Last Call For Biden, His Time

President Joe Biden today unveiled a huge new executive order package that targets greedy corporations in general and Big Tech and Big Pharma in particular with a raft of new federal antitrust and pro-consumer regulations.

The White House announced a sweeping executive order Friday to promote competition throughout the U.S. economy, in the most ambitious effort in generations to reduce the stranglehold of monopolies and concentrated markets in major industries.

The order — whose details POLITICO first reported last week — also includes elements designed to lower the price of prescription drugs, protect consumers' privacy and increase scrutiny of abusive business tactics in the tech industry.

The effort marks a major push by President Joe Biden’s administration to focus on competition as part of the economic recovery from the pandemic. It also offers a response to progressives’ criticisms that the federal government has focused too much on supporting banks and other corporations without concern about the effect on consumers, who have watched their choices dwindle over the years.

Biden plans to sign the order at 1:30 p.m., the White House said.

The order’s impacts could be felt in industries including agriculture, airlines, health, broadband and banking. Previously unreported elements include a provision urging the Federal Communications Commission to reinstate its Obama-era net neutrality rules, as well as a call for financial regulators to allow data sharing among financial companies.

It dives into the specifics on some policy issues — for instance, by calling for over-the-counter sales of hearing aids, urging the Food and Drug Administration to allow imports of prescription drugs from Canada, and ending "exclusivity arrangements" in which landlords "stick tenants with only a single internet option," according to a nearly 4,000-word White House fact sheet issued Friday morning.

The White House said order will include initiatives to require airlines to refund fees to passengers who receive shoddy Wi-Fi service or baggage handling; restricting businesses’ ability to foist noncompete agreements on employees; challenge occupational licensing requirements that limit competition in industries like health care; and guarantee farmers and motorists the right to repair their own vehicles without voiding warranty protections. The last provision would also have implications for consumer products like Apple’s iPhones.

Top White House officials said the order seeks to ensure small businesses and consumers have access to fair markets.

“The overarching objective with the executive order is to make sure the president is encouraging competition in industries around the country,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday.

Taking aim at just one industry the order will cover, Psaki added: “It doesn’t sound right to most people that there are three shipping companies that are dominating the market and upping and increasing costs for suppliers, small businesses, people across the country. That doesn’t sound right or fair, because it isn’t.”

 

The bad news is that the regulations are toothless without Congressional law backing these up. There's a lot of "suggestions" and "proposals" and directives to "encourage" things, but nothing that will really take a bite out of monopolies by the trillion-dollar corporations.

 

The worse news of course is that I expect every major industry group to sue the pants off the Biden administration over anything that actually will have an effect, and for the orders to receive near-instant national injunctions from Trump-appointed federal judges that will tie up the regulations in federal courts for years.

They'll never take effect unless Biden's followed by a second term or another Democrat. Better make that happen, folks.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Texas's new statewide anti-abortion law is a legal nightmare, not just because of the screamingly unconstitutional "fetal heartbeat" provision that effectively blocks abortions after six weeks, but the even worse nonsense that deputizes Texas anti-choice activists as the state's Abortion Police.

People across the country may soon be able to sue abortion clinics, doctors and anyone helping a woman get an abortion in Texas, under a new state law that contains a legal innovation with broad implications for the American court system.

The provision passed the Texas State Legislature this spring as part of a bill that bans abortion after a doctor detects a fetal heartbeat, usually at about six weeks of pregnancy. Many states have passed such bans, but the law in Texas is different.

Ordinarily, enforcement would be up to government officials, and if clinics wanted to challenge the law’s constitutionality, they would sue those officials in making their case. But the law in Texas prohibits officials from enforcing it. Instead, it takes the opposite approach, effectively deputizing ordinary citizens — including from outside Texas — to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It awards them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.

“It’s completely inverting the legal system,” said Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “It says the state is not going to be the one to enforce this law. Your neighbors are.”

The result is a law that is extremely difficult to challenge before it takes effect on Sept. 1, because it is hard to know whom to sue to block it, and lawyers for clinics are now wrestling with what to do about it. Six-week bans in other states have all been blocked as they make their way through the court system.

Texas’ Legislature began a special session on Thursday, with a conservative agenda taking aim at voting rights and other issues.

The law comes as the right to an abortion and the laws governing it are in flux. Abortion opponents have scored major victories in state legislatures over the past decade, with restrictions whittling down access through much of the Midwest and South. The 2021 legislative season has set the record for the most abortion restrictions signed in a single year in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion statistics and supports abortion rights.

The Supreme Court has shifted too, with conservatives now making up a solid majority, and an abortion case before the court next term.

Critics say the Texas law amounts to a kind of hack of the legal system. In an open letter this spring, more than 370 Texas lawyers, including Professor Vladeck, said a central flaw was its attempt to confer legal standing on abortion opponents who were not themselves injured. They called the law an “unprecedented abuse of civil litigation,” and said it could “have a destabilizing impact on the state’s legal infrastructure.”

“If the barista at Starbucks overhears you talking about your abortion, and it was performed after six weeks, that barista is authorized to sue the clinic where you obtained the abortion and to sue any other person who helped you, like the Uber driver who took you there,” said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University.

Some statutes do authorize private citizens to sue to enforce a law even if they themselves are not harmed, for example California’s consumer protection law, which gives anyone in the state the right to sue a company for disseminating false information or engaging in other unfair business practices, said Howard M. Wasserman, a law professor at Florida International University in Miami. What’s different about Texas’s law, he said, is that private enforcement is not in support of state enforcement; it’s in lieu of it, a switch he said was not good for democracy.

What is more, a Supreme Court ruling last month involving a credit reporting company rejected the concept of people suing when they were not concretely harmed. That case involved lawsuits in federal court, but Professor Wasserman said lawyers for the clinics would probably use it in their arguments in Texas.

The most common place for clinics to challenge abortion restrictions in Texas has been federal court, where they have won more often than at the state level. Supporters of the new law say it is an attempt to argue abortion cases in the courts of the state where they originated — Texas — without anti-abortion measures immediately being suspended by a federal judge, as often happens.

John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, the largest anti-abortion organization in the state, said that some people in the anti-abortion movement thought “this was not working in federal court, so let’s try a different route.”

Lawyers for the clinics argue that a six-week abortion ban is clearly unconstitutional, and the Texas law is designed to insulate the state from a challenge. Federal protection currently extends to pregnancies up to the point at which a fetus can sustain life outside the womb, about 23 or 24 weeks, and six weeks is often before a woman even knows she is pregnant. Given that federal courts are experienced at deciding constitutional rights issues, lawyers for clinics say, it is logical to go there for relief. The new law, if it takes effect, will make that much harder.

The clinics and their staff “are stuck in state court in a defensive posture, and there’s a lot at stake,” Professor Wasserman said. “If they lose, they are on the hook for significant sums of money.”

 

This law is horrific. It effectively gives all the power to rabid anti-choice lunatics who would serve as the Uterus Stasi, going after women looking for medical services, clinic employees, drivers, everyone with hundreds, maybe thousands of civil lawsuits that would bankrupt and destroy everyone in the women's medical services field, not to mention obliterate the women at the core of the "debate" over abortion.

The goal here is make getting an abortion so impossible that nobody ever tries, because of the consequences.  Most of all, it's to put women in Texas in a constant state of fear, and to set a precedent for deputizing GOP cultists and religious zealots as the new agents of the state. They are trying to criminalize anything that might threaten the power structure of white Christian Dominionism: history, medical services, education, voting.

I was never kidding about the "Road to Gilead" part, folks. It was never a catchy metaphor based on a popular Hulu and book series. It was always a deadly serious warning about a theocratic fascist government that reduced women to chattel forming before our eyes, and we're closer than ever to that point.

Glenn's Scary Glenn Loss

The mask slips, and once again Republicans tell the truth by accident.

Virginia's Republican nominee for governor reportedly told supporters at a fundraising event in June that he couldn't reveal his true position on abortion rights until after he's elected.

His reasoning: He needs the independent vote to ensure his victory in November.

Glenn Youngkin, the venture capitalist running as a Republican in Virginia's gubernatorial race against former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, made the comments to Lauren Windsor, who runs The Undercurrent, a self-described "grassroots political web-show" funded by the liberal advocacy group American Family Voices.

The American Independent obtained the video footage from Windsor, who also shared it with MSNBC.

In the video, Windsor begins speaking with Youngkin about her feigned support for things like "getting a fetal heartbeat bill here like they did in Texas, or defunding Planned Parenthood."

A man who identifies himself only as "Pete" also appears in the video, though his full identity is not immediately clear.

Youngkin responds by telling Windsor that she's "on the right path," adding that he initially wants to work on abortion issues he says a "majority of Virginians" support, including to "stop using taxpayer money for abortions" and banning "abortions all the way up until the last week before birth." (Taxpayer money is not used to fund abortions.)

When Windsor pushes him more, Youngkin says that he's unable to speak much on the issue for fear of losing the independent voters he says he needs to win Virginia's gubernatorial contest in November.

"I'm gonna be really honest with you, the short answer is, in this campaign, I can't," Youngkin says after "Pete" asks him whether he plans to "take it to the abortionists."

"When I'm governor, and I have a majority in the House, we can start going on offense," he continues. "But as a campaign topic, sadly, that in fact won’t win my independent votes that I have to get. So you'll never hear me support Planned Parenthood, what you'll hear me talk about is actually taking back the radical abortion policies that Virginians don't want."

 

A couple of observations: 

 

One, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is going to win by double digits over this clod. There's no bigger sin in Republican politics than admitting the culture war con is just that. Not only does Youngkin admit he needs to deceive moderate voters, but he's tacitly admitting that he needs to deceive Republican cultist base voters too, because politics is all about getting into power. Actually showing the people how the sausage gets made makes you a ham-fisted loser in the era of Trumpian showmanship.

Two, there are no moderate Republicans in 2021. They're all cultists if they're in the party, and half the ones that "left" are just independents who want to self-delude into thinking they're cool hipsters or something. Youngkin I think really falls into this latter category, and that's the second-biggest sin in GOP politics.

He's done, folks.

Last Call For Gov. Mike, De Slime

Never forget for a moment that red state Republicans want anyone who isn't a white, straight Christian removed from "their" state by legalized attrition through denial of basic services.

In the latest state-level swing at LGBTQ health care access, Ohio will now allow medical providers to refuse to administer any medical treatment that violates their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.

The language was buried in a 700-page document of last-minute amendments to the state’s two-year budget bill, which Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine approved last Thursday. The provision allows anyone providing medical care — from doctors and nurses to researchers and lab techs – and anyone paying for that care (namely, insurance providers), “the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.”

The bill does not allow medical professionals to deny LGBTQ people care, carte blanche; the exemption “is limited to conscience-based objections to a particular health care service.” It goes on to say that the provider is “responsible for providing all appropriate health care services, other than the particular health care service that conflicts with the medical practitioner’s beliefs or convictions, until another medical practitioner or facility is available.”

But the bill was overwhelmingly opposed by the state’s medical community. “The implications of this policy are immense and could lead to situations where patient care is unacceptably compromised,” read a letter to budget negotiators, signed by the Ohio Hospital Association, the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, the Ohio State Medical Association, and the Ohio Association of Health Plans.

Gov. DeWine could have struck the language while signing the rest of the budget into law, but declined to do so, despite issuing 14 other line-item vetoes.

State and national LGBTQ advocates started sounding the alarm in June, when the language was introduced, saying that it will prevent LGBTQ people from accessing the health care they need. With this newly enacted language in place, a medical provider could refuse to prescribe PrEP to an LGBTQ patient looking to reduce their risk of contracting HIV, or refuse to provide gender-affirming care to trans and nonbinary patients, or puberty blockers to transgender minors. Equality Ohio called it a “license to discriminate,” and Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David said that it jeopardizes “the medical well being of more than 380,000 LGBTQ people in Ohio.”

Gov. DeWine has insisted that this provision won’t change the standard of care in Ohio. “This is not a problem,” he told a local news station. “If there’s other things that maybe a doctor has a problem with, it’s worked out. Somebody else does those things” — referring to a loosely written clause that requires that the medical professional, when possible, “attempt to transfer the patient to a colleague who will provide the requested procedure,” as long as making that referral doesn’t violate their conscience as well.

But even if the medical professional does attempt to make that referral, a quarter of Ohio’s population lives in rural counties, where LGBTQ-friendly medical care is sparse. And for queer elders living in long-term care facilities, options are even slimmer.

Local advocates have also called foul on lawmakers’ move to insert the clause last-minute into the state’s massive two-year, 2,400-page budget bill. “They know that they couldn’t pass this on its merits as a standalone bill, because literally no one is asking for this to be passed,” Dominic Detwiler, a public policy strategist for Equality Ohio told the Columbus Dispatch.

 

Right-wing assholes like DeWine have used tactics like these for generations: if you want to get rid of "undesirables" just legalize discrimination that codifies them as second-class citizens. Nothing's more American.

And of course, the Roberts Court will see that this legalized discrimination remains "constitutional".

The Big Lie, Con't

Pennsylvania Republicans, having learned nothing from the hubris of Arizona Republicans, now plan to conduct their own "forensic audit" of the 2020 election. To make things even worse (and to waste even more taxpayer dollars) the PA "audit" will include multiple counties, not just Arizona's one.

 

A Republican state senator close to former President Donald Trump has announced he will pursue a legislative audit of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.

Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, said Wednesday that he had sent letters to “several counties” asking for “information and materials” needed to conduct a “forensic investigation” of the 2020 general election and the 2021 primary.

“This investigation is not about overturning the results of either election,” he wrote in an opinion piece sent to Pennsylvania news outlets. “The goals are to restore faith in the integrity of our system, confirm the effectiveness of existing legislation on the governance of elections, and identify areas for legislative reform.”

Mastriano, who has promoted false claims of a stolen election, did not respond to a request for comment.

In the op-Ed, the central Pennsylvania lawmaker did not specify which counties he had requested information from. The counties also represent “different geographical regions” and “differing political makeups,” Mastriano said in the opinion piece. He added that it will be a “balanced investigation.”

*At least two counties have confirmed they received a letter from Mastriano: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city and a Democratic stronghold, as well as York County, a large, reliably Republican county in south-central Pennsylvania.

The letter states that legislative changes to the election code, the COVID-19 pandemic, state Supreme Court rulings and actions by former Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar “presented unprecedented challenges” and “combined to cause a great burden on counties and county officials during the general election cycle.”

“The damage to the integrity and confidence in our election process will not be undone with the passing of time,” the letter continues. “I believe the only way to restore confidence in our Commonwealth‘s election process is to undertake a forensic investigation of the election results. By doing this, faith in our election system will be restored.”

The letter requests that York County turnover potentially hundreds of thousands of items, including all ballots cast in the 2020 election, voter rolls, ballot paper samples, cybersecurity protocols, software used through the election process, and the machines used to tabulate results, among others.

Mastriano set a July 31 deadline for the counties to respond with a plan to comply. A subpoena may be issued if a plan to comply with the documents request is not returned by the deadline, the letter says.

A spokesperson for York County declined further comment besides confirming they had received the letter.

 

No doubt that just like Arizona, Pennsylvania's "audit" will subcontract the job out to Trump-friendly Republicans, followed by comically bad faith efforts, a complete travesty of any chain of custody efforts of the ballots and the voting machines, and for a Democratic Secretary of State, in this case Kathy Boockvar, to find that the entire disaster will end up costing multiple counties millions to purchase new voting equipment.

This will go even worse than in the Grand Canyon State, I expect.

Watch.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The right-wing noise machine wants the deadly January 6th insurrection of six months ago to disappear completely from the national stage, and it's working better than even I expected it to.

 

Six months after their leader tried to overturn the election he had lost by more than 7 million votes, Republicans have settled on a message about the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol: Insurrection? What insurrection?

From calls to let bygones be bygones, to punishing dissidents who dare criticize former President Donald Trump for instigating that day’s attack, to literally describing the mob as no different from everyday “tourists,” the Republican Party ― with notable exceptions ― has pushed the idea that the unprecedented attempt to overthrow American democracy was really no big deal.

And, if recent polling is correct, they appear to be succeeding. According to a recent Morning Consult survey, fully 41% of Americans believe that the riot of Jan. 6 has received “too much attention,” compared with 50% who do not. That figure is driven by 68% of Republicans who say that but includes more than a third of independents and even a quarter of Democrats.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who believes the country barely dodged a constitutional crisis on Jan. 6, said many Americans simply would rather not think about that day.

“It’s human nature to suppress terrible forebodings that don’t quite materialize,” he said, adding that the barrage of Trump-inspired crises during his term likely laid the groundwork. “The cascade of terrible events and near-misses over the past four years has desensitized people if not entirely anesthetized them.”

Hans Noel, a political science professor at Georgetown University, said that Republicans also have an active interest in wishing Jan. 6 away.

“Generally, conservatives, particularly those who get their news from other conservatives, will come to downplay the attack,” Noel said. “Some of that is just believing it’s not a big deal. Some of it is not wanting to talk about uncomfortable facts as they come out. But this is the main thing: The partisan messaging on this has been to downplay it for Republicans, Trump supporters and others on the right.”

Whatever its causes, the process of memory-holing that day reflects Trump’s continued success at fashioning an outrageous lie and then browbeating Republican leaders into going along with him.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, for example, said on Jan. 13 on the House floor that Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” Within weeks, he had gone to visit Trump at his Palm Beach resort and posed for a photo with him. And, at the six-month mark of the mob assault, he is attacking those few GOP House members, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, who refuse to bend to Trump’s will.

McCarthy’s office did not respond to HuffPost queries. On Thursday, he said of Cheney’s acceptance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s appointment to serve on a select committee to investigate Jan. 6: “Maybe she’s closer to her than us.” He had warned Republicans who would serve on that panel that they would be stripped of their committee assignments.

“If most Americans have indeed forgotten about Jan. 6, that is in part due to the tenacious efforts of the GOP to downplay it,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University. “For a party whose brand is law enforcement, Jan. 6′s murderous rage against Capitol Police could turn voters off. So they deny the violence ― Trump turned it into ‘hugs and kisses’ ― and block any investigation that would place the facts of it in the public realm.”

 

So yeah, "Why don't you liberals shut up about January 6th already" is a thing, and nearly half the country agrees, even a quarter of Democrats.

 

It's okay though.

 

We'll have a brand-new horrible domestic terrorism event or six to talk about very soon, I imagine.

StupidiNews!

• Florida officials say the search and rescue mission at a collapsed condo building in Surfside has now changed to a recovery mission as the death toll has risen to 46.
• Former US President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn are celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary this week as the Carters will host a reception in their hometown on Saturday.
• A Texas federal judge has found the US Air Force responsible for a 2017 mass church shooting by failing to prevent the gunman from purchasing weapons a background check would have stopped.
• President Biden faces the decision to keep or replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and could replace three other central bank governors this year.
• Chinese mobile phone games are now requiring facial recognition scans to play at night as Beijing cracks down on kids playing games during the country's official nightly gaming curfew for minors.
  

Last Call For Mitch Better Have My Money, Con't

Delusional Republican voters lie to themselves as much as their GOP politicians lie to them, so it all makes sense in the end that reality is meaningless as long as their side "wins".

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for touting the benefits of the stimulus law for his home state of Kentucky. The $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief law cleared Congress in March without any Republican support.

"Vote no and take the dough," Pelosi wrote on Twitter.

At a press conference on Tuesday, McConnell swung between noting his opposition to the federal rescue package and crediting it with providing substantial financial relief for Kentucky.

"Not a single member of my party voted for it. So you're going to get a lot more money," McConnell said. "I didn't vote for it, but you're going to get a lot more money. Cities and counties in Kentucky will get close to $700-$800 million."

The Kentucky Republican said the state was projected to get $4 billion as a result of the stimulus law. "So my advice to members of the legislature and other local officials: Spend it wisely because hopefully this windfall doesn't come along again," McConnell said.

Republicans were staunchly opposed to Biden's stimulus law, which contained $1,400 direct payments, a renewal of federal unemployment benefits, and aid to state and local governments. They argued it was too large and costly after lawmakers had approved a $900 billion federal rescue package late in 2020. Not a single Republican in Congress voted for it.

However, at least a dozen congressional Republicans have since touted parts of the law, such as small business aid, even though they didn't support the law's passage. Biden rebuked the GOP earlier this year for "bragging" about the law, saying, "some people have no shame."

Also on Tuesday, McConnell pledged a bruising political brawl over Democratic efforts to bypass Republicans to implement their infrastructure spending plans. "This is not going to be done on a bipartisan basis," he said. "This is going to be a hell of a fight over what this country ought to look like in the future and it's going to unfold here in the next few weeks."

 

So Mitch to Kentucky:

1. We didn't vote to give you anything.
2. You're getting money because of Biden and the Democrats.
   
3. We're taking credit for it anyway. 
4. Vote Republican!

 Yes, it's delusional. Yes, Republican voters believe every word of it.

Dennis Beckett wasn't even sure he wanted to cash his stimulus check, especially after he received a letter from President Biden announcing its arrival. Beckett, a retired pipe fitter, owns 25 firearms and staunchly opposes the president's call for restrictions on high-capacity magazines.

After thinking about it for a few days, Beckett finally decided to use the money to fix up his century-old home, recently purchased for $30,000.

But even as the stimulus makes his renovation possible, Beckett also blames it for the rising cost of the construction materials he needs. “Ever since January 20th, everything has shot up,” Beckett said, referring to the day Biden was inaugurated. “Just look at gas — it’s $3 a gallon, when it had been $1.79.”

Beckett’s ambivalence is echoed across Monroe County, made up of small towns and family farms tucked in the Appalachian region of southeastern Ohio.

In this impoverished pocket of the United States, the most recent round of stimulus payments — $1,400 for Americans who earn up to $75,000 — was the difference between getting a medical treatment and not, enrolling a child in college and not. But political divisions are deep here, and Trump voters, who make up the great majority of residents, are blaming the payments for a range of ills.

Some here say the Biden stimulus checks are keeping people from work, fueling a sense that the undeserving are exploiting the system. As the price of basic goods climbs, others worry that the stimulus will lead to runaway inflation on wood, cars, even milk.

“My God-honest opinion was at first that it was nice that the government was helping people,” said Brad Jeffries, 50, a truck driver who was laid off for most of last year and used the stimulus to pay off bills. “But since we got that, everything has went up, so how is that helping people out?”

This former Democratic stronghold has shifted right recently, and many residents now refer to the area as “Trump country.” In 2020, President Donald Trump received an average of 72 percent of the vote in the 420 counties covered by the Appalachian Regional Commission, a joint federal-state agency that steers resources to the 13-state region.

Biden has promised to win some of those voters back with economic incentives like the stimulus and the expanded child tax credit program, which will begin monthly payments to parents in mid-July of $350 per-child under the age 6, and $250 per child for children between 6 and 17.

A Washington Post analysis estimates that more than 90 percent of Trump voters in Monroe County received stimulus checks, one of the highest rates in the region.

“The president understands when we raise the quality of life and achievement of rural America, we improve the quality of life for all Americans,” said Gayle Manchin, whom Biden appointed co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission this spring.

But many of Monroe County’s Trump supporters don’t see it that way. Danny Long, a 41-year-old truck driver, was unemployed for much of last year and was behind on rent and utility bills.

The stimulus helped him catch up. But he credits Republicans for the checks, noting that Americans also received two stimulus payments during the last year of Trump’s presidency. “Biden didn’t do this,” Long said. “Trump did.”

 

So either the Biden stimulus "caused inflation", rather than the basic economics of demand reasserting itself after a depression-strength crash, or it's the Trump stimulus and he gets the credit for it. Also, apparently only Trump voters matter. You'd never, ever, ever see a single story where the people who voted for Biden are happy that they got the money they needed.

You can't win over a self-delusional cultist.

Dems need to stop trying to save people who would literally rather die than be helped and save who want to be helped. You will never appease them, and they will never stop trying to destroy Democrats and their voters.

They will never, ever stop.

Hack The Planet, Con't

So it turns out that the July 4th weekend cyberattack on global companies was really cover for Russian-linked hacker group Cozy Bear to try to hit the Republican National Committee.

Russian government hackers breached the computer systems of the Republican National Committee last week, around the time a Russia-linked criminal group unleashed a massive ransomware attack, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The government hackers were part of a group known as APT 29 or Cozy Bear, according to the people. That group has been tied to Russia’s foreign intelligence service and has previously been accused of breaching the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and of carrying out a supply-chain cyberattack involving SolarWinds Corp., which infiltrated nine U.S. government agencies and was disclosed in December.

It’s not known what data the hackers viewed or stole, if anything. The RNC has repeatedly denied that it was hacked. “There is no indication the RNC was hacked or any RNC information was stolen,” spokesman Mike Reed said.

In a statement following the publication of this story, Chief of Staff Richard Walters said the RNC learned over the weekend that a third-party provider, Synnex Corp., had been breached.

“We immediately blocked all access from Synnex accounts to our cloud environment,” he said. “Our team worked with Microsoft to conduct a review of our systems and after a thorough investigation, no RNC data was accessed. We will continue to work with Microsoft, as well as federal law enforcement officials, on this matter.”

In a statement, Microsoft declined to provide additional details. “We can’t talk about the specifics of any particular case without customer permission,” a company spokesperson said. “We continue to track malicious activity from nation-state threat actors -- as we do routinely -- and notify impacted customers.”

A spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The attack on the RNC, coupled with the recent ransomware attack, is a major provocation to President Joe Biden, who warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about cyberattacks at a June 16 summit. It’s not clear if the attack on the RNC is connected in any way to the ransomware attacks, which exploited multiple previously unknown vulnerabilities in software from Miami-based Kaseya Ltd.

The hackers are suspected to have attacked the RNC through Fremont, California-based Synnex, the people said, asking not to be identified as they weren’t authorized to discuss confidential matters. In a press release, Synnex said “it is aware of a few instances where outside actors have attempted to gain access, through Synnex, to customer applications within the Microsoft cloud environment.”

“As our review continues, we are unable to provide any specific details,” said Michael Urban, president of worldwide technology solutions distribution at Synnex in a statement to Bloomberg News. “As with any security issue, a full review of all companies, systems, third-party applications and related IT solutions must be completed before final determinations can be made.”

 

Now, I find it extremely interesting that the RNC is flatly denying that it lost any data at all, when politically it would benefit them to say that the effort "proved" that Biden was weak, or that Trump was strong, or that it was all a part of a grand Russian "collusion" conspiracy with the Democrats to hurt Republicans. Those accusations I'm sure are coming, but for now, the initial, immediate reaction was that the attack failed to accomplish the stated goal.

It's possible that the RNC is actually telling the truth, but, well, that's unlikely now, isn't it?

Anyway, there's two possibilities, that 1) the attack worked because the Russians absolutely want to keep the GOP under their thumb with possible blackmail material, or 2) it failed and eventually this all changes to "the Dems were in on it" which is ludicrous, but this is the era of flat earth, anti-vax, and the Big Lie.

There is a third possibility, that there was never an attack on the RNC's third-party provider at all and it's all a massive false flag, but who knows with cyberattacks? They have built in plausible deniability.

Anyway, don't take anything the RNC says at face value. But you already knew that...

Haiti President Jovenel Moïse Assassinated

Word this morning that Haiti's leader, President Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated by armed gunmen in his own home overnight, and that reports are that his wife Martine also succumbed to her injuries.

President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti was assassinated in an attack in the early hours of Wednesday at his home on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the prime minister said.

Mr. Moïse’s wife, Martine Moïse, was also shot in the attack, Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a statement. Her condition was not immediately clear.

“A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president of the republic and thus fatally wounded the head of state,” the prime minister said.

Mr. Joseph said in a telephone interview that he was the one running the country at the moment.

The news rocked the impoverished Caribbean island nation 675 miles southeast of Miami. Haiti has a long history of dictatorships and coups.

The country fought to emerge from one of the world’s most brutal slave colonies, one that brought France great wealth and that the colonial rulers fought to keep.

What started as a slave uprising at the turn of the 18th century eventually led to the stunning defeat of Napoleon’s forces in 1803. More recently, the country suffered under more than two decades of dictatorship by François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, and then his son, Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc.

A priest from a poor area, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, became the first democratically elected president in 1990. But in less than a year, he was deposed in a coup.

In recent months, the streets of Haiti have become clogged with angry protests demanding the removal of Mr. Moïse. He had clung to power, ruling by decree for more than a year, with many — including constitutional scholars and legal experts — contending that his term had expired.

Since a devastating earthquake 11 years ago, the country has not rebuilt, and many say it is worse off, despite billions of dollars of reconstruction aid. Armed gangs control the streets and have taken to kidnapping even schoolchildren and church pastors in the middle of their services. Poverty and hunger are on the rise, and the government has been accused of enriching itself while not providing even the most basic services.

Mr. Joseph said that the president had been “cowardly assassinated,” but that the murderers “cannot assassinate his ideas.” He called on the country to “stay calm” and said he would address the nation on Wednesday. He said the country’s security situation was under the control of the police and the army.

But international observers warned that the situation could quickly spiral out of control.

Didier Le Bret, a former French ambassador to Haiti, said he hoped Mr. Joseph would be able to run the country, despite his lack of political legitimacy.

“There is no more Parliament, the Senate is missing for a long time, there’s no president of the Court of Cassation,” Mr. Le Bret said, adding of Mr. Joseph: “Everything will rest on him.”

 

We'll see where this ends up, but it's going to be very tragic all the way around. The international community could finally get off its ass and help Haiti, it's been more than a decade. The earthquake there was a story I covered on ZVTS way back at our start.

Now another earthquake, the political kind, has devastated the place.

We talk about disasters a lot here, but this is definitely one of them.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll in the condo collapse in Surfside, Florida has risen to 36 as 109 remain unaccounted for as Tropical Storm Elsa is expected to reach Category 1 Hurricane strength before hitting Florida.
• Last week's heat wave in British Columbia, Canada may have killed more than one billion tidal animals like starfish and mussels off the coast of Vancouver.
  
• Eric Adams will win the NYC Democratic Mayoral Primary, with a narrow lead that is only expected to grow in the ranked-choice counting.
• The Biden Administration is advising the Saudi and UAE governments as OPEC's next round of oil price talks get underway this month.
• NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, accompanying the Perseverance rover, has now completed its ninth flight in less than three months, going further and faster each time.
  

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

When it's clear you're not wanted somewhere, go somewhere else where you are.

Journalists Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates are joining Howard University’s faculty, school officials announced Tuesday in a major recruiting victory for the private institution in the nation’s capital.

The surprising development came less than a week after trustees for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill voted to award tenure to Hannah-Jones. Initially, the public university hired her as a professor without the job-protection status. But its board of trustees approved tenure for her on Wednesday, after faculty and students at Chapel Hill protested that she had been mistreated.

In an interview Tuesday on CBS This Morning, Hannah-Jones said she would not join the UNC faculty.

Now Hannah-Jones will have tenure at Howard in the new position of Knight Chair in Race and Journalism, starting this summer at the historically Black university in Washington.

“I am so incredibly honored to be joining one of the most important and storied educational institutions in our country … ” Hannah-Jones said in a statement. “One of my few regrets is that I did not attend Howard as an undergraduate, and so coming here to teach fulfills a dream I have long carried.”

Hannah-Jones will also found a Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard. She said it will aim to train journalism students from historically Black schools to “accurately and urgently [cover] the challenges of our democracy with a clarity, skepticism, rigor and historical dexterity that is too often missing from today’s journalism.”

Coates, an award-winning author known for his work on topics including race and white supremacy, will be a writer-in-residence in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, and hold the Sterling Brown Chair in the English department. He said in an interview he plans to teach a class in creative writing next year.

“That really is the community that made me,” Coates said. “I would not be who I am without the faculty at Howard.”

Coates also has plans to finish his bachelor’s degree, which he started at Howard in 1993. He hasn’t picked a major but said he’d like to learn more about math, science and economics.

 

A very wise move for Hannah-Jones, Coates, Howard U., and for Black Lives Mattering.

 

In another life I would have graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill's journalism school myself, I understand why Hannah-Jones pursued the offer. But to create a journalism program, well...that's something that will long outlive you. That's a legacy.

Oh, and Howard U. got $20 million from their own rich donors to do it.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Report on that.

Ghosts In The Machines, Con't

The same Russian-based cyberattack gang that hit America's largest meatpacker five weeks ago has now hit multiple corporations across the globe over the July 4th holiday weekend, and the villains are demanding $70 million to free all their victims.

Cybersecurity teams worked feverishly Sunday to stem the impact of the single biggest global ransomware attack on record, with some details emerging about how the Russia-linked gang responsible breached the company whose software was the conduit.

An affiliate of the notorious REvil gang, best known for extorting $11 million from the meat-processor JBS after a Memorial Day attack, infected thousands of victims in at least 17 countries on Friday, largely through firms that remotely manage IT infrastructure for multiple customers, cybersecurity researchers said.

REvil was demanding ransoms of up to $5 million, the researchers said. But late Sunday it offered in a posting on its dark web site a universal decryptor software key that would unscramble all affected machines in exchange for $70 million in cryptocurrency.

Earlier, the FBI said in a statement that while it was investigating the attack its scale “may make it so that we are unable to respond to each victim individually.” Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger later issued a statement saying President Joe Biden had “directed the full resources of the government to investigate this incident” and urged all who believed they were compromised to alert the FBI.

Biden suggested Saturday the U.S. would respond if it was determined that the Kremlin is at all involved.

Less than a month ago, Biden pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop giving safe haven to REvil and other ransomware gangs whose unrelenting extortionary attacks the U.S. deems a national security threat.

A broad array of businesses and public agencies were hit by the latest attack, apparently on all continents, including in financial services, travel and leisure and the public sector — though few large companies, the cybersecurity firm Sophos reported. Ransomware criminals infiltrate networks and sow malware that cripples them by scrambling all their data. Victims get a decoder key when they pay up.

The Swedish grocery chain Coop said most of its 800 stores would be closed for a second day Sunday because their cash register software supplier was crippled. A Swedish pharmacy chain, gas station chain, the state railway and public broadcaster SVT were also hit.

In Germany, an unnamed IT services company told authorities several thousand of its customers were compromised, the news agency dpa reported. Also among reported victims were two big Dutch IT services companies — VelzArt and Hoppenbrouwer Techniek. Most ransomware victims don’t publicly report attacks or disclose if they’ve paid ransoms.

CEO Fred Voccola of the breached software company, Kaseya, estimated the victim number in the low thousands, mostly small businesses like “dental practices, architecture firms, plastic surgery centers, libraries, things like that.”

Voccola said in an interview that only between 50-60 of the company’s 37,000 customers were compromised. But 70% were managed service providers who use the company’s hacked VSA software to manage multiple customers. It automates the installation of software and security updates and manages backups and other vital tasks.

Experts say it was no coincidence that REvil launched the attack at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, knowing U.S. offices would be lightly staffed. Many victims may not learn of it until they are back at work on Monday. Most end users of managed service providers “have no idea” whose software keep their networks humming, said Voccola,

Kaseya said it sent a detection tool to nearly 900 customers on Saturday night.

The REvil offer to offer blanket decryption for all victims of the Kaseya attack in exchange for $70 million suggested its inability to cope with the sheer quantity of infected networks, said Allan Liska, an analyst with the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Although analysts reported seeing demands of $5 million and $500,000 for bigger targets, it was apparently demanding $45,000 for most.

“This attack is a lot bigger than they expected and it is getting a lot of attention. It is in REvil’s interest to end it quickly,” said Liska. “This is a nightmare to manage.”

 

In other words, the bad guys caught so many victims in their nets that they're demanding a blanket ransom for everyone.  If anything, they're victims of their own success. Too bad for them though that they've just caught international attention.

We'll see what happens.

The Big Lie, Con't

Republicans heading into the 2022 midterm elections are openly running on the Big Lie, not only using it to justify removing President Biden from the Oval Office and "restoring" Trump as president, but using it for justification to advocate removing Democrats from power by any means necessary.

A candidate to be Arizona’s top elections official said recently he hopes a review of 2020 ballots underway in his state will lead to the reversal of former president Donald Trump’s defeat there.

In Georgia, a member of Congress who used to focus primarily on culturally conservative causes such as opposing same-sex marriage has made Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen a central element of his bid to try to unseat the current secretary of state.

And in Virginia last month, a political novice who joined Trump’s legal team to try to overturn his 2020 loss in court mounted a fierce primary challenge — and won — after attacking a Republican state House member who said he had seen no evidence of widespread fraud in the election.

“He wasn’t doing anything — squat, diddly,” Wren Williams said in an interview about his primary opponent. “He wasn’t taking election integrity seriously. I’m sitting here fighting for election integrity in the courts, and he’s my elected representative who can legislate and he’s not.”

Across the country, as campaigns gear up for a handful of key races this year and the pivotal 2022 midterms, Republican candidates for state and federal offices are increasingly focused on the last election — running on the falsehood spread by Trump and his allies that the 2020 race was stolen from him.

While most of these campaigns are in their early stages, the embrace of Trump’s claims is already widespread on the trail and in candidates’ messages to voters. The trend provides fresh evidence of Trump’s continued grip on the GOP, reflecting how a movement inspired by his claims and centered on overturning a democratic election has gained currency in the party since the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Dozens of candidates promoting the baseless notion that the election was rigged are seeking powerful statewide offices — such as governor, attorney general and secretary of state, which would give them authority over the administration of elections — in several of the decisive states where Trump and his allies sought to overturn the outcome and engineer his return to the White House.

Many are newcomers to politics. They boast campaign websites proclaiming “America First,” call themselves patriots or tout their military service.

Some, including Chuck Gray of Wyoming, declare “election integrity” their top priority. Gray is one of at least six pro-Trump Republicans challenging Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has denounced Trump and voted to impeach him on a charge that he incited the Capitol attack.

And many are current Republican officeholders, lining up to seek reelection, who have backed Trump’s efforts over the past eight months by questioning the validity of the 2020 result, taking legislative votes or signing on to official efforts to overturn it.

Of the nearly 700 Republicans who have filed initial paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run next year for either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives, at least a third have embraced Trump’s false claims about his defeat.

Many of them — 136 — are sitting members of Congress who voted against Joe Biden’s electoral college victory on Jan. 6.

Similarly, of the nearly 600 state lawmakers who publicly embraced Trump’s false claims, about 500 face reelection this year or next. Most of them signed legal briefs or resolutions challenging Biden’s victory. At least 16 of them attended the Jan. 6 protest in Washington.

“What’s really frightening right now is the extent of the effort to steal power over future elections,” said Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state in Colorado. “That’s what we’re seeing across the nation. Literally in almost every swing state, we have someone running for secretary of state who has been fearmongering about the 2020 election or was at the insurrection. Democracy will be on the ballot in 2022.”

 

Republicans figure they can nullify enough Democratic wins in 2022 to take control of the House and Senate, bury Biden in impeachment for two years, and take over more states in 2024. The result will be an electoral college impossible for the Democrats to win, because Republicans in enough states will simply declare that Trump, or whoever is running on the GOP ticket in 2024, is automatically the winner.

The "election fraud" will be the justification for action against Democrats at all levels. It'll get ugly, fast. I still believe people are badly underestimating the probability of widespread, organized violence in the months ahead.

StupidiNews!

• Tropical Storm Elsa is crossing over Cuba and headed for Florida on Wednesday as the state prepares for heavy winds and rain.
• Legal experts say Ivanka Trump may be the next target in the ongoing investigation of the Trump Organization's criminal finance probe.
• Rescue crews in Japan are resuming their search for 24 missing in landslides over the weekend as heavy rains have cleared for now.
• Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel remains hospitalized for a second day after being diagnosed with COVID-19 last week, the 48-year-old Bettel is stable condition for now.
• Analysts say the pandemic finished off Columbus, Ohio's status as America's "Smart City" as a $50 million, five-year grant from the Department of Transportation was largely wasted.