BREAKING: Last Call For The Last Watch

The worst has come to pass with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas.

The court, in a statement, said Ginsburg died at her home in Washington surrounded by family. She was 87.

"Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature," Chief Justice John Roberts said. "We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tired and resolute champion of justice."

Architect of the legal fight for women's rights in the 1970s, Ginsburg subsequently served 27 years on the nation's highest court, becoming its most prominent member. Her death will inevitably set in motion what promises to be a nasty and tumultuous political battle over who will succeed her, and it thrusts the Supreme Court vacancy into the spotlight of the presidential campaign.

Just days before her death, as her strength waned, Ginsburg dictated this statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."

She knew what was to come. Ginsburg's death will have profound consequences for the court and the country. Inside the court, not only is the leader of the liberal wing gone, but with the Court about to open a new term, Chief Justice John Roberts no longer holds the controlling vote in closely contested cases.

Though he has a consistently conservative record in most cases, he has split from fellow conservatives in a few important ones, this year casting his vote with liberals, for instance, to at least temporarily protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation by the Trump administration, to uphold a major abortion precedent, and to uphold bans on large church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. But with Ginsburg gone, there is no clear court majority for those outcomes.

Of course, a third Trump justice will be nominated to the court before the end of the month and approved by Mitch McConnell days before the election, and if not before the election, held as a carrot and prime negotiation tool for late November, or early December.  It's the final blow to the country, one that we will not recover from, starting with the end of Obamacare.

Indeed, a week after the upcoming presidential election, the court is for the third time scheduled to hear a challenge brought by Republicans to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. In 2012 the high court upheld the law by a 5-to-4 vote, with Chief Justice Roberts casting the deciding vote and writing the opinion for the majority. But this time the outcome may well be different.

That's because Ginsburg's death gives Republicans the chance to tighten their grip on the court with another Trump appointment that would give conservatives a 6-to-3 majority. And that would mean that even a defection on the right would leave conservatives with enough votes to prevail in the Obamacare case and many others.

So here we are. Once again we are betting the entire country on Republican senators doing the right thing here when they have every reason to not do it. And every previous time they have failed us, failed history, failed themselves.

Now they will fail one more time, and we are undone as a nation.

Unless...?

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

At an event at the National Archives on Constitution Day, Donald Trump officially declared war on free speech and vowed that "systemic racism will be removed from our schools"...

..wait, no I'm being told that "teaching that systemic racism exists will be removed from our schools" because it's "child abuse".

Donald Trump, speaking slowly and in dark tones, warned a "radical movement" on the political left is intent on pushing “propaganda” to undermine what he called Americans’ “heritage” and bring about an undefined form of “segregation” that he claimed would “destroy” the country.

Using that National Archives Museum that houses the country’s founding documents as a venue, the president delivered what amounted to a campaign speech on Constitution Day that railed against “critical race theory” and declared in a message to his conservative base: “We will never submit to tyranny.” He openly ignored the United States’ complex history of slavery and appeared to appeal to parts of his base that deal in widely dismissed conspiracy theories.

“This radical movement is attempting to demolish these treasures” he said of America’s history and what he described as Americans “precious inheritance.”

Speaking with grim-but-vague proclamations and warnings, the president said: “We can’t let that happen.”

“Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders [in a] campaign of violence and anarchy,” he said, apparently referring to protests across the country stemming from the deaths of black people while interacting with white police officers.

In the ornate hall in Washington, the president bemoaned “far-left demonstrators” and warned “the left has launched a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement.”

Describing the news media and many large US corporations as allies of these so-called “radicals,” the president issued a warning to what appeared to be his white, conservative base: “The goal is the same: To silence dissent” and “to scare you out of speaking the truth.”

The president said he made the short drive down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington “to declare we will never submit to tyranny.”

To  recap, Trump will stop the "tyranny" of the fact that the Founding Fathers tolerated slavery in the Constitution by forming the "National Commission to Promote Patriotic Education"("1776 Commission", a direct attack on the 1619 Project) to remove teaching of this fact from America's schools, colleges, and universities using the coercive power of the federal government to silence it.

This is "freedom".  Critical Race Theory is now proscribed terrorist propaganda, and those who do teach it I'm sure are already on Trump's Enemies List.

Structural, systemic racism does not exist in America, the Greatest Nation on Earth™.

Those who teach otherwise will be dealt with in a Trump second term, citizen.

Barely Masking Their Hatred

The US Postal Service, the White House Coronavirus Task Force (led by Mike Pence) and several textile manufacturers had a plan ready to go in April to deliver reusable cloth masks -- some 650 million -- to every postal household in America, starting in states with large outbreaks like New York and New Jersey.

Trump killed the plan because it would "ensure panic", fired then Postmater General Megan Brennan, and had Louis DeJoy appointed two months later.

It would be months before Louis DeJoy took the reins of the nation’s mail system, and the U.S. Postal Service already was mired in crisis.

Mail carriers were revolting, fearful they had few protections against the newly emerging coronavirus. The Trump administration was bearing down on its finances, sending USPS officials scrambling over what they saw as a potential illegal takeover of agency operations. And then there was a looming standoff with Amazon, which privately signaled it could take some of its lucrative delivery business elsewhere.

The tensions surfaced at an April 9 meeting, when Amazon executives “stated their concerns” about the Postal Service’s economic plight amid the pandemic and questioned its “viability to them as a continued shipping partner,” according to a once-secret memo circulated within the agency, which described the situation as an “inflection point.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The wide-ranging headaches that so troubled the USPS in April ultimately foreshadowed a summer of upheaval, thrusting the once-venerated mail service into a political maelstrom months before a presidential election. Newly disclosed details of these struggles are laid bare in nearly 10,000 pages of emails, legal memos, presentations and other documents obtained by The Washington Post from American Oversight, a watchdog group that requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents, which mostly span March and April, depict an agency in distress, as its deteriorating finances collided with a public-health emergency and a looming election that would be heavily reliant on absentee ballots. During that period, the USPS occasionally relied on the legal counsel of well-connected Republicans, including Stefan C. Passantino, who once served as a top White House lawyer under President Trump. Passantino, whose role has not been previously reported, is also part of a new pro-Trump legal coalition preparing for the possibility of a contested election, a relationship that has raised new ethical flags among the administration’s critics.

Read the scrapped USPS announcement to send 5 masks to every American household

The records also offer fresh detail about the Postal Service’s precarious position in the White House’s early pandemic response. At one point in April, USPS leaders drafted a news release announcing plans to distribute 650 million masks nationwide, enough to offer five face coverings to every American household. The document, which includes quotations from top USPS officials and other specifics, was never sent. But it suggests that the government’s initial interest in tapping the Postal Service as part of its campaign to combat the coronavirus may have been far more advanced than initially reported this spring.

The Postal Service declined to discuss its specific dealings with the White House, Treasury Department or Amazon about plans to distribute masks or its finances. David Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, stressed in a statement that the mail agency is “firmly committed to being a source of constancy and reliability in every community.”

“Our more than 630,000 employees are working to make sure our customers can depend on us,” he added. “We’re on the front lines — delivering needed medicines, supplies, benefit checks, financial statements and the important correspondence every family counts on.”

But the emails and other records offer fresh insight about the Postal Service, its philosophical shifts and the little-known board of governors overseeing its operations and finances. Lawmakers already have trained their attention on board leader Robert M. Duncan, a top Republican financier, for his political ties. The board later picked DeJoy, whose support for Trump, history of GOP fundraising and controversial USPS cost-cutting moves have stoked widespread criticism.

Trump could have saved thousands of lives, but he didn't want to.

He didn't want to admit the federal government had any responsibility in additional role to play other than giving out respirators that were already stockpiled and making governors responsible for them.

He didn't want to be seen as responsible for a problem he had already admitted was going to "go away" in a matter of weeks.

Most of all, he didn't want to help poor people who didn't have masks in blue states. He wanted them to all get sick and die for the sin of not voting for him. They weren't human to him, just vermin to be eradicated. He made sure that not only this plan was going to die screaming, he replaced the Postmaster General to make sure it would never happen.

The man is a monster.

Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

There's no better example than the adage "The GOP has a much larger bigotry problem than just Donald Trump" than Georgia's 14th Congressional district and QAnon conspiracy theorist, avowed white supremacist, anti-Semite, Islamophobic jackass Marjorie Taylor Greene.

And now that Greene's Democratic opponent has been driven out of the race abruptly by threats from Greene's fellow travelers, Greene now has nothing to stop her from joining the House in 2021. As expected from the White Supremacy party, Republicans are now dropping any and all opposition to her and embracing her hate-filled views as one of their own, starting with GOP Rep. Steve Scalise.

Scalise told CNN this week that he wants to sit down with Greene, a first-time candidate and the owner of a commercial construction company, and talk about her goals, noting repeatedly he's been told she's "very strongly" against abortion. 

"The people that know her say her real drives and passions are fighting for life and battling socialism," said Scalise. "Those are things that a lot of people are very interested in fighting for." 

"You got to respect every district, and I think I owe it to her to have a real good candid conversation," he added. 

Despite Greene espousing views that many see as racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic, Republicans are working to bring her into the fold -- and are insisting they expect her to be a team player if she comes to Washington next year. Many are happy about comments Greene made last month backing away from promoting "Q," an anonymous central character in a conspiracy theory that claims that President Donald Trump secretly fights to bring down a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. The FBI has warned such fringe conspiracy views amount to a domestic terror threat. 

Greene has called "Q" a "patriot" who is "worth listening to." But in August, she told Fox News that QAnon "wasn't part of my campaign" and that once she "started finding misinformation," she "chose another path." CNN asked Greene campaign manager Isaiah Wartman whether she is denouncing QAnon; Wartman referred CNN to their press office, which did not respond to a request for comment. 

While Greene distanced herself from the fringe movement, she stopped short of disavowing it. 

But top Republicans believe her comments to Fox News were sufficient. 

"Marjorie also came out and denounced QAnon," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told CNN on Wednesday. When asked about her past offensive and racist comments, McCarthy said as he walked into his office: "I raised my concerns about those." 

Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of the House GOP leadership, was satisfied with Greene's comments on Fox News and added that she backs her candidacy. 

"We've got to make sure we get every Republican elected -- she's fighting hard and that's an important seat for us to keep," Cheney said.

I can't wait until Greene is on the House floor in a few months, screaming for federal prosecution of Democrats. No doubt she'll end up on the House Intel or Homeland Security committees demanding investigations and arrests of "traitors".

I've referenced the Ten Stages of Genocide on this blog before, and we're definitely deep into Stage 7, heading for Stage 8.

VII. PREPARATION

National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution” to the Jewish, Armenian, Tutsi or other targeted group “question.” They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.” They build armies, buy weapons and train their troops and militias. They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group. Leaders often claim that “if we don’t kill them, they will kill us,” disguising genocide as self-defense. There is a sudden increase in inflammatory rhetoric and hate propaganda with the objective of creating fear of the other group. Political processes such as peace accords that threaten the dominance of the ruling group through elections or prosecution for corruption may actually trigger genocide.
Prevention of preparation may include arms embargo​e​s and commissions to enforce them. It should include prosecution of incitement and conspiracy to commit genocide, both crimes under Article 3 of the Genocide Convention.

National law enforcement authorities should arrest and prosecute leaders of groups planning genocidal massacres.

Let's remember that QAnon is a domestic terrorist group, and that we have multiple White Supremacist domestic terrorism militias in the United States, that are often composed of national law enforcement authorities.

We're already dipping our toes into the bloody ocean of Stage 8 as well.

VIII. PERSECUTION

Victims are identified and separated out because of their national, ethnic, racial or religious identity. The victim group’s most basic human rights are systematically violated through extrajudicial killings, torture and forced displacement. Death lists are drawn up. In state sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are segregated into ghettoes, deported to concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. They are deliberately deprived of resources such as water or food in order to slowly destroy the group. Programs are implemented to prevent procreation through forced sterilization or abortions. Children are forcibly taken from their parents. Genocidal massacres begin. All of these destructive acts are acts of genocide outlawed by the Genocide Convention. They are acts of genocide because they intentionally destroy part of a group. The perpetrators watch for whether such massacres are opposed by any effective international response. If there is no reaction, they realize they can get away with genocide. The perpetrators know that the U.N., regional organizations, and nations with powerful militaries will again be bystanders and permit another genocide.

When it comes to the regime's deportation program, ICE camps,  family separation, mass deportation, and now as we have learned, forced sterilizations, we are definitely in Stage 8.

After that point, the shooting starts in earnest.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr keeps getting closer and closer to full-blown authoritarianism, and extra-legal retribution against Trump's enemies' list as his main job.

Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call.

The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named describing Mr. Barr’s comments because they feared retribution.

The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions.

The directives are in keeping with Mr. Barr’s approach to prosecute crimes as aggressively as possible in cities where protests have given way to violence. But in suggesting possible prosecution of Ms. Durkan, a Democrat, Mr. Barr also took aim at an elected official whom President Trump has repeatedly attacked.

Justice Department representatives did not respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported Mr. Barr’s remarks about sedition.

The disclosures came as Mr. Barr directly inserted himself into the presidential race in recent days to warn that the United States would be on the brink of destruction if Mr. Trump lost. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could find itself “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if Mr. Trump lost and that the country faced “a clear fork in the road.”

Mr. Barr’s actions have thrust the Justice Department into the political fray at a time when Democrats and former law enforcement officials have expressed fears that he is politicizing the department, particularly by intervening in legal matters in ways that benefit Mr. Trump or his circle of friends and advisers.

The protest zone in Seattle became a flash point in the national debate over issues of race and policing this summer. Officers had abandoned the police station there for weeks before retaking it in late July amid escalating violence, including deadly shootings. Ms. Durkan said at the time that she had been forced to act because of the lawlessness.

Days later, federal Homeland Security officials sent tactical agents to the city. Ms. Durkan protested that their arrival would potentially exacerbate tensions between residents and local officials.

Mr. Trump has called the people who lived in the zone “domestic terrorists” and warned that Ms. Durkan and Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington needed to regain control of the area. “If you don’t do it, I will,” the president wrote on Twitter. “This is not a game.”

It's not a game. And in a second Trump term, thousands of dissenters and resisters are most likely going to jail, along with Democrats.

The larger issue, besides Barr criminalizing dissent quite literally, is the fact that Donald Trump is encouraging his supporters to deadly violence.  Barr should be going after Trump.

We have to do everything we can to stop that future from coming to pass.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Support for Black Lives Matter is running into the "Biden will destroy the suburbs" racist propaganda, and it's working on white voters in particular. The backlash is here.

As racial justice protests have intensified following the shooting of Jacob Blake, public support for the Black Lives Matter movement has declined, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. A majority of U.S. adults (55%) now express at least some support for the movement, down from 67% in June amid nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd. The share who say they strongly support the movement stands at 29%, down from 38% three months ago.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been back in the spotlight due to this summer’s protests. The new survey findings come as confrontations between protesters and police have escalated in some cities and as President Donald Trump has stepped up his criticism of the movement.

The recent decline in support for the Black Lives Matter movement is particularly notable among White and Hispanic adults. In June, a majority of White adults (60%) said they supported the movement at least somewhat; now, fewer than half (45%) express at least some support. The share of Hispanic adults who support the movement has decreased 11 percentage points, from 77% in June to 66% today. By comparison, support for the Black Lives Matter movement has remained virtually unchanged among Black and Asian adults.

Support for the Black Lives Matter movement remains particularly widespread among Black adults. Some 87% of Black Americans say they support the movement, similar to the share who said this in June. However, the share of Black adults expressing strong support for the movement has decreased 9 points, from 71% to 62%.

The partisan divide in support for the Black Lives Matter movement – which was already striking in June – has widened even more. Among Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party, about two-in-ten (19%) now say they support the movement at least somewhat, down from four-in-ten in June. The share of Democrats and Democratic leaners who support the movement (88%) has not changed considerably.

The partisan gap is similar among White adults. About nine-in-ten White Democrats (88%) express at least some support for the Black Lives Matter movement, compared with 16% of White Republicans. And while about half of White Democrats (51%) say they strongly support the movement, just 2% of White Republicans say the same.

White Republicans in particular have decided that Black folks deserve all the police brutality, murder, and suffering we can get in order to stop "riots".  Video of George Floyd had 37% of white Republicans support BLM in June, it's now 16%. Running police propaganda on FOX for three months has cut white Republican support of BLM by more than half. 

Creating the "All Lives Matter" backlash absolutely worked on the people most in need of the badly-needed perspective that Black people are human.

It always does, generation after generation.

Black Lives Still Matter.

StupidiNews!

• Rescue crews are working in "historic flooding" on the Gulf Coast as the remnants of Hurricane Sally dropped 30 inches of rain in 24 hours in parts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
• High winds this weekend could fuel more wildfires on the West Coast as California braces for more wildfire-related problems.
• Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield was "confused" and "contradicted himself" correcting Trump's claims a COVID-19 vaccine would be widely ready in 2020.
• A new Quinnipiac poll finds SC GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham is tied with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, the poll shows both men at 48%.
• Donald Trump has dismissed Republican Michael O'Rielly on the FCC, O'Rielly will be replaced by White House advisor Nathan Simington in order to fast track social media retribution regulation.

Last Call For Clown Hall

Trump's Tuesday town hall meeting and interview with ABC's George Stephanopolous did not go well, even by Republican debate spin standards, from people like former McConnell aide and CNN GOP contributor Scott Jennings.

Donald Trump's town hall with ABC News did not go well, although I give him credit for agreeing to a road game in a hostile gym. The President had a few decent moments in Philadelphia Tuesday, but the event showed he is simply better in a pugilistic debate with an opponent than he is in addressing individual voters in a "townhall" format. 

Not that the negative interactions were all his fault. This was billed as a conversation with "uncommitted" voters, which is, charitably, baloney. Most of the questions were hostile, and several of the questioners quite clearly have no intention whatsoever of voting for Trump. 

It actually speaks to a larger question about the American electorate -- is there really anyone uncommitted at this point? There is no ambivalence about Trump. You love him or you hate him. And some people who love him are going to vote against him, because they are exhausted. And some people who hate him are going to vote for him because they see his opposition as unhinged and ridiculous. 

Trump also had to fight off relentless badgering from ABC's chief anchor George Stephanopoulos. This is Stephanopoulos' job, I guess, and Trump often says things that are so ridiculous that he invites the badgering. But this format was supposed to be about Trump and the voters and it was frequently about Trump and the anchor. This show should've been unmoderated.

If that's the best the GOP can spin it, it was an unmitigated disaster, and it was.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And the first one comes from Paul Tubiana.

Paul, take it away.

TRUMP: Hi, Paul.

TUBIANA: Mr. President, I voted for you in 2016. I’m a conservative, pro-life and diabetic. I’ve had to dodge people who don’t care about social distancing and wearing face masks.

I thought you were doing a good job with the pandemic response until about May 1st. Then you took your foot off the gas pedal. Why did you throw vulnerable people like me under the bus?

TRUMP: Well, we really didn’t, Paul. We’ve worked very hard on the pandemic. We’ve worked very hard. It came off from China. They should have never let it happen.

And if you looked at what we’ve done with ventilators, and now, frankly, with vaccines --we’re very close to having the vaccine.

If you want to know the truth, the previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine because of the FDA and all the approvals, and we’re within weeks of getting it. You know, could be three weeks, four weeks, but we think we have it. Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, we have great companies and they're very, very close.

It’s been very... it’s a terrible thing, but if you look at...as an example, are you from New York? Where are you from?

TUBIANA: Originally I’m from New York. I’ve lived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

TRUMP: I see.

TUBIANA: For 18 1/2 years. This is the longest place I’ve ever lived.

TRUMP: Well, that’s very good. It’s a good place. But actually, if you look at what we’ve done for various things -- we built hospitals. New York, we took the convention center, converted it to 2,800 rooms. We brought in the ships. I wish they would have used it, because, frankly, they would have saved a lot of people had they used it.

As Steve M. points out, Trump going straight to a pile of tangentially related arguments, one on top of the other, is classic Gish Gallop. We'll see it in all three debates, most likely.

Maybe he won't be like that in the debates with Joe Biden. Maybe he'll be the nasty attack dog of the MAGA rallies. I think it's possible that his testosterone will get the better of him (or Biden will goad him) and he'll go on the attack. If so, that will hurt him. What much of America dislikes about him more than anything is his tone.

But if he restrains himself, low-info voters might conclude that he's done what he's done the past four years out of a sense of good judgment. He'll lie and lie and lie, and Biden will be forced to pick his spots in rebutting those lies, which means most of them will get through unchallenged.

I'm not really worried. Polls suggest that there aren't very many undecided voters, and Biden appears to be comfortably ahead in enough states to win. And the press seems fed up with Trump's bullshitting.

But Trump just might sound this way in the last few presidential events most voters will pay attention to, and it might help him some, even if he's telling the same lies he always tells.

Dubya's "Catapulting the propaganda" is now a full-blown Trump orbital space strike. He'll get 42% no matter what, but will her get the 5-6% more he needs to win the electoral college?

We'll see.

Deporation Nation, Con't

The hideous, inhuman treatment of ICE detainees in the COVID-19 era by the Trump regime is far, far worse than you've imagined. These people are monsters, full stop.

A nurse who worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Irwin County, Georgia and four lawyers representing clients there are claiming that immigrant women are routinely being sent to a gynecologist who has left them bruised and performed unnecessary procedures, including hysterectomies.

Yeah, you read that right. "Unnecessary hystorectomies".  You know, goddamn Nazi-era sterilization procedures.

The doctor, who three lawyers identified as Dr. Mahendra Amin, practicing in Douglas, Georgia, has continued to see women from the Irwin County Detention Center for the past several years despite complaints from his patients.

Amin was the subject of a Justice Department investigation in 2015 for making false claims to Medicaid and Medicare. As a result, he and other doctors involved paid $525,000 in a civil settlement, according to the Justice Department.

The lawyers identified the doctor after a whistleblower complaint to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security was filed by Dawn Wooten, who worked as a nurse inside the facility. She said in the complaint that detainees were not getting Covid-19 tests and other needed medical care. The complaint was first reported by the Intercept.

Wooten worked full time as a licensed practical nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, until being demoted in July.

The complaint cites both allegations from unnamed detained immigrants and Wooten.

The facility houses immigrant detainees in the custody of ICE, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security. It also houses inmates for Irwin County and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network filed the complaint on behalf of detained immigrants at the center and Wooten.

Wooten was demoted in July from a full-time nurse to “as-needed” after missing work because she had coronavirus symptoms. She said she believes the demotion was in retaliation for raising coronavirus protocol concerns, according to the complaint.

She also said that there was not enough active testing of the immigrant detainees for the coronavirus and that the facility was not “reporting all these cases that are positive,” meaning the number of cases at the facility was possibly much higher than that reported by ICE.

Kids in cages, separated, deporting toddlers, now we have forced sterilization. I tell you what, these guys are headed for The Hague, but only if we kick them out of power first.

Getting The Band Back Together

The GOP is absolutely up to their old voter suppression tricks on a national level, and they've been attacking the integrity of the vote since it became obvious that COVID-19 was going to make voting by mail easier.They've been coordinating a national bag of dirty tricks for months, and the effort is being spearheaded by our old friend, Dubya-era voter suppression expert Hans von Spakovski and his merry crew of assholes over at the Heritage Foundation.

Starting in early spring, as the coronavirus took hold, a conservative lawyer at the forefront of raising alarms about voting by mail held multiple private briefings exclusively for Republican state election officials, according to previously unreported public records.

The lawyer, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.

Among the participants in these meetings has been an official from the office of Georgia’s secretary of state; the secretary, Brad Raffensperger, recently elevated concerns about voter fraud by contending that 1,000 Georgians had voted twice in elections this year.

GOP congressional staffers and a Trump administration appointee have also joined in these meetings, which were open to officials from states across the country, including Missouri and Nevada, the records show. No Democratic state election officials appear to have been invited.
The “goal” of the meetings, held remotely, is to “gather the chief state election officials together to strategize on advancing their shared goal of ensuring the integrity of the elections they administer in their home states,” an invitation to an early August event reads.

Most of the states declined to comment on the meetings, and it’s not clear what specifically was discussed. Von Spakovsky is highly influential in conservative circles. He has sent invitees copies of his published essays pushing for in-person voting and culling voter rolls as absentee balloting expands amid the pandemic, a situation that von Spakovsky argued will “make fraud far easier.”

The meetings come as voting access has become one of the central flashpoints of the upcoming presidential election. More Americans are expected to vote by mail this year than ever before because of the health risks posed by COVID-19. President Donald Trump has repeatedly and baselessly asserted that mail-in voting is rife with problems. Echoing von Spakovsky, he asserted on Twitter in July that the upcoming presidential vote will be the “most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
Experts have said voting by mail carries little risk of fraud. Since it is widely believed that more Democractic voters will vote by mail than Republicans, von Spakovsky’s proposals, if adopted, could suppress Democratic turnout in one of the most consequential presidential elections in a generation.

Secretaries of state, who oversee statewide voting and work with county election officials, have broad leeway to act in ways that can limit or expand the franchise. While most are partisan elected officials, they are expected to carry out policies that benefit everyone.

The Heritage Foundation did not make von Spakovsky available for an interview and didn’t address detailed questions about the meetings. In a statement, the nonprofit’s media director, Greg Scott, said election security was “crucial to our country’s future.”

“The Heritage Foundation is committed to making sure elections are free and fair,” he said. “Every eligible voter’s vote should be counted and not canceled out by fraudulent acts.”

So now we know where Trump is getting his bad info on "rampant voter fraud" from, the same Dubya/Nameless One jackasses who were doing the same 15 years ago.

They're definitely up to no good.

StupidiNews!

• UCLA medical researchers have found evidence that the COVID-19 virus was in America weeks before originally thought, as early as the week of Christmas 2019.
• A Wisconsin Republican state House candidate is backing away from retweets posted by former KKK leader David Duke after being questioned by reporters.
• Hurricane Sally has slowed to a crawl, dumping feet of rain on the Mississippi/Louisiana Gulf Coast as the storm came ashore as a Category 1 storm.
• Donald Trump says a working COVID-19 vaccine could be ready for medical personnel by mid-October, but critics say the US is far away from a working vaccine.
• Apple is going head to head with Amazon with a bundle that includes combined subscriptions to AppleTV, Apple Arcade, and Apple Music starting at $14.95.

Last Call For Skinning The Walrus

The Trump regime is now exacting bloody revenge on John Bolton's mustache, and odds are he's going to prison, and the WSJ can barely contain its glee.

Federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to former national security adviser John Bolton’s publisher and literary agent on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, launching a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton mishandled classified information.

The subpoenas, to Simon & Schuster and Javelin, requested all communications with Mr. Bolton, said the people, who declined to be named. Both companies were involved in publishing Mr. Bolton’s bestseller, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” The book, released in June, is highly critical of President Trump and relays stories about Mr. Bolton’s time in government and relationship with the president.

The Justice Department’s use of a grand jury in the inquiry hasn’t previously been reported. The agency previously filed a lawsuit against Mr. Bolton over the book’s publication.

Mr. Bolton himself didn’t receive any subpoena, one of the people said. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bolton declined to comment. An attorney for Mr. Bolton couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster, which is the book publishing arm of ViacomCBS Inc., declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. A representative for Javelin couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The development marks an escalation in the administration’s battle with Mr. Bolton, who is one of several former administration officials who have written books that recount their time in office under Mr. Trump. The president and the White House have been critical of some of those memoirs for painting a harsh portrait of him.

But the Justice Department took particular issue with Mr. Bolton’s book because he was accused of not waiting until his manuscript had received signoff from national security reviewers, the government alleged in a civil suit earlier this year filed in federal court in Washington. Such signoff is required of former officials to ensure that they don’t disseminate classified information.

Mr. Bolton responded in that civil suit that one official had cleared the manuscript after months of edits, and that the White House was improperly extending the review process to delay his book because it was embarrassing for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Bolton’s memoir sold more than 780,000 copies in all formats through its first week on sale in the U.S., according to Simon & Schuster. There are now more than 1 million hardcover copies in print.

A federal judge said John Bolton likely “jeopardized national security” and was persuaded that Mr. Bolton had violated his employment contracts that governed his access to classified information when he was Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. But the judge rejected the request to block the book’s distribution given that many of its revelations had already been made public.

The judge, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, also noted that Mr. Bolton may have committed a crime, saying: “This was Bolton’s bet: If he is right and the book doesn’t contain classified information, he [gains publicity and sales]; but if he is wrong, he stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security. Bolton was wrong.”

So the civil suit is now a Bill Barr-run criminal investigation, complete with possible indictments. Pay close attention to this one, as it's how Trump wants to deal with all his enemies, Republican and Democratic. In a second Trump term, a whole hell of a lot of people are going to prison, and none of them will be the people who actually need to go to prison.

Well, except maybe Bolton, the guy actually does deserve a few war crimes tribunals to be honest.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Pennsylvania has struck down Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's COVID-19 safety restrictions, calling them "arbitrary" and "unfettered" government overreach. 

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic restrictions that required people to stay at home, placed size limits on gatherings and ordered “non-life-sustaining” businesses to shut down are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, sided with plaintiffs that included hair salons, drive-in movie theaters, a farmer’s market vendor, a horse trainer and several Republican officeholders in their lawsuit against Wolf, a Democrat, and his health secretary.

The Wolf administration’s pandemic policies have been overreaching, arbitrary and violated citizens’ constitutional rights, Stickman wrote in his ruling.

The governor’s efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus “were undertaken with the good intention of addressing a public health emergency,” Stickman wrote. “But even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered.”

Courts had consistently rejected challenges to Wolf’s power to order businesses to close during the pandemic, and many other governors, Republican and Democrat, undertook similar measures as the virus spread across the country.

Wolf has since lifted many of the restrictions, allowing businesses to reopen and canceling a statewide stay-at-home order.

But over the summer, his administration imposed a new round of statewide pandemic restrictions on bars, restaurants and larger indoor gatherings in response to rising infection rates in some virus hot spots. The state has also imposed a gathering limit of more than 25 people for events held indoors and more than 250 people for those held outside.

A spokesperson for Wolf said the administration was reviewing the decision.

Trump of course couldn't be happier as he defied Nevada's rule on indoor gatherings over the weekend with an indoor rally of several thousand, most without masks.

After failing to arrange alternative venues in the Las Vegas area, the campaign decided to hold the rally indoors at the Xtreme Manufacturing facility, owned by his friend Don Ahern, Trump said.

“They canceled six different sites because the governor wouldn’t let it happen, all external sites,” the president said.

The evening reflected a split seen across the country between Americans who want fewer restrictions imposed by state and local governments and those who believe that Trump should not encourage his supporters to risk their health in order to express their political opinions.

Trump said in his interview with the Review-Journal that he is not afraid of getting the coronavirus from speaking at the indoor rally.

“I’m on a stage and it’s very far away,” Trump said. “And so I’m not at all concerned.”

“I’m more concerned about how close you are, to be honest,” Trump told a Review-Journal reporter who thought she was socially distanced.

Trump had no worries about if he'll be infected.

As for the thousands in the crowd?

They all signed waivers, you see.  Sorry if your cult worship kills you, or if you spread the virus to others around you. Not Trump's fault, you see. 

Hope you voted early, you will be missed.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

It's one thing when convicted (and commuted) felon Roger Stone calls for Trump to take over the country through martial law, but now we have active Trump regime members saying the same thing 50 days before the election.

Michael Caputo, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, claimed Sunday that there is a “resistance unit” of “seditious” government scientists at the CDC working to undermine President Donald Trump.

They “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump,” Caputo added. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
He made the claims, as recorded by the New York Times, in a histrionic Facebook livestream where he additionally claimed that his own life is at risk.

“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” he told his followers, building into a dramatic tangent about the “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.”

Caputo told the Times that his family had been “continually threatened” since he joined the administration in April. He did not immediately respond to TPM’s questions. Caputo has been a vocal Trump loyalist for years, and has no background in health care.

Over the weekend, reports surfaced Caputo’s attempts to massage weekly bulletins from the CDC — critical public health updates called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports — to fit Trump’s insistence that the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding. The reports, meant mostly for scientists and public health officials, are traditionally guarded as wholly apolitical and kept from political appointees until just before publication.

Caputo was reportedly helped in these efforts by Paul Alexander, an assistant professor Caputo hired to assist him with pandemic-related matters, who has reportedly called the MMWRs “hit pieces on the administration.” The two recently tried to stop the publication of a report on the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, an unproven treatment Trump has heralded as a COVID-19 cure-all. Alexander has called for a complete stop in MMWR publishing until the process is amended so “someone outside of CDC like myself” can review the reports.

The House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus announced Monday that they’re investigating the interference with the reports.

In his livestream, Caputo also dipped into conspiracy theorizing about Trump winning reelection, but former Vice President Joe Biden refusing to concede.

“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing,” he said, adding, “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

Caputo is not well. He needs to be cleaning his desk out, frankly.  But in this regime, when he's calling on Trump supporters to stock up and firearms and ammunition, in order to begin an armed insurrection against Joe Biden?

This is beyond the pale.

People are going to get hurt or killed over this, possibly a lot of people, possibly in multiple mass casualty events in the months ahead.

Please, everyone, be careful out there.

StupidiNews!

South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravinsborg apparently struck and killed a pedestrian with his car Saturday night, Ravinsborg told police he had hit what he thought was a deer.
LA police have posted a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a fugitive believed to have shot and injured two LA County Sheriff's deputies in Compton on Saturday.
Hurricane Sally has strengthened considerably off the coast of Mississippi and could strike this morning as a Category 3 storm with winds of 110 mph and what could be up to two feet of rain.
A campaign finance watchdog group has found that current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy gave $600,000 to the GOP after the position became available.
Microsoft confirms that a critical Windows update patch fixes an exploit that could allow malicious users to gain domain access to an entire network without credentials.