Last Call For The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

Jared Kushner is a crafty bastard, and the Trump crime family continue to rob his cultists blind. Paul Waldman at WaPo:

If you thought you’d heard about all the financial chicanery Donald Trump and his family have engaged in during his presidency, rest assured there’s plenty more to be revealed. Here’s the latest story, courtesy of Business Insider:

President Donald Trump's most powerful advisor, Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president's family members and spent almost half of the campaign's $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider. 

The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump's top advisors and family members, while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny. 

When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign Chief Financial Officer Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations about the shell company.

To be clear, it could well be that no laws were violated, scrupulous about obeying the rules as the Trump and Kushner families are known to be. But the whole point of shell companies is to hide something; in this case, the campaign was able to show over $600 million in payments to the shell company, American Made Media Consultants Corp., on its Federal Election Committee filings, without the details that would be known if whatever they were spending money on was paid directly to vendors.

And while most of that $600 million probably went to buy advertising, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the favored officers of the shell company got nice salaries, nor if there were ways that it was used to funnel campaign contributions back to Trump himself.

We may never know. But I know this: Trump’s supporters couldn’t care less, even if it’s their money.

That’s because he has spent years convincing them that self-dealing and graft are perfectly fine. The only question is whether it’s the people you like who are benefiting.

This was always Trump’s argument about unethical behavior: not that he’s innocent and others are guilty, but that everyone is guilty, so we shouldn’t worry about his misdeeds. Everyone is corrupt, everyone is on the take, everyone mistreats women, we’re living in a world without morals or principles and all that matters is whether you win.

He never made any bones about it. Even in 2016, when Hillary Clinton charged that he was probably refusing to show his tax returns because he paid no taxes (which turned out to be pretty much true), he replied, “That makes me smart.” Obeying the rules is for suckers and chumps.

By now, Trump’s supporters — who will remain his supporters after he leaves office — firmly believe that. If he pulls a new scam and they’re his victims? That just shows what a genius he is.

 

If Trump takes our money, well, he deserves it.  If you get a dime, we reserve the right to inflict as much violence against you and yours as we can.

 

That's how Trump's America works.

 

We'll still be living in it long after he's out of the White House.

A Supreme Miss On The Miscount

The US Supreme Court on Friday punted on the legal challenge to the Trump regime's efforts to eliminate all undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census, with the 6-3 ruling by Roberts Court conservatives calling it "premature" and ordering the case sent back to the lower courts for lack of standing.

The United States Supreme Court on Friday, by a vote of 6-3, said an effort to block President Donald Trump from excluding undocumented immigrants from a key Census count was "premature," effectively allowing the administration to move forward with its plans even as the justices left the door open to future challenges.

By subtracting millions of immigrants from the Census total, Trump hopes to shape the apportionment of congressional seats, the allocation of billions in federal funds and the contours of the nation's electoral map for at least the next decade. If he succeeds, it would be the first time in 230 years that the process would exclude large swaths of people inside the U.S.

The Court's conservative majority, in an unsigned opinion, said the scope and impact of the president's promised action is not yet clear.

"At present, this case is riddled with contingencies and speculation that impede judicial review," the Court said.

"The President, to be sure, has made clear his desire to exclude aliens without lawful status from the apportionment base. But the President qualified his directive by providing that the Secretary should gather information 'to the extent practicable' and that aliens should be excluded 'to the extent feasible.' Any prediction how the Executive Branch might eventually implement this general statement of policy is no more than conjecture at this time," it said.

While the Census concluded earlier this year, the government told the Court last month that analysts at the Commerce Department, which oversees the U.S. Census Bureau, were still trying to estimate the number of undocumented immigrants in the country, including a breakdown of long-term residents and more recent arrivals.

"The count here is complete; the present dispute involves the apportionment process, which remains at a preliminary stage," the Court's majority said. "The Government's eventual action will reflect both legal and practical constraints, making any prediction about future injury just that—a prediction."

In dismissing the challenge to Trump's plan for now, the Court made clear that it was not a decision on the merits. "We hold only that they are not suitable for adjudication at this time," they said.

 

Justice Breyer's dissent was powerful.

The liberals’ dissent, which was penned by Justice Stephen Breyer, said that putting off the decision would bring about severe costs, as another round of litigation would delay states’ redistricting processes, and on the merits, the question of the policy’s legality was not “not difficult.” Breyer said that the text of the relevant law, its history and the legislative record behind it support the conclusion that the Trump policy violates statutes passed by Congress concerning the census and apportionment. He stopped short of weighing in on whether it was unconstitutional.

“Where, as here, the Government acknowledges it is working to achieve an allegedly illegal goal, this Court should not decline to resolve the case simply because the Government speculates that it might not fully succeed,” Breyer wrote.

 

We'll see how this shakes out, but I don't have a good feeling on this that the Roberts Court is entertaining the notion that what Trump is doing isn't patently wrong. They have clearly stated that they intend to leave out undocumented immigrants and violate the Constitution. I don't understand the whole "speculation" nonsense.

Anyway, this will get another day before SCOTUS.

 

Looks Like Mitch Will Win Again

Mitch McConnell continues to outmaneuver and outplay Democrats at every turn, like he has for the last decade, and frankly it's getting exhausting. Senate Democrats at this point are walking away from the COVID-19 relief talks with something, better than nothing, and nobody's happy, and it's not just Pelosi and Schumer.

 

It's also far less than what we need, and he's sabotaging the country just like the GOP did with the Obama stimulus 12 years ago.

 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is getting much of what he wants in an emerging coronavirus relief package, after months of digging in his heels against a demand by Democratic leaders to pass a multitrillion-dollar package that would shore up the ailing finances of state and local governments.

The GOP leader isn’t getting liability protection for businesses and other organizations but McConnell himself last week proposed dropping that controversial item along with another large tranche of funding for state and local government.

State and local funding was a top priority of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Democrats are getting $90 billion in relief for local governments but it will be distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, meaning city and state leaders will have less control. Democrats say that money for housing assistance will also help ease the fiscal burdens on states.

But McConnell is getting a deal a lot closer to what Democrats dismissed as the “emaciated” plan he pushed in recent months than the $2.2 trillion HEROES Act that Pelosi and Schumer said should have been the “starting point” of the talks.

That was quickly leading to some criticism on Wednesday as it emerged the sides were closing in on an agreement, though in Congress, some Democrats taking shots at the package still said it should be approved.

“This is not any place close to what is needed,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said of the emerging $900 billion deal.

But Warren said Democrats have little choice but to accept a much smaller relief package than they wanted in order to get a deal.

“That makes for a very difficult negotiation,” she said of McConnell’s staunch insistence on a “targeted” package below $1 trillion.

She faulted the GOP leader, saying “Mitch McConnell is willing to let American families walk away with nothing.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) similarly criticized the bill while giving his blessing to its outlines.

Sanders had pushed for a new round of stimulus checks, something that will be a part of the final package.

But the checks will not be as large as he wished, and it will not include other provisions including the aid to local governments that he’d backed.

“There is simply not enough money in the proposal to deal with the unprecedented crises that we now face,” Sanders said Wednesday.

He told CNN that “we met very stiff resistance from Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership.”

“What we got now is not enough but it is something,” he said.

A Democratic senator who requested anonymity to assess the emerging deal said McConnell largely got what he wanted.

“He got negotiators down way away from where Nancy Pelosi was and he’s going to do a package that’s not going to be enough for the American people and he’s not doing anything on state and local [funding] and he didn’t have to compromise on the liability protections,” the senator said.

So Mitch once again holds the country hostage and wins, while Democrats congratulate themselves that hey didn't butcher even more hostages in the process. Yay, Congress!

In the end, Mitch wins again and again because he is more ruthless, more willing to do whatever it takes to maintain power, and more willing to sacrifice the American people, and the Democrats are  simply not.  If he's still in power come January, expect this to continue for the entire Biden administration:

 

 

Mitch wins because he's willing to shoot hostages, and when they die, the police are always blamed, period. And every single voter will blame Biden and the Dems in 2022 and they will give the GOP even more power, and the cycle of abuse continues until we're all dead.

We have one shot to break that cycle in Georgia on January 5. One.

A Pence-ive Escape Plan

Mike Pence, doomed to be the final traitorous villain in Trump's downfall, is hoping that if he runs away in the final two weeks of his term that the Trump cultists will forget who he is.

On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence will oversee final confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Then he’ll likely skip town.

As vice president, Pence has the awkward but unavoidable duty of presiding over the session of Congress that will formalize Biden’s Electoral College victory — a development that is likely to expose him and other Republicans to the wrath of GOP voters who believe President Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him.

But Pence could dodge their ire by leaving Washington immediately for the Middle East and Europe. According to three U.S. officials familiar with the planning, the vice president is eyeing a foreign trip that would take him overseas for nearly a week, starting on Jan. 6.

Though Pence aides declined to confirm details of the trip, which remains tentative, a U.S. government document seen by POLITICO shows the vice president is due to travel to Bahrain, Israel and Poland, with the possibility of more stops being added. A pre-advance team of Pence aides and other U.S. officials left earlier this week to visit the planned stops in preparation for the multicountry tour, which would be Pence’s first trip abroad since last January, when he traveled to Rome and Jerusalem on a whirlwind two-day sojourn.

On the surface, the trip is part of a push to underscore the Trump administration’s role in brokering a series of diplomatic agreements to normalize relations between Israel and a handful of Arab countries, including Bahrain. But for Pence, visiting these countries is also a way to bolster already-strong credentials with the Christian right, which strongly supports Israel. And it allows Pence — once again — to put distance between himself and Trump’s complaints about the election outcome that are likely to intensify after Congress affirms Biden’s win.

It’s a tactic Pence has used to navigate the final days of Trump’s presidency: stay out of the spotlight and insulate himself from his boss’s baseless election-fraud crusade, all while still finding ways to burnish his own credentials and technically toe the party line.

Pence has promoted Trump in his work as head of the government’s coronavirus task force and while boosting two GOP Senate candidates facing runoff races in Georgia. But he’s declined to publicize his minimal involvement in the president’s election-fraud strategy. And while he has privately assisted the Trump campaign when asked — joining donor calls and lending his signature to fundraising pleas — his public comments since the election have almost all centered on other topics, including hosting an event focused on the Trump administration's anti-abortion policy at the White House on Wednesday.

“I suspect the timing is anything but coincidental,” one Pence ally said of his tentative travel plans.

 

I have no sympathy for the guy, and I'm actually glad to see that like the previous two Republican Veeps we've had, his political career is essentially over and he has no shot at the Oval Office. Granted, both Quayle and Cheney are making bank in the private sector these days, and I'm sure Pence will go back to Indiana and join a legal firm or stay in DC as a venture capital outfit lobbyist, but what I'd like to see is Pence end up in Leavenworth instead.

What he won't do is run for office again.  He'll be primaried out of existence if the tries, and he knows it. Trump's boundless capacity for retribution will see to that.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

 

Last Call For The Country Goes Viral, Con't

Trump didn't get the election win he wanted, and Trump didn't get the vaccine credit headlines he wanted, so now states, even red ones, aren't getting the vaccine doses they wanted.

Officials in multiple states said they were alerted late Wednesday that their second shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine next week had been reduced, sparking widespread confusion and spurring the company’s CEO to put out a statement saying it had millions more doses than were being distributed.

The changes prompted concern in health departments across the country about whether Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine accelerator, was capable of distributing doses quickly enough to meet the target of delivering first shots to 20 million people by year’s end. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said the revised estimates for next week were the result of states requesting an expedited timeline for locking in future shipments — from Friday to Tuesday — leaving less time for federal authorities to inspect and clear available supply.

But Pfizer released a statement on Thursday that seemed at odds with that explanation, saying the company faced no production issues and had more doses available than were being distributed.

“We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses,” the statement read.

A total of 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was cleared for shipment this week, and 5.9 million doses of Moderna’s regimen are poised to go out next week if the vaccine is authorized, as expected. That will be on top of additional supply from Pfizer, which Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday would amount to 2 million doses next week.

That represents a sharp drop-off from what states were expecting, according to health officials in several states. At least three states received notice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday informing them of the shortfall, forcing last-minute changes to vaccine distribution plans for next week. Some places were intending to use the second shipment from Pfizer to begin vaccinating residents of long-term care facilities, officials said, creating dilemmas about whether to go ahead with those plans or to finish inoculating health-care providers on the front lines of the intensifying pandemic.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said anticipated shipments to the state in the next two weeks had been cut roughly in half. The uncertainty was even more pronounced in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said new shipments from Pfizer were “on hold,” as officials in his administration reported their expected allocation disappearing entirely in Tiberius, the online tracking system the Trump administration is using to coordinate with the states. Fred Piccolo Jr., a spokesman for DeSantis, said the numbers had come back online by Thursday but had been reduced significantly.

“It’s 40 percent less than we were originally thinking,” Washington State Health Secretary John Wiesman said in an interview on Thursday. “We thought we were getting 74,100 and now we are planning for 44,850 doses.”

Pfizer’s statement seemed to point responsibility at the federal government.

“We have continuously shared with Operation Warp Speed and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through weekly meetings every aspect of our production and distribution capabilities,” it continued. “They have visited our facilities, walked the production lines and been updated on our production planning as information has become available.”

 

If this game sounds familiar, it's the same nonsense we found out was happening with respirators and again with medical PPE equipment as the Trump regime made states compete against either other in order to get the highest price for Trump's friends in the logistics and supply business.

 

But the only supplier right now is Pfizer, and the vaccine is vastly different. In fact, Trump has made several statements saying he wants it distributed to as many Americans as possible, the "Trump miracle vaccine."

Of course, that's when he was running for re-election.  And as the walls close in, it looks like he's screwing over states one last time just to be spiteful, so that governors take the blame.

Or maybe the Trump regime is just amazingly incompetent.

Or both. There's always both.

I Can't Seem To Recall Gavin

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is almost certainly headed for a recall fight under the state's relatively generous recall vote rules, and while Newsom remains broadly popular, as Politico's Carla Marinucci points out, the recall could be very plausible in a post-Trump "How come he hasn't fixed everything yet?" flood of impatience.

 

A recall by Republicans, who still have the albatross of Donald Trump, an unpopular president in solidly blue California, around their necks, remains a long shot. And Democrat Newsom still enjoys the strong approval of the majority of Caifornians, the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll showed.

But here are five key takeaways on why the Newsom recall attempt shouldn’t be dismissed:

1. THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT IS BACKING IT: The California Republican Party and its chair, Jessica Milan Patterson have endorsed it. So has the entire CA GOP House caucus, according to Rep. Devin Nunes, who said as much last week — and said the party is helping to fire up the recall push. “We're encouraging people to sign the petitions,’’ Nunes told KMJ host Ray Appleton. “The California delegation as we sit today is … in favor of it.’’

Newly reelected Rep. David Valadao confirmed the move. “We all support it,” he said. “Our campaign offices all had the petitions there. A lot of our events had folks there gathering signatures.’’ And conservative darlings like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee are also on board, with Gingrich agreeing to do Zoom calls and fundraising. Which leads us to...

2. THEY’VE GOT FUNDRAISING MUSCLE: Anne Dunsmore, a veteran GOP fundraiser based in Irvine whose fundraising work helped elect Rep. Mike Garcia in CA-25, told POLITICO she’s now a recall campaign manager and lead fundraiser, and is working her proverbial Rolodex hard. So far, Gingrich’s efforts and online fundraising have only produced small donations. But what concerns Democrats is the notion that all the GOP needs is a couple of wealthy political types, party insiders or business moguls — even from another state — to sign on; after all, dropping $1 million into this effort could be a bargain price for an avalanche of national publicity on Fox, OAN and Newsmax, which are already covering Newsom heavily...

3. THE BAR IS INCREDIBLY LOW: “California’s governor faces one of the easiest recall requirements in the country,’’ said Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform. “Voters only need to gather the signatures of 12 percent of voter turnout in the 2018 election – in this case, 1,495,709 signatures. California also grants 160 days to gather them. In other states, the signature percentage requirement is more than double and the time to gather is less than half.” And, he said, “thanks to the use of initiatives, California has a well-developed signature-gathering industry that can get a recall on the ballot.”

Plus, the California GOP has one more advantage, as compared to backers of the failed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “Wisconsin law requires the elected official to face off in a new election — where he was facing a clear opponent. In California, Newsom would not face an opponent. The vote is simply a yes or no as to whether he should stay in office, with the replacement race further down the ballot.” Which means...

4. THE EAGER HORDES AWAIT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: There will be publicity-seekers, true, but some legitimate office-holders who see a gubernatorial recall as an easy opportunity to get on the ballot will do their best to push for it. And don’t think Democrats won’t consider undermining Newsom if it comes to that. “We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires,’’ said one Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group.

Secretary of State Alex Padila’s office confirmed this week the requirements to get on the ballot for the recall would be 65 to 100 nomination signatures and a filing fee of $4,194.94, or 7,000 signatures in lieu of the filing fee. Those minimal requirements have essentially not changed since the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in 2003; back then, 135 candidates made the ballot — and that was before the age of Facebook and Twitter. Social media could multiply that number by 100 or more. Our heads hurt.

5. THE PANDEMIC ISN’T GOING AWAY: At least not before March 2021, when the proponents need to turn in 1.5 million valid signatures. That deadline will come after months of business shutdowns, bad news and economic turmoil, over which Newsom may not have control. But he’ll be in charge — and anger at him could get people signing, including the nearly 30 percent of California voters who don’t belong to a major political party.

 

In other words, this is a mess that California Republicans hope will paralyze and consume Newsom in 2021, so they can keep yelling "Well if the largest blue state in the nation can't handle things under a failed Biden administration, why are you still voting Democrat?" 

It only works of course if Newsom blows things so badly that this becomes an issue, but if he sails through this, and California continues on a post-vaccine path to economic recovery, then things will be looking good for Team Blue in 2022.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Just how bad was the FireEye/SolarWinds Russian mega cyber attack on the Trump regime this month? Bad enough for a former Dubya/Trump Homeland Security Adviser to take to the New York Times to tell us how bad it is bad.

At the worst possible time, when the United States is at its most vulnerable — during a presidential transition and a devastating public health crisis — the networks of the federal government and much of corporate America are compromised by a foreign nation. We need to understand the scale and significance of what is happening.

Last week, the cybersecurity firm FireEye said it had been hacked and that its clients, which include the United States government, had been placed at risk. This week, we learned that SolarWinds, a publicly traded company that provides software to tens of thousands of government and corporate customers, was also hacked.

The attackers gained access to SolarWinds software before updates of that software were made available to its customers. Unsuspecting customers then downloaded a corrupted version of the software, which included a hidden back door that gave hackers access to the victim’s network.

This is what is called a supply-chain attack, meaning the pathway into the target networks relies on access to a supplier. Supply-chain attacks require significant resources and sometimes years to execute. They are almost always the product of a nation-state. Evidence in the SolarWinds attack points to the Russian intelligence agency known as the S.V.R., whose tradecraft is among the most advanced in the world.

According to SolarWinds S.E.C. filings, the malware was on the software from March to June. The number of organizations that downloaded the corrupted update could be as many as 18,000, which includes most federal government unclassified networks and more than 425 Fortune 500 companies.

The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate.

The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months. The Russian S.V.R. will surely have used its access to further exploit and gain administrative control over the networks it considered priority targets. For those targets, the hackers will have long ago moved past their entry point, covered their tracks and gained what experts call “persistent access,” meaning the ability to infiltrate and control networks in a way that is hard to detect or remove.

While the Russians did not have the time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them. It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy.

The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated. But it is unclear what the Russians intend to do next. The access the Russians now enjoy could be used for far more than simply spying.

The actual and perceived control of so many important networks could easily be used to undermine public and consumer trust in data, written communications and services. In the networks that the Russians control, they have the power to destroy or alter data, and impersonate legitimate people. Domestic and geopolitical tensions could escalate quite easily if they use their access for malign influence and misinformation — both hallmarks of Russian behavior.

 

Russia compromised companies like FireEye and SolarWinds to get to government and corporate networks. They put in back doors to regular server updates this spring, and your corporate IT department installed those tainted upgrades and never questioned them, because they were official from the company.

Now the Russians have everything.  Absolutely everything.

And they got it because of Trump, and the GOP enablers who specifically killed internet and election security legislation.

That's the story, one we're going to have to deal with for years.  And remember, we can trace every major Russian hack over the last several years to the NSA tools Ed Snowden provided to Moscow, and there are still Americans who consider him a hero to this day.

StupidiNews!

• Parts of the Northeast are digging out from a nor'easter that dropped more snow this week than the entire snowfall total of last winter.
• Senior Biden transition team advisor Cedric Richmond has tested positive for COVID-19, the Biden team is taking precautions and so far no additional positive tests have been found.
• Nigerian national security forces have rescued 350 school-age boys from Boko Haram militants, the children were being forced into service as child soldiers.
• The corporate and government victims of the recently discovered SolarWinds Orion hack continues to widen, including the Department of Energy's nuclear arsenal, and software giant Microsoft.
• Sony has pulled both the PS4 and PS5 versions of Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Network entirely and is offering refunds on the digital version, no word if Microsoft will follow suit.

Last Call For A Hostile Environment

Another Biden pick is in real trouble from the left again, this time it's the Biden administration's selection for Environmental Protection Agency head, Mary Nichols, and environmental and social justice groups are nearly unanimously furious as Biden is now reportedly looking for a replacement.

 

When Joseph R. Biden, Jr. won the presidential election, his top candidate to lead the nation’s most powerful environmental agency appeared clear: Mary D. Nichols, California’s clean air regulator and arguably the country’s most experienced climate change official, was seen as a lock to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now Mr. Biden’s team is scrambling to find someone else, according to several people who have spoken with the presidential transition team. The chief reason: This month, a group of more than 70 environmental justice groups wrote to the Biden transition charging that Ms. Nichols has a “bleak track record in addressing environmental racism.”

Possible last-minute candidates, those people said, include Michael S. Regan, a senior North Carolina environmental official, Richard L. Revesz, a New York University law professor, and Basil Seggos, head of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, none of whom had been in serious contention for the job until late last week. The Biden team is also considering asking Gina McCarthy, who ran the agency in the Obama administration, to return.

The environmental justice groups cited Ms. Nichols’s role in pushing California’s cap-and-trade program, which is designed to broadly reduce pollution of planet-warming greenhouse gases — but disproportionately does so at the expense, the groups said, of communities of color by exposing them to more pollutants like smog and soot. The groups charged that Ms. Nichols had repeatedly disregarded or dismissed the concerns of those communities about the effects of the climate policies she enacted.

The letter appears to have resonated: One of Mr. Biden’s key campaign pledges was a promise to address environmental justice, highlighting the need to protect poor and minority communities that are exposed to more pollution than rich communities.

While Mr. Biden had expected that Ms. Nichols would be criticized by Republicans for her history of pushing tough regulations on industries, he was caught off guard by the intense objections to Ms. Nichols from liberals.

The influence of those groups, and Mr. Biden’s reactions to their push, appears to be another signal of the increasing tensions between the left and moderate factions of the Democratic Party. Mr. Biden has already been subject to criticism from the left for some of his cabinet picks, even as he explicitly attempts to build a cabinet of racial and gender diversity.

A spokesman for the Biden transition team declined to comment.

From the perspective of environmental progressives, the push to oust Ms. Nichols in the name of environmental justice is of a piece with “the battle for the soul of the party,” said Rich Gold, an energy and environment lobbyist and former senior E.P.A. adviser in the Clinton administration.

California environmental groups have long had a legitimate beef with Nichols, and it looks like she's being sunk for good reason.

 

During the campaign, the Biden-Harris campaign made environmental justice a core part of their climate plan, recognizing that “environmental policy decisions of the past have failed communities of color.” With Ms. Nichols identified as a candidate for EPA Administrator, California environmental justice communities are now holding the President and Vice-President to their word, asserting that Nichols is incompatible with their campaign promise to ensure that communities burdened by pollution would benefit from a transition to clean energy.

During her tenure as CARB Chair, Nichols has been known for pushing market-based approaches to the climate crisis at the expense of the health and well-being of California’s communities of color, who suffer from some of the deadliest air in the country. The California groups’ letter outlines examples of how Nichols has disregarded environmental justice during her tenure.

“As CARB Chair for well over ten years, Mary Nichols had a unique opportunity and responsibility to address generations of environmental injustice in California, as she was urged by community members time and time again. Regrettably, over the years she instead dismissed petitions of frontline communities aimed at both improving their environmental health and preventing further harms from pollution and the climate crisis,” said Gladys Limón, Executive Director of the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA). “As demands for racial justice heighten, COVID-19 races through historically redlined neighborhoods, and big polluters continue to fuel the climate crisis, we need an EPA leader who will partner with frontline communities to advance truly equitable solutions that center the well-being of people, not industries.”

Nichols’ signature cap-and-trade program created a market for big polluters to buy and sell pollution allowances at just $15 per ton. The program is failing to meet its own emissions reduction targets and has increased pollution from the oil and gas industry.

“Mary Nichols’ cap-and-trade program turned working class communities of color into environmental sacrifice zones,” said Miya Yoshitani, Executive Director of Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). “Nichols’ approach left gaping loopholes for industrial polluters to continue to pollute for profit, and increased pollution burdens on the communities living alongside refineries, oil and gas wells, and dirty power plants. President Biden must learn from California’s failures and appoint an EPA leader who will work with us to lead a just transition away from an economy based on profit and pollution and toward an economy where all of us can thrive.”

 

To his credit, Biden is listening here. This is an example where a serious, critical problem has been raised, and presented to the Biden team, and the Biden team is responding after considering the new information. That's how things are supposed to work, and note that in the letter, the environmental groups aren't attacking Biden, but stating their case.

It looks like they were successful, and we're better for it with the pick that is emerging, North Carolina's top environmental official, Michael Regan.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will nominate Michael S. Regan, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to three people on the Biden transition team.

Mr. Regan became Mr. Biden’s top choice only in recent days, two people familiar with the selection process said. The front-runner had for several weeks been Mary D. Nichols, California’s air quality regulator, but she faced significant criticism from liberal groups who accused her of not doing enough to address issues of environmental racism in her state.

Mr. Biden also has been under pressure to make his cabinet choices more racially diverse. If confirmed, Mr. Regan is expected to bring a strong focus on racial equity to the agency.

“It signals that the Biden administration is serious about getting the E.P.A. back to its core mission to protect the environment and public health as well as ensure strong, meaningful steps are taken to advance environmental justice issues,” said Brian Buzby, the executive director of the North Carolina Conservation Network, a coalition of environmental groups.

 

The process worked.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

As with Ferguson, Missouri, Black Lives Matter community leaders in Louisville are turning up dead in the wake of revelations that state AG Daniel Cameron never even considered murder or even manslaughter charges against Louisville Metro Police in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Hours after protest leader Travis Nagdy was shot and killed in late November, Kris Smith remembered the young man fondly.

“He’s gonna be missed over here, because he was really one of the good ones,” Smith told The Courier Journal at the time.

Today, those who knew Smith have found themselves saying similar things about the 42-year-old business owner who was a regular at protests over the death of Breonna Taylor.

On Friday, Smith was shot and killed in the 200 block of North 26th Street, according to a chaplain who helped identify his body.

His death is one of more than 150 homicides in Louisville this year, a number that has blown past the city's previous record of 117 homicides in 2016.

Neither Louisville police nor the coroner's office have confirmed Smith as the victim. But Stachelle Bussey, a local pastor and friend of Smith's, said she was with Smith's wife when she identified his body at University of Louisville Hospital.

"Just like everybody else, he was finding his niche, finding his voice" at the protests, Bussey said. "We're mourning one, then we lose another. ... With Travis, I lost a brother. Today we lost another one."

 

Here's the best part.

 

Police say there is no evidence to indicate that Nagdy and Smith's deaths are related, and there are "no motives at this point." 

Of course not. Perish the thought. And I'm sure LMPD will have these murders solved any day now.

Any day now.

Black lives still matter.

America Almost Went Super Viral, Con't

Keep in mind that every time Trump regime Republicans say "herd immunity" what they mean is "we will survive, and those people won't, and we'll all be better off." This is of course the same country that decided smallpox blankets to gift the Natives was fair game.

A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a "herd immunity" approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to internal emails obtained by a House watchdog and shared with POLITICO.

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD," then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

"Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…" Alexander added.

"[I]t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected" in order to get "natural immunity…natural exposure," Alexander wrote on July 24 to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Caputo and eight other senior officials. Caputo subsequently asked Alexander to research the idea, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee's select subcommittee on coronavirus.

Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread, lamenting in a July 27 email to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that “we essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had...younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread.”

Alexander was a top deputy of Caputo, who was personally installed by President Donald Trump in April to lead the health department's communications efforts. Officials told POLITICO that they believed that when Alexander made recommendations, he had the backing of the White House.

“It was understood that he spoke for Michael Caputo, who spoke for the White House,” said Kyle McGowan, a Trump appointee who was CDC chief of staff before leaving this summer. “That’s how they wanted it to be perceived.”

Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity — a concept advocated by some conservatives as a tactic to control Covid-19 by deliberately exposing less vulnerable populations in hopes of re-opening the economy — was under consideration or shaped the White House's approach to the pandemic. “Herd immunity is not the strategy of the U.S. government with regard to coronavirus," HHS Secretary Alex Azar testified in a hearing before the House coronavirus subcommittee on Oct. 2.

In his emails, Alexander also spent months attacking government scientists and pushing to shape official statements to be more favorable to President Donald Trump.

For instance, Alexander acknowledges in a May 30 email that a draft statement from the CDC about how Covid-19 was disproportionately affecting minority populations was "very accurate," but he warned HHS and CDC communications officials that "in this election cycle that is the kind of statement coming from CDC that the media and Democrat [sic] antagonists will use against the president." The problems were "due to decades of democrat neglect," Alexander alleged.

So yeah, culling the herd.

Those least likely to have the medical resources to survive would die, or become chronically ill with "long COVID" and would eventually die much sooner. Black folk, undocumented folk, poor folk, Latino folk, all the high risk groups would be surrounded by asymptomatic carriers and would of course get sick anyway.  They just wanted a way to justify it to the press and the American people.

This was the plan so that the rest of them could eat out at their favorite restaurant. 

 

Of course the "low-risk groups" like kids did get sick, and it killed them too.

It wasn't just neglect, it was genocide.

74 million voted for it.

Last Call For Mitch In The Ditch

Senate GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell is trying to evacuate himself and as many of his Senate GOP enablers as he can from the sinking Trump regime, but all the lifeboats are being set on fire by the Trump cultists, and I can't say that I'm sorry to hope they all drown like the rats they are.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Republican senators Tuesday during a private caucus call not to object to the election results on Jan. 6, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

McConnell told his caucus that challenging the results would force Republicans to take a “terrible vote” because they would need to vote it down and appear against President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also echoed McConnell’s remarks.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said that no one objected on the call to McConnell encouraging members to accept the election results.

"There wasn’t any pushback to it," she said. "There’s wasn’t anyone saying: oh wait a minute. That didn’t occur."

McConnell’s advice comes one day after the Electoral College officially voted for Joe Biden as the president-elect. The Kentucky Republican acknowledged for the first time that Biden will be the next president in his floor remarks Tuesday.

Several House Republicans, led by hard-line conservative Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), are still planning to challenge the election results on Jan. 6, the date Congress will officially certify them. If a Republican senator joins the long-shot effort, however, it will force both chambers to take a vote on the election. But they have yet to get official buy-in from any GOP senators, though Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) hasn't ruled it out.

Brooks, in response to McConnell cautioning the GOP against objecting to the election results, tweeted that he hopes it’s “fake news.”

“I find it unfathomable that anyone would acquiesce to election theft and voter fraud because they lack the courage to take a difficult vote on the House or Senate floor,” Brooks said in a phone interview. “Last time I checked, that’s why we were elected to Congress.”

Brooks met briefly last week with several GOP senators to discuss his effort, but declined to say whether anyone is seriously considering the idea. Conservatives, however, have been eyeing Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville — another Alabama Republican and Trump supporter — as someone who may get on board. And Senate Republicans are unsure where he stands; Tuberville was not a part of Tuesday’s conference call.

McConnell’s warning underscores how the last-ditch bid to overturn the election is putting the GOP in a bind. On the one hand, Republicans are facing pressure from Trump and his allies to support his attempt to remain in power. And party leaders want to keep the base energized ahead of a pair of critical Georgia runoff races on Jan. 5. that will determine control of the Senate.

But at the same time, McConnell — who is defending a tough Senate map in 2022 — needs to protect his members from taking a tough vote. If the Senate is forced to deliberate the election results, most GOP senators would be going on the record against a president who values fealty above all else. And it would be none other than Vice President Mike Pence presiding over the floor debate — a potentially awkward scenario as his boss continues to deny the reality of the election he lost.

 

Mitch now faces a trap of his own design. He either has to risk losing his power now and anger Trump's cultists enough that they sabotage the George runoffs, or risk losing power in 2022 when attacks ads will show Republican after Republican who voted to overturn the election (or they are primaried out by Republicans who didn't and are replaced with even worse ones).

I hope it's the former.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Understand that Bill Barr was fired by Trump for several reasons, and not appointing a special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden's son is one of the main ones. Incoming replacement Jeff Rosen is now going to be under tremendous pressure to make this happen.

President Donald Trump is considering pushing to have a special counsel appointed to advance a federal tax investigation into the son of President-elect Joe Biden, setting up a potential showdown with incoming acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen.

Trump — angry that out-going Attorney General William Barr didn’t publicly announce the ongoing, two-year investigation into Hunter Biden — has consulted on the matter with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and outside allies.

That’s according to several Trump administration officials and Republicans close to the White House who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.

Beyond appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the younger Biden, the sources said Trump is interested in having another special counsel appointed to look into his own baseless claims of election fraud. But if he’s expecting his newly named acting attorney general to go further than Barr on either matter, he could end up quickly disappointed.

Barr on Monday evening announced he will resign effective next week, revealing his plans about a week after Hunter Biden publicly disclosed that he was under investigation related to his finances. It is generally Justice Department policy not to disclose investigations that are in progress, though the subjects of those investigations can.

Rosen, the deputy attorney general, will step into the Justice Department’s top job in an acting role. A longtime litigator, he has served as Barr’s top deputy since May 2019 but largely shies away from the spotlight. He said in a statement Tuesday he was “honored” to serve and “will continue to focus on the implementation of the Department’s key priorities.”

Trump is still weighing his options, considering whether to pressure Rosen to make the special counsel appointment or, if needed, to replace the acting attorney general with someone more likely to carry out his wishes. He has even asked his team of lawyers, including personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, to look into whether the president has the power to appoint a special counsel himself.

A key question will be whether Rosen can stand up to presidential pressure — and potentially withering attacks — in the waning weeks of the Trump administration. If not, Rosen could be cast aside in favor of others more willing to do Trump’s bidding.

Believing that a special counsel probe could wound a Biden administration before it even begins, Trump aides have urged the president to push for one, which would make it so the investigation can’t be easily stopped by the incoming president. No firm decision has been made.

 

Trump has 35 days left in office.  He can still cause a tremendous amount of damage in five weeks, and the damage he has already caused will leave scars on America's political system for decades, not to mention the irreversible human carnage wrought by his cancerous party: hundreds of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands more will die, and millions are facing a wintry eviction in a matter of a score of days.

 

As he runs out of options as the days go by -- and as America reaches a point not seen since the 1930s -- the odds of precipitous calamity increase exponentially. We're still at the phase where Trump going after Hunter Biden is an ugly political attack to force Joe Biden to relent before New York serves Trump with subpoenas. Give it a couple of weeks, and we'll be at the point after Christmas where Trump may do something so profoundly illegal, immoral, and indefensibly evil that the entire country could be set aflame.

 

The monster is most dangerous when cornered by the hero as the final battle begins.

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

At this point, Republicans are openly running their campaign platforms on Donald Trump imposing a second term through a coup and martial law, and Republicans will vote for them, because they are all traitors.

State Sen. Amanda F. Chase, a brash Republican gubernatorial contender who bills herself as "Trump in heels," called on President Trump on Tuesday to declare martial law to prevent his removal from office.

One day after the electoral college formally confirmed former vice president Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, Chase (Chesterfield) doubled down on baseless allegations of election fraud in an early-morning Facebook post.

“Not my President and never will be,” she wrote, referring to Biden. “The American people aren’t fools. We know you cheated to win and we’ll never accept these results. Fair elections we can accept but cheating to win; never. It’s not over yet. So thankful President Trump has a backbone and refuses to concede. President Trump should declare martial law as recommended by General Flynn.”

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser pardoned by the president, recently shared a Twitter post advocating that the president “temporarily suspend the Constitution” and declare martial law.

In an interview Tuesday, Chase said she was holding out hope that Trump somehow would be declared the winner when the electoral college ballots are formally counted during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 — an all-but-impossible outcome, especially as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory for the first time since the election. Barring that extremely unlikely turn of events, Chase thinks martial law is in order.

Under martial law, she said, troops would “go and seize these [voting] machines and voting equipment to find the voter fraud. There needs to be a national audit.”

Chase’s call for martial law drew rebukes from a few prominent Virginia Republicans, including her lone rival for the GOP nomination, Del. Kirk Cox (Colonial Heights).

“Senator Chase’s suggestion that martial law be imposed is absurd and dangerous,” Cox, a retired teacher, said in a written statement. “I taught government for 30 years and have great respect for our constitutional republic. Per that system and the electoral college vote yesterday, Joe Biden will be the next President.”

Cox, a former House speaker who had said he would not comment on the presidential election until after the electoral college vote, acknowledged Biden’s win for the first time Tuesday.

 

I bet you dollars to doughnuts that this "brash, Trump on heels" wins the Virginia Republican gubernatorial primary by 20 points, and my fear is that running on "not my President and never will be" is all she'll need to say and do at campaign rallies to have a serious chance to beat former Dem Gov. Terry McAuliffe come November 2021.

 

And Chase isn't alone. Far from it, in fact. 

A North Carolina senator suggested Tuesday that the president might suspend basic liberties to overturn an election that he believes, without evidence, was stolen.

Sen. Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan, paraphrased on his Facebook page comments that retired Gen. Thomas McInerney made earlier this month on a conservative talk show. Among other things, McInerney suggested President Donald Trump declare a national emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act and suspend habeas corpus.

Steinburg told WRAL News on Tuesday evening that he wasn't endorsing the idea, just "putting out there options that others say still remain on the table," though he later said he'd be on board with it. In an extended harangue, Steinburg also made it clear he believes the recent presidential election was stolen and that Trump is the victim of a conspiracy to which multiple countries, the media, U.S. government agencies, officials and judges are either a part or turning a blind eye.

“There’s something going on here bigger than what anybody is willing to talk about," he said. "I’m not nuts. … I’m not a conspiracy theory person. I don’t like them. I don’t like conspiracy theories at all. But something is going on here that’s bigger than meets the eye.”

Steinburg then offered, unprompted, to take a psychiatric evaluation. He said the CIA and FBI both know there's a coup d'etat going on in the country but won't do anything about it.

"They think we’re just bunch of boobs out here in the hinterland," he said. "Well, these boobs are waking up.”

People like this aren't just going to vanish into the ether on January 20th.

A former Houston Police Department Captain was arrested and charged for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in an attempt to prove claims of a massive voter fraud scheme in Harris County, according to a news release from the Harris County's DA's office.

Mark Anthony Aguirre, 63, was arrested by Houston police Tuesday and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

"He crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime, and we are lucky no one was killed," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. "His alleged investigation was backward from the start - first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened."

According to court documents, Aguirre told police that he was part of a group of private citizens called the "Liberty Center," who were conducting a civilian investigation into the alleged ballot scheme.

According to Aguirre, he had been conducting surveillance for four days on a man who was allegedly the mastermind of a giant voter fraud scheme. Aguirre told authorities the man was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in a truck he was driving.

Instead, the victim turned out to be an innocent air conditioner repairman, court documents said.

Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out, according to court documents.

When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man's back until police came, the court document said.

Aguirre allegedly directed police to a parking lot nearby where another suspect, who has not been identified, took the truck.

According to court documents, there were no ballots in the truck. The truck was filled with air conditioning parts and tools.

"I think it's a political prosecution. I really do," said Terry Yates, Aguirre's attorney. "He was working and investigating voter fraud, and there was an accident. A member of the car got out and rushed at him and that's where the confrontation took place. It's very different from what you're citing in the affidavit."

 

This is just a taste of what's coming in the weeks and months ahead, especially should Donald Trump and his family end up facing the music in New York on state charges. People are going to get hurt, and our long national nightmare is not over, it's just moving on to a different phase.

I hope we can get through it.  I'm not so sure we will.

StupidiNews!

• A New York State judge has ordered the Trump Organization to turn over tax documents to state Attorney General Tish James in the state's ongoing Trump Organization tax fraud investigation.
• The FDA has released new medical data on the second major COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna, paving the way for FDA approval which could come later this month.
• House and Senate leaders from both parties say they are nearing a final agreement on a COVID-19 stimulus bill as the government faces a Friday shutdown deadline.
• The Trump regime is asking the Supreme Court to stop mail delivery of Plan B abortion medication, claiming using the postal service to deliver the pills is a violation of the Hyde Amendment.
• Claiming they haven't been paid in months, workers at an iPhone parts plant in India have damaged the factory as millions of workers across India are going on general strike.