Drive Fast, Turn Racist

In the wake of NASCAR banning the Confederate flag earlier this month, the crew of league's only top black driver, Bubba Wallace, found a noose hanging in his garage at Talledega over the weekend.

"Late this afternoon, NASCAR was made aware that a noose was found in the garage stall of the 43 team. We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act," NASCAR said in a statement. "We have launched an immediate investigation, and will do everything we can to identify the person(s) responsible and eliminate them from the sport.

"As we have stated unequivocally, there is no place for racism in NASCAR, and this act only strengthens our resolve to make the sport open and welcoming to all."

Wallace never saw the noose, ESPN's Marty Smith reported. It was first seen by a member of Wallace's team, who immediately brought it to the attention of NASCAR, Smith reported. NASCAR told Fox Sports that it will work with law enforcement.

Wallace, an Alabama native who drives the No. 43 Chevrolet for racing icon Richard Petty, said in a statement that he was "incredibly saddened" by the act.

"Today's despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism," Wallace wrote on Twitter. "Over the last several weeks, I have been overwhelmed by the support from people across the NASCAR industry, including other drivers and team members in the garage. Together, our sport has made a commitment to driving real change and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone.

"Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate. As my mother told me today, "They are just trying to scare you." This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in."

NASCAR has spent years trying to distance itself from the Confederate flag, long a part of its moonshine-running roots from its founding more than 70 years ago. Five years ago, former chairman Brian France tried to ban flying the flags at tracks, a proposal that was not enforced and largely ignored.

This year was different, and it was Wallace who led the charge, calling for the sanctioning body to prohibit the flag.

But outside the track on Sunday, vehicles waving and flying Confederate flags lined the boulevard running past the massive speedway, and a plane flew above the track towing a banner of the Confederate flag that read, "Defund NASCAR."

Here's the thing though: given the tight security and COVID-19 protocols at races right now, especially at a facility the size of Talledega Superspeedway, it had to be an inside job, as Deadspin's Eric Barrow surmises.

As to the question of who did it, NASCAR likely won’t need to go very far, as the noose was found in a secure area where access is only made available to race team members, NASCAR officials, track workers, as well as, security, medical and safety personnel, according to a source. Garage stalls are off limits to the public.

“We’re not working under any assumptions just yet,” said the source.

Cameras are stationed throughout the garage, though not in every stall. The source confirmed NASCAR officials are reviewing all videos.

According to the source, NASCAR is working with law enforcement as the placing of a noose would likely be considered a criminal hate crime in Alabama. 

We'll see soon, I suspect.  The suspect, that is. The DoJ is looking into the case as well.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Saturday's Trump Hate Rally in Tulsa was a disaster for the Trump campaign, and they know it.

By the time President Donald Trump was gliding in his helicopter toward Joint Base Andrews on Saturday, destined for what he'd once hoped would be a triumphant packed-to-the-rafters return to the campaign trail, things were already looking bad. 

Scanning cable news coverage earlier in the day, Trump was disappointed to see pictures not of massive lines forming outside the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa but of Geoffrey Berman, the federal prosecutor Trump's attorney general had attempted unsuccessfully to dismiss the night before, a person familiar with his response said. 

Hours later, the President was informed six campaign staffers in Tulsa had tested positive for coronavirus ahead of his scheduled arrival -- an unfortunate reminder of an ongoing pandemic Trump's critics say he is ignoring. After initially dismissing the revelation, a source familiar with his reaction said Trump erupted when it was subsequently reported in the media -- overtaking coverage of the rally itself. 

Still, a determined Trump was intent on breathing new life into his staggering campaign. He took off for Tulsa, convinced large swaths of his supporters would be waiting for him there. 

Things did not improve once Air Force One lifted off. The President received a report that only about 25 people were assembled in the overflow space the campaign had reserved for a crowd Trump claimed five days earlier would top 40,000. 

Two hours before the rally was set to begin, people who had signed up for tickets received an urgent text message from the Trump campaign: "The Great American Comeback Celebration's almost here!" it read. "There's still space!" 

When the President landed in Tulsa at 5:51 p.m. local time, the crowds his aides had promised him had failed to materialize. Air Force One flew over the arena, where Trump had been told thousands of supporters would be waiting to hear from him before he went inside, but saw nothing resembling the sea of people he'd been expecting. 

While he was in the air, the campaign had canceled the outside appearance given the apparent lack of enthusiasm. 

Once viewed inside the White House and Trump's campaign as a reset button for a presidency beset by crises and self-inflicted wounds, Saturday evening's campaign rally in Tulsa instead became plagued with pitfalls, a disappointing microcosm of the blindspots, denial and wishful thinking that have come to guide the President as he enters one of the most precarious moments of his first term. 

By the time he strode out to the strains of Lee Greenwood on Saturday evening into a partially-full Bank of Oklahoma Center, the event had devolved from a triumphant return to the campaign trail after a 110-day pandemic-forced absence into something else altogether. The launch of a new assault on former Vice President Joe Biden fizzled, replaced by recycled grievances and race-baiting. The sparse crowd was a reminder that many Americans, even Trump's supporters, remain cautious of a pandemic that continues to rage in places like Oklahoma, where cases are spiking, even if Trump is ready to move on. 

Reports are that fewer than 6,700 people showed up in the 19,200 capacity arena.

If there was ever a sign that the Trump hold on his cult may be starting to break, it's failure to fill seats in deep red Oklahoma at his first rally in months. Things actually seem to be different this time. Impeachment wasn't enough, a pandemic wasn't enough, a Bresurgent Black Lives Matter wasn't enough...

...but the incompetence of Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale to account for the social media generation may finally be the keystone that collapses the Trump circus.

As CNN's Harry Enten points out, there are no "hidden" Trump voters this time around like there were in 2016, people embarrassed to tell polsters that they preferred Trump.  That was a big problem for the Democrats in 2016. There's no evidence that the same thing is happening this time.

A new national Ipsos/Reuters poll finds that former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump 48% to 35%.

While Biden has led Trump in almost every Ipsos poll this year, his advantage this week is the largest in 2020. 

What's the point: Even though the national polls were accurate in 2016, one of the complaints I hear most often about the polls is that Trump's supporters are either lying or won't talk to pollsters. Polls like Ipsos get around that argument because they use machines (e.g. they're done online) to conduct the interviews. There's no reason to lie to a machine. If Trump was doing significantly better in these non-live interview polls, then these critics of the polls may have a point.

The evidence indicates these detractors are, at least in this moment, wrong. There's no sign of shy Trump voters. Trump doesn't do any better in polls without a live interviewer.  

The average of national surveys (accounting for the fact that some pollsters survey more often) this week from pollsters who didn't have a live interviewer put Biden up over Trump 50% to 39% (10 points unrounded). That's a huge advantage and very similar to the latest live interview poll average that has Biden up 51% to 41%.

So Biden still has not just a small lead, but a double-digit lead unless every single pollster is wrong.  The cracks are showing.

StupidiNews!

• British authorities are calling a knife attack in Reading on Saturday that killed three people an act of terror, the 25-year-old Libyan national suspect is in police custody.
• A new study of over 100 million Uber and Lyft ride-sharing trips in Chicago last year found "digital redlining" in non-white neighborhoods that charged customers significantly more for trips. 
• American Airlines says it will seek $3.5 billion in new financing by selling stock and other assets, the airline industry could lose up to $100 billion worldwide in 2020.
• House Democratic Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler says while he believes Attorney General Bill Barr should resign, impeaching him would be a "waste of time" due to the election and GOP Senate.
• A new COVID-19 study finds that the virus mutates quickly enough that immunity from recovering after an infection may only last 2-3 months.

Last Call For The Millenials Go Viral

The effective end of social distancing now means that new cases are exploding in red states like Florida, Georgia and Texas, and as new COVID-19 cases rise above 30K for the first time since early May, more Millennials are testing positive for COVID-19, and casualties are rising as a direct result.

Officials in states across the South are warning that more young people are testing positive for coronavirus.  

The shifts in demographics have been recorded in parts of Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and other states -- many of which were some of the first to reopen. 

And while some officials have pointed to more widespread testing being done, others say the new cases stem from Americans failing to social distance. 

In Mississippi, where one health officer called adherence to social distancing over the past weeks "overwhelmingly disappointing," officials attributed clusters of new cases to fraternity rush parties. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said last week that people under 30 made up a majority of new coronavirus cases in several counties. He said that increase in young infected people could be related to Memorial Day parties, visits to bars or other gatherings. 

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that the median age was 37 for newly diagnosed coronavirus cases over the last week. In the state, 62% of new cases for the week of June 7 are under 45 years old, he said. 

"That is a big change from where we were at the end of March and the beginning of April. It was skewing much older at that time," he said. 

Coronavirus has more severe outcomes on older people, Blacks and Hispanics, and people with underlying health conditions, according to demographic data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From the beginning of the pandemic up through May 30, the median age of positive coronavirus cases was 48, the CDC said. 

That 48 median age of new cases is dropping like a rock.

And so are Millennials.

Please folks, wear a mask in public.

Biden, His Time, Con't

Having grown up in such a family, I'd like to remind folks that there are liberal Democrats of faith out there in America, and while white evangelical Christians have increasingly sided with Donald Trump and the GOP, the shame of the state of that "Christianity" leaves the door open for a more liberal Catholic Joe Biden to make his case.

Biden, a lifelong Catholic, has performed better in recent polling among white evangelicals — and other religious groups — than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and is widely perceived as more religious than the current White House occupant. A Pew Research study conducted earlier this year showed that a majority of U.S. adults (63 percent) think Trump is “not at all” or “not too religious,” versus 55 percent who said they believed Biden is somewhat or very religious.
Many conservative evangelical leaders have argued that Biden’s positions on cultural issues — like abortion, judges and religious freedom — are disqualifying. Still, anxiety is growing inside Trump’s orbit about the former vice president’s ability to peel off Christian voters who supported him in 2016, including the 81 percent of white evangelicals he carried, according to eight administration officials, White House allies and people involved with the Trump campaign.

Such an outcome could deal a fatal blow to the president’s reelection, which largely hinges on expanding his support with religious voters to compensate for enthusiasm gaps elsewhere.

“Here’s the problem for Trump: he needs to be at 81 percent or north to win reelection. Any slippage and he doesn’t get a second term, and that’s where Joe Biden comes into play,” said David Brody, chief political analyst at the Christian Broadcasting Network. “In this environment, with everything from the coronavirus to George Floyd and Trump calling himself the ‘law-and-order president,’ Biden could potentially pick off a percent or two from that 81 percent number.”

“It would behoove him to take a play out of the Obama playbook in 2008,” Brody added.

Some of Biden’s campaign appearances and debate answers have been infused with religious undertones, and his campaign reportedly hosts a weekly call with faith leaders to crowdsource policy and personnel suggestions.

At a CNN town hall in February, Biden said his faith “gives me some reason to have hope and purpose” and praised the “ultimate act of Christian charity” shown by members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., after they forgave a white supremacist who murdered nine members of their congregation in a 2014 mass shooting.

In an op-ed last December that included references to Scripture and Pope Francis’ second encyclical “Laudato Si,” Biden described “the core concepts of decency, fair play and virtue” that he learned through his Catholic upbringing as guiding principles in his political career.

A person familiar with the talks said the Biden campaign is also in the early stages of potentially scheduling an on-camera sit-down with Brody, who conducted several interviews with Obama during his 2008 campaign. The Biden campaign declined to comment on the record.

Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist who has argued that Biden has an opening to make inroads with Christian conservatives, said the candidate should invoke his faith more often, as opposed to constantly referencing his accomplishments from his time as vice president and a member of the U.S. Senate.

“He would be well-served to talk more in those terms, instead of telling people to check out his record,” Stutzman said. “There are a lot of themes that fit the moment related to justice, authority and loving your neighbor and not in a way that would necessarily make white evangelicals uncomfortable if Biden could speak to them.”

Even Trump allies recognize that Biden has an opening to strike the empathetic and compassionate tone that Trump eschewed in many of his comments about the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests over racial inequality.

I don't expect a national shift in the evangelical vote away from Trump. The conservative religious establishment has made their bed with a man who gets them what they want and have decided his own plethora of personal sins are necessary in order to serve "the greater good" of transforming America into the theocracy of Gilead.

But if Biden knocks that Trump 81% of white evangelicals number down to even 75%, he wins. Biden's belief that the teachings of Christ require service to your community and to those less fortunate instead of the purpose of being Christian meaning punishing those who have differing views is what I was taught growing up.

I think that's entirely possible, if not very likely that he gets enough that Trump loses spectacularly.

Sunday Long Read: The Cult Of Orange

Trump's Tulsa rally this weekend is exactly what his slavering fanatics want, to bask in his glory (and COVID-19) and to get their marching orders to engage the backlash against the last four weeks of Black Lives Matter protests. He is nothing less than their God of White Supremacy, and they want bloody vengeance from his lips and his deeds.

Yusif Jones, standing in front of a long row of porta-potties, slides his plastic Trump mask over his face. “I’m him!” he exclaims. He puffs up his chest in his homemade Trump shirt. It’s a short-sleeved American flag pullover, onto which he has ironed black felt letters across vertical red and white stripes: GOT TRUMP? Then he flashes the O.K. sign, a silver ring on his pinky. “I’m him, dude!”

For Trump supporters like Jones, the O.K. sign—thumb meeting index finger, three fingers splayed—is a kind of secret handshake. It began as a joke—a “hoax” meant to trick liberals into believing that the raised fingers actually represent the letters WP: white power. The joke worked so well that it became real. Now, in certain circles, O.K. does mean white power—unless you say it doesn’t. Jones, a big, vein-popping, occasionally church-going white man burdened with what he calls an “Islamic” name by his hippie mother, revels in this kind of coded message, a sense of possessing knowledge shared only by a select few. It’s Möbius strip politics, Trumpism’s defining oxymoron: a populist elite, a mass movement of “free thinkers” all thinking the same thing. They love Trump because he makes them feel like insiders even as they imagine him their outsider champion. That’s what’s drawn Jones here, to the CenturyLink Center in Bossier City, Louisiana, two weeks before Thanksgiving. Like many of the president’s 14,000 followers waiting for the rally to begin, Jones believes that Trump is on a mission from God to expose (and destroy) the hidden demons of the deep state.

To attend a Trump rally is to engage directly in the ecstasy of knowing what the great man knows, divinity disguised as earthly provocation. Jones tells me about Jesse Lee Peterson, a right-wing pastor and talk show host who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” He doubles over and slaps his knee, signaling to me that it’s another joke. “He’s black!” says Jones, meaning Jesse Lee Peterson. “I love that dude,” he says. He considers Peterson, like the White Hope himself, awesomely witty. Jones straightens up. “But it’s true!” he adds. Which is how racism works at a Trump rally, just like the president’s own trolling—signal, disavowal, repeat; the ugly words followed by the claim that it was just a joke followed by a repetition of the ugly words. Joking! Not joking. Play it again, until the ironic becomes the real.

Later, I listen to Peterson’s show. He calls Trump the Great White Hope because, he says, “Number one, he is white. Number two, he is of God.” Peterson does not mean this metaphorically. Trump is the chosen one, his words gospel.

Peterson is hardly fringe in this belief. Many followers deploy a familiar Christian-right formula for justifying abuses of power, declaring Trump a modern King David, a sinner nonetheless anointed, while others compare him to Queen Esther, destined to save Israel—or at least the evangelical imagination of it—from Iran. Still others draw parallels to Cyrus, the Old Testament Persian king who became a tool for God’s will. “A vessel for God,” says former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast. Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.”

In Trump’s case, divine backing is more about smiting than healing. When Rep. Elijah Cummings died last October shortly after sparring with Trump about Baltimore, Peterson declared on his radio show, “He dead”—like Trump enemies John McCain and Charles Krauthammer, Peterson noted. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Great White Hope. Don’t mess with God’s children.”

Jones only recently became one of those children. “I’ve been on the side of evolution my whole life,” he confesses. Not so much the science end, he wanted me to understand. His had been the partying wing of agnosticism. Then his fiancé persuaded him to start attending a fundamentalist church, not long before Trump was elected, and the veil was lifted. For instance, he says, now he can see the “gay agenda” of the Democrats. “Actually, they’re pedophiles."

The Trump cult isn't going anywhere. They will crawl over broken glass, through COVID-19, past scary non-white people, to vote for their messiah of darkness. And should Joe Biden pull off the miracle and win, they will never accept Trump's loss for a moment.

My second-greatest fear is that a Biden win will almost be certainly followed by a series of white supremacist terrorist attacks that will leave thousands dead, maybe more. My greatest fear is that Trump is still in charge when the attacks start.

America Goes Viral, Con't

We're at the point where the rest of the world is rightfully worried about America's rampant, unchecked COVID-19 spread harming efforts to protect their own citizens after Europe, Asia, and Australia have successfully flattened the curve.

As coronavirus cases surge in the U.S. South and West, health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored.

“It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the past three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it’s unsafe,” Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. “It’s hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It’s heartbreaking.”

China’s actions over the past week stand in stark contrast to those of the United States. In the wake of a new cluster of more than 150 new cases that emerged in Beijing, authorities sealed off neighborhoods, launched a mass testing campaign and imposed travel restrictions.

Meanwhile, President Trump maintains that the United States will not shut down a second time, although a surge in cases has persuaded governors in some states, including Arizona, to back off their opposition to mandatory face coverings in public.

Commentators and experts in Europe, where cases have continued to decline, voiced concerns over the state of the U.S. response. A headline on the website of Germany’s public broadcaster read: “Has the U.S. given up its fight against coronavirus?” Switzerland’s conservative Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper concluded, “U.S. increasingly accepts rising covid-19 numbers.”

“The only thing one can say with certainty: There’s nothing surprising about this development,” a journalist wrote in the paper, referring to crowded U.S. beaches and pools during Memorial Day weekend in May.

We're in absolutely dire trouble.





We're in as bad of a shape now as we were on April 1.  The EU has gotten things under control, and remember here the numbers are far worse than this graph indicated due to abandonment of testing protocols in many states.

We never should have reopened in the first place.

Now, we will pay dearly for it.  This summer will be a nightmare.

Last Call For It's Still Mueller Time, Con't

BuzzFeed News's lawsuit to get unredacted Mueller report passages finds that yes, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Michael Cohen all told Mueller's team that Roger Stone absolutely knew WikiLeaks had the stolen 2016 DNC emails, and that yes, Roger Stone absolutely told Trump that the leaks were coming.

Donald Trump was told in advance that Wikileaks would be releasing documents embarrassing to the Clinton campaign and subsequently informed advisors that he expected more releases would be coming, according to newly unredacted portions of special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
In July 2016, political consultant Roger Stone told Trump as well as several campaign advisors that he had spoken with Julian Assange and that WikiLeaks would be publishing the documents in a matter of days. Stone told the then-candidate via speakerphone that he "did not know what the content of the materials was," according to the newly unveiled portions of the report, and Trump responded "oh good, alright" upon hearing the news. WikiLeaks published a trove of some 20,000 emails Russians hacked from the Democratic National Committee on July 22 of that year.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen told federal investigators that he overheard the phone call between Stone and Trump. Agents were also told by former campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates that Stone had spoken several times in early June of something “big” coming from WikiLeaks. Assange first mentioned having emails related to Clinton on June 12.

The new revelations are the strongest indication to date that Trump and his closest advisors were aware of outside efforts to hurt Clinton’s electoral chances, and that Stone played a direct role in communicating that situation to the Trump campaign. Trump has publicly denied being aware of any information being relayed between WikiLeaks and his advisors. 

Allegations of communications between Stone and Trump to discuss WIkiLeaks first surfaced early last year, when Cohen testified to a congressional committee about the June 2016 conference call. At the time, Stone denied any such involvement. “Mr. Cohen’s statement is not true,” he told BuzzFeed News.

But based on the interviews it conducted with those three men and other officials, Mueller’s report concluded it had "established that the Trump Campaign displayed interest in the WikiLeaks releases, and that former Campaign member Roger Stone was in contact with the Campaign about those releases, claiming advance knowledge of more to come."

The newly unredacted portions of the Mueller report also show that after the initial dump by WikiLeaks, Trump personally asked Manafort to keep in touch with Stone, who in turn told the then-campaign chairman to keep him “apprised of any developments with WikiLeaks.” Investigators were also told by Gates that Trump had multiple phone conversations with Stone during the campaign and that, following one call held en route to LaGuardia airport, “Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming.”

In written testimony to Mueller’s team in November 2018, Trump denied being aware of any communications between Stone, Manafort, Gates, or Donald Trump Jr and WikiLeaks or Assange. Yet according to the newly public portions of the Special Counsel’s report, “Trump knew that Manafort and Gates had asked Stone to find out what other damaging information about Clinton WikiLeaks possessed, and that Stone's claimed connection to WikiLeaks was common knowledge within the Campaign."

Considering the contradictory evidence, the special counsel’s office weighed the possibility that Trump “no longer had clear recollections” of what happened two years earlier, but also wondered whether “the President's conduct could also be viewed as reflecting his awareness that Stone could provide evidence that would run counter to the President's denials and would link the President to Stone's efforts to reach out to WikiLeaks." The investigators stopped short of suggesting that the President may have lied or otherwise misled the special counsel, however.

It doesn't really change much, Stone has been convicted and will almost certainly be pardoned by Trump along with Flynn and Manafort, Trump's impeachment failed to garner a conviction, and Joe Biden will leave prosecuting Trump to the state of New York.

Of course after last night, maybe things are quite different in SDNY land.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The Boogaloo Boys have found their two-for-one anti-government and race war target: the feds and the primarily black residents of Washington DC.

On Monday, the National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium (NTIC), a fusion center for Washington, D.C. that provides support to federal national security and law enforcement agencies, warned in an intelligence assessment that “the District is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology due to the significant presence of US law enforcement entities, and the wide range of First Amendment-Protected events hosted here.”
The assessment, dated June 15 and obtained by Politico, reported that “recent events indicate violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology likely reside in the National Capital Region, and others may be willing to travel far distances to incite civil unrest or conduct violence encouraged in online forums associated with the movement.”

A senior DHS official forwarded the assessment to security stakeholders on Friday, noting that “while it identifies Washington D.C. as an attractive target, the boogaloo ideology is not restricted to a specific region and those who wish to cause division are routinely using peaceful protests as means of cover. Heading into a weekend of more planned protests, we believe this information to be useful to all of our membership.”

Separately on Friday, DHS published its own intelligence note assessing that “domestic terrorists advocating for the boogaloo very likely will take advantage of any regional or national situation involving heightened fear and tensions to promote their violent extremist ideology and call supporters to action.”

The note, dated June 19 and obtained by Politico, aims to “provides information regarding some domestic terrorists’ exploitation of heightened tensions during recent First Amendment-protected activities in order to threaten or incite violence to start the ‘boogaloo’—a colloquial term referring to a coming civil war or the fall of civilization.”

Participants in the boogaloo movement generally identify as anarchist, pro-Second Amendment members of citizen-militias who are preparing for a second Civil War or American revolution, extremism experts say. Several boogaloo adherents have been charged in recent weeks for acts ranging from felony murder to terrorism, and police last month seized military-style assault rifles from so-called “boogaloo bois” in Denver.

The DHS note says boogaloo tactics “likely will be repeated in future similar incidents wherein domestic terrorists attempt to shut down or endanger government operations, judging from domestic terrorists’ continued calls for attacks.”

Remember, we already have evidence that these terrorists have already killed cops in order to blame "Antifa" and Black Lives Matter protesters.  They want blood-soaked streets so they can step in and target both sides to foment a national crackdown that will leave thousands dead, and the Trump regime is playing footsie with these assholes because they think the chaos will help them in November.

To date, no federal charges have been filed against individuals linked to antifa—violent acts at Black Lives Matter protests, including setting police cars on fire, have been attributed to individuals with no clear political or ideological affiliation, according to charging documents.

But right-wing extremists, militia groups and vigilantes have become more activated, with more than half a dozen separate violent incidents across the country in the last month alone—most within the last week.

Law enforcement and government officials, moreover, are increasingly in the crosshairs. A Santa Cruz county police officer and a federal officer in Oakland were murdered, allegedly by a boogaloo adherent, earlier this month, and boogaloo members in California’s Bay Area have reportedly been plotting to kidnap elected leaders’ children.

Experts on far-right violence and extremism say the president and attorney general’s rhetoric is political, and that the real threat has been laid out in the federal charges filed in the last month and the federal alerts, such as from NTIC and DHS, being sent to law enforcement warning of far-right violence.

But some argue that the unwillingness to name and shame these far-right groups publicly and from the top is not harmless, either.

“It puts a target on the backs of law-enforcement -- whether federal, state or local -- because these individuals, with the power they have at the podium, are not speaking out about who is really carrying out these abhorrent acts of violence,” said Jason Blazakis, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a nonprofit that studies emerging threats.

Again, the goal here is a shooting war between police/National Guard and Black Lives Matter protesters. They want a national race war going on where Black America is terrorized on a daily basis and police kill rampantly in the name of "law and order".

With Trump and Barr around, they just might get it.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Tuesday's primary here in Kentucky is going to be a disaster than makes Georgia's mess look competent: Louisville and Lexington will have one polling station open each for hundreds of thousands of voters and voting-by-mail may take weeks before the results are known, with possibly tens or even hundreds of thousands who requested ballots being disenfranchised and never getting them by Tuesday's deadline.

And all of that falls on the shoulders of our Republican Secretary of State, Michael Adams.

Fewer than 200 polling places will be open for voters in Kentucky’s primary Tuesday, down from 3,700 in a typical election year. Amid a huge influx in requests for mail-in ballots, some voters still had not received theirs days before they must be turned in. And turnout is expected to be higher than in past primaries because of a suddenly competitive fight for the Democratic Senate nomination.

The scenario has voting rights advocates and some local elections officials worried that the state is careening toward a messy day marked by long lines and frustrated voters — similar to the scenes that have played out repeatedly this spring as the novel coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the 2020 primaries.

Because of a shortage of workers willing to staff voting sites during the health crisis, each of the commonwealth’s 120 counties is opening a very limited number of polling locations. The two largest counties will have just one in-person location each.

On Thursday evening, a federal judge rejected an effort to add polling places in the state’s largest counties, citing a legal standard discouraging last-minute court intervention in election procedures.

That means Jefferson County — the state’s largest, home to 767,000 residents and the city of Louisville — will have as its sole polling location a convention and expo center where voting booths have been set up about eight feet apart in a cavernous hall. About 1 in 5 residents in the county is African American, the largest black population in the state.

In Fayette County, the state’s second-largest county and home to Lexington, voters who want to cast ballots in person will have to head to the football field at the University of Kentucky, where voters will find hand-sanitizing stations and booths where they can fill out paper ballots and scan them through machines.

One precinct for what, four hundred thousand voters?  Another for 150,000 in Fayette County?

This is absolute vote suppression and Adams is throwing up his hands.

Michael G. Adams, Kentucky’s Republican secretary of state, said his office has been aggressively trying to reach voters through the news media and social media, encouraging them to vote by mail and seeking to reassure those worried that the expansion of mail voting will lead to fraud.

Adams launched an educational campaign around mail-in ballots with the slogan, “Easy to vote, hard to cheat.” The goal is to explain to voters that “absentee voting is a great concept and there are laws in place about how it works,” he said.

“I’m much more concerned about voter confusion than I am about people trying to steal an election,” Adams said.

Like many states, Kentucky relaxed the rules of who can vote absentee by applying the “medical emergency” excuse to fear of the coronavirus.

More than 937,000 voters requested early ballots as of Wednesday, or 27 percent of all registered voters in the state, Adams said.

And tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, won't get their ballot in time.

It's going to be an absolute disaster.  Adams has had months to prepare for this and he's dropped the ball. Regardless of who wins between Charles Booker and Amy McGrath for the right to take on Mitch McConnell in November, there's no reason to believe the primary results will be accurate.

It should mean Adams's resignation.

It won't, of course.

And where is Gov. Beshear in all this? Andy better get off his ass if he wants to not face a primary from either McGrath or Booker in 2023.

Come on, guys.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Good morning.  We have an active Constitutional crisis on our hands.

Another Trump Regime Friday Night Massacre, this time the Bill Barr Justice Department getting rid of Geoff Berman, the US Attorney looking into Rudy Giuliani's Ukraine criminality in the Southern District of New York. 

AG Bill Barr announced Berman's resignation late Friday night.

Only one problem. The resignation was news to Berman.

The Justice Department on Friday abruptly tried to oust the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
But Mr. Berman said in a statement that he was refusing to leave his position, setting up a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs.

“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said, adding that he learned that he was “stepping down” in a press release from the Justice Department.
Attorney General William P. Barr’s announcement that President Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman’s successor Jay Clayton, current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign but he refused so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said.

Mr. Berman has taken an aggressive approach in a number of cases that have vexed the Trump administration, from the prosecution and guilty pleas obtained from Mr. Cohen to a broader investigation, growing out of that inquiry, which focused on Mr. Trump’s private company and others close to him.

Over the last year, Mr. Berman’s office brought indictments against two close associates of the president’s current lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and began an investigation into Mr. Giuliani himself, focusing on whether his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on the president’s political rivals violated laws on lobbying for foreign entities.

Mr. Berman’s office also conducted an investigation into Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, subpoenaing financial and other records as part of a broad inquiry into possible illegal contributions from foreigners.

Mr. Berman’s abrupt removal came just days after Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, alleged in his new book that Mr. Trump sought to interfere in an investigation by Mr. Berman’s office into a Turkish bank, in a bid to cut deals with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Mr. Trump has been upset with Mr. Berman ever since the Manhattan prosecutor’s office pursued a case against Mr. Cohen, according to a person familiar with their relationship.

So, Berman was leading multiple active SDNY investigations into Trump regime criminality, the Giuliani's Ukraine/Burisma circus, the Trump inaugural committee foreign pay-for-play emoluments scam, and the Erdogan/Turkey Halkbank mess, the third one being widely confirmed now by John Bolton's Mustache's book. 

The memoir was apparently the last straw. And remember, Berman was already placed as acting US Attorney by the courts because Trump fired US Attorney Preet Bharara after just three months and the Senate never confirmed a replacement.

Berman isn't leaving.  In fact, he's all but accused Barr of obstruction of justice against the cases the SDNY is overseeing against the Trump regime and their cronies.

We have that full Constitutional crisis, fully-formed, right now.

Get ready.

Last Call For Juneteenth Done Wrong

Corporate brands embarrassing themselves when it comes to Black history is nothing new, but when you factor in the tech sector's near universal anti-blackness due to an appaling lack of black employees and complete absence of black decision-makers, you get absolutely moronic crap like this.

Snapchat apologized for its now-removed Juneteenth filter, telling CNBC on Friday that it went live without being approved through its review process.

Using the Pan-African flag as the backdrop of the filter, the app prompted users to smile, which then caused chains to appear behind them and break.

“We deeply apologize to the members of the Snapchat community who found this Lens offensive. A diverse group of Snap team members were involved in developing the concept, but a version of the Lens that went live for Snapchatters this morning had not been approved through our review process. We are investigating why this mistake occurred so that we can avoid it in the future,” a Snap spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

Criticism of the filter spread when Mark Luckie, a digital strategist and former journalist, shared the filter on Twitter, calling it “interesting.”

This SnapChat #Juneteenth filter is...um...interesting.

Smile to break the chains? Okay then. pic.twitter.com/Wyob3kT3ew

— Mark S. Luckie (@marksluckie) June 19, 2020

The blunder comes after Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said the company will continue to keep its diversity report private, according to Business Insider. Spiegel said that releasing the data would reinforce the perception that minority groups are underrepresented in the industry.

I can't think of an industry sector that is more openly antagonistic, unrepentant, and outright racist towards Black America than Silicon Valley right now, even more so than banking or real estate, and that's only because banking and real estate face federal housing and financial civil rights regulations.

Tech does not.  They can be as awful as they want to be, and often are. 

It's About Suppression, Con't

Donald Trump is once again calling voting by mail the "biggest risk" to his reelection, and all but says his campaign will do everything in its power to stop states expanding it.

President Donald Trump called mail-in voting the biggest threat to his reelection and said his campaign's multimillion-dollar legal effort to block expanded ballot access could determine whether he wins a second term.

In an Oval Office interview Thursday focusing on the 2020 election, the president also warned his party in blunt terms not to abandon him and cast Hillary Clinton as a more formidable opponent than Joe Biden, despite Biden's commanding lead in polls.

The president’s assertion that mail-in voting will endanger his reelection comes as states across the country are rushing to accommodate remote voting in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of voters could be disenfranchised if they decide to stay home on Election Day rather than risk contracting the virus at crowded polling stations.

But Trump and his campaign argue, despite a lack of evidence, that widespread mail-in voting will benefit Democrats and invite fraud. The Republican Party is spending tens of millions of dollars on a multifront legal battle.

“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump said. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.”

Trump was asked a two-part question during the interview: Would a substantial amount of mail-in voting — which is widely expected because of coronavirus — cause him to question the legitimacy of the election? And would he accept the results no matter what?

“Well, you can never answer the second question, right? Because Hillary kept talking about she’s going to accept, and they never accepted it. You know. She lost too. She lost good.” Clinton conceded the day after the 2016 election.

Trump goes on to warn Republicans thinking about dumping him that they will face the wrath of"the strongest base people have ever seen" unless they remain completely loyal, taking credit for ending the political careers of former GOP senators Bob Corker, Dean Heller, and Jeff Flake.

But note Trump didn't say losing the lawsuits puts his reelection at risk, he specifically said that losing the lawsuits to block voting by mail puts "the election at risk".

That's a dead giveaway as to what's coming if and when Trump loses the electoral vote, which CNN's Harry Enten now sees as a likely outcome.

For Biden to score a huge win, very little needs to change. Biden is ahead by 10 points in an average of live interview polls nationally. The largest Democratic win in the last 56 years was Bill Clinton's 9-point win in 1996.

More impressively, Biden isn't that far from taking more than 400 electoral votes. Let's assume Biden wins all the electoral votes Hillary Clinton did four years ago (232), as polls indicate. One or more recent polls put him up as well in Arizona (11 electoral votes), Florida (29 electoral votes), Georgia (16 electoral votes), Michigan (16 electoral votes), North Carolina (15 electoral votes), Ohio (18 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). 

If Biden wins all of these states, he gets to just south of 370 electoral votes.
Add on Iowa (6 electoral votes) and Texas (38 electoral votes), where Biden was down just a point in two high quality polls released in June, and he gets more than 400 electoral votes. That would beat Clinton's 379 electoral votes in 1996 as the largest since Johnson's 486 electoral vote win in 1964. 

Indeed, forecast models based on a slew of indicators (such as one put together by University of Alabama student Jack Kersting) have Biden earning more than 400 electoral votes within its 95% confidence interval.

Of course, if the models are off by only a few points, Trump wins easily.

Yet, models such as these also have Biden getting only about 200 electoral votes as a plausible scenario too. 

Remember, it was only a few months ago when Biden's lead in the live telephone national polls was 6 points. That would put Trump within the range where he could win an electoral college victory with a small polling error, even if he lost the national vote. In fact, in many of the 2016 Trump states where Biden currently leads, there were polls that favored Trump just a few months ago. 

In our fast moving news cycles, one could imagine a new unforeseen crisis arising. Likewise, a topic currently dominating the news (e.g. the protests) may fall to the background. Either of these could cause the presidential race to tighten up. 

Moreover, history tells us that it's also quite conceivable that Biden loses. Harry Truman in 1948 was facing a similar deficit in the national polls that Trump is facing now. He'd win by nearly 5 points nationally and carry the electoral college in a tight contest. More recently, Clinton was in a distant third place at this point in 1992 to Republican George H.W. Bush and independent Ross Perot. Clinton took the popular vote by 6 points and scored 370 electoral votes.

And all it takes for Trump to knock those models in his direction far enough to win is to increase GOP voter suppression efforts in the battleground states the GOP has either legislative or gubernatorial control (or both): Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all have Republican-controlled state legislatures, along with Texas, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana.

Take nothing for granted.  Everything will be different five months from now.  Again.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

The Cook Political Report is moving Montana Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock's race against incumbent GOP Sen. Steve Daines to true toss-up status due to Bullock's increasing popularity in handling COVID-19 correctly.

Montana skyrocketed to competitive status earlier this year when Democrats finally convinced term-limited Gov. Steve Bullock to jump into the race and challenge first-term GOP Sen. Steve Daines. That decision at the beginning of March came just before the COVID pandemic spread throughout the U.S., limiting the amount of campaigning either candidate could do.

But the past few months have also highlighted the unique nature of this race, as the only contest with a sitting governor seeking a Senate seat. And like other governors who have ably handled the pandemic — especially in comparison to the Trump administration's bungling — Bullock has seen his approval ratings rise exponentially too, up to 75 percent in one poll. Montana has had one of the lowest per capita infection rates (49th out of 50), with only 20 deaths as of June 17, and Bullock has gotten plaudits for closing the state early as it began to reopen last month.

So it's not surprising that Bullock seems to have benefited from his gubernatorial leadership during this crisis and being in the news daily. Recent private Democratic polling in the contest gives Bullock a small lead and finds that Bullock's approval ratings are more than 20 points higher than Daines, though the incumbent senator remains slightly above water. GOP polling also shows that it's a close race, but one where every internal poll for them has still shown Daines leading. Yet, even some Republicans privately admit this is likely to be a margin of error race to the finish line. Each party just believes it's their candidate who will eke out the victory.

Governors races and Senate races are fundamentally different of course, but this year could be one where having such executive experience and successfully managing such a daunting crisis could help Bullock overcome the heavy Republican tilt of the state at the presidential level. Trump won the state by just over 20 points four years ago. Still, if we look at where the president is polling against Joe Biden nationally (an average Biden lead of 8.5), that would indicate Trump is on pace to win the state by double digits, but somewhere perhaps in the mid or low teens instead.

Overcoming that margin is still tough in a presidential year — when Jon Tester won a second term in 2012 with President Obama atop the ballot, he outpaced him by almost 7 points. Obama lost Montana that year by nearly 14 points. But in 2008, Democratic Senate candidates in competitive races did outpace the top of the ticket by about 12.5 points. Also, Democrats argue that Biden isn't as toxic in the state as Hillary Clinton was four years ago, and note that Obama even came within 2 points of winning the state in 2008. But Republicans say their polling from last month still had Biden far underwater in the state. Plus, if Trump's numbers continue to sour nationally, there's a chance that Republicans can make the argument that there needs to be a GOP Senate still to serve as a check on a Biden administration.

But there's some evidence that maybe Bullock's performance with handling COVID-19 and generally good favorability in the state makes this a unique situation where traditional rules may not apply. Unlike other states with candidates newer to the statewide ballot, Bullock is already well-defined in voters' minds, and it may be harder to change voters' opinions of him. Bullock's fundraising has been impressive since he got in, too — he outraised Daines by about $2.1 million in the first fundraising quarter, despite being in the race for less than a month before the deadline. In the six week pre-primary filing period too ahead of the June 2 primary, Bullock again outpaced the incumbent by a nearly two-to-one margin and pulled within $1.6 million of Daines's cash of hand advantage.

Democrats need to pick up three seats with a Biden win, or four seats otherwise, to regain control of the Senate.  The bad news is Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama is most likely going to lose his seat, meaning the Dems will have to pick up five seats.

The good news is that there are now five GOP toss-ups in play: Daines, Susan Collins in Maine, Cory Gardner in Colorado, Thom Tillis in NC and Martha McSally in Arizona.

Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is facing a challenge from Republican John James, who ran unsuccessfully against Tammy Duckworth in 2018 and is trying again now, Peters has a six-to-nine point lead or so but his seat is in play.

But on the other side of the coin, there are four more Republican seats in play like Peters's seat, including both Georgia senators (Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue), Joni Ernst in Iowa, and Kansas's open seat with Pat Roberts retiring after 24 years.

Yes, the most mathematically likely outcome is that as with 2018, the GOP picks up a senate seat with Jones losing and nearly all the incumbent Republicans hanging on.  90%+ of them get reelected and the Dems would be historically speaking lucky to break even by knocking off one of the five toss-ups, maybe two in the end for a total of +1 and a 52-48 GOP Senate in January.  Hell, the GOP gained two seats in 2018 despite a massive House shift towards the Democrats.

But I don't think 2020 is going to be a typical year at all.  Not by a long shot.  I'd much rather be the Democrats in this situation with nine seats in play for the GOP than the GOP's likely one seat and one longer shot for a total of two Democrats even remotely in trouble.

A lot can happen in the next four-and-a-half months and will happen, believe me.  But things are looking truly good for the Dems this time.

StupidiNews!

• Australian PM Scott Morrison admitted Friday that the country has come under widespread cyber attacks from "malicious" and "sophisticated" state actors in the last several weeks.
• AMC Theaters CEO Adam Aron plans to reopen the chain across America next month but won't require patrons or staff to wear masks in order to "avoid political controversy".
• Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar is withdrawing her name from consideration as Joe Biden's running mate, saying Biden should select a "woman of color".
• Ten Indian soldiers have been released by the Chinese military as border tensions between Beijing and Delhi are increasing after clashes this week between the two nations.
• Robotics company Boston Dynamics is finally bringing one of its robot guard dogs to the commercial security market with the Spot model selling for a cool $74,500 on the company's website.