Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The Black Lives Matter movement in June may have been the largest protest movement in American history, an astounding number well into the millions -- if not tens of millions -- nationwide.

The recent Black Lives Matter protests peaked on June 6, when half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United States. That was a single day in more than a month of protests that still continue to today.

Four recent polls — including one released this week by Civis Analytics, data science firm that works with businesses and Democratic campaigns — suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks.

These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the country’s history, according to interviews with scholars and crowd-counting experts.

“I’ve never seen self-reports of protest participation that high for a specific issue over such a short period,” said Neal Caren, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who studies social movements in the United States.

While it’s possible that more people said they protested than actually did, even if only half told the truth, the surveys suggest more than seven million people participated in recent demonstrations.

The Women’s March of 2017 had a turnout of about three million to five million people on a single day, but that was a highly organized event. Collectively, the recent Black Lives Matter protests — more organic in nature — appear to have far surpassed those numbers, according to polls.

“Really, it’s hard to overstate the scale of this movement,” said Deva Woodly, an associate professor of politics at the New School.

Professor Woodly said that the civil rights marches in the 1960s were considerably smaller in number. “If we added up all those protests during that period, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, but not millions,” she said.

Even protests to unseat government leadership or for independence typically succeed when they involve 3.5 percent of the population at their peak, according to a review of international protests by Erica Chenoweth, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School who co-directs the Crowd Counting Consortium, which collects data on crowd sizes of political protests. 

Precise turnout at protests is difficult to count and has led to some famous disputes. An amalgam of estimates from organizers, the police and local news reports often make up the official total.

But tallies by teams of crowd counters are revealing numbers of extraordinary scale. On June 6, for example, at least 50,000 people turned out in Philadelphia, 20,000 in Chicago’s Union Park and up to 10,000 on the Golden Gate Bridge, according to estimates by Edwin Chow, an associate professor at Texas State University, and researchers at the Crowd Counting Consortium.

Across the United States, there have been more than 4,700 demonstrations, or an average of 140 per day, since the first protests began in Minneapolis on May 26, according to a Times analysis. Turnout has ranged from dozens to tens of thousands in about 2,500 small towns and large cities. 

If the numbers are correct than anywhere from 6-10% of all Americans joined BLM protests in June. It's different this time because we participated in numbers literally too big to ignore, and now the Trump regime is terrified.

Black Lives Still Matter.

Biden, His Time, Con't

The polls continue to look good for Joe Biden heading into July, at least according to the latest Monmouth University national survey of which candidate people know they won't vote for.

Half of the nation’s electorate says they have ruled out voting for Donald Trump in November, while 4 in 10 say the same about Joe Biden. Biden currently holds a 12 point lead in the presidential race according to the latest Monmouth (“Mon-muth”) University Poll. Biden holds a significant advantage among the 1 in 5 voters who do not have a favorable opinion of either candidate. Slightly more voters say they are confident about the challenger’s mental and physical stamina than say the same about the incumbent.

Biden currently has the support of 53% of registered voters and Trump has the support of 41%. This is similar to the Democrat’s 52% to 41% lead in early June. Biden’s edge stood at 50% to 41% in May, 48% to 44% in April, and 48% to 45% in March.

Slightly more voters say they are certain about their support for Biden (40%) than say the same about Trump (34%). Fully half (50%), though, say they are not at all likely to support the incumbent while 39% say the same about the challenger. In addition to Biden’s current firm support, another 3% say they are very likely to vote for him and 9% are somewhat likely, while 6% are not too likely. In addition to Trump’s current firm support, another 2% say they are very likely to vote for him and 6% are somewhat likely, while 6% are not too likely. Among white voters with a college degree, 62% have ruled out a vote for Trump while just 31% say the same about Biden. On the other hand, 56% of white voters without a college degree are not at all likely to support Biden while 37% say the same about Trump. Among voters from other racial or ethnic groups, 61% have ruled out Trump and just 22% say the same for Biden.

“Half of all registered voters have ruled out backing Trump. Trump showed in 2016 that he can thread the needle, but these results suggest the president has even less room for error in 2020. He must convert some of those unlikely supporters if he is to win a second term,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

A key difference from four years ago is that fewer voters have a negative opinion of the Democratic nominee. Biden’s rating stands at 44% favorable and 44% unfavorable. It was 42%–49% in early June. Hillary Clinton’s rating in July 2016 was 34% favorable and 52% unfavorable. Trump currently has a negative 38% favorable and 55% unfavorable opinion. It was 38%–57% in early June. As a candidate four years ago, he held a 31% favorable and 53% unfavorable rating.

Overall, 21% of all registered voters do not have a favorable opinion of either party’s nominee. Trump did well with this “double negative” group in 2016. The National Election Pool exit poll showed him ultimately winning their vote after Clinton held a small edge throughout the campaign. But he is getting swamped among these voters this time around. Biden leads by 55% to 21% among this group.

No need to tell you once again that the Hillary hate spread by the media in the last two weeks of the election especially was what put Trump in the White House, but it looks like all that is backfiring on Trump four years later.

If half of voters have ruled Trump out, he can't win.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

If it's actually possible, somehow the Russia bounty scandal just keeps getting worse for the Trump regime as the NY Times is reporting that Afghan military contractors were the middlemen when it came to paying Taliban militia for Russian bounties on the heads of US troops.

He was a lowly drug smuggler, neighbors and relatives say, then ventured into contracting, seeking a slice of the billions of dollars the U.S.-led coalition was funneling into construction projects in Afghanistan.

But he really began to show off his wealth in recent years, after establishing a base in Russia, though how he earned those riches remained mysterious. On his regular trips home to northern Afghanistan, he drove the latest model cars, protected by bodyguards, and his house was recently upgraded to a four-story villa.

Now Rahmatullah Azizi stands as a central piece of a puzzle rocking Washington, named in American intelligence reports and confirmed by Afghan officials as a key middleman who for years handed out money from a Russian military intelligence unit to reward Taliban-linked fighters for targeting American troops in Afghanistan, according to American and Afghan officials.

As security agencies connected the dots of the bounty scheme and narrowed in on him, they carried out sweeping raids to arrest dozens of his relatives and associates about six months ago, but discovered that Mr. Azizi had sneaked out of Afghanistan and was likely back in Russia. What they did find in one of his homes, in Kabul, was about half a million dollars in cash.

American and Afghan officials have maintained for years that Russia was running clandestine operations to undermine the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and aid the Taliban.

But U.S. officials only recently concluded that a Russian spy agency was paying bounties for killing coalition troops, including Americans, which the Kremlin and the Taliban have denied.

According to officials briefed on the matter, U.S. intelligence officials believe the program is run by Unit 29155, an arm of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the G.R.U. that has carried out assassinations and other operations overseas.

That a conduit for the payments would be someone like Mr. Azizi — tied to the American reconstruction effort, enmeshed in the regional netherworld, but not prominent enough to attract outside attention — speaks to the depth of Russia’s reach into the increasingly complicated Afghan battlefield, exploiting a nexus of crime and terror to strike blows with years of deniability.

Again, this GRU operation was going for years and was part of a larger in-theater effort by Russia to undermine the US and coalition efforts in Afghanistan. Going from the dryly clinical and theoretical "well it's possible somebody may have paid bounties" to "Yes, we have a guy in custody who we know purchased the death of US troops by corrupting local militia with Russian cash" is a hell of a thing, and the Trump regime knows it.

They can't blame this on Obama or Biden. They can't pretend this is fake news, either. More details keep coming out, and it's absolutely devastating.

No, this won't lead to Trump resigning or a magical impeachment scenario, that's dangerous magical thinking for a despot who knows if he leaves office, he spends the rest of his life in prison. But it can lead to a Biden victory so overwhelming that Trump heads for the nearest flight out of town on January 19th.

Again, this one has legs, guys.