Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't


Riots in downtown Richmond over the weekend were instigated by white supremacists under the guise of Black Lives Matter, according to law enforcement officials.

Protesters tore down police tape and pushed forward toward Richmond police headquarters, where they set a city dump truck on fire.

Police declared the event an “unlawful assembly” and ordered people to leave, later deploying tear gas.

Six people were arrested. The mayor of Richmond thanked the Black Lives Matter protesters he said tried to stop the white supremacists from spearheading the violence.

“Their mission is simple, not the Richmond we know,” said Mayor Levar Stoney.

Besides the police department, damage also occurred in and around the VCU campus.

Meanwhile, the Trump regime is trying to instigate its own riot in Portland.

The Trump administration is sending more federal agents to Portland, Ore., as officials consider pushing back harder and farther against the growing crowds and nightly clashes with protesters, vandals and rioters, The Washington Post has learned.

To strengthen federal forces arrayed around the city’s downtown courthouse, the U.S. Marshals Service decided last week to send 100 deputy U.S. Marshals to Portland, according to an internal Marshals email reviewed by The Post. The personnel began arriving Thursday night, the email says.

The Department of Homeland Security is also considering a plan to send an additional 50 U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to the city, but a final decision on the deployment has not been made, according to senior administration officials involved in the federal response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Such moves would mark a significant expansion of the federal force operating at the courthouse — there were 114 federal agents there in mid-July — though it is unclear how many personnel there now would be relieved and sent home once the reinforcements arrive.

“The agency took steps to identify up to 100 personnel to send to the District of Oregon in case they were needed to relieve or supplement deputies permanently stationed in the district,” Drew J. Wade, a spokesman for the Marshals Service, said in written statement. “They may also be used to rotate with personnel already sent there to support district operations during the civil unrest mission to insure the function and safety of judicial proceedings.”

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

It'll just take one particularly bloody event where a lot of people are hurt or killed for Trump to start declaring martial law nationwide.

Just one.

And he needs it to happen before the election.



A Taxing Explanation, Con't

The fight over Trump's tax returns continues after the Supreme Court punt a few weeks ago, and the regime has no intention of cooperating with New York state prosecutors.

In a second amended complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan, Trump’s lawyers argued that the subpoena was “wildly overbroad,” and was issued in “bad faith” and amounts to “harassment.”

The subpoena “is so sweeping that it amounts to an unguided and unlawful ‘fishing expedition’ into the President’s personal and financial dealings,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the complaint.
Trump, who is seeking re-election on Nov. 3, asked the court to declare the subpoena invalid.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance last August issued the grand jury subpoena to Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, demanding eight years of his business and personal returns and other documents as part of an investigation involving Trump and the Trump Organization, his family’s real estate business.

On July 9, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 vote rejected his argument that he was immune from state criminal probes while in the White House. The high court said, however, that Trump could challenge the subpoena on other grounds.

In the newly amended complaint, Trump’s lawyers say Vance is demanding documents that relate to topics beyond New York jurisdiction, and argue the subpoena was issued in bad faith because it mirrors a congressional subpoena.

Vance’s investigation began after reports that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence before the 2016 election about sexual encounters with Trump, which he has denied.

Carey Dunne, general counsel for Vance, on July 16 warned U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero against allowing Trump to delay long enough to get beyond statutes of limitations.

That's the real issue.  Trump's lawyers are trying to run out the clock on his tax crimes, ones that would almost certainly put him in prison for the rest of his life.  If he wins, he gets away with it. If he loses, he goes to jail.

That's the core of all of this.

Kentucky Goes Viral, Con't

Here in Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is closing bars and rolling back restaurant seating capacity for two weeks in order to cut down on COVID-19 cases.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced Monday that Kentucky bars must close and restaurants will have to reduce their indoor capacity to 25 percent.

The order, which comes around a month after bars were allowed to open and restaurant capacity was allowed to increase to 50 percent, goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and will last for two weeks.

“This is going to hurt a lot of restaurants,” Beshear said. “But the White House’s modeling shows this is absolutely necessary to control the spread.”

He dismissed the idea of increasing restrictions only in counties that are hardest hit, noting that 74 of Kentucky’s 120 counties are either listed as red or yellow by the White House as coronavirus cases spread.

Beshear said the administration will enforce “seat rules” for bars that serve food. Everyone who comes in must have a seat and must stay in that seat unless they’re going to the bathroom. Restaurants can have unlimited outdoor seating, so long as it complies with social distancing orders. He said he is hopeful that restaurants will be able to get back up to 50 percent after two weeks.

The order comes as the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits from the federal government has expired. Congress is still negotiating whether they should extend the benefits. There are currently around 68,000 unresolved unemployment claims in Kentucky.

He also recommended that public and private schools in Kentucky wait until at least the third week of August to start in-person instruction.

“The line and the trend is undeniable,” Beshear said. “This virus is now escalating and spreading so much statewide that statewide action is necessary.”
Beshear made the order after a month of increased spread of COVID-19 throughout Kentucky. The 11,977 COVID-19 cases so far in July is nearly double the number of cases in June, even though the number of tests completed is similar. There were 169,495 people tested in June and 184,145 people have been tested so far in July. 

Bars and restaurant indoor seating never should have happened, and schools should remain closed.  Kentucky has nearly doubled our total cases in July and we almost certainly will by the end of the month, from 15,624 on June 30 to 27,601 now.  We'll almost certainly hit that 31,000 mark by Friday, and if we don't, we will by this time next week.

The depressing part is our daily testing average remains under 10k. We need to be testing 1% of the population per day to have any shot at rounding this thing up, and that means 45k tests per day.

The bigger issue is that daily hospitalizations have jumped 50% in the last two weeks from 400 per day on July 18 to 600 now.  We're rapidly running out of ICU beds here.

Right now deaths are coming in at about 10 per day still, but it's going to get much worse quickly if this rate keeps up.  We'll see if Beshear's latest order helps.

School starts in two weeks.


StupidiNews!