Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

As the Trumptanic heads for disaster, Republican rats in Congress are scampering across the decks, cheering the oncoming iceberg as a bold, manly path to show that frozen bitch who's boss. They'd rather face the slim chance that some of them will survive the disaster in November than the guaranteed butchery by their angry orange captain and his horde of cult followers should they try to jump ship now. Susan Glasser at the New Yorker explains:

One of the enduring mysteries of this most unusual of campaign seasons is why Trump’s precarious reëlection bid has not affected his standing with the Republican politicians who will be on the ballot alongside him. In the past, a historically unpopular President plummeting in the polls would have caused a slew of panicking pols to distance themselves. In July of 1980, when Jimmy Carter’s popularity sank into the low twenties and he hovered just under forty per cent in the polls in his race against Ronald Reagan, Carter even gave a speech in which he volunteered to stay away from Democratic members’ districts if they thought that his campaigning for them would hurt their chances. It didn’t work, of course, and when Carter was defeated by Reagan his party lost twenty-nine seats in the House and control of the Senate. 

But the vast majority of Republicans this time are not abandoning Trump; some are even choosing to double down on their embrace of the President, a political choice that speaks loudly to the current moment. Part of it is that Trump is an unusually vengeful politician, one who is obsessed with loyalty and who does not hesitate to go after members of his party who cross him. On Tuesday night, Trump and his inner circle crowed when his former Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was soundly defeated in a Republican primary in Alabama, a humiliating end to his bid to win back the Senate seat that he gave up to serve in Trump’s Cabinet. Sessions, who committed the unpardonable sin—to Trump—of recusing himself from the Russia investigation, had been the first senator to endorse Trump, back in 2016. Even after being fired by the President, Sessions continued to publicly suck up to Trump during his comeback bid. A few weeks ago, when Trump’s mid-pandemic return to the campaign trail, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, bombed, Sessions blithely praised the President for his “masterful” performance and “winning message.” But that was not enough for Trump, who endorsed Sessions’s opponent and bad-mouthed his former A.G. as “a disaster who let us all down.” After the vote, Trump exulted in Sessions’s defeat. So did Trump’s close adviser Stephen Miller, the young immigration hawk who owes his career to Sessions. Asked on Wednesday about Sessions’s loss, as he strolled across the White House driveway, Miller called it a “great victory for the country, a great victory for the President.” 

Fear alone, however, does not explain what’s going on with Republicans. Not every state is Alabama, where Trump will win in November no matter what. Trump has been sagging even in reliably red states, such as Georgia and Texas—a Democratic Presidential candidate has not won the latter state since Carter, in 1976—where surveys now show Biden more or less even with Trump. The Dallas Morning News wrote the other day that “Trump represents a bigger threat to fellow Republicans than any GOP nominee in forty-four years.” As coronavirus cases spike in Texas, the crucial suburban voters in Dallas and Houston, who have long been the G.O.P.’s bedrock in the state, appear to be souring on the President. Yet Senator John Cornyn, a mild-mannered Republican-establishment type never previously seen as a Trumpite, has chosen to respond to his increasingly uphill reëlection challenge in Texas by becoming one of the President’s more ardent public defenders. He’s tweeting more. He’s trolling. He told Texans to go out and drink some Corona beer and not to panic about the disease. Democrats are now calling him Mini-Don. There are plenty of other Republican officeholders like him. 

The best, or at least most vivid, explanation for this phenomenon that I’ve seen is a recent piece in Rolling Stone by the Republican strategist Tim Miller, an adviser to Jeb Bush’s doomed 2016 Presidential campaign who became a fervent Never Trumper. Miller asked nine G.O.P.-consultant friends who are still welcome in the Party why the “dumpster fire” that is the Trump 2020 campaign has not caused their Republican candidates to abandon the President. “There are two options, you can be on this hell ship, or you can be in the water drowning,” one told Miller. Miller’s report from the U.S.S. Hellship suggests that the trapped sailors are well aware of how badly Trump is faring but are unable to bail out—especially in competitive elections, where the Party can ill afford to lose any Republican votes. In rural Texas, one of Miller’s informants pointed out, “Trump gets like Saddam Hussein level numbers here.” Cornyn desperately needs those Trump superfans in order to win statewide. Loyalty to Trump among such voters now outweighs any policy position, which means that catering to them requires Cornyn to strike a hard pro-Trump line, even if it further alienates the suburban moderates now wavering on the President. “No dissent is tolerated,” a consultant in another state told Miller. And, besides, another strategist told him, the election is all about Trump—there’s no use pretending otherwise. Their observations are strikingly similar to a conversation that I had last month with a veteran Republican pollster, whose clients are running in competitive states. I asked him whether, given the bad and worsening poll numbers, we might soon see his candidates running away from the President. “I don’t think so,” he said, citing the Trump Twitter curse. “He stirs up his base all the time, so you can’t take a position to reach out to the independents who have trouble with his persona, because the Republican Trump base will turn on you in a second.” And so the Hellship sails on.

The real issue is that Republicans know full well that Justin Amash, Jeff Sessions, and Richard Burr were all publicly executed from a political standpoint.  Amash was run out of the party and now faces obliteration. Sessions was put out to pasture like a broken racehorse as I mentioned earlier this week. And Richard Burr is most likely headed for prison and expulsion from the Senate, mysteriously the only person to be caught in the FBI's investigation of insider COVID-19 trading.

Trump doesn't just get revenge.  He breaks legs and breaks lives.  He can instantly turn 90% of Republican voters against anyone in the party with a day of tweets, and everyone in the GOP knows it. They are afraid of him because all of them are cowards.

But they'd rather be live cowards than dead heroes.

It's About Suppression, Con't

As I said two weeks ago, the fight for restoring voting rights to Florida felons who have served their time is far from over, and this week that fight took a dismal turn thanks to SCOTUS.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Thursday to overturn a federal appeals court’s decision that blocked some Florida felons’ eligibility to participate in elections — a major blow to efforts to restore voting rights to as many as 1.4 million people in the battleground state.

The decision lets stand a temporary halt by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit of a judge’s order that had cleared the way for hundreds of thousands of felons in the state to register to vote.

In early July, the Campaign Legal Center in Washington petitioned the high court to lift the stay, arguing that the appeals court decision had “thrown the election rules into chaos.”

But on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied that request. Three liberal justices noted their dissent, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing that the court’s decision “prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida’s primary election simply because they are poor.”

Paul Smith, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, said he was “deeply disappointed” with the decision.

A spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said earlier this month that his office would not comment on the ongoing legal matter until there is an appeals court ruling.

Although it's an unsigned order, it's clear that Chief Justice John Roberts, who has been openly hostile to voting rights since his appointment by Dubya 15 years ago, has again sided with the court's conservatives to maintain Florida's poll tax on Black felons.

Because that's what this is, a poll tax on Black felons.

Kentucky Goes Viral, Con't

As I expected, Kentucky's GOP Attorney General Daniel Cameron has now filed for an immediate injunction and motion to void all of Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear's COVID-19 orders, leaving the state operating at 100% normal, pre-pandemic capacity and putting Kentuckians entirely at the tender mercies of the state's Republican lawmakers and the cornoavirus.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron filed a motion Wednesday to block all of Gov. Andy Beshear's past and future executive orders under the current COVID-19 state of emergency, alleging that the governor's actions are arbitrary and violate Kentuckians' constitutional rights.

The motion was filed in Boone County Circuit Court, where a judge recently issued a restraining order against Beshear's public health orders related to auto racetracks and daycare centers.

The governor on Wednesday asked the Kentucky Supreme Court to uphold his emergency public health orders in this case and a related one involving agritourism businesses in Scott County, following a ruling against his COVID-19 orders by an appellate judge Monday.

Cameron's motion seeks a temporary injunction to prohibit the governor from "issuing or enforcing any executive order or other directive" under Kentucky's state of emergency statute, calling Beshear's past orders "an arbitrary and unreasonable burden" and a direct violation of citizens' constitutional rights.

Beshear fired back at Cameron in two tweets Thursday morning, stating he had just learned of the motion that, if granted, would "void every COVID-19 rule or regulation, and prevent any future orders needed to respond to escalating cases."

"With no rules, there is no chance of getting kids back to school, we will lose over $10 billion in our economy, and many Kentuckians will die," Beshear tweeted. "I hope everyone understands how scary and reckless this is."

Cameron knows exactly what he's doing too, neutering Beshear, putting 4.5 million Kentuckians at risk, and forcing the governor to call a special session of the state legislature so that Kentucky lawmakers can finish the job of removing all power from him.

In a series of tweets two hours later, Cameron responded by criticizing Beshear for not collaborating with his office and Republican legislators on his public health orders.

"Judges at every level have found constitutional problems with his orders," Cameron wrote. "Instead of collaborating with our office and the General Assembly to fix these issues, he’s pointing fingers."

Cameron's 31-page motion took aim at the rationale of Beshear and Dr. Steven Stack, the commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Public Health, behind the COVID-19 orders, saying a recent deposition by Stack revealed they were based on "values-based judgment and ad-hoc rationalization."
"Although there are nearly 4.5 million people in Kentucky, and state government is composed of three branches of government, with a general assembly composed of 38 senators and 100 representatives, right now nearly every aspect of the lives and livelihoods of those 4.5 million Kentuckian is purportedly governed by one man, and his political appointees: Gov. Andrew Beshear," stated Cameron's motion.

Cameron is also attacking the notion of even needing any of these orders in the first place, all but taking up the reprehensible Rep. Thomas Massie position on health emergency orders, that the government has no business in protecting Americans from health problems.

This is horrific news.  If Cameron is successful, Kentuckians will suffer like never before.

And he knows it.

StupidiNews!

• Mary Trump's tell-all book about her uncle Donald Trump's family has sold nearly a million copies on its first day, smashing sales records.
• A California man has been arrested after pulling a gun on artists painting a Black Lives Matter mural at a courthouse.
• The US reported more than 77,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a new record as cases rose in 38 states.
• The Trump White House is demanding a "major" payroll tax cut as part of any addition COVID-19 stimulus legislation, along with federal COVID-19 liability protections for businesses.
• NASA is delaying the launch of its James Webb Space Telescope from March of next year until October 31, citing COVID-19 as the main issue.

Last Call For Unseemaly Conduct

Another week, another Inspector General finds corruption in the Trump regime (well, an IG that Trump hasn't fired yet at any rate) and this time it involves the regime's top Medicare and Medicaid official, Seema Verma.

A top Trump administration health official violated federal contracting rules by steering millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts that ultimately benefited GOP-aligned communications consultants, according to an inspector general report set to be released today. 

The contracts, which were directed by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Seema Verma, were only halted after a POLITICO investigation raised questions about their legality and the agency had paid out more than $5 million to the contractors. 

The 70-page HHS inspector general report — the result of a 15-month audit — calls on HHS and CMS to take nine separate actions to address the "significant deficiencies" that it identified. Those actions include conducting a review of all the department's contracts, and making a closer examination of whether CMS overpaid several of its contractors. 

The report paints a detailed portrait of Verma's use of federal contracts to install allies who managed high-priority projects and exercised broad authority within CMS, while circumventing the agency's career officials and funding projects that ethics experts have said wasted taxpayers’ money. 

“CMS improperly administered the contracts and created improper employer-employee relationships between CMS and the contractors,” the inspector general wrote, detailing how Verma leaned on her hand-picked consultants rather than hundreds of civil servants in her communications department. “CMS’s administration of these contracts put the Government at increased risk for waste and abuse.” 

For instance, the report cites numerous examples across her first two years leading CMS of Verma personally directing contractors to craft her speeches and remarks, working with them to secure media appearances and even accompanying one for a “Girl’s Night Out” networking event. While the inspector general uses pseudonyms to describe individual contractors, POLITICO has previously identified the individuals cited in the report. 

Verma — a close ally of Vice President Mike Pence — has emerged as a key leader of the White House coronavirus task force, overseeing billions of dollars in emergency payments to doctors and hospitals, rolling out new rules affecting nursing homes and championing the use of telemedicine. She also runs the nation's largest health care safety-net programs — Medicare and Medicaid — in addition to overseeing Obamacare, as head of a trillion-dollar agency with sweeping regulatory authority over the U.S. health care system. 

Verma has spent more than a year defending the contracts, testifying to Congress that they were “consistent” with previous communications arrangements and focused on promoting the agency, not her. 

However, the inspector general concluded that Verma and her team “did not administer and manage the contracts in accordance with Federal requirements.” The watchdog also faulted the health department for failing to adequately manage the contracts, which auditors linked to potential duplicate spending and other “questionable costs,” such as a $150,000 payout for a canceled bus tour. 

At other times, Verma’s hand-picked contractors — including her former communications specialist, Marcus Barlow, who had worked as a spokesperson on behalf of Verma’s consulting firm but had been blocked from taking a job at CMS — personally steered federal staff and policies in ways that appeared to flout contracting rules, according to the inspector general.

Keep in mind being in charge of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, Verma controls more than a trillion dollars in federal funds every year.   So yeah, looking at her books a bit more closely is probably a good idea.

I like how she (so far) has avoided the obvious Medicare fraud angle which being watched more closely would have gotten her busted years ago and instead paid off GOP PR firms through the department's communications budget, that's pretty clever. Verma's clearly been at this game long enough to rip off Indiana taxpayers when working for Pence and figured she'd use the same tricks at the federal level.

That of course brings up two questions, one, who else is she paying off to when it comes to the big healthcare money, and two, what was Verma getting in return for these communications contracts?

My initial answers are "Whomever Pence told her to" and "She expected favors from these firms after leaving the Trump regime and going back to her consulting business".

Should be fun to find out.

Biden, His Time, Con't

Remember, the polls are just a snapshot, we cannot afford the luxury of thinking Biden is going to win.  We have to go make it happen in November.

Having said that, the latest Quinnipiac poll has Biden up by fifteen points.

As coronavirus cases surge and states rollback re-openings, former Vice President Joe Biden opens up his biggest lead this year over President Donald Trump in the race for the White House. Registered voters back Biden over Trump 52 - 37 percent, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll released today. This compares to a June 18th national poll when Biden led Trump 49 - 41 percent. Since March, Biden's lead had ranged from 8 to 11 percentage points.

Independents are a key factor behind Biden's widening lead as they now back him 51 - 34 percent, while in June, independents were split with 43 percent for Biden and 40 percent for Trump. There is also some movement among Republicans as they back Trump 84 - 9 percent, compared to 92 - 7 percent in June. Democrats go to Biden 91 - 5 percent, little changed from 93 - 4 percent in June.

"Yes, there's still 16 weeks until Election Day, but this is a very unpleasant real time look at what the future could be for President Trump. There is no upside, no silver lining, no encouraging trend hidden somewhere in this survey for the president," said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

BIDEN VS. TRUMP: THE ISSUES

Voters now give Biden a slight lead over Trump in a direct match up when it comes to handling the economy. Voters say 50 - 45 percent that Biden would do a better job handling the economy, a reversal from June when Trump held a slight lead 51 - 46 percent.

Asked about other key issues:

* On handling a crisis, Biden leads 57 - 38 percent;

* On handling health care, Biden leads 58 - 35 percent;

* On the coronavirus response, Biden leads 59 - 35 percent;

* On addressing racial inequality, Biden leads 62 - 30 percent.

 Two big observations, one, Trump is now losing on the economy to Biden and Trump's overall approval on handling of the economy has dropped to 44% with 53% disapproving, and two, Biden's margin with college-educated white voters is so large now (64%-31%, a 33 point edge) that he is ahead overall with white voters by a 49%-43% margin.  If that holds up through the election, Trump is absolutely through, and there is no saving him.

The one thing that worries me is this:




Biden's folks need to work on their outreach to Black and Hispanic voters, period.  Obama set the gold standard for that. I know Trump can't win if Biden beats him with white voters, but Biden can't afford to take Black and Hispanic voters for granted.  Asian either.

We brought you to this dance, Joe.  Remember that. 

The Cover-Up Goes Viral

The Trump regime plan to win in November is to scrub the nation's COVID-19 stats and make the pandemic disappear, and that starts with controlling all hospital data at the federal level, and cutting off federal funding from hospitals that don't comply.

Hospital data on coronavirus patients will now be rerouted to the Trump administration instead of first being sent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to CNN on Tuesday. 

The move could make data less transparent to the public at a time when the administration is downplaying the spread of the pandemic, and threatens to undermine public confidence that medical data is being presented free of political interference. 

Michael Caputo, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the department, confirmed the change first reported by The New York Times earlier in the day, saying in a statement that the "new faster and complete data system is what our nation needs to defeat the coronavirus and the CDC, an operating division of HHS, will certainly participate in this streamlined all-of-government response. They will simply no longer control it." 

"The CDC's old hospital data gathering operation once worked well monitoring hospital information across the country, but it's an inadequate system today," Caputo said in the statement.

The Times said hospitals are to begin reporting the data to HHS on Wednesday, noting also that the "database that will receive new information is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on C.D.C. data to make projections and crucial decisions."

This is the real issue: hiding data from the public and especially from news organizations.  We'll find out much later about "data corrections" but I nearly guarantee that we'll see a sudden total reversal of spike trends.

This is bad, folks.  Real bad.

StupidiNews!

• Oklahoma GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt has tested positive for COVID-19 but says he is not considering additional restrictions for the state, saying "you can't pick and choose" on freedoms. 
• Brad Parscale has been demoted from managing the Trump campaign, replaced by former Chris Christie aide Bill Stepien, Parscale will continue as the campaign's senior data adviser.
• The Trump regime says it will take action involving possible national security risks associated with China-based social media apps TikTok and WeChat in "weeks, not months".
• Twitter is dealing with a major security breach Wednesday that allowed several high profile accounts to be compromised and to tweet out Bitcoin scam links.
• US energy researchers believe finding a cost-effective way to recycle old solar panels into new ones could save Americans billions and that federal regulations are the key moving forward.

Last Call For The Final Sessions

Amber Phillips at the Washington Post details the embarrassing and complete destruction of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III's political career at the singular hands of Donald Trump, and I couldn't be happier to see the Trump Touch Theory in full effect: everything the man touches transforms into dust.

If there was one establishment figure in Washington who understood Trumpism, it was Jeff Sessions. But Sessions is also the Washington figure who most clearly paid a political price for not seeming loyal enough to President Trump.

The longtime senator from Alabama, like Trump, leaned hard on anti-immigrant policies. It made him something of an outsider in traditional Washington politics, but Trump and Sessions worked together to change that.

Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump, choosing him over other candidates like his Senate colleague Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).

Trump was just a few months into his campaign when Sessions stood with him onstage, giving the candidate a boost of legitimacy from Washington. When Trump won the White House, Sessions was rewarded by being chosen as Trump’s attorney general. And Sessions in return tried to relentlessly hammer home the two men’s tough-on-immigration rhetoric and policies.

But the relationship went wrong over the question of loyalty, or rather the president’s perception of loyalty. Sessions lost a runoff in Alabama on Tuesday in an attempt to return to his old Senate seat, and Trump was cheering his loss on from Washington, after insulting Sessions or urging voters to ditch him nearly every step of the way. Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville won the nomination and will try to unseat Democrats’ most vulnerable senator in November, Doug Jones.

Trump has been humiliating Sessions for years, actually, even while Sessions was still his attorney general. The president seemed to view the prominent Cabinet position as one designed to protect him rather than to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Perhaps Trump was helped along by the fact that his attorney general was such a close political ally. Or perhaps Trump views key aspects of government as a means to the end of supporting him — a pattern we’ve seen since.

Trump felt he needed the most protection from the Department of Justice on an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and any ties to his campaign — and he believed Sessions wasn’t there for him. Sessions had recused himself from overseeing the investigation because he played such a prominent role in the Trump campaign and had visited with the Russian ambassador during it.

Shortly after that, Trump fired the FBI director, and shortly after that, Sessions’s No. 2 appointed a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to take on the investigation. Trump uttered an expletive when he found out, according to Mueller’s report.

The Mueller report says Trump immediately turned his anger to Sessions. Trump later told the New York Times, “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.” 

And the president spent more than a year insulting Sessions on Twitter, even making Sessions’s former Republican colleagues in the Senate uncomfortable with the public humiliation, before firing him and then doing what he could to make sure Sessions never came back to Washington.

Sessions will be back as a lobbyist emeritus I'm sure, but his political career has ended with all the ignominy he deserved.  He could have kept his Senate seat for another two terms, I'm sure.  Now? He'll be lucky to end up on a sinecure masthead somewhere if not retiring.

Donald Trump destroyed him, and Sessions allowed it to happen.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Yesterday dozens of BLM protesters showed up at Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron's house in Louisville to protest Cameron's failure to bring charges or even to arrest the LMPD officers responsible for the murder of Breonna Taylor in March. Police responded quickly to the protest, rounding up 87 protesters and Cameron wasted no time in charging them with felonies.

More than 80 people were arrested while protesting outside a Louisville home owned by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron Tuesday night, several media outlets reported. 

The 87 demonstrators who were arrested had gathered on the lawn of the home in the Graymoor-Devondale neighborhood to call for action in the Breonna Taylor case, WDRB reported. 

The gathering was organized in part by the national Until Freedom organization, according to WAVE3 News in Louisville. 

Until Freedom shared live video on its Facebook page showing protesters marching and later seated in rows with arms linked on the lawn of the single-story home. 

A co-founder of the group, Linda Sarsour, who was among those arrested, told the Courier-Journal, “We are here to hold Daniel Cameron accountable and make sure that he does his job, because he is not doing his job.” 

Cameron’s office and the FBI have both been investigating the shooting death of Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville EMT who was killed by police who were serving a no-knock warrant at her home March 13. Use of the warrants has since been prohibited in Louisville. 

Officer Brett Hankinson has been fired, but two other officers involved in the shooting, officer Myles Cosgrove and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, are still employed by the Louisville Metro Police Department. Protesters have been calling for criminal charges against the officers. 

Cameron issued a statement Tuesday night, saying “a thorough and fair investigation” is being conducted. 

“The stated goal of today’s protest at my home was to ‘escalate.’ That is not acceptable and only serves to further division and tension within our community,” he said in the statement shared by several media outlets. “Justice is not achieved by trespassing on private property, and it’s not achieved through escalation. It’s achieved by examining the facts in an impartial and unbiased manner. That is exactly what we are doing and will continue to do in this investigation.” 

WLKY reported that police warned the protesters to leave, and those who refused were charged with intimidating a participant in a legal process, second-degree disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing.

It's that "intimidating a participant in a legal process" charge that is utter fascism.  That's something usually reserved for jury or witness tampering, in Kentucky that's a class D felony with a 1-5 year prison sentence. To use that against protesters because Cameron is an officer of the court as AG is just outright fascism and a clear message of intimidation and state power, and proof that he's willing to throw as many BLM protesters in prison as needed in order to protect cops who kill.

Things just took a really bad turn here in Kentucky.  Collectively the people protesting are facing hundreds of years in prison, like this is a tinpot dictatorship.

Cameron is no different from Trump.  They're all fascists.

Texas As Primarily Kentucky

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

A long-shot Republican US Senate seat in a traditionally red state possibly in play this November, the Democratic primary front-runner, a white military veteran woman pilot who has a big out-of-state cash lead and growing national attention to her campaign suddenly finds herself facing a real fight on her hands from a Black state lawmaker from the state's largest city as he is peaking at the right time thanks to Black Lives Matter protests and his career as a criminal justice reformer, but the pilot may have banked enough of a mail-in ballot lead to win as the runoff primary was delayed due to COVID-19.

While Charles Booker came up short against Amy McGrath in Kentucky last month, the story also applies to Texas this month, where last night Air Force veteran helicopter pilot MJ Hegar faced off against state Sen. Royce West for the right to take on Republican US Senator John Cornyn.  As with McGrath, Hegar counted her chickens before they hatched and ran almost exclusively against Cornyn, while West ran on the protests of the last six weeks.

But the results were the same as Hegar survived with a 52%-48% win.

Air Force veteran Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar will officially face Sen. John Cornyn in November after winning out against state Sen. Royce West in Texas’s Democratic primary runoff on Tuesday. 

Hegar secured the endorsement not just from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee but also from major national groups including EMILY’s List, Everytown for Gun Safety, and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She has long been the anointed candidate to take on Cornyn, and she was the top vote-getter in Texas’s Super Tuesday primary in March. 

On Tuesday, she again defeated West, a progressive fixture of Democratic politics in Texas. In the lead-up to the runoff, Hegar and her allies spent heavily to make sure they put the race away: According to the Texas Tribune, she, along with the DSCC and EMILY’s List, poured at least $2 million into ads in the Houston area over the last week of the race, outspending West 85 to 1.

That kind of spending might well have been necessary. According to Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University, West had been gaining traction in the race, though Tuesday’s result shows it didn’t happen quite fast enough to get him over the line.
In particular, Jones said, the national movement following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis gave West a lift. “African American officeholders and political elites in the state,” he said, began to “really rally behind West in a way that they hadn’t in the original primary in March.” 

Hegar was always the favorite, however, and now she heads into the general election against Cornyn with about $1.6 million in the bank and a steep climb ahead of her. The Cook Political Report rates the Texas Senate race as “Likely R,” and Jones said he believes that’s “still pretty safe.” 

Texas is becoming less of a sure thing for Republicans: FiveThirtyEight’s polling average shows President Donald Trump in a dead-heat tie with Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the state, and one-time presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke came within a few points of unseating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. 

But Cornyn looks to be somewhat more popular in the state than his colleague in the Senate, never mind the president, and he’s running anywhere from 8 to 13 points ahead of Hegar in recent polling, so she’ll have her work cut out for her.

All of this sounds terribly familiar to me, and both Hegar and McGrath will probably end up losing by double digits.

Or maybe not.  Maybe not this year.  Even Mitch McConnell is spooked.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been crisscrossing Kentucky and delivering a sober analysis of the country's struggle with the coronavirus pandemic, imploring Americans to wear masks and warning in blunt terms that it's unclear how long the virus will continue to wreak havoc on the country. 

"Well regretfully, my friends, it's not over," McConnell said Monday at a hospital in Mt. Vernon, Kentucky. "We're seeing a surge in Florida and Texas and Arizona and yes, here in Kentucky." 

It's a far different message than what's being espoused by President Donald Trump, who boasts about the country's response, demands the economy reopen, rarely urges Americans to wear a mask and dismisses the virus' surge across the Sun Belt and the rise in cases in 37 states.

"It's going to take a while to get a vaccine," McConnell said back home this week, less than a week after Trump promised a vaccine "very, very soon" and in "record time."

McConnell, on the other hand, urges caution. 

"Remember once we get one or more vaccines we're going to need a massive number of doses, not just for our country, but for the whole world," he said, standing outside a hospital this week, holding his disposal facemask in his left hand. "For the whole world. A massive number of doses." 

On Tuesday, McConnell added in Henderson, Kentucky: "The earliest I've heard anybody suggest one could be available would be later this year, and that would be extremely optimistic."

Mitch is running from Trump on COVID-19.  He wants a Senate package and while his top priority is lawsuit immunity from COVID-19 lawsuits, he's moving forward on something I didn't think he would. Of course, he has thousands of Kentuckians and millions of Americans facing the end of COVID-19 unemployment benefits as convenient hostages for his demands, so who knows what will happen next week.

Maybe this is where Mitch and John Cornyn both lose to Democratic military veteran women pilots in November.

StupidiNews!

• Kansas GOP Rep. Steve Watkins is facing multiple felony voting fraud charges related to allegedly using the wrong address when voting last year for local elections.
• Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is "resting peacefully" after being hospitalized this week for a bile duct infection.
• The Trump regime is reversing an earlier order that would have removed visas for tens of thousands of college students who attended universities that didn't offer in-person classes this fall.
• Donald Trump says the US will end Hong Kong's special diplomatic status with the US in order to punish Beijing for its recent crackdown on the city-state's citizens.
• Mythbusters host, movie FX artist, and robotics engineer Grant Imahara passed away Monday at age 49 from a brain aneurysm, he is survived by his long-time partner Jennifer Newman.

Last Call For Maxwell, Silver Hammered

Indicted Epstein sidekick Ghislaine Maxwell pleaded guilty and was denied bail today at her hearing, and is facing a trial date over a year from now, meaning she'll be a guest of decidedly substandard federal housing for nearly 375 days before she even gets to make her case before a jury.

A federal judge Tuesday ordered Ghislaine Maxwell jailed pending trial, saying the significant financial resources, international ties and "extraordinary capacity to avoid detection" of the one-time girlfriend and alleged accomplice of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein made her a flight risk. 

At a court proceeding, Maxwell, 58, pleaded not guilty to charges by New York federal prosecutors that she helped recruit, groom and ultimately sexually abuse minors as young as 14. 

The British socialite, whom prosecutors have described as having been "in hiding" since Epstein's arrest last summer, participated in the hearing by videoconference from a federal jail in Brooklyn, providing the public its first glimpse of her in more than a year. 

Dressed in a brown crew neck prison shirt, her dark hair pulled into a bun, Maxwell fidgeted in her seat as US District Judge Alison Nathan rejected arguments by Maxwell's defense counsel that she should be granted bail. At one point, Maxwell sighed, but betrayed no emotion. 

Regarding possible bail conditions, the judge said: "The court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that no combination could reasonably assure her presence in court. The risks are simply too great."

Prosecutors had urged the judge to order detention for Maxwell, saying her wealth -- with numerous bank accounts containing as much as $20 million, according to court filings; multiple foreign citizenships, including in France, which doesn't extradite its citizens; and skill at hiding made her an "extreme" risk of flight. 

In court Tuesday, prosecutor Alison Moe laid out "serious red flags" and detailed what she described as additional evidence of Maxwell's deception, saying Maxwell told a real estate agent involved in the sale of her New Hampshire estate -- where Maxwell was living when she was arrested July 2 -- that she was a journalist named Janet Marshall.
Only upon seeing Maxwell's photo in news reports following her arrest did the agent realize he had been duped, Moe told the court. 

"These facts make clear to the court that the defendant has the ability to remain in hiding," Moe told the judge. "She's good at it," she said, adding that Maxwell has the "ability and willingness to live off the grid indefinitely."

There's no way Maxwell, if granted bail, would not be on her way to the French Riviera or another playground without an extradition treaty with the US tonight as you read this. She knows too many powerful people, who owe her too many favors to keep her from talking.

Because putting her in a federal facility in Brooklyn for a year before even getting a trial date is exactly what federal prosecutors are hoping will force her to cooperate.  There's no way she sails through a year unscathed as someone the world believes rounded up kids as sport for consumption by hungry predators. She knows this.

She's going to talk. (Well, if she's not ganked. Again, powerful people involved.)

It'll come sooner rather than later, too. Maxwell doesn't strike me as the "Orange is the New Black" quick learner type. She'll need to give up some heavy hitters though.

We'll see.

Bluenami Tsunami, Con't

Last week I noted Cook Political Report now had Joe Biden breaking the 270 electoral vote threshold in their forecasts meaning a clear win a November (whether or not Republican states will try to manipulate the results of or even try to nullify a Biden win is anyone's guess right now, but 2016 GOP voter suppression tactics will certainly apply).

This week Sabato's Crystal Ball remains at 268-204 Biden, with 66 toss-ups, but given the consistency of Biden's 8-10 point lead, several Safe Republican states are moving to Likely and could be in play if Biden's lead holds up at the state level, which given the 5-6 point overestimation of Clinton's state level polling in 2016 remains a gargantuan-sized if.

Sabato's Kyle Kondik:

2020 is shaping up to be a bad year in American history, which Republican lobbyist Bruce Mehlman illustrates in his latest look at the political environment. It is not the kind of year when one wants to be an incumbent running for reelection, and a majority of the public appears to believe that this president is not meeting the moment.
A few weeks into the public health crisis, we explored the possibility of Trump being the second iteration of Jimmy Carter, whose reelection bid fell apart among myriad crises in 1980. Since then, the Trump-as-Carter scenario has grown even more plausible.

There is time for the situation to change — as we wrote a few weeks ago, we want to see where things stand after the conventions, around Labor Day. But Trump is extremely unlikely to win if the polls continue to look the way they do now. And if these numbers represent a new normal, we need to account for the possibility that this election won’t be particularly close, and that new states may come into play. In other words, if the national picture remains bleak for Trump, then the slippage he’s seen from earlier this year wouldn’t just be limited to a handful of swing states.

Over the past few weeks, there have been some interesting little nuggets here and there about the map expanding into red turf. The very well-sourced New York Times trio of Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, and Alexander Burns recently reported that internal Republican data showed Trump with only a small lead in Montana and trailing in Kansas, two states that Trump carried by about 20 points apiece in 2016 (both have competitive Senate races, too).

Enterprising members of the #ElectionTwitter community spearheaded a fundraising campaign to poll under-polled states: Public Policy Polling, the Democratic pollster, stepped up and polled Alaska and Montana on their behalf, with the money raised going to charity. Trump was up 48%-45% in Alaska and 51%-42% in Montana. (The #ElectionTwitter polling project remains underway, and we have supported them and we encourage others to as well at their GoFundMe page.)

Democratic pollster Garin-Hart-Yang had Biden up two points in Missouri, a 19-point Trump state; an earlier poll for Missouri Scout conducted by Remington Research, a GOP firm, had Trump up eight. On Monday, polling from Saint Louis University/YouGov had Trump up by a similar 50%-43% margin.

A UtahPolicy.com/KUTV 2 News poll of Utah had Trump up just 44%-41% there in late May, although the pollster (Y2 Analytics) later re-weighted the poll by education, which suggested a lead for Trump more in the six-to-10-point range, depending on which weighting was used (the Y2 post includes a thoughtful discussion of education weighting, an important factor in polling and something that might have contributed to some Democratic bias in state polls in 2016).

One other caveat comes from friend of the Crystal Ball Dan Guild, who has noticed that in the last three elections, some summer polling has seriously overstated eventual November Democratic performance in red states. That may be a factor now.

But Trump’s position is weak enough in mid-July that we have to concede there are some signs of competitiveness in states that were not competitive in 2016. This sort of thing can happen when the overall election is tilted toward one side over the other, which is the state of play at the moment and the advantage Biden currently holds.

If Trump were up by 10 nationally, we might be moving Safe Democratic states that Hillary Clinton won in the low double-digits, like Delaware and Oregon, into more competitive categories.

More to the point, we continue to rate states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia as Likely, not Safe, Democratic. That’s despite it being hard to imagine Trump carrying any of them, even if his position dramatically improves.

So we’re moving seven Safe Republican states to Likely Republican: Alaska, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Utah.

Do we think Biden will win these states? Not really. In all likelihood, these red states are going to vote for Trump, and not just by a few points.

But could one or more flip if Biden wins decisively in November? Possibly. Let’s remember: A “Likely” rating still means we see one side — in this case, the Republicans — clearly favored in a state. We just don’t feel 100% certain about these states in the event of a lopsided election.

It's not much of a shift as far as the electoral picture, in fact it's a not a shift up front at all.  But if states like Indiana, Kansas, and Montana are no longer 100% Trump locks, then the entire electoral map has shifted at the back end since Memorial Day weekend.

Still, the second the Biden people believe they are up by 8 rather than down by 8 is the seond they start ensuring a second Trump term.

Take nothing for granted and fight like you're dying.

Because we are.

The Race Against COVID-19, Con't

The death rate of Black America from COVID-19 is only getting worse as the virus spreads into the Deep South, where health risk outcomes of Black patients and systemic racism in the US healthcare system are already stacking the deck against survival.

If you’re Black in America, Covid-19 is more likely to kill you, and the disparity has only widened as cases have surged across the U.S.
In counties where the majority of residents are Black, the death rate has climbed to 3.5 times the national average, up from roughly three times as high in May, an ongoing analysis of Johns Hopkins University and Census Bureau data by Bloomberg News finds. In places where African Americans exceed 13.4% of the population, the proportion they make up of the U.S., the death rate is double the national average, also a slight uptick from two months ago.

Since as early as April, public health experts and lawmakers have pushed the federal government to release more data and work to reduce the disparities. Absent national figures, the picture of racial health outcomes in the U.S. is still incomplete. What statistics exist have continued to show Black Americans bear the brunt of the virus. But with imperfect information, officials can't properly deploy resources or develop plans to tackle the issue. Four months into the pandemic, the problem appears to be getting worse.

Study after study of available information points to the same grim reality. In places with more than 100 deaths, Black Americans have made up 23% of them, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost twice their share of the national population. Federal statistics on 1.5 million coronavirus patients obtained by the New York Times showed that Black and Latino people who contract the virus are twice as likely to die. Even these statistics have gaps, with demographic information missing from hundreds of thousands of people.

The disproportionate toll persists even when accounting for age, pre-existing health conditions, geography, occupational exposure and housing conditions, Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute has found. “These starkly different numbers for African Americans would withstand every empirical argument you can make. You cannot explain this away,” he said. “It’s acting as an expression of a whole set of cumulative disadvantages faced by Black Americans.”

The Bloomberg analysis of more than 3,100 U.S. counties can only infer the deadliness of the virus among Black Americans. In our data set, which covers all deaths from March 23 to July 10, the race of those dying is unknown. In many cases, race and other demographic information is not being collected or released.

Minority communities and cities with large Black populations, like New York City, New Orleans and Detroit were some of the earliest hotspots. But as the virus has spread elsewhere, the disparities remain. The CDC data published by the New York Times showed Black people dying at higher rates across state lines and in areas rural, urban and suburban.

And again, even when controlled for health risk factors like diabetes, hypertension and obesity, even when controlled for wealth and location, Black Americans face a higher death rate, more than twice the national average, and it's only getting more blatant.

COVID-19 kills because our healthcare system kills Black Americans at a higher rate.

Period.

Systemic racism kills.  I don't know how much more clear I can be about it.