A Prescription For Disaster

It's that time of year again where Americans camp out for days in order to see a pop-up rural clinic nurse because we have the most ridiculously expensive "health care" on earth and a system absolutely designed to keep it that way.

They were told to arrive early if they wanted to see a doctor, so Lisa and Stevie Crider left their apartment in rural Tennessee almost 24 hours before the temporary medical clinic was scheduled to open. They packed a plastic bag with what had become their daily essentials after 21 years of marriage: An ice pack for his recurring chest pain. Tylenol for her swollen feet. Peroxide for the abscess in his mouth. Gatorade for her low blood sugar and chronic dehydration.

They took a bus into the center of Cleveland, Tenn., a manufacturing town of 42,000, and slept for a few hours at a budget motel. Then they awoke in the middle of the night and walked toward the first-come, first-served clinic, bringing along a referral from a social worker for what they hoped would be their first doctor’s checkup in more than four years.

“Urgent needs from head to toe,” the social worker had written. “Lacking primary care and basic medication. They have fallen into the gap.”

Only when Stevie and Lisa arrived at the clinic a little after 2 a.m. did it occur to them how large that medical gap has become in parts of rural America. Dozens of people were sprawled out in sleeping bags on the asphalt parking lot. Others had pitched tents on an adjacent lawn. The lot was already filled with more than 300 cars from all over the rural South, where a growing number of people in medical distress wait for hours at emergency clinics in order to receive basic primary care. Tennessee has lost 14 percent of its rural physicians and 18 percent of its rural hospitals in the past decade, leaving an estimated 2.5 million residents with insufficient access to medical care. The federal government now estimates that a record 50 million rural Americans live in what it calls "health care shortage areas," where the number of hospitals, family doctors, surgeons and paramedics has declined to 20-year lows.  

What’s arrived in their place are sporadic free clinics such as the one in Cleveland, where a nonprofit agency called Remote Area Medical brought in a group of doctors, nurses and other volunteers for the weekend to transform the local high school into a makeshift hospital. There would be a triage station in the entryway, bloodwork in the science lab, kidney scans in the gym, dental extractions in the cafeteria, and chest X-rays in the parking lot — a range of medical care that would be available for only two days, until the clinic packed up and moved on to Hazard, Ky., and then Weatherford, Okla.

“We’ll do as much as we can for as many as we can,” a clinic volunteer promised as she patrolled the parking lot late at night and handed out numbers to signify each patient’s place in the line. No. 48 went to a woman having panic attacks from adjacent Meigs County, where the last remaining mental-health provider had just moved away to Nashville. No. 207 went to a man with unmanaged heart disease from Polk County, where the only hospital had gone bankrupt and closed in 2017.

With the Supreme Court and Republicans doing everything they can to break the Affordable Care Act and then refusing to fix it, we now have the direct results of that disaster.  Rural hospitals are closing, people have no health care out in rural counties, and they are lied to and told to blame Democrats because Obamacare forced doctors to go treat those people in the dirty cities and not real Americans out in the heartland.

The reality of course is that Republicans have cut funding for the programs to keep red state rural clinics and hospitals operating, because dead poor people stop being such a drain on red state budgets.

The Adventures Of Pete's Dragon, Con't

Pete Buttigieg remains in the running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, but his political fortunes took a turn for the worse last week as a shooting in South Bend revealed the tensions in the city, and it seems the one thing everyone agrees on is that Buttigieg should get his ass back to South Bend and work on fixing the city that he's Mayor of before he worried about being President.

A town hall featuring Mayor Pete Buttigieg broke into near chaos Sunday afternoon as the Democratic presidential candidate tried to respond to community concerns over a white police officer killing a black man in the city.

Buttigieg was solemn, somber and circumspect as he tried to explain the procedures of how officials will review the shooting, while saying that he didn’t want to prejudice the investigation. He also said he would ask the Justice Department to review the case and for an independent prosecutor to decide whether to prosecute.

“We’ve taken a lot of steps, but they clearly haven’t been enough,” said Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.

The largely black audience of hundreds was having none of it. “We don’t trust you!” a woman hollered at the mayor.

The tragedy unfolded in Buttigieg’s city on June 16, and it would be difficult to imagine a domestic crisis more nightmarish for a mayor and a presidential candidate who has enjoyed a largely carefree rise to the top tier of Democratic contestants.

Buttigieg’s lack of popularity among black voters nationally — a crucial demographic for winning the Democratic primary and then the presidency – was already one of his biggest weaknesses in a contest dominated by racial justice issues like never before. Buttigieg had recently been laying the groundwork to win over some of those skeptical voters in states such as South Carolina.

But now the shooting has highlighted the racial tension right on Buttigieg’s home turf, revealing for a national audience the pain and anger that has long festered among South Bend’s black residents.

“I’m not surprised,” said Mario Sims, 67, the pastor of the nondenominational Dolos Chapel, who is black.

“This was a trail of gasoline that was waiting to be ignited, and last week it ignited,” Sims said of the hometown strife now surrounding Buttigieg.

Until now, Buttigieg had enjoyed a charmed and improbable role in the presidential primary as the mayor of a Rust Belt city whose population barely tops 100,000, a 37-year-old in a field dominated by two 70-somethings.

He’d been lifted in the polls — and into television green rooms — by his gifts as a communicator and by his singular biography as an openly gay veteran who reads James Joyce and speaks several languages.

His mere existence as a liberal force in conservative Indiana suggested an alternative path for Democrats fighting to rebuild support in the nation’s heartland. 

But at home, Buttigieg is a much more common figure in American politics: a white politician struggling to connect with his black constituents, whose lives are plagued by grinding poverty and violence that their wunderkind mayor has been unable to repair after seven years in office.

And this has always been his weakness.  He just doesn't get it, he doesn't understand the party and keeps telling Democrats that we're the ones who have to change to accommodate Republicans.  But he blew it.  If black residents of South Bend think Buttigieg is a failure, and I gotta agree with them here, then he needs to drop out of the race.

Pete's nowhere near ready yet.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 7.2 earthquake has struck in the Banda Sea near Indonesia, the tremors were felt as far away as northern Australia.
• Rescuers in Cambodia are searching through the rubble of a collapsed building at a resort town as the death toll from the disaster has reached 18.
• Turkey's main opposition party has claimed victory in the mayoral race in Istanbul as President Erdogan forced a redo of the election from three months ago after claiming "voting irregularities".
• The Czech Republic government may face a no confidence vote this week as hundreds of thousands continue to protest PM Andrej Babis and demand his resignation over corruption charges.
• Researchers have been able to use lasers to successfully record and transmit audio using "atomic radios", high-energy atoms that can be used as quantum receivers.

Last Call For The Last Week In June

Just a gentle reminder that the true bill for the "principled opposition" to Hillary Clinton comes due starting Monday.

The U.S. Supreme Court, approaching the end of its current term, is due to issue rulings in the coming days in major cases including the Trump administration’s bid to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census and efforts by voters to curb the partisan manipulation of electoral district boundaries.

The court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, has 12 cases left to decide during its current term, which began in October and is expected to conclude by the end of June, with some rulings scheduled to be issued on Monday.

Eagerly awaited rulings in legal challenges to the proposed census question and a practice called partisan gerrymandering could have enduring effects on elections for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures.

Critics have called the move by President Donald Trump’s Commerce Department to add a citizenship question to the census a Republican scheme to deter immigrants from taking part in the population count for fear of deportation. The aim, these critics have said, is to engineer a deliberate undercount of places with high immigrant and Latino concentrations, costing Democratic-leaning areas seats in the House to the benefit of Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

The justices are hearing the administration’s appeal of a judge’s January ruling in New York blocking the question as a violation of a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act. Two other courts subsequently blocked the question. During April’s argument in the case, the court’s conservative majority appeared to be inclined to rule in favor of Trump.

The administration has argued that adding a question requiring people participating in the decennial population tally to declare whether they are a citizen is needed to better enforce a voting rights law, a rationale that opponents called a pretext for a political motive.

A group of states including New York and immigrant rights organizations sued to prevent the question.

Separate cases from North Carolina and Maryland focus on whether the justices will empower courts to impose restrictions on partisan gerrymandering, the practice in which electoral districts are drawn purely to amplify the political power of the party already in control of a state’s legislature.

If, as I expect, both these rulings are 5-4 in favor of the conservatives on the Roberts Court, then tens of millions of people will eventually be disenfranchised in order to give the Republican party near permanent power.  Demographics as destiny means nothing if black and brown people lose the right to vote or to even exist in the country.

Of course, the people who three years ago said that they could afford to not vote for Hillary are the people who won't be hurt directly by SCOTUS this week, and in future Junes to come in the post-Kennedy Roberts Court era.

The rest of us get the bill starting tomorrow.

It's About Suppression, Con't

If you were expecting Florida's new state constitutional amendment to actually grant voting rights back to some 1.4 million convicted felons who served their time, you don't know the GOP very well.

Florida’s reputation as America’s tightest -- and wildest -- swing state should stay intact, as a battle over felons’ voting rights seems destined for the courts. At the least, it’s increasingly looking like Florida’s 1.4 million disenfranchised ex-convicts won’t be the potent voting bloc they might’ve been.

Seven months ago, almost two-thirds of voters approved Amendment 4, which restores registration rights to many felons. Florida had been one of three states, along with Kentucky and Iowa, where those convicted of a felony were permanently prohibited from registering without going through a lengthy clemency process, and many saw Floridians’ vote as bringing the state into the U.S. mainstream. Only those convicted of murder and sexual offenses still are excluded.

However, Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign a bill within days that critics say will blunt much of Amendment 4’s impact. The bill passed by the Republican-led Legislature would require felons to pay off restitution, court fees and fines before registering -- a move that voting rights advocates say could have a chilling effect. So far, the number of former inmates who have visited a local supervisor of elections office to register has been a modest 2,000, according to one estimate.
“There’s just no way to get around the fact that the Legislature did everything it could to undermine Amendment 4,” Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “I don’t think it’s consistent with the will of the voters, and it’s not consistent with the text of Amendment 4.”

Voting rights and civil liberties advocates mounted a well-funded campaign ahead of last year’s midterm elections to pass the voting rights amendment. A group called the Second Chances Florida campaign won over Floridians with stories of how ex-convicts -- renamed as “returning citizens” -- were eager to move beyond their troubled past. Behind the scenes, a political committee called Floridians for a Fair Democracy collected almost $27 million in checks and in-kind donations, according to state election records. 

Several progressive groups and individuals gave six or seven figures to the cause, including the ACLU, the Washington-based Sixteen Thirty Fund and ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s. It also won the endorsement of some conservative-leaning groups, including the Koch brothers-linked Freedom Partners, while a small group of critics gave Amendment 4 only token opposition. 

Despite an overwhelming victory at the polls, supporters face major obstacles in carrying out Amendment 4’s promise if DeSantis signs the bill. And, while some political scientists thought Democrats would see a boost from having more than a million felons eligible to register, that, too, looks questionable.

Forget "questionable".  With only 2,000 out of 1.4 million voters so far getting their right to vote back., and DeSantis about to sign a law into effect that will force every one of these felons to repay Florida thousands of dollars in order to be enfranchised, Republicans will easily be able to tangle up this mess until after 2020.

Republicans just recreated the modern poll tax, and in all likelihood they are going to get away with it.  For the vast majority of the state's felons who have served their time, they will never be able to vote, and since that accounts for a massive percentage of black and brown citizens in the state, that's fine with Florida Republicans. Only a handful of felons will ever get that right back.

It's vile and awful and racist, because Republicans are vile and awful and racist.

And they are winning.

Sunday Long Read: Another #MeToo Moment

In an excerpt from her memoirs being published next week, author and columnist E. Jean Carroll describes her life of writing for well over 50 years and brings us a list of her awful encounters with sexual assault, from a classmate at Indiana University, to a Girl Scout camp director, to former CBS head honcho Les Moonves, and also one more hideous slug of a cretin who assaulted her in a department store bathroom in 1996, a man by the name of Donald J. Trump.

Which brings me to the other rich boy. Before I discuss him, I must mention that there are two great handicaps to telling you what happened to me in Bergdorf’s: (a) The man I will be talking about denies it, as he has denied accusations of sexual misconduct made by at least 15 credible women, namely, Jessica Leeds, Kristin Anderson, Jill Harth, Cathy Heller, Temple Taggart McDowell, Karena Virginia, Melinda McGillivray, Rachel Crooks, Natasha Stoynoff, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Juliet Huddy, Alva Johnson, and Cassandra Searles. (Here’s what the White House said: “This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad.”) And (b) I run the risk of making him more popular by revealing what he did.

His admirers can’t get enough of hearing that he’s rich enough, lusty enough, and powerful enough to be sued by and to pay off every splashy porn star or Playboy Playmate who “comes forward,” so I can’t imagine how ecstatic the poor saps will be to hear their favorite Walking Phallus got it on with an old lady in the world’s most prestigious department store.

This is during the years I am doing a daily Ask E. Jean TV show for the cable station America’s Talking, a precursor to MSNBC launched by Roger Ailes (who, by the way, is No. 16 on my list).

Early one evening, as I am about to go out Bergdorf’s revolving door on 58th Street, and one of New York’s most famous men comes in the revolving door, or it could have been a regular door at that time, I can’t recall, and he says: “Hey, you’re that advice lady!”

And I say to No. 20 on the Most Hideous Men of My Life List: “Hey, you’re that real-estate tycoon!”

I am surprised at how good-looking he is. We’ve met once before, and perhaps it is the dusky light but he looks prettier than ever. This has to be in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996 because he’s garbed in a faultless topcoat and I’m wearing my black wool Donna Karan coatdress and high heels but not a coat.

“Come advise me,” says the man. “I gotta buy a present.”

“Oh!” I say, charmed. “For whom?”

“A girl,” he says.

“Don’t the assistants of your secretaries buy things like that?” I say.

“Not this one,” he says. Or perhaps he says, “Not this time.” I can’t recall. He is a big talker, and from the instant we collide, he yammers about himself like he’s Alexander the Great ready to loot Babylon.

As we are standing just inside the door, I point to the handbags. “How about—”

“No!” he says, making the face where he pulls up both lips like he’s balancing a spoon under his nose, and begins talking about how he once thought about buying Bergdorf ’s.

“Or … a hat!” I say enthusiastically, walking toward the handbags, which, at the period I’m telling you about — and Bergdorf’s has been redone two or three times since then — are mixed in with, and displayed next to, the hats. “She’ll love a hat! You can’t go wrong with a hat!”

I don’t remember what he says, but he comes striding along — greeting a Bergdorf sales attendant like he owns the joint and permitting a shopper to gape in awe at him — and goes right for a fur number.

“Please,” I say. “No woman would wear a dead animal on her head!”

What he replies I don’t recall, but I remember he coddles the fur hat like it’s a baby otter.

“How old is the lady in question?” I ask.

“How old are you?” replies the man, fondling the hat and looking at me like Louis Leakey carbon-dating a thighbone he’s found in Olduvai Gorge.

“I’m 52,” I tell him.

“You’re so old!” he says, laughing — he was around 50 himself — and it’s at about this point that he drops the hat, looks in the direction of the escalator, and says, “Lingerie!” Or he may have said “Underwear!” So we stroll to the escalator. I don’t remember anybody else greeting him or galloping up to talk to him, which indicates how very few people are in the store at the time.

I have no recollection where lingerie is in that era of Bergdorf’s, but it seems to me it is on a floor with the evening gowns and bathing suits, and when the man and I arrive — and my memory now is vivid — no one is present.

There are two or three dainty boxes and a lacy see-through bodysuit of lilac gray on the counter. The man snatches the bodysuit up and says: “Go try this on!”

“You try it on,” I say, laughing. “It’s your color.”

“Try it on, come on,” he says, throwing it at me.

“It goes with your eyes,” I say, laughing and throwing it back.

“You’re in good shape,” he says, holding the filmy thing up against me. “I wanna see how this looks.”

“But it’s your size,” I say, laughing and trying to slap him back with one of the boxes on the counter.

“Come on,” he says, taking my arm. “Let’s put this on.”

This is gonna be hilarious, I’m saying to myself — and as I write this, I am staggered by my stupidity. As we head to the dressing rooms, I’m laughing aloud and saying in my mind: I’m gonna make him put this thing on over his pants!

There are several facts about what happens next that are so odd I want to clear them up before I go any further:

Did I report it to the police?

No.

Did I tell anyone about it?

Yes. I told two close friends. The first, a journalist, magazine writer, correspondent on the TV morning shows, author of many books, etc., begged me to go to the police.

“He raped you,” she kept repeating when I called her. “He raped you. Go to the police! I’ll go with you. We’ll go together.”

My second friend is also a journalist, a New York anchorwoman. She grew very quiet when I told her, then she grasped both my hands in her own and said, “Tell no one. Forget it! He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.” (Two decades later, both still remember the incident clearly and confirmed their accounts to New York.)

Trump denies ever meeting Carroll.



The picture included in the excerpt is Trump meeting Carroll.  The only newspaper that even put this story on the front page this weekend was the Washington Post.

Here endeth the lesson.

Deportation Nation, Con't

So today's ICE terror sweeps have been postponed for the official reason that Dear Leader wants to give the Democrats two weeks to come up with a deal of some sort in order to prevent mass ICE raids.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Donald Trump Friday night and asked him to call off the Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation raids scheduled for Sunday, a source familiar with the call told CNN. 

Trump pulled back on the raids Saturday a matter of hours after he spoke in support of the coordinated arrests and deportations that were slated to hit 10 major cities. Trump announced via Twitter that he would delay for two weeks US raids to give Congress a chance to "get together and work out a solution" on the enforcement of his signature immigration policy. 

Trump and Pelosi spoke at 7:20 p.m. ET Friday night for about 12 minutes, according to the source. White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere confirmed a phone call took place Friday night between Trump and Pelosi. 

A senior Democratic aide said Trump is "trying to create leverage in a situation where he has none," adding that "it won't work."

 The reality is Trump is conducting a mole hunt where everyone is probably guilty, including himself.

President Donald Trump suddenly canceled on Saturday a planned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation targeting undocumented immigrant families from across the country that was set to begin in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday.

The operation details, which had been reported by multiple outlets, including BuzzFeed News, had set off an unprecedented level of preparation amongst immigrant advocates this week.

But in a tweet Saturday, Trump said that he had “delayed” the plan at the request of Democrats to work on a plan to solve issues at the border, including what he believes are inherent loopholes to the system.

“At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border,” Trump tweeted. “If not, Deportations start!”

However, two senior administration officials told BuzzFeed News that those within the administration believe acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, or his staff, leaked operational details and that is what ultimately put the ICE operation in jeopardy.
“Leaking the locations and details to stop the operation from happening not only harmed operational integrity, but it put the safety and well-being of his own officers in jeopardy,” said one senior administration official. “The ICE mission is enforcing the nation’s laws and ensuring those who are unlawfully present in the country are removed if ordered by a judge; this will leave an un-erasable mark on his tenure.”

DHS officials did immediately not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

So we have our scapegoat for when Trump was the one who tweeted these raids were coming last week.   I said Friday that the wild card was how sanctuary cities would react to being given a week's heads up on this, and the answer is that without the cooperation of local police and the cities being able to warn people, the raids would have not been the "shock and awe" that Trump wanted.

The plan now is to blame McAleenan, who took over for Kirstjen Nielsen in April, and testified to Congress that ICE needed much more funding amid low morale and needed personnel.  Trump apparently doesn't think McAleenan can do the job.

Former Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan on Saturday accused Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Kevin McAleenan of working against ICE’s objectives.

Homan, whom President Donald Trump recently appointed as his administration’s “border czar,” made the comments during a weekend appearance on Fox & Friends; he discussed the administration’s recently leaked plans to launch mass raids targeting undocumented families on Sunday.

“You’ve got the acting Secretary of Homeland Security resisting what ICE is trying to do,” Homan said. “In the Washington Poststory, and numerous media outlets, [McAleenan] does not support this operation. And I tell you what, if that’s his position then he’s on the wrong side of this issue. You don’t tell the men and women of ICE a day before they go out there to do this operation.”

Homan also strongly implied that McAleenan was the source of the information leaked to media outlets regarding Sunday’s planned raids and accused him of putting ICE officers in danger.

Expect McAleenan's resignation shortly, paving the way for somebody worse I guess.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

Convicted former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort apparently was getting advice for months from one of Trump's top aides during the Mueller probe, that adviser being one FOX News host Sean Hannity.

Court documents previously filed under seal with the government’s sentencing recommendations for Paul Manafort were made public on Friday.

The documents include a months-long text exchange between Manafort and a “Sean” who appears to be Fox News host Sean Hannity.

The texts show Manafort apparently complimenting Hannity on his coverage, with the Fox host telling Manafort to stay strong throughout the early stages of the Mueller investigation.

“I appreciate what you tried to do,” Manafort wrote in one August 2017 message.

“Mueller is trying to intimidate me,” he wrote. “The raid is just one example.”

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in an order that the exhibit was initially redacted due to privacy concerns.

In one late November 2017 exchange, Manafort appears to express interest in working on Trump’s 2020 campaign.

“Plus i plan on helping on the re elect !” he wrote.

Hannity repeatedly pleaded with Manafort that he should appear on the Fox News host’s show. Manafort complained about the constraints imposed on him by the gag order in his case, but according to the exchanges, Manafort’s attorney Kevin Downing sought to provide Hannity with information on “what we are doing and how it connects to your reporting.”

Hannity reported back to Manafort that an apparent January 2018 call with Downing went well and said that he asked Downing to “feed me everyday.” 

The only reason why Manafort wasn't nailed for contempt of court for violating Judge Amy Berman Jackson's gag order was because they couldn't pin down a follow-up by Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing that actually showed where Manafort broke the gag request.

That's it.

Meanwhile, Sean Hannity is working for the Trump regime as propaganda minister and has been for years.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Oregon GOP Edition Con't

Things are definitely getting worse in Oregon as armed white supremacist domestic terror groups are now openly siding with Oregon Republicans in shutting down the state legislature by any means necessary, including threats of deadly violence, in order to prevent Democrats from passing climate change legislation.

Oregon’s top lawmakers will shut down the state capitol after receiving threats from militia groups, who authorities say are planning to demonstrate there in support of the 11 Republican senators who fled the state to dodge a vote on climate change. 

State Senate President Peter Courtney (D) told his colleagues on Friday that Oregon State Police had informed him there was a credible threat to him, the rest of the remaining senators — all of whom are Democrats — and the building’s staff. 

“It was obviously a credible threat because Sen. Courtney wouldn’t close it down for no reason,” Courtney’s spokeswoman Carol Currie told The Washington Post.
State police confirmed the danger in an emailed statement. 

“We have been monitoring information throughout the day that indicates the safety of legislators, staff and citizen visitors could be compromised if certain threatened behaviors were realized,” wrote Capt. Timothy Fox. 

Friday night’s menacing escalation was the latest in a bizarre feud between the state’s Democrats and Republicans, who have clashed repeatedly during this year’s legislative session. 

Early Thursday morning, every GOP senator bolted, reportedly for the Idaho line, rather than sit idly in the chamber as their opponents passed a sweeping cap-and-trade bill. Gov. Kate Brown (D) responded by directing state troopers to corral the Republicans and return them to the state house. 

Democrats have a supermajority in Oregon, allowing them the rare opportunity to pass the legislation of their dreams — but without Republicans, they can’t achieve a quorum. No quorum, no vote. GOP senators said they had two options: allow a bill to pass that they said would devastate their constituents, or make a run for it. 

“We will not stand by and be bullied by the majority party any longer," Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger, Jr. said in a Thursday statement. “Oregonians deserve better.”

If Republicans cannot control the state, they will threaten violence against those who do until they get the political outcome they want.  This is the textbook definition of political terrorism, and sitting Republicans in Oregon are resorting to terrorist groups in order to get their way.

Here's a theoretical.  Flip the players around and imagine this was Alabama or Florida or Ohio or another state with a GOP supermajority in the state legislature and a GOP governor.  Imagine Democrats leaving the state to prevent a quorum to prevent the state legislature from conducting any business.

Now imagine that Black Lives Matter demonstrators planned a rally at the state capitol to protest the GOP agenda. Imagine state police closing the capitol because of credible threats against GOP lawmakers.

Would anyone in America hesitate to use the phrase "terrorism" there?  Would anyone doubt immediate intervention by Donald Trump, calling for swift and deadly force against both the protestors and the Democratic lawmakers who skipped town?  Immediate international news as National Guardsmen and federal agents descended?

That's the difference.  This story is maybe a page A10 at best.

You will either have a GOP government, America, or you will burn.

This is the Republican party.

Trump Trades Blows, Con't

Time to check in with apparently the only voters who actually exist in America, white red state farmers getting wrecked by Trump's trade wars.

Some rural residents are growing increasingly frustrated with the ongoing trade feuds and wonder how long Trump will call upon farmers to make sacrifices as the country’s “patriots.”

“People are starting to say, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive this,’ ” said [South Dakota farmer Ray] Martinmaas, who voted for Trump in 2016, but says he’s open to a Democrat like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock this time. “You know, we’re the ones taking the brunt of it in all these negotiations, so they need to be kind of helping us out right now.”

Martinmaas, whose family homesteaded this land in 1888, said his farm operation lost more than $700,000 last year. He’s had to put a moratorium on buying new equipment, and he’s stuck with grain bins full of soybeans, because China isn’t buying. Other farmers can’t pay their bills for the hay and grain they bought from him.

Martinmaas, 69, says he’s skeptical that Trump’s aid package will help, given the uncertainty about how much individual farmers will receive and who will qualify.

Trump’s 2016 victory hung largely on support from rural and small-town Americans like Martinmaas. His approval rating with them remains strong — 57 percent, far higher than the 39 percent of Americans overall, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll in late April.

But a survey of farmers released this month by Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture shows rising pessimism, with only 20 percent saying they believe the trade war with China will be resolved by July 1, down from 45 percent in March.

But in tiny Orient — population 63 — farmers are beginning to voice disillusionment and frustration. More than a dozen farmers did not have their operating loans renewed for the coming year, according to a local lender, with at least one farmer losing it all and a land auction planned for the courthouse steps later this month. Agriculture exports from the state to China — a big soybean buyer — fell 40 percent in the state last year, part of a $10 billion loss nationally, according to an American Farm Bureau Federation analysis.

But they'll vote for Trump anyway.  Every single one of them.  Worst case scenario is that a state that Trump won by 40 points he only wins by 30 in 2020.

Bonus hatred for coastal elites:

Martinmaas runs his farm operation — including Angus beef cattle, corn, soybeans, sunflowers and hogs — with his three brothers. He was born and raised in Orient, in a tiny house with no electricity or running water, one of 12 children of conservative Catholic parents. Now he lives with his wife, Becky Martinmaas, in a cozy house decorated in a lodge theme, with a gun room, workshop, horse barn, skinning shed and a salt-lick pallet out front, which Becky hand-painted in the colors of the American flag and the words “Let Freedom Ring.”

Married 31 years, they share a commitment to hard work and family, a love of sport shooting and hunting, and a distaste for coastal elites.

“I always say the West Coast and East Coast can each be a country and the rest of us will be just fine,” Martinmaas said from his kitchen table one recent Sunday, as Becky made butter biscuits.

“But they’d starve!” she said.

“Here in flyover country, we have everything we need — food, oil,” Martinmaas said.

“Except voters,” his wife responds.

They hate, hate, hate the fact that city slickers actually matter more than their heroic farmer selves that feed an ungrateful nation, and they will lay down their livlihoods for the man who promises them that America will be run by farmers in South Dakota and not those people in South Harlem.

Oh, and they fully expect Trump to fix that "Except voters" problem.  That's why they elected him.  That's why they'll vote for him again.

Why is anyone expecting anything different?

Deportation Nation, Con't

It's been a busy June for Team Evil as Trump's promise earlier this week of mass deportation operations is coming to fruition on Sunday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pressing forward to arrest and deport families with court-ordered removals in 10 cities beginning Sunday, according to a senior immigration official, after President Donald Trump's tweet revealing an operation was imminent.

But acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan has been hesitant about elements of the operation, according to two sources familiar with his thinking.

ICE has said it was considering options to arrest and deport families who have gone through their legal proceedings but has refrained from publicly providing the scope and timeframe of the operation, which officials say could lead to a situation where a family is separated and could cause a backlash against the department. 

To that end, Trump's tweet Monday night that ICE, the enforcement arm of DHS, was preparing to deport "millions" of undocumented immigrants next week was striking, given the figure and the decision to disclose an operation prior to its execution. 

"If you're here illegally, then you should be removed," acting head of ICE Mark Morgan told reporters Wednesday during a call prompted by the President's tweet. "And in this case, that includes families."

ICE says it expects to target thousands of families, as a matter of fact.  And they're doing this for two reasons: number one, as always, Serwer's Maxim. The cruelty is the point.

Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week.

The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some of the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney.

She described seeing terror in the children’s eyes.

“It’s just a cold, fearful look that you should never see in a child of that age,” Gialluca said. “You look at them and you think, ‘What have you seen?’”

Another mother at the same facility had a premature baby, who was “listless” and wrapped in a dirty towel, as HuffPost previously reported.

The lawyers feared that if they had not shown up at the facility, the sick kids would have received zero medical attention and potentially died. The Trump administration has come under fire for its treatment ― and its alleged neglect ― of migrants who have been crossing the southern border in record numbers. The result is overcrowded facilities, slow medical care and in some instances, deaths.

Trump isn't denying these reports, because he wants them spread far and wide.  He wants migrants terrified.  He wants undocumented folks terrified.  And he wants them fleeing the country.

Reason #2 the ICE machine is shifting into high gear: Obama did a better job of deportations.

Trump won't stand for that.  ICE has its orders to beat Obama.

The wild card in Sunday's raids: law enforcement cooperation in the case of sanctuary cities like Chicago.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that the Chicago Police Department “will not cooperate with or facilitate any ICE enforcement actions.”

According to The Washington Post, President Trump directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct a “mass roundup” of migrant families with deportation orders. The operation is stated to likely begin on Sunday in major U.S. cities.

In a statement Lightfoot said, “We are all aware of the threat from President Trump regarding raids by ICE, and in response, Chicago has taken concrete steps to support our immigrant communities.”

Lightfoot said with her direction, CPD has “terminated ICE’s access to CPD’s databases related to federal immigration enforcement activities.”
The mayor said she has personally spoken with ICE leadership in Chicago and voiced her strong objection to any raids.

“Chicago will always be a welcoming city and a champion for the rights of our immigrant and refugee communities, and I encourage any resident in need of legal aid to contact the National Immigrant Justice Center,” Ligthfoot stated.

We'll see how this all plays out this weekend.

Last Call For Race To The Bottom, Con't

You can argue whether or not the act of opposing reparations itself makes you a racist, but when your reasoning for doing so is literally "We won, you lost, that's that" not only does it make you a racist, but an unrepentantly awful one.

Fox News star Laura Ingraham waded into the ongoing debate over reparations for descendants of slaves during her podcast on Thursday by proclaiming there are no “do-overs” after a “conquest.”

Talking to Kentucky State professor and ‘Hate Crime Hoax’ author Wilford Reilly about the recent House hearing on reparations, Ingraham played a clip of author Ta-Nehisi Coates taking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to task for saying reparations are unnecessary because Americans elected Barack Obama as president.

After praising McConnell’s remarks, Reilly stated that the logistics of paying reparations would be far too difficult before wondering if Native Americans would then be next to request compensation over their treatment.

“I mean, obviously both white and black soldiers, frankly, took this country from the Indians—the first people,” Reilly added.

“People would argue that the whole world, and I would, the whole world has been reshaped by people taking other people's land,” Ingraham weighed in. “It's called conquest.”

Mentioning past empires and how there was a “totally different map” in the past, Ingraham—whose own brother thinks she is a “monster”—then complained that “they want to live in a fake world,” presumably talking about liberals.

“As Trump always says, ‘You don't get do-overs,’” she declared. “No do-overs, that's it. There was an argument, sometime—I think it was the 1980s. There was a quote, you won, we lost, that's that. Describing world politics, we won, you lost, that's that. That's just the way it is.”

Seems the white supremacist lady on FOX (and there's quite a few white supremacists on FOX News these days, isn't there) doesn't like the idea.

Look, I actually do understand the argument of "Well *I* didn't enslave black people, why should I have to pay up for it?" but as Ta-Nehisi Coates said earlier this week:

The matter of reparations is one of making amends and direct redress, but it is also a question of citizenship. In H.R. 40, this body has a chance to both make good on its 2009 apology for enslavement, and reject fair-weather patriotism. To say that a nation is both its credits and its debts. That if Thomas Jefferson matters, so does Sally Hemings. That if D-Day matters, so does black Wall Street. That if Valley Forge matters, so does Fort Pillow. Because the question really is, not whether we will be tied to the “somethings” of our past, but whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of them.

At what point does America answer for its past and present so that it can have a real future?

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Oregon GOP Edition

Meanwhile in Oregon, Republicans in the state Senate have apparently walked out of the state legislature and are apparently threatening an armed insurrection along with domestic terrorist white supremacist militia groups in what could be a bloody standoff with state police.

Tensions were already smoldering in the Oregon Senate Wednesday, when Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, poured gasoline on the situation, suggesting he would shoot and potentially kill any state trooper sent to haul him unwillingly back to the Capitol. 

After Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. said Tuesday that his caucus was “prepared to take actions” to prevent passage of a major climate change bill, Gov. Brown announced on Wednesday that she was ready to answer Republican stonewalling by calling lawmakers back for a special session. 

Brown hinted that she would be willing to send state troopers to round up Republicans if they walk out in the final days of the regular legislative session, saying in a statement that she is “in close communication with Oregon State Police.” That’s an option Democratic senators and the governor did not use earlier this year, when Senate Republicans first brought the Senate to a standstill by walking out and preventing the necessary quorum. 

The governor’s hint that she would consider sending troopers in the event of a second walkout triggered an aggressive response from Boquist, which was captured by a KGW news team at the Capitol. 

“This is what I told the superintendent,” Boquist said, referring to OSP Superintendent Travis Hampton. “Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”

And no, this isn't just some goober yelling "SPARTA!" before getting ganked at Thermopylae,  Social media accounts of armed militia groups in the state like the Three Percenters are saying they will "provide security" for Republican state senators who as of Thursday had fled the state completely and gone into hiding.

Oregon state police are downplaying the incident.

The Oregon State Police says its officers intend to retrieve the missing senators "in a peaceful, gentle, and process-supporting way." 

The official statement offers few details on what tactics troopers will use to fulfill the governor's order. "She has now given a lawful directive which OSP is fully committed to executing," the statement says. "OSP is utilizing established relationships to have polite communication with these Senators. While we obviously have many tools at our disposal, patience and communication is and always will be our first, and preferred, option."

This could get ugly, and fast.  To recap, Oregon Republicans are willing to resort to deadly, lethal force by working with domestic terrorism groups in order to try to nullify the Oregon state legislature.

These assholes are committing seditious conspiracy as elected lawmakers.

Stay tuned.

The Drums Of War Just Got Very Loud

Last night we almost went to war with Iran.

President Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions. 

As late as 7 p.m. Thursday, military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike, after intense discussions and debate at the White House among the president’s top national security officials and congressional leaders, according to multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations.

Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.

The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off, a senior administration official said. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said.

The abrupt reversal put a halt to what would have been the president’s third military action against targets in the Middle East. Mr. Trump had struck twice at targets in Syria, in 2017 and 2018.

It was not clear whether Mr. Trump simply changed his mind on the strikes or whether the administration altered course because of logistics or strategy. It was also not clear whether the attacks might still go forward.
Asked about the plans for a strike and the decision to hold back, the White House declined to comment, as did Pentagon officials. No government officials asked The New York Times to withhold the article.

Two scenarios on this:  Scenario One, this is Trump's super ham-fisted attempt at screaming "Hold me back" while motioning at his guys to do so before taking a swing at an MMA fighter at a bar. Occam's razor, and we'll be at war the next time Iran so much as breaks wind.

Scenario Two however makes a lot more sense.

Amid increased tensions between Iran and the U.S., Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the U.S. that a military conflict with Iran would be “catastrophe” and said that Iran was observing its commitments under the Iran nuclear deal.

Speaking during his annual phone-in event, Putin said that he was concerned by the shooting down of an American drone by Iran this week and worried that the U.S. had no ruled out using military force against Tehran in the ongoing crisis between the two countries.

“I will say it straight, it would be a catastrophe, at a minimum for the region,” Putin said, adding it could lead to a new mass exodus of refugees.

What is far more likely is that as with Venezuela, Trump was talked into this but the Russians, having compromised the hell out of us, responded immediately on the hotline and Trump's boss Vlad told him no as this was going down, and in order to save face, Trump concocted this pullback story and leaked it to the press so he can be the big hero.

Our incoherent and dangerous foreign policy that very nearly started a shooting war with Iran was short-circuited last night because the one goddamn person Trump listens to is one of the worst autocratic crooks on Earth, and it's bad for business when one of his client states is bombing another.

That's it.  That's the answer to the mystery of the "sudden pullback".

But there's one more mystery...the leaks for this story landed quickly enough and were confirmed quickly enough that the NY Times dropped this story last night, maybe a few hours after this was all called off.

Did Trump leak this himself all in order to save face after Putin's warning, or did Bolton leak all this in order to force Trump's hand?  Or did somebody else leak this, like intelligence agencies? Or maybe it was Russia?

Or maybe it was more than one of these, which is why it got confirmed and published so quickly.

That's just as much the story as Trump's "pullback".

We deserve to know both stories.

StupidiNews!

• GOP congressional leaders are calling for a "measured" military response to the downing of a US drone by Iran as Congress was briefed Thursday by the State Department on the attack.
• Senate Republicans are begging former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to run for his old Senate seat as former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore has thrown his hat into the ring.
• Demonstrators in Hong Kong took to the streets again on Friday as a deadline to scrap an extradition bill to China expired and Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam remains in power.
• The Senate has voted to block US an arms sale package to Saudi Arabia as the Trump regime vows it will veto the measure and proceed with the military transaction.
• Only about a quarter of Americans say they are interested in NASA missions to the moon or Mars, two-thirds say the space agency should concentrate on scanning for possible asteroids hitting Earth.