Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

Here in Kentucky, Gov. Beshear's moratorium on evictions is being challenged in the state Supreme Court by landlords' associations. if Beshear loses, hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians could be on the streets by the end of the year.

About one in four Kentucky adults live in a household that missed last month’s rent or mortgage payment, or who aren't sure they can make next month’s payment on time, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey. 

The National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel makes a more dire prediction, estimating that 44.3% of Kentucky renter households are at risk of eviction and the state could see 149,000 eviction filings in the next four months. 

From 2017 through 2019, Kentucky saw 127,522 total eviction filings. 

During his media briefing on Tuesday, Gov. Andy Beshear said he believes the number of at-risk Kentuckians is much lower than previously thought, saying most who were struggling have reached payment plans with their landlords. 

And while he suspended evictions for nonpayment in May, the outcome of a federal lawsuit that challenges that order and a recent decision by the state Supreme Court could allow for most eviction cases to resume in full just as the state's coronavirus cases are on the rise again. 

Landlords have said some renters are taking advantage of them and not working with them to find solutions and that missed rent payments are impacting maintenance, payroll and other expenses. 

A mediation session for the lawsuit was scheduled for Thursday morning. The Supreme Court is part of that discussion, Beshear said. 

"I know that there have been some possible outcomes that have gone back and forth, trying to find that right area where no one who is unable to pay because of COVID is evicted," Beshear said. "But at the same time those that can, can't use it as a reason to simply not pay." 

During his briefing on Thursday afternoon, Beshear said the last update he received on the mediation session was that it did not look like there would be a resolution. 

"If there is not a resolution then ... we'll move forward and we will defend our order," he said.

He added that he believes the Supreme Court's decision would allow for eviction cases for nonpayment to be filed — although any trials could not start until Oct. 1 — but his order would still prevent people from actually being pushed out of their homes.

I can't imagine that the Kentucky Supreme Court would evict hundreds of thousands of people into a pandemic and depression, but if they decide it, there's not much that will stop things from happening very quickly.  It's be a cataclysm of course to have, I don't know, something like ten percent of the state's population rendered homeless heading into this winter, but here we are.

And Mitch and the Senate GOP's top priority is protecting businesses from COVID-19 lawsuits.  That's all that matters to them.  Millions of homeless Americans?

Well, they won't be able to vote against Trump if they don't have an address, will they?

Last Call For Listen Up Y'All It's Sabotage

The Trump regime is burning down everything so that Joe Biden and the Democrats will have an impossible task ahead of them come January.  They've burned down the economy, they've burned down the public health system, they're now in the process of burning down the Postal Service.

President Trump’s yearslong assault on the Postal Service and his increasingly dire warnings about the dangers of voting by mail are colliding as the presidential campaign enters its final months. The result has been to generate new concerns about how he could influence an election conducted during a pandemic in which greater-than-ever numbers of voters will submit their ballots by mail.
In tweet after all-caps tweet, Mr. Trump has warned that allowing people to vote by mail will result in a “CORRUPT ELECTION” that will “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY” and become the “SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES.” He has predicted that children will steal ballots out of mailboxes. On Thursday, he dangled the idea of delaying the election instead.

Members of Congress and state officials in both parties rejected the president’s suggestion and his claim that mail-in ballots would result in widespread fraud. But they are warning that a huge wave of ballots could overwhelm mail carriers unless the Postal Service, in financial difficulty for years, receives emergency funding that Republicans are blocking during negotiations over another pandemic relief bill.

At the same time, the mail system is being undercut in ways set in motion by Mr. Trump. Fueled by animus for Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and surrounded by advisers who have long called for privatizing the post office, Mr. Trump and his appointees have begun taking cost-cutting steps that appear to have led to slower and less reliable delivery.

In recent weeks, at the direction of a Trump campaign megadonor who was recently named the postmaster general, the service has stopped paying mail carriers and clerks the overtime necessary to ensure that deliveries can be completed each day. That and other changes have led to reports of letters and packages being delayed by as many as several days.
Voting rights groups say it is a recipe for disaster.

“We have an underfunded state and local election system and a deliberate slowdown in the Postal Service,” said Wendy Fields, the executive director of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of voting and civil rights groups. She said the president was “deliberately orchestrating suppression and using the post office as a tool to do it.”

Trump will burn down the Census next month.

The Census Bureau is cutting short critical door-knocking efforts for the 2020 census amid growing concerns among Democrats in Congress that the White House is pressuring the bureau to wrap up counting soon for political gain, NPR has learned.

Attempts by the bureau's workers to conduct in-person interviews for the census will end on Sept. 30 — not Oct. 31, the end date it indicated in April would be necessary to count every person living in the U.S. given major setbacks from the coronavirus pandemic. Three Census Bureau employees, who were informed of the plans during separate internal meetings Thursday, confirmed the new end date with NPR. All of the employees spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs.

"It's going to be impossible to complete the count in time," said one of the bureau employees, an area manager who oversees local census offices. "I'm very fearful we're going to have a massive undercount."

Asked why and when the decision was made to move up the end of door knocking, the Census Bureau replied in a written statement Friday: "We are currently evaluating our operations to enable the Census Bureau to provide this data in the most expeditious manner and when those plans have been finalized we will make an announcement."

About 4 out of 10 households nationwide have still not participated in the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the U.S., and self-response rates are even lower in many communities.

This month, the bureau began deploying door knockers to visit unresponsive homes in certain parts of the country. Door-knocking efforts are expected to roll out nationwide Aug. 11.

It's unclear how much longer households can submit census responses on their own by going online, over the phone and by mail. The bureau's website — which as recently as Thursday still listed Oct. 31 as the end of the "self-response phase" that began in March — now reads that phase will last until the end of field data collection.  

Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington, one of five states where mail-in balloting is universal, said Wednesday on NPR’s “1A” program that “election officials are very concerned, if the post office is reducing service, that we will be able to get ballots to people in time.”

It's straight-up sabotage of the government, and it helps Trump disenfranchise voters for years to come.  It may not save him in 2020, but it will be a massive obstacle to Democrats in 2022 and 2024, and with a massive Census undercount, it could be a decade-long disaster.

If Trump can;t control and profit from the government, then he will destroy the country to the point where misery will wreck everything.

We'll be fighting this for years.

The State Of The Police State, Con't

In Portland, Trump's Brownshirts are now going after the press as "national security threats" for exposing the use of military contractors for his private army.

The Department of Homeland Security has compiled “intelligence reports” about the work of American journalists covering protests in Portland, Ore., in what current and former officials called an alarming use of a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors.

Over the past week, the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies and others, summarizing tweets written by two journalists — a reporter for the New York Times and the editor in chief of the blog Lawfare — and noting they had published leaked, unclassified documents about DHS operations in Portland. The intelligence reports, obtained by The Washington Post, include written descriptions and images of the tweets and the number of times they had been liked or retweeted by others.

After The Post published a story online Thursday evening detailing the department’s practices, the acting homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, ordered the intelligence office to stop collecting information on journalists and announced an investigation into the matter.

“Upon learning about the practice, Acting Secretary Wolf directed the DHS Intelligence & Analysis Directorate to immediately discontinue collecting information involving members of the press,” a department spokesman said in a statement. “In no way does the Acting Secretary condone this practice and he has immediately ordered an inquiry into the matter. The Acting Secretary is committed to ensuring that all DHS personnel uphold the principles of professionalism, impartiality and respect for civil rights and civil liberties, particularly as it relates to the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

Some of the leaked DHS documents the journalists posted and wrote about revealed shortcomings in the department’s understanding of the nature of the protests in Portland, as well as techniques that intelligence analysts have used. A memo by the department’s top intelligence official, which was tweeted by the editor of Lawfare, says personnel relied on “FINTEL,” an acronym for financial intelligence, as well as finished intelligence “Baseball cards” of arrested protesters to try to understand their motivations and plans. Historically, military and intelligence officials have used such cards for biographical dossiers of suspected terrorists, including those targeted in lethal drone strikes.

The DHS intelligence reports, which are unclassified, are traditionally used for sharing the department’s analysis with federal law enforcement agencies, state and local officials, and some foreign governments. They are not intended to disseminate information about American citizens who have no connection to terrorists or other violent actors and who are engaged in activity protected by the First Amendment, current and former officials said.

You can bet this order came from the White House, and Acting Brownshirt Coordinator Chad Wolf is pleading plausible deniability, but there's no way that federal agents willingly make more work for themselves like this unless they were told to do so.

And yes, it gets worse.  They are going to start putting journalists in jail by the boatload.

Federal officials responding to the long-running protests in Portland are asking that a court order protecting journalists be lifted on the grounds that some of those engaged in violence are masquerading as members of the press. 

Justice Department lawyers leveled the claims of misconduct by purported journalists in filings submitted Thursday to U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon, who issued a temporary restraining order last week forbidding federal authorities from targeting the press. 

His order also requires law enforcement to allow individuals claiming to be journalists to remain in place even when crowds are ordered to disperse.

The federal government’s drive to dissolve the injunction came just one day after the Trump administration struck a deal with Gov. Kate Brown (D-Ore.) to try to quell unrest and violence around the federal courthouse in Portland. 

Under the pact, Oregon State Police agreed to set up a security perimeter around the building, while federal law enforcement agents dispatched from around the country would retreat and eventually leave town. 

However, the feds’ bid to rescind the restraining order signals their desire to maintain maximum flexibility in responding to the unrest if they again assume a front-line role or if the state police arrangement proves inadequate. 

“Individuals are abusing the TRO to masquerade as members of the press and evade lawful orders, or actively participating in protest activities and even illegal acts while holding themselves out to be members of the press under the protection of the TRO,” Justice Department lawyers wrote. “Even individuals who are not expressly taking advantage of the TRO are often within crowds of protesters or between officers and active protesters making it incredibly difficult and dangerous to observe the restrictions while implementing crowd control measures.” 

“Savvy protesters abuse the TRO to evade lawful orders, impede law enforcement, and perpetrate crimes. The TRO has become ‘an instrument of wrong,’ and must be dissolved,” DOJ attorneys argued.

We got that?

The press is covering for terrorists, and we get to determine who the terrorists are. If they happen to be the press, well...

Again, this is the White House quite literally treating journalists as terrorists.  They are building intelligence files on the men and women covering the Trump regime's test run in Portland.  It absolutely will be rolled out to every major city in advance of the election.

We're a few months away from losing the country unless Trump is removed from office, and I no longer believe an election will do the job.

Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

Second-quarter GDP estimates are in and they are heart-stopping: the United States economy is on track to shrink by one-third by year's end.

The coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy plunging by a record-shattering 32.9% annual rate last quarter and is still inflicting damage across the country, squeezing already struggling businesses and forcing a wave of layoffs that shows no sign of abating.

The economy’s collapse in the April-June quarter, stunning in its speed and depth, came as a resurgence of the viral outbreak has pushed businesses to close for a second time in many areas. The government’s estimate of the second-quarter fall in the gross domestic product has no comparison since records began in 1947. The previous worst quarterly contraction — at 10%, less than a third of what was reported Thursday — occurred in 1958 during the Eisenhower administration.
Soon after the government issued the bleak economic data, President Donald Trump diverted attention by suggesting a “delay” in the Nov. 3 presidential election, based on his unsubstantiated allegations that widespread mail-in voting will result in fraud. The dates of presidential elections are enshrined in federal law and would require an act of Congress to change.

So steep was the economic fall last quarter that most analysts expect a sharp rebound for the current July-September period. But with coronavirus cases rising in the majority of states and the Republican Senate proposing to scale back aid to the unemployed, the pain is likely to continue and potentially worsen in the months ahead.
The plunge in GDP “underscores the unprecedented hit to the economy from the pandemic,” said Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “We expect it will take years for that damage to be fully recovered.”

Years.

An unknown number of years to recover.

Just to get back to 4th quarter 2019.

And so many of us will not make it.

Last Call For Election Rejection

Donald Trump is now openly voicing the idea of not having an election in November due to "massive fraud" caused by people being allowed to vote for Joe Biden, or something.

President Donald Trump explicitly floated delaying November's presidential election on Thursday, lending extraordinary voice to persistent concerns that he would seek to circumvent voting in a contest where he currently trails his opponent by double digits. 

Trump has no authority to delay an election, and the Constitution gives Congress the power to set the date for voting. Lawmakers from both parties said almost immediately there was no likelihood the election would be delayed. 

Yet Trump's message provides an opening -- long feared by Democrats -- that both he and his supporters might refuse to accept the presidential results. In questioning the results ahead of time, Trump is priming those in his camp to doubt the legitimacy of whatever outcome emerges in the first weeks of November. 

In his tweet on Thursday morning -- coming 96 days before the election and minutes after the federal government reported the worst economic contraction in recorded history -- Trump offered the suggestion because he claimed without evidence the contest will be flawed. 

"With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA," he wrote. "Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???" 

There is no evidence that mail-in voting leads to fraud. 

Trump has previously sought to stoke fear and lay the groundwork to question the election's results by promoting the idea that mail-in voting leads to widespread fraud and a "rigged" election. Democrats have warned his efforts are meant both to suppress voting and to provide a reason to refuse to leave office should he lose. 

Trump's representatives had previously scoffed at Democratic suggestions he would attempt to delay the election, claiming they were unfounded conspiracies. His tweet on Thursday marks the first time Trump has openly raised the idea of moving the date of voting. 

On Thursday, Trump's campaign said the President was offering a query. 

"The President is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting," campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley said. "They are using coronavirus as their means to try to institute universal mail-in voting, which means sending every registered voter a ballot whether they asked for one or not."

I'm glad Democrats understand that this is a ploy to undermine a Biden win giving cover to red states not to certify results showing Biden was victorious.  Mitch McConnell anf the GOP poured cold water on this idiocy this afternoon.

Trump's remarks were immediately panned by many top Republicans interviewed by CNN. US Senators including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah —who represents a state where all registered voters are sent a mail ballot — said they disagreed with Trump and believed the election should go on as scheduled.

McConnell's top Republican counterpart in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told CNN that "Never in the history of federal elections have we ever not held an election and we should go forward with our election."

Still, keep an eye on this.  There's plenty Republicans can do to delay, disenfranchise, and destroy this election, and they will.

The Final Nine, Nine, Nine

Former GOP presidential nominee Herman Cain has succumbed to COVID-19 after being hospitalized for the entire month of July.

Herman Cain, a former presidential hopeful who was once considered by President Donald Trump for the Federal Reserve, has died after being hospitalized with the coronavirus. He was 74.

Cain’s death was announced Thursday on his website by Dan Calabrese, who edits the site and had previously written about his colleague’s diagnosis.

“Herman Cain – our boss, our friend, like a father to so many of us – has passed away,” Calabrese said in the blog post. “We all prayed so hard every day. We knew the time would come when the Lord would call him home, but we really liked having him here with us, and we held out hope he’d have a full recovery.”

Cain was among the highest-profile public figures in the United States to have died from Covid-19. Less than two weeks before receiving his diagnosis, Cain had attended Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Cain had been a business executive and board chairman of a branch of Kansas City’s Federal Reserve Bank before moving into Republican politics and eventually becoming a presidential candidate.

Last year, Trump briefly considered picking Cain as his nominee to join the Federal Reserve Board. Cain remained a vocal supporter of Trump’s after his nomination was withdrawn.

Cain had been hospitalized in Atlanta on July 1, two days after being told he had tested positive for Covid-19, according to a statement posted to his social media accounts at the time.

He did not require a respirator and was “awake and alert” when he checked in to the hospital, the statement said. “Please join with us in praying for Mr. Cain, and for everyone who has contracted the coronavirus – as well as their families,” it said.

Cain tweeted a photograph of himself at Trump’s rally showing him surrounded by other attendees, none of whom appeared to be wearing masks or other protective gear.

I'm not noting this because Cain was a particularly great figure, he was a con man and cultist just like the rest of the GOP, Clarence Thomas without the robes.

I'm noting this because Donald Trump killed him.

Herman Cain didn't have to die.

153,000 Americans didn't have to die.

4.5 million Americans didn't have to get sick.

More are dying every day.

And it's only going to get worse this fall.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Trump campaign is writing off Michigan in an effort to go after the more competitive Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and to defend Iowa and Nevada.

President Trump’s campaign has quietly receded from the television airwaves in Michigan in recent weeks, shifting money elsewhere as one of the key Midwestern states that powered his surprise victory in 2016 threatens to move more firmly back into the Democratic column in 2020. 

Michigan began the year with expectations that it would be one of the most intense battlegrounds in the country, but its share of Trump television advertising dollars dwindled this summer as Joseph R. Biden Jr. built a steady advantage in the polls. 

Since the end of June, Mr. Trump has spent more money on ads in 10 other states — with Michigan falling behind even much smaller states like Iowa and Nevada — and in recent days, Mr. Trump’s campaign stopped buying ads in Michigan entirely. 

The Biden campaign has more than tripled what Mr. Trump spent on television in Michigan in the last month, by far the most lopsided advantage of any swing state where both are advertising. And in Detroit, the state’s largest media market, the Trump campaign last ran a television ad, outside of national ad buys that include the state, on July 3, according to data from Advertising Analytics. 

Mr. Trump faces a trifecta of troubles in Michigan, according to political strategists and state polling: reduced support among less educated white voters in a contest against Mr. Biden compared with Hillary Clinton; motivated Black voters in the state’s urban centers; and suburban voters who continue to flee Mr. Trump’s divisive brand of politics. 

“Of all the states he won in 2016, Trump would be most hard-pressed to keep Michigan in his column this time around,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster for Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC.

Trump still gets re-elected if he should lose Michigan and  keeps all his 2016 states, and he can lose Pennsylvania and Wisconsin too if he picks up Nevada and New Hampshire, both of which are more competitive than Michigan right now.

It's good that Biden is pushing his lead and making Trump retreat, but the fact is Trump still can get to 270 without Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan if Biden's not careful.

I'd still rather be Biden than Trump.  But Biden's lead is going to shrink, probably dramatically, as the race tightens up, and with mail-in ballots and GOP state legislatures possibly not certifying election results for weeks or months, nothing should be taken for granted.

Not even Trump giving up on Michigan.

StupidiNews!

• Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert has tested positive for COVID-19, Gohmert has made a point of not wearing a mask and was in a hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr for hours on Tuesday.
• A new Yale University study finds that the $600 COVID-19 employment benefit was not causing people to stay home instead of working, as Republicans have accused.
• Arizona is leading a multi-state investigation into Apple intentionally slowing down older iPhones in order to sell newer models.
• The Trump regime say it will withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany, saying the NATO ally's defense is its own business, and that the deployment has "ripped Americans off" for years.
• NASA is set to launch the Perseverance rover to Mars today, the missions will involve new astrobiology experiments as well as flying the Ingenuity helicopter drone.

Last Call For The State Of The Police State, Con't

Oregon Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler have figured out that what Trump really wants from his performative stormtrooper ballet is something he can call a victory, and very wisely the effort is being made to give the Toddler-In-Chief a win on the scoreboard that doesn't involve splitting open people's heads like ripe melons.

The Trump administration has started talks with the Oregon governor’s office and indicated that it would begin to draw down the presence of federal agents sent to quell two months of chaotic protests in Portland if the state stepped up its own enforcement, a senior White House official said Tuesday. 

The official stressed to The Associated Press that the talks with the office of Democratic Gov. Kate Brown are in the early stages and there is no agreement. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke on the condition of anonymity. 

Brown didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office also didn’t immediately respond to an email. 

Just a day earlier, the U.S. Marshals Service and Department of Homeland Security were weighing whether to send in more agents. The marshals were taking steps to identify up to 100 additional personnel who could go in case they were needed to relieve or supplement the deputy marshals who work in Oregon, spokesman Drew Wade said. 

Homeland Security was considering a similar measure with Customs and Border Protection agents, according to an administration official with direct knowledge of the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plans and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity. 

President Donald Trump did not let up on criticizing local authorities in their handling of the protests that began after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police and have grown to include the presence of federal agents in Portland and other Democratic cities. 

The nightly protests often spiral into violence as demonstrators target the U.S. courthouse in Oregon’s largest city with rocks, fireworks and laser pointers and federal agents respond with tear gas, less-lethal ammunition and arrests. 

“We, as you know, have done an excellent job of watching over Portland and watching our courthouse where they wanted to burn it down, they’re anarchists, nothing short of anarchist agitators,” Trump said Tuesday. “And we have protected it very powerfully. And if we didn’t go there, I will tell you, you wouldn’t have a courthouse. You’d have a billion-dollar burned-out building.”

Trump wants to send in more contractors and spur a violent event that will become the catalyst for a crackdown. What Brown and Wheeler are trying to do is to give Trump a political win he can brag about, so he can go on TV and say he "saved Portland".  Trump fancies himself to be a dealmaker, not because he's good at making deals (he's horrific at it) but because his malignant narcissism requires that he believes everyone else operates within the same transactional social framework as he does.

What Trump wants is for people to say good things about him on TV, about how smart he is and how good of a negotiator he is, and how only he could resolve the protests in Portland. That's his ticket to a second term, he thinks.

He's wrong, and Brown and Wheeler are trying to manipulate him the way you would deal with any tantrum-prone 4-year-old. Someone's going to point that out to him and this ploy is probably going to fail miserably and end in bloodshed anyway, because Trump is also easily manipulated by his cadre of revenants, ghouls, and vampires and they've had a lot more practice at it.

But you have to give Brown and Wheeler credit here.  They are honestly trying to save lives by placating a buffoon in love with the smell of his own flatulence.

Not A Shutdown Countdown But Could Have Been

If you're wondering why Democrats refuse to use the power of the purse to punish Trump, it's because Dems don't have the desire to shut down the government and aren't going to pick a fight over anything in a presidential election year, not even DHS funding.

House Democrats on Tuesday were forced to pull their Homeland Security spending bill from the floor just days before it was slated for a vote, after it faced strong blowback from both progressives and centrists within the caucus.

Dozens of vulnerable Democrats in swing districts as well as progressives had threatened to torpedo the measure in recent days: The moderates argued the bill went too far in cracking down on immigration enforcement, while liberals argued it didn't do nearly enough to rein in the Trump administration's draconian policies.

“Frontline members raised serious concerns that the Homeland bill was a tough vote in swing districts because of its progressive provisions,” a House Democratic aide said Tuesday.

“At the end of the day, frontliners are our majority makers and there is no reason to force them to take a tough vote," the aide said, noting that the House would ultimately still need to negotiate with the Senate GOP to avert a government shutdown this fall. Congress is widely expected to enact a stopgap measure in September and punt any major funding decisions until after the November election.

The House had planned to take up the Department of Homeland Security funding measure on Friday, as part of a seven-bill, $1.4 trillion minibus. The package will now include just six bills, and is expected to easily pass.

The decision by Democratic leaders — while a relief for more moderate members — is a disappointment for appropriators, who had laced the bill with language to curb the Trump administration’s immigration agenda and cut Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.

“This is probably the most progressive Homeland Security bill that has ever been presented to the House,” Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), the chair of the Homeland Security spending panel, said last week.

“It literally has everything in it that the advocates, the members, have told me over the years, had to be in the bill,” said Roybal-Allard, ticking off provisions that limit the number of detention beds and prevent the Trump administration from moving money around for its immigration priorities.

Democrats had also crafted an amendment to the DHS bill to block federal funding for the administration’s use of paramilitary action to quell protests in Oregon and Washington state, in hopes of winning over more progressive votes.

But leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus made clear that the amendment wasn't enough, and had been pressing leadership to strip the measure from the minibus.

“Voting to put so much money into this agency, at this moment, when these bills aren’t going to go anywhere in the Senate, I think makes no sense whatsoever,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the CPC, said in an interview last week.

The reversal comes after several weeks of complaints from many Democrats, who questioned the merits of voting on a contentious immigration bill on the floor in an election-year, when it stood no chance of becoming law and would only highlight party divisions on the issue.

It's easy to say this is a rare misfire by Nancy Pelosi, bringing a bill to the floor she didn't have the votes for, and it sounds like she was nowhere near close to having them.  Not sure what she was thinking here, but it was an unforced error on her part.

The larger issue is that the Congressional Progressive Caucus in safe blue seats decided making the perfect the enemy of the good is why this vote had to be pulled.

It's also exactly why Trump never gets punished.

Fraud Of The Yankees

Donald Trump is such a thin-skinned man-child that he couldn't stand to see Dr. Anthony Fauci be invited to throw out a first pitch for the Washington Nationals last week, so much so that he invited himself to throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game, which was news to the Yankees and everyone else and then he "canceled" days later.

When he abruptly announced on Sunday that he would not be throwing out the first pitch at the Yankees game August 15, Donald Trump claimed that it was because he couldn’t break his “strong focus” on the coronavirus pandemic and a host of other issues he’s never before had a problem ignoring. But the real reason he won’t be taking the mound next month is far simpler: He hadn’t actually been asked.

According to the New York Times, the president surprised both the Yankees and his own staff when he said during a press conference that he’d be tossing the opening pitch on the 15th next month—a day he hadn’t been invited to do so, and which evidently conflicted with something already on his schedule. It’s not clear what that prior engagement is, but aides—shocked by his announcement—“scrambled to let the ballclub know that he already had plans for that Saturday. “We will make it later in the season!” Trump promised in his tweet canceling the outing.

Why would Trump impulsively announce he’d been asked to throw a ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game he hadn’t actually been invited to, on a date when he already had something on his schedule? Because Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert whose clear-eyed assessments of the coronavirus crisis contradict the president’s wishful thinking, was about to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener against the Yankees. Jealous of Fauci, and irritated that the public health expert is stealing the spotlight, Trump said an hour before the doctor’s first pitch Thursday that he, too, would be taking the rubber before a Yankees game. “Randy Levine is a great friend of mine from the Yankees,” the president said. “And he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I’m doing that on August 15 at Yankee Stadium.”

Trump has done this kind of thing before, and for equally stupid, selfish reasons. The most recent example, perhaps, was his announcement in April that he’d be giving a commencement speech at West Point—surprising the school, and forcing cadets to return to campus in the middle of a pandemic to listen to him ramble. That outing didn’t go so well; his address was overshadowed by his slow, ginger walk down what he’d later claim, in one of his numerous ludicrous explanations for his careful gait, was a “very long & and steep…[and] very slippery” ramp. It’s possible he would have fared better on the mound; having a catch with former Yankees great Mariano Rivera outside the White House last week, his arm looked like it had some pop in it—enough, perhaps, to get the ball closer to the plate than Fauci, whose opening pitch was a bit low and outside. (“I completely miscalculated the distance from the mound,” Fauci told the Times Monday.)

He's a child.  I keep saying this, he keeps doing childish things, we admit he does, and we keep not saying "This is a child who should resign because he is an infantile moron incapable of the job". 

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

In Richmond, Virginia over the weekend, police believe an unlawful assembly was caused by Boogaloo Boys trying to start a riot.

Riots in downtown Richmond over the weekend were instigated by white supremacists under the guise of Black Lives Matter, according to law enforcement officials.
Protesters tore down police tape and pushed forward toward Richmond police headquarters, where they set a city dump truck on fire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just one.

And he needs it to happen before the election.

A Taxing Explanation, Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's the core of all of this.

Kentucky Goes Viral, Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The line and the trend is undeniable,” Beshear said. “This virus is now escalating and spreading so much statewide that statewide action is necessary.”

Beshear made the order after a month of increased spread of COVID-19 throughout Kentucky. The 11,977 COVID-19 cases so far in July is nearly double the number of cases in June, even though the number of tests completed is similar. There were 169,495 people tested in June and 184,145 people have been tested so far in July. 

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

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

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

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

School starts in two weeks.

StupidiNews!

• Attorney General Bill Barr testifies before the House Judiciary Committee today, with his planned opening statement accusing House Democrats of covering up the Russia investigation as a "hoax".
• Gold is testing new highs of $2,000 per ounce this week as fears of COVID-19 and inflation has led to a major flight to the metal.
• The average American car on the road is now a record 11.9 years old as drivers are hanging on to used cars as long as possible during the growing Trump Depression.
• Analysis of Trump campaign spending finds that the Republican incumbent is spending 90% of ad money defending states he won in 2016.
• Google says it will keep workers at home until June 2021 in order to deal with COVID-19 issues and will continue to allow employees to telecommute.