog” on the hood “in what appeared to be his own blood.”

A couple of days later, during police protests in Austin, Texas, police pulled over a truck after seeing three men in tactical gear and carrying guns drive away in it. Hunter, in the front passenger seat, wore six loaded banana magazines for an AK-47-style assault rifle on his tactical vest, according federal authorities. The two other men had AR-15 magazines affixed to their vests. The officers found an AK-47-style rifle and two AR-15 rifles on the rear seat of the vehicle, a pistol next to the driver’s seat and another pistol in the center console.

Hunter denied he owned any of the weapons found in the vehicle. He did, according to the complaint, volunteer that he was the leader of the Boogaloo Bois in South Texas and that he was present in Minneapolis when the Third Precinct was set on fire. Police seized the guns and let Hunter and the others go.

Hunter had bragged about his role in the Minneapolis riots on Facebook, publicly proclaiming, “I helped the community burn down that police station” and “I didn’t’ [sic] protest peacefully Dude … Want something to change? Start risking felonies for what is good.”

“The BLM protesters in Minneapolis loved me [sic] fireteam and I,” he wrote on June 11. According to the complaint, “fire team” is a reference to a group he started with Carrillo “that responds with violence if the police try to take their guns away.”

“Hunter also referred to himself as a ‘terrorist,’ ” the complaint states.

A confidential informant told police that Hunter planned to “go down shooting” if authorities closed in. He didn’t. They arrested him without incident in San Antonio, Texas, this week, and he made his first court appearance Thursday.

 

This super genius apparently shot up a police precinct, looted and burned it, then allegedly killed a deputy, then bragged about it all on Facebook for months.  And it still took the feds nearly five months to arrest this asshole.

But his goal was to convince police to start butchering Black folk. This is what being Black in America is like in 2020, assholes like this trying to bring about your very extinction.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

More evidence is emerging this week that white supremacist domestic terrorism group The Base is actively recruiting white men with law enforcement and military experience, and training them for strikes against Black and brown targets across America.

Young men hoping to join a White supremacist group spoke about hosting paramilitary trainings and how to legally bring firearms to those events, according to secret recordings of vetting calls published by the Southern Poverty Law Center Thursday. 

Some 83 hours of calls with more than 100 participants linked to The Base group were analyzed by the SPLC, which monitors hate, for a new podcast, "Sounds Like Hate." 

Military training or knowledge of firearms was an important asset, according to the released calls. So was having a place to train. 

One of the people in the calls trying to join the Base says he is 17 years old and offers his mother's property for a training exercise.

"What date would be best in January for everybody?" the caller, who gave a pseudonym of Erik, asks the group. Two members, apparently vetting 'Erik' for membership, talk about stocking up on ammunition before the event. One talks about having blown through a lot of ammunition at a prior meeting. One offers to place orders and ship them for others. 

That meeting appears to have been postponed, according to the calls, because Erik says his mother got nervous. It is unclear if it ever took place. But it gives insight into what the group values, how they operate, and how they view themselves. 

The SPLC's release of parts of the calls comes at a time when US intelligence services say domestic violent extremists, specifically White supremacist groups are the "the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland." 

The calls, dating from 2018 until January 2020, were supplied by a confidential source, said Jamila Paksima, co-host of the podcast. The authenticity was verified by subject matter experts who recognized the leader's voice from previous audio appearances and were able to verify other corroborating details, Paksima told CNN.

Remember, these guys are straight up neo-Nazi terrorists. 

The man at the center of most of the calls is Rinaldo Nazzaro, the group's leader, who the SPLC says now lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

CNN contacted Nazzaro via an e-mail address attached to his name regarding the leak of the secret calls. 

He did not dispute that he was the leader of the group, but challenged its characterization. 

"The Base is a survivalism and self-defense network. Our objective is sharing knowledge and training to prepare for crisis situations," Nazzaro said in an e-mail to CNN. "The Base is not a neo-Nazi organization or a terrorist group. We do not encourage violence beyond self-defense situations." 

In the encrypted calls aired on the podcast, Nazzaro said being "pro-White" was the main criteria for membership, adding there were many Nazis. "Most of us are national socialists, but there are others who just consider themselves White nationalists," he told one caller. 

Federal authorities have said alleged members of The Base have talked about forming a White ethno-state and "committing acts of violence against minority communities," including Black and Jewish people.

No wonder then that the GOP is openly threatening to classify the Southern Poverty Law Center and other NGOs monitoring white supremacists as hate groups themselves.  

They're defending white supremacists like The Base. They are depending on these groups to hurt or kill folks in a Biden administration.

The most powerful white supremacist in America is Donald Trump.

 

Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump has apparently decided on the scorched earth approach to the executive, signing an executive order this week that will allow executive agency heads to reclassify civil service employees and then fire them at-will on the last day of the Trump regime.

 

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order creating a new classification of “policy-making” federal employees that could strip swaths of the federal workforce of civil service protections just before the next president is sworn into office.

The order would create a new Schedule F within the excepted service of the federal government, to be composed of “employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions,” and instructs agency heads to determine which current employees fit this definition and move them—whether they are members of the competitive service or other schedules within the excepted service—into this new classification. Federal regulations stating that employees hired into the competitive service retain that status even if their position is moved to the excepted service will not apply to Schedule F transfers.

Positions in the new Schedule F would effectively constitute at-will employment, without any of the protections against adverse personnel actions that most federal workers currently enjoy, although individual agencies are tasked with establishing “rules to prohibit the same personnel practices prohibited” by Title 5 of the U.S. Code. The order also instructs the Federal Labor Relations Authority to examine whether Schedule F employees should be removed from their bargaining units, a move that would bar them from being represented by federal employee unions.

“Except as required by statute, the civil service rules and regulations shall not apply to removals from positions listed in Schedules A, C, D, E, or F, or from positions excepted from the competitive service by statute,” the order states.

The order sets a swift timetable for implementation: Agencies have 90 days to conduct a “preliminary” review of their workforces to determine who should be moved into the new employee classification—a deadline that coincides with Jan. 19, the day before the next presidential inauguration.

The White House argued that the executive order is a necessary reform to ensure that federal officials can more efficiently remove “poor performers.”

“Effective performance management of employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating positions is of the utmost importance,” the order states. “Unfortunately, the government’s current performance management is inadequate, as recognized by federal workers themselves. For instance, the 2016 Merit Principles Survey reveals that less than a quarter of federal employees believe their agency addresses poor performers effectively.”

But federal employee groups and government observers described the executive order as a “stunning” attempt to politicize the civil service and undermine more than a century of laws aimed at preventing corruption and cronyism in the federal government.

“The [1883] Pendleton Act is clearly in the sights of this executive order,” said Donald Kettl, the Sid Richardson professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “It wants to undo what the Pendleton Act and subsequent civil service laws tried to accomplish, which was to create a career civil service with expertise that is both accountable to elected officials but also a repository of expertise in government. The argument here is that anyone involved in policymaking can be swept into this new classification, and once they’re in they’re subject to political review and dismissal for any reason.”

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement on Thursday that the executive order is “the most profound undermining of the civil service system in our lifetimes.”

“This executive order strips due process rights and protections from perhaps hundreds of thousands of federal employees and will enable political appointees and other officials to hire and fire these workers at will,” Kelley said. “Through this order, President Trump has declared war on the professional civil service by giving himself the authority to fill the government with his political cronies who will pledge their unwavering loyalty to him—not to America.”

 

In other words, if Trump loses, he'll reclassify, de-unionize, and most likely terminate every competent civil service employee in the executive branch, leaving the Biden administration completely crippled on Day 1. If Trump wins, he gets to claim credit for "finally draining the swamp" and then he gets to remake every single executive agency in his image from the ground up, including all the nation's intelligence and legal agencies.

At minimum, we won't have a functioning executive for months, because Trump will have fired tens, if not hundreds of thousands of agency employees.  It'll take Biden years to get things back in order if Trump does what I think he's going to do on January 19th.

Here's hoping this can be stopped.