Last Call For The Cruelty Is The Point, Con't

The driving force behind everything Donald Trump does is cruelty towards people who he believes has wronged him.  There's no depths of petty vengeance that Trump won't sink to in order to humiliate and destroy his political enemies, even when those actions threaten to endanger those he hates.  

No wonder then that Trump's latest victims are House Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the only two black Muslim women in Congress, and Trump is now enlisting embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to inflict punishment.

President Trump has told advisers he thinks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should use Israel's anti-boycott law to bar Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) from entering Israel, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

What he's saying: Trump's private views have reached the top level of the Israeli government. But Trump denies, through White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, ever giving any kind of directive to the Israelis. "The Israeli government can do what they want. It's fake news," Grisham said on Saturday.

Driving the news: Trump has told U.S. advisers, including senior Trump administration officials, that Israel should bar Omar and Tlaib's entry because the two congresswomen favor a boycott of Israel, according to sources familiar with Trump's private comments. In 2017, Israel's parliament passed a law requiring the interior minister to block foreign nationals from entering Israel if they have supported boycotting the Jewish state. 

Trump's reaction came days after the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed a resolution to condemn the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS movement, which Omar and Tlaib support. The resolution states that the global movement to boycott the state of Israel over its policies toward Palestinians "promotes principles of collective guilt, mass punishment and group isolation, which are destructive of prospects for progress towards peace." 

Omar and Tlaib voted against the resolution.

Between the lines: Trump told confidants he disagreed with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer's rationale for Israel to overlook the law to let Omar and Tlaib visit Israel. Dermer said last month: "Out of respect for the U.S. Congress and the great alliance between Israel and America, we would not deny entry to any member of Congress into Israel." 

Trump said that if Omar and Tlaib wanted to boycott Israel, "then Israel should boycott them," according to a source with direct knowledge. 

Israeli officials say congressional Democratic leadership pushed Dermer to allow the congresswomen into the country. Their advocacy, per those officials, is a major reason why Netanyahu will allow the two women in.  

The Democrats had argued that if the Israeli government blocked Omar and Tlaib's entry, then other Democratic members would cancel a planned, AIPAC-sponsored Israel trip in solidarity, these officials said.

Both Omar and Tlaib were expected to arrive in Israel next weekend for a planned trip to the Holy Land, but now there's little chance that Netanyahu will allow that to happen. What will really seal the deal though is when Democrats go through with their AIPAC retreat in Israel anyway.

Neither party will risk pissing off Israel over two black Muslim women.  Not by a long shot.

Deportation Nation, Con't

The Trump regime continues to move quickly to remove obstacles in the path of mass arrests and deportations, and the next step on the list is to strip power from immigration judges, starting with decertifying the judges' union by reclassifying them as management, not employees.

The Justice Department moved Friday to potentially decertify the union that represents federal immigration judges, a spokesman said, a maneuver that could silence an organization that has been critical of some aspects of the Trump administration’s overhaul of immigration enforcement.

The department filed a petition asking the U.S. Federal Labor Relations Authority to examine whether it should revoke the certification of the National Association of Immigration Judges because, a Justice Department spokesman said, its members are “management officials” under the law.

Judge Ashley Tabaddor, the association’s president, said she thinks the petition’s intent is to “disband and destroy the union,” which has publicly pushed for judges to have more independence and sparred with the Justice Department over a quota system it imposed.

“It’s designed to take full control of judges without having a balancing force or a balancing voice,” Tabaddor said. 

Meanwhile the Trump regime will be directing ICE to conduct more massive workplace raids nationwide, leading to thousands, if not tens of thousands of more arrests.

The White House has told ICE officials to conduct dozens more workplace enforcement operations this year, a senior immigration official with knowledge of the conversations told CNN. 

The news comes on the same day that President Donald Trump said raids like those in Mississippi this week are a "very good deterrent" for undocumented immigrants.
Shortly after the raids in Mississippi that led to the detention of at least 680 undocumented immigrants, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement field offices across the country were instructed to identify at least two locations in their regions as potential targets for workplace enforcement operations, the source said. 

Those operations can include criminal investigations, business audits and raids. 

This week's raids led to a series of heart wrenching images and videos of family members -- including young children whose parents were detained -- reeling from the arrest of their relatives. 

Trump on Friday defended ICE's workforce enforcement strategy as well as the agency's strategy for dealing with the children whose parents were detained. 

Asked Friday why there wasn't a better plan in place to deal with the children after their parents' arrests, Trump told reporters outside the White House south lawn, "You have to go in, you can't let anybody know." 

"Otherwise when you get there, nobody will be there," Trump said. "The big factor is to let people outside of the country that want to come in legally," he continued. 

"I want people to know that if they come into the United States illegally, they're getting out," he said. "They're going to be brought out. And this serves as a very good deterrent." 

"When people see what they saw (earlier this week), like they will be for a long time, they know that they're not staying," he added.

The campaign of terror is the point.  Trump wants the undocumented in America to be terrorized and terrified.  He wants the safety precautions in the government removed.  He wants mass arrests and mass deportations playing out on TVs and monitors week after week, if not day after day.

But the biggest obstacle to mass deportations isn't in America at all, and it's not under Trump's control one bit. Guatemala, the Trump regime's potential dumping ground for millions of undocumented, is having elections on Sunday, with President Jimmy Morales not running for re-election.  That's a huge problem for Trump.

Morales is the one who signed a safe harbor agreement with Trump, but neither Guatamala's courts nor either of the candidates who could succeed Morales, Sandra Torres and Alejandro Giammatei, are expected to honor the agreement.

On July 26, the Morales administration signed a deal with the White House to establish Guatemala as a “safe third country” and require asylum seekers who pass through Guatemalan territory on their journey north to seek refuge there. However, the costly and time-consuming work of carrying out such an agreement would fall to the winner of Sunday’s electoral contest.

There’s good reason to believe Guatemala’s next government will not put the accord into effect. Giammattei has called Morales’s acquiescence to the Trump administration “irresponsible.” Torres also rejected any safe third country agreement, though she did meet privately with acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan during his bid to sell the agreement within Guatemala. Though Guatemala’s top business associations have supported the agreement under the threat of devastating tariffs, the deal remains widely unpopular among the rest of society, even triggering protests outside the Presidential Palace.

Guatemala’s constitutional court, moreover, has ruled that the agreement requires congressional approval. Guatemalan human rights ombudsman Jordán Rodas has lodged an additional legal challenge on the grounds that, per international law, “agreements signed under threats cannot take legal effect.”

But even if the next president agreed to implement the agreement, it’s unlikely he or she would be able to do so. The Trump administration wants Guatemala — a country that ranks among the most corrupt and ineffective in the world — to harbor refugees and to stop its citizens from leaving. That’s not going to happen, regardless of Sunday’s outcome.

Expect Trump to slap crushing tariffs on Guatemala if either Torres or Giammattei won't play ball.  The resistance to the Trump regime in Guatemala City will most likely evaporate by the end of the year, if not before then.

BREAKING: Jeffrey Epstein Dead By Suicide

The convicted felon facing new sexual assault charges and jail time was found unresponsive in cardiac arrest after hanging himself in his cell this morning in Manhattan.

Jailed multimillionaire financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has died by suicide, two law enforcement sources said Saturday, a day after a court unsealed new details of the claims against him.

Epstein, 66, was taken from New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center on Saturday morning in cardiac arrest and died at an area hospital, the sources told CNN.

An ambulance was called at about 6:40 a.m. Epstein was being treated by members of the detention center's medical unit and was administered CPR, and he died a short time later at an area hospital, one of the sources said.

Epstein had been jailed since early July, when he pleaded not guilty to charges by New York federal prosecutors after an indictment accused him of sex trafficking dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14 years old.

News of Epstein's death comes a day after hundreds of pages of court documents were unsealed in New York federal court, alleging new details of sexual abuse claims against Epstein and several associates.

A spokeswoman for the US Attorney's office in Manhattan, which was prosecuting Epstein, declined to comment on Saturday.

An attorney for Epstein, Reid Weingarten, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The cops are treating this as a suicide, and I would think given the fact that Epstein injured himself a few weeks ago trying to hang himself before and that he was on suicide watch, there was a critical failure in that process.

We'll see where the case goes.  Certainly the criminal trial is over, but the civil one will probably continue, and documents and testimony in that case could still be revelatory.

Big Orange Takes Over, Con't

And just like that, the war between Twitter and Mitch McConnell's social media team is over with a resounding and total victory for the Senate GOP leader.

After a Twitter blackout that lasted nearly two full days, Sen. Mitch McConnell's campaign account is back on the web.

The account, @Team_Mitch, reintroduced itself to the world just after 12:30 p.m. Friday with a GIF of the Senate majority leader's face fittingly imposed over Tim Robbins' face after his character breaks out of prison (spoiler alert) at the end of "The Shawshank Redemption."

Representatives from several Republican campaigns, including President Donald Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, had said they would suspend spending on Twitter advertising until McConnell's campaign account was back up.

McConnell's campaign account was locked Wednesday after it shared a video from Monday of an obscenity-laced protest outside the senator's home in Louisville. That video made a reference to a hypothetical McConnell voodoo doll, which the person behind the camera suggested should be stabbed in the heart.

So Twitter's rules simply don't apply to Republicans anymore, and they will never cross Trump or his brood again, lest they lose millions in GOP ad revenue.  All congressional Republicans know they have free reign on Twitter now to post whatever they want, a status no longer reserved just for Donald Trump.

So no, Twitter will never stand up to Trump, and it will never stand up to white supremacist Republicans, and now Trump has his excuse for his new executive order regulating social media.  New information indicates Trump will be classifying social media as digital communications under the FCC.

The White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would widen its attack on the operations of social media companies.

The White House has prepared an executive order called “Protecting Americans From Online Censorship” that would give the Federal Communications Commission oversight of how Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies monitor and manage their social networks, according to a CNN report.

Under the order, which has not yet been announced and could be revised, the FCC would be tasked with developing new regulations that would determine when and how social media companies filter posts, videos, or articles on their platforms.

The draft order also calls for the Federal Trade Commission to take those new policies into account when investigating or filing lawsuits against technology companies, according to the CNN report.

Social media censorship has been a perennial talking point for President Donald Trump and his administration. In May, the White House set up a tip linefor people to provide evidence of social media censorship and a systemic bias against conservative media.

In the executive order, the White House says it received more than 15,000 complaints about censorship from the technology platforms. The order also includes an offer to share the complaints with the Federal Trade Commission.

As part of the order, the Federal Trade Commission would be required to open a public complaint docket and coordinate with the Federal Communications Commission on investigations of how technology companies curate their platforms — and whether that curation is politically agnostic.

Under the proposed rule, any company whose monthly user base includes more than one-eighth of the U.S. population would be subject to oversight by the regulatory agencies. A roster of companies subject to the new scrutiny would include, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Snap and Pinterest .

At issue is how broadly or narrowly companies are protected under the Communications Decency Act, which was part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Social media companies use the Act to shield against liability for the posts, videos, or articles that are uploaded from individual users or third parties.

Putting social media under the Trump FCC and Commissioner Ajit Pai will assure that it will be 100% weaponized against Democrats, and that social media will become the online arm of the GOP.

But what about the Roberts Court?

Well, who knows?  After Hobby Lobby, anything goes.  And after complaining for years about social media censorship, Republicans are about to turn the FCC into the internet speech police so that they can suppress dissent.

Dissent will not be tolerated online, citizen.

Last Call For Sugar Coats-ing The Problem

Donald Trump has found his yes man to dismantle the rest of the protections on our election system so that Russia can freely interfere, with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats resigning and now Coats's deputy Sue Gordon out as well.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday night that Joseph Maguire, the leader of the National Counterterrorism Center, is his new pick to be the acting director of national intelligence. 

"I am pleased to inform you that the Honorable Joseph Maguire, current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will be named Acting Director of National Intelligence, effective August 15th," Trump tweeted. 

The announcement came not long after Trump tweeted that Sue Gordon, the country's number two intelligence official and an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, would resign. White House officials had been signaling such a move for days, saying Trump would prefer to have a political loyalist in the role. 

Under normal protocol, Gordon would have become acting director after outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats resigned. But administration officials told CNN that the White House was reviewing whether it could legally choose an acting director outside the line of succession. 

And two sources told CNN that Gordon was interviewed by some in the administration as the type of political loyalist Trump wanted in the role. Maguire will take over for Coats, whose last day with the administration is on August 15.

Maguire's first move will be to fire or otherwise neutralize Shelby Pierson as the DNI's election protection czar, the move by Coats three weeks ago was the impetus for his summary termination.  Trump can't have anyone looking into nationwide patterns of election security and possible interference, at least not until the 2020 election is over.

Both Coats and Gordon were fired because the were insufficiently loyal to to Trump.  Keep that in mind as Maguire moves forward as semi-permanent acting DNI. No Senate confirmation needed, he was already confirmed 95-1 in December, so he can basically keep the job as long as Trump needs him there.

Don't be surprised if Pierson is gone by this time next week.

Deportation Nation, Con't

A lot going on this week on the deportation front.

First, with ICE raids unpopular in blue state metro areas and police not cooperating, the Trump regime is now turning to rural red state America in order to ramp up mass deportations and to terrorize the undocumented public with size being the sheer intimidation factor, hitting a series of Mississippi chicken processing plants in the largest single day of ICE action yet.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept through seven work sites in six cities across Mississippi on Wednesday, arresting approximately 680 people the agency said were undocumented immigrants in what officials said is the largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.

The raids targeted agricultural processing plants, part of a year-long investigation into illegal employment of immigrants in the state, officials said. They did not say how many individuals they were targeting in the operations, nor what proportion of those taken into custody were what ICE calls “collateral” arrests — those who were swept up along with those ICE was seeking.

ICE acting director Matthew Albence said at a news conference in Jackson, Miss., that some of those arrested will be prosecuted for crimes, others will be swiftly deported, and some will be released pending immigration court hearings. Albence said the raids were part of normal ICE operations that seek to enforce U.S. immigration laws.

The Trump administration has been openly stepping up pressure on the nearly 11 million immigrants believed to be in the United States illegally, threatening mass arrests of families who have arrived recently as part of an effort to deter migrants from coming to the country. The administration also has sought to turn away asylum seekers — forcing some to await their court hearings in Mexico — and now plans to deport some Central Americans to Guatemala to seek asylum there instead as part of an international agreement.

Although President Trump telegraphed the family raids several times, they have not gone forward in full force. But ICE has continued operations that it says primarily target immigrants with criminal convictions as well as those who have been deemed deportable in U.S. courts. The Mississippi raids were a stark reminder that the administration is continuing to press on immigration, with some of its largest enforcement efforts to date.

The clear signal is that this will be the new normal, and those arrested will be deported...even if it's to the wrong country.

A 41-year-old Detroit man deported to Iraq in June died Tuesday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and two people close the man’s family.

The man, Jimmy Aldaoud, spent most of his life in the U.S., but was swept up in President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement efforts. Edward Bajoka, an immigration attorney who described himself as close to Aldaoud’s family, wrote on Facebook that the death appeared to be linked to the man’s inability to obtain insulin in Baghdad to treat his diabetes.

Aldaoud was an Iraqi national, but he was born in Greece and came to the U.S. as a young child, his family friend said. He had never lived in Iraq and did not speak Arabic, according to Bajoka.
“Rest In Peace Jimmy,” Bajoka wrote. “Your blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration.”

The Trump administration has sought to deport more than 1,000 Iraqis with final orders of removal, including Chaldean Catholics in the Detroit metro area, of which Aldaoud was one. Chaldeans are an eastern branch of the Roman Catholic church who trace their roots to ancient Mesopotamia in present-day Iraq, where they are at high risk of being tortured or killed by the the terror group ISIS, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a related legal case.

"Jimmy Aldaoud ... should have never been sent to Iraq," Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) said in a written statement. "My Republican colleagues and I have repeatedly called on the executive branch to cease deportation of such vulnerable people. Now, someone has died."

Meanwhile, any remaining internal resistance to Stephen Miller's white supremacist tactics are met with instant purges of those not loyal enough to the regime, the latest ouster being the State Department's top immigration official.

Kimberly Breier, assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere since October, has resigned, leaving a key vacancy at the top of the diplomatic office in charge of the Trump administration’s efforts to control immigration from Mexico and Central America and to build stronger partnerships in South America.

U.S. officials said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week accepted her letter of resignation, which cited personal reasons. Her departure is expected to be announced Thursday.

Earlier in her government career, Breier, who holds degrees in Spanish and Latin American studies, also handled regional issues as a CIA analyst and at the National Security Council under president George W. Bush. Immediately before becoming assistant secretary, she handled Latin American issues in the department’s policy planning office.

Breier, 46, referred questions about her status to the State Department press office, which declined to comment. Several senior administration officials discussed the matter on the condition of anonymity because it concerns personnel.

She is the latest in a steady turnover at the assistant secretary level. Although Pompeo has filled many of the jobs left vacant by his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, a number are still held by acting officials, and at least four have departed this year, including A. Wess Mitchell, the top diplomat in charge of European affairs.

It gets worse.

Officials said Breier, a Mexico expert, was not necessarily opposed to administration policies in the region but chafed at the level of control exerted by the White House over immigration and trade-dominated relations with Mexico and other matters.

One senior administration official said she had been chastised, in a particularly unpleasant recent email chain, by White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, who considered her insufficiently committed to publicly defending last month’s sudden agreement over asylum between President Trump and the government of Guatemala.

The safe third country agreement requires Central American migrants to seek asylum in Guatemala and be rejected there before the United States will consider their asylum requests here. Pompeo reportedly objected to the White House-negotiated deal on grounds that Guatemala, one of the world’s most violent countries, was not equipped to provide secure refuge for migrants fleeing Honduras and El Salvador.

Stephen Miller punched her ticket out.  It's clear that anyone standing in the way of the coming mass deportations to Guatemala will be expelled from the Trump regime.

And millions of undocumented will be expelled from the US.

Kentucky In Black And White

Kentucky's Republican candidate for Attorney General is Daniel Cameron, who is black.  If elected, he would be only the second black statewide officeholder in history, after current Lt. Gov. Jaenean Hampton.  Cameron is trying to make inroads with the black community in Kentucky, but it's not going nearly as well as it did for Hampton.  In fact, it's going disastrously wrong.

Kentucky Republicans are rallying behind attorney general candidate Daniel Cameron, who was labeled by a black civil rights attorney as a submissive race traitor for being endorsed by President Donald Trump.

"Liberals will stop at nothing to attack anyone and everyone who dares to think for themselves," said Sarah Van Wallaghen, the state GOP's executive director, in a statement.

But Dawn Elliott, who said Cameron needs to "stop eating the 'coon flakes' the White House is serving," isn't backing down. The outspoken radio show host said the association with Trump is a slap in the face to African Americans and that Cameron needs to explain his position to black voters.

"To sit there and be so proud of someone who is an open racist is shameful," said Elliott, an attorney who co-hosts a political talk show on WLOU 1350 AM. "Why would anyone of color want to side with someone who is trying to destroy us?"

Cameron, who worked as general counsel for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, also defended himself on Twitter.

"I am a proud lifelong Republican, part of a diverse Kentucky Republican Party ticket, and yes I support Donald Trump," Cameron tweeted Wednesday. "It's time to stop telling black Americans what we're allowed to believe."

Cameron, a former University of Louisville football player, is running against Democrat Greg Stumbo in an increasingly nasty contest filled with personal attacks and negative advertisements. 

Here's the thing.

Daniel Cameron is black.

And I wouldn't vote for him if he was the last black man on Earth besides myself.

Dawn Elliott isn't wrong, and Greg Stumbo shouldn't pretend she is.

StupidiNews!

• US and Canadian Air Force jets intercepted two long-range Russian bombers off the coast of Alaska this week, warning them away from Alaskan airspace.
• Walmart says it will no longer carry ads for violent video games under pressure from Republican lawmakers, but the retailer will continue to sell rifles and shotguns in stores.
• Chinese officials have issued an alert for the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang as Super Typhoon Lekima bears down on the mainland while bringing up to three feet of rain.
• Hong Kong officials are bracing for sit-in protests to shut down the city's airport all weekend as demonstrators continue to call for the resignation of city administrator Carrie Lam.
• A new UN report on land usage warns that humans will have to use less farmland less grazing land, and plant more forests in order to counter effects of climate change.

Last Call For The State Of Church And State

Knowing full well that the Trump regime isn't about to lift a finger to enforce the Johnson Amendment to the US tax code to stop churches from directly endorsing Trump, Christian evangelical organizations are happy to roll out their game plan for becoming an officially sanctioned arm of the Trump 2020 campaign.

Roughly 400 pastors and faith leaders will descend on Lynchburg, Virginia later this week as two major evangelical forces unite together in the beginning efforts of a 2020 national ground game aimed at restoring Judeo-Christian principles across the country and mobilizing an evangelical army of pastors to lead the way.

The closed-door two-day event will be held at Liberty University, one of the largest evangelical universities in the country and is organized by the American Renewal Project, led by influential political mechanic David Lane. They're bringing in the pastors for the affair, many of whom are expected to take part in a political training session as they mull whether to run for local or statewide office.

"The Pastor and Pews events have been extremely valuable in mobilizing church-going voters and illuminating critical issues for elections," said former presidential candidate and Fox News Contributor Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee, a former pastor himself, has spoken at these events many times before and understands their value.

"I am convinced that the pastor and pews model was instrumental in the 2016 election of President Trump and has been instrumental in numerous statewide elections for congressional, US Senate and gubernatorial races."
President Trump won 81 percent of the white conservative evangelical vote in 2016 and during it all, the American Renewal Project was on the ground and extremely active. In the 60 days before the General Election, ARP spent $9 million in six battleground states, including some big prizes like Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. Now they're back at it looking for a repeat.

"It is the single, largest, most cohesive voter bloc in the last election," said Doug Wead, a noted historian, and best-selling author and advisor to two U.S. Presidents. "Now its all about voter ID and turnout."

With all the extra vitriol, animosity and energy aimed at Trump this time around, the president will need a similar showing or even better to win in 2020.

"Evangelicals propelled Donald Trump to victory in 2016 and if he's going to win again in 2020, it must be an all hands on deck approach," said Scott Lamb, senior vice president for the office of communications and public engagement for Liberty University. "Pastor events like this one truly are the Ground Zero launching pad for mobilizing the evangelical crowd."

Donald Trump and the GOP have a network of megachurches and the pastors running them in order to get their congregations to vote Republican.  That's what we're up against in 2020.

Never forget it.  Trump voters will be there to vote.  There has to be more of us.

Trump Trades Blows, Con't

As Trump escalates his trade war with China, and China now saying it will no longer buy any crop imports from the US, American farmers are letting the GOP know just how much they stand to lose at the ballot box next year.

Farmers’ discontent over President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China erupted into the open Wednesday as his agriculture secretary was confronted at a fair in rural Minnesota.

Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, drew applause as he leveled criticism of the administration’s trade policy at a forum with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in front of thousands of farmers gathered in a metal barn for a panel discussion.

American farmers took a fresh financial hit from Trump’s trade war over the weekend as China announced a halt to all U.S. agricultural imports after the president threatened Beijing with another tariff increase.

Wertish criticized Trump’s “go-it-alone approach” and the trade dispute’s “devastating damage not only to rural communities.” He expressed fears Trump’s $28 billion in trade aid will undermine public support for federal farm subsidies, saying the assistance is already being pilloried “as a welfare program, as bailouts.”

Others joined in. Brian Thalmann, president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, complained about Trump statements that farmers are doing “great” again. “We are not starting to do great again,” he said. “We are starting to go down very quickly.”

Joel Schreurs of the American Soybean Association warned American producers are in danger of long-term losses in market share in China, the world’s largest importer of soybeans.

Perdue sought to soothe the crowd as he defended the president’s policies. “Obviously this is a popular opinion. A lot of applause,” he joked after the audience reacted to Democratic Representative Angie Craig saying aid is not substitute for a strategy on trade. “There is a lot of stress out there.”

If farmers are laying into Sonny Perdue out in the open like this, then Trump may have badly miscalculated the support of farmers heading into 2020.  They're no longer willing to wait 15 months to vote for Trump if the China trade war explodes and their farms go under in six.  By no means does it mean farmers will start voting for Democrats in 2020, but they're not going to vote for Trump much either if the man's personally responsible for wrecking their farms.

One major miscalculation by either the US or China on this and it's global recession time anyway.

Big Orange Takes Over

Twitter slapped Team Mitch's account in limbo over a tweet of protesters outside the Senate GOP leader's house.

After sharing a video of a profanity-laced protest outside of the Kentucky Republican's home in Louisville, the campaign Twitter account, Team Mitch, has been locked out. 

"This morning, Twitter locked our account for posting the video of real-world, violent threats made against Mitch McConnell. This is a problem with the speech police in America today," McConnell campaign manager Kevin Golden told the Courier Journal. "The Lexington Herald-Leader can attack Mitch with cartoon tombstones of his opponents. But we can’t mock it. 

"Twitter will allow the words of “Massacre Mitch” to trend nationally on their platform, but locks our account for posting actual threats against us," Golden added. "We appealed and Twitter stood by their decision, saying our account will remain locked until we delete the video." 

According to Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough, “The user was temporarily locked out of their account for a Tweet that violated our violent threats policy, specifically threats involving physical safety.”

Twitter's policy states that users "may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people" and that the social network prohibits "the glorification of violence." 

McConnell, who fractured his shoulder on Sunday, has been under a heated spotlight after two mass shootings that killed more than 30 people and injured several more. 

Democrats and other critics have been urging McConnell to take up several gun control measures that proponents believe will stem the violence.

The response from the Trump regime was swift. By yesterday afternoon, the White House was already warning that it would soon be following through on threats to bring social media services like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube under Trump's control with a new executive order regulating the industry.

The White House is circulating drafts of a proposed executive order that would address allegations of anti-conservative bias by social media companies, according to a White House official and two other people familiar with the matter — a month after President Donald Trump pledged to explore "all regulatory and legislative solutions" on the issue.

None of the three would describe the contents of the order, which one person cautioned has already taken many different forms and remains in flux. But its existence, and the deliberations surrounding it, are evidence that the administration is taking a serious look at wielding the federal government’s power against Silicon Valley.

“If the internet is going to be presented as this egalitarian platform and most of Twitter is liberal cesspools of venom, then at least the president wants some fairness in the system,” the White House official said. “But look, we also think that social media plays a vital role. They have a vital role and an increasing responsibility to the culture that has helped make them so profitable and so prominent."

Two other people knowledgeable about the discussions also confirmed the existence of the draft order.

None of the three people could say what penalties, if any, the order would envision for companies deemed to be censoring political viewpoints. The order, which deals with other topics besides tech bias, is still in the early drafting stages and is not expected to be issued imminently.

"The President announced at this month’s social media summit that we were going to address this and the administration is exploring all policy solutions," a second White House official said Wednesday when asked about the draft order.

Now, on the surface this smells like a massive bluff to me considering not even the Roberts Court is a guaranteed win for Trump on a screamingly obvious First Amendment issue like this.  But the last thing that social media companies want is a long, expensive, drawn-out court fight that wrecks their bottom line and drives off both users and investors.  Even if Trump is blowing smoke, this is going to cost the social media giants billions.

Bluff or not, just issuing the order would be serious trouble for the social media companies, and they know it.  The question now is finding out what Trump is trying to extort from them.

Then again, with Trump, the cruelty is the point.  A Twitter that has the balls to actually apply the rules to Mitch McConnell is a Twitter that might actually apply them to Donald Trump, and that can never be allowed to happen.

This isn't a shot across the bow, this is one right up the tailpipe.

StupidiNews!

• Walmart CEO Doug McMillon says the company will offer a "thoughtful and deliberate" response to last weekend's deadly El Paso shooting, but for now the company will continue to sell firearms.
• Two bodies found in Manitoba, Canada appear to be the two murder suspects sought by RCMP officers after a three-week manhunt for the teens who allegedly killed three people.
• Puerto Rico's third governor in less than a week was sworn in Wednesday after the territory's Supreme Court ruled Pedro Pierluisi's assumption of power was illegal.
• Pakistan has suspended all trade with India and has downgraded diplomatic ties in response to Delhi's decision to revoke the autonomous status of the disputed Kashmir region between the two nations.
• Apple's latest iOS iteration, version 13, will tighten up VoiP privacy settings on social media apps like Facebook, meaning vendors have until April 2020 to comply or be cut off.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

On the day where Donald Trump visited El Paso, a city grieving over the slaughter of immigrants by a white supremacist terrorist, his regime made it painfully clear as to which side of the immigration debate the federal government is on.

U.S. immigration officials raided numerous Mississippi food processing plants Wednesday, arresting 680 mostly Latino workers in what marked the largest workplace sting in at least a decade.

The raids, planned months ago, happened just hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to visit El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latino city where a man linked to an online screed about a “Hispanic invasion” was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead in the border city.

Workers filled three buses — two for men and one for women — at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in tiny Morton, 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Jackson. They were taken to a military hangar to be processed for immigration violations. About 70 family, friends and residents waved goodbye and shouted, “Let them go! Let them go!” Later, two more buses arrived.

A tearful 13-year-old boy whose parents are from Guatemala waved goodbye to his mother, a Koch worker, as he stood beside his father. Some employees tried to flee on foot but were captured in the parking lot.

Workers who were confirmed to have legal status were allowed to leave the plant after having their trunks searched.

“It was a sad situation inside,” said Domingo Candelaria, a legal resident and Koch worker who said authorities checked employees’ identification documents.

The company did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

About 600 agents fanned out across the plants involving several companies, surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing. They occurred in small towns near Jackson with a workforce made up largely of Latino immigrants, including Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol.

Matthew Albence, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting director, told The Associated Press that the raids could be the largest such operation thus far in any single state.

Asked to comment on the fact that the raid was happening on the same day as Trump’s El Paso visit, Albence responded, “This is a long-term operation that’s been going on. Our enforcement operations are being done on a racially neutral basis. Investigations are based on evidence.”

And if you believe that the timing is coincidental, that the regime wasn't saving this raid until a day where Trump would need to remind America of the price he plans to extract from undocumented immigrants as a promise to his base in order to rally them, well I have a bridge to sell you running from San Francisco to Hawaii.

Another Day In Gunmerica

A near-tragedy at the headquarters of newspaper USA Today, as Trump's "enemies of the people" rhetoric against the press spawns stochastic terrorism.

USA TODAY's headquarters in McLean, Virginia was being evacuated Wednesday amid a heavy police presence after authorities responded to a report of a man with a weapon at the suburban Washington building.

Alarms sounded inside the building as police squad cars, firetrucks and ambulanes converged on the scene. Law enforcement officers with rifles and body armor were patrolling the area and a helicopter hovered overhead.

The building houses the headquarters of USA TODAY, its parent company, Gannett Co., and offices for a variety of other businesses.

Fairfax County police tweeted around noon that they were responding to reports of a man with a weapon at the building. Officials provided no other details.

Police warned people to avoid the area, which is near the Capital Beltway, major regional malls and office buildings in the Washington suburbs.

The headquarters building houses non-newspaper offices. Hundreds of office workers were herded outside by police.

Workers who fled reported hearing a fire alarm and an announcement over the loudspeaker about an incident inside the building.

"We've been drilled so well in school on this," said Akhil Kota, 21, who works for Appian, a software developer.

Young Millennials and Gen Z have simply accepted that the school mass shooter drills they grew up with will be the workplace mass shooter drills they will live with all their lives.

But I can hear the right now.  "Nobody was hurt, nobody was killed, working as intended."

Why is this intended?

Because the gun lobby makes it so and has for decades.  I guarantee you that your corporate workplace already has a mass shooter plan in place, and that your employer is considering mass shooter drills as more and more of the workforce becomes the people who grew up with this nihilism in school.

Duck and Cover for a new century.  Everyone buy a gun now and protect yourself from the inevitable people with guns!

The number of mass shootings in the last week has prompted many to purchase guns and sign up for classes to earn their license to carry concealed weapons, according to the people who are doing training.

Inside the Laguna Shooting Center, experts offer everything from concealed carry classes to active shooter training. Protocols and practices outlined in the training manuals have changed as the types of mass shooting scenarios change.

Time and time again, we see violent images of horrific shootings. This weekend they came from in El Paso and then Dayton.

“The officers took out the guy as soon as they got there,” said Terry Wingert, an instructor with the Advanced Security Institute.

Wingert, a former police officer, has taught concealed carry classes for 40 years all across California. He teaches up to 300 classes a year, and when a mass shooting happens, inquiries go up 10-15%.

“People will call because they are afraid to go out,” he said.

He and his partner Joe Williams teach the law, civil and criminal liability, and how to use a firearm. The concealed carry classes are 16 hours, spanning about 2 days with several hours on the range and focusing on firearm safety.

In the last few years, they have also offered active shooter training for businesses, churches and private citizens.

“There is classroom training, hands-on training and sometimes we take them in shooting scenarios,” said Wingert.

He also offers an advanced combat stress fire training class.

“Where we put people under stress a number of different ways like having a shooting go on while they are doing it so they get the live sound of it and we have people yelling and screaming,” said Williams.

The concealed carry classes are the most popular. So we asked Sacramentans if they would consider getting their license.

“Yeah, probably, especially in this area,” Julio Lee said.

“I don’t think it’s enough motivation for me to say-preventative measure,” said Denise Lee.

“It was actually a few years ago that we got it because we decided it was something we wanted to do,” Alisha Anson said.

Citizens are taking a step towards securing their own safety. It can take several months to get, but a license to carry is valid for two years in California.

Of course California -- the state with the largest number of registered Republicans in America -- loves concealed carry.

Just another day in Gunmerica.

Doesn't Matter Where You Go Donny, But You Can't Stay Here

Local leaders in both Dayton and El Paso are less than thrilled that Donald Trump is showing up this week to "heal the nation" when everyone freely admits he's making it all worse.

Donald Trump will seek to console the grief-stricken residents of El Paso and Dayton on Wednesday -- a presidential duty he’s never quite mastered and that is made harder by local reluctance about his visit.
The president and first lady Melania Trump will pay tribute to emergency responders in both cities after a pair of weekend shootings left at least 31 people dead and dozens injured. But the visits are complicated both by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric -- blamed by Democrats for helping to incite the El Paso attack -- and his resistance to gun-control measures demanded by local politicians in the aftermath of the shootings.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, said Trump shouldn’t visit, and the city’s Republican mayor has acknowledged local opposition to the president. Dayton’s mayor, a Democrat, has criticized Trump’s reaction to the shootings, in which he blamed mental illness and video games and refused to endorse proposals such as expanded background checks for gun buyers.

“His comments weren’t very helpful to the issue around guns,” the mayor, Nan Whaley, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “If you just do mental health and don’t do gun work, on common-sense gun legislation, we will not be successful in this fight.”

The U.S. experiences mass shootings at a pace that far exceeds any other developed nation, but Trump’s Republican Party has resisted policies that seek to limit civilian access to firearms. Further complicating Trump’s attempts to soothe the nation, the El Paso attacker posted a racist manifesto online that echoed language the president himself has used in verbal attacks on immigrants and minority members of Congress.

“The president’s the president of all the people, and what he wants to do is go to these communities and grieve with them, pray with them, offer condolences, and quite frankly offer thank you and appreciation to those who are first responders and put their lives on the line and were able to take out the shooter so quickly,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Tuesday.

“He also wants to talk about potential solutions -- how we keep this from ever happening again,” Gidley said.

Gidley said the president is open to considering new legislation, including a background checks bill that passed the House but has not been advanced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Democrats have called on McConnell to bring forward the bill.

Mitch doesn't have the time or inclination for a background check bill that will hand the Senate over to the Democrats as millions of rabid GOP voters turn on him and his Senate GOP colleagues, even if it is the humane thing to do.

Besides, everyone knows the Narcissist-in-Chief is only doing this for the congratulatory news coverage of himself from FOX announcing what a good, good boy he is for not literally taking a steaming dump on the stage and rolling in it.

Meanwhile, Republicans around Trump are in full panic mode as they know this will cost them their offices across the country if they refuse to act, so at the state level, expect bills to at least get a vote.

Well, not in Texas.  Ohio maybe. But you get the picture.

StupidiNews!

• Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has directed state investigators to take over the Palm Beach County Sherriff's case against indicted felon Jeffrey Epstein.
• Multiple foreign countries have issued travel advisories for their citizens visiting the US after this weekend's mass shootings, citing increased "indiscriminate violence" and anti-foreign sentiment.
• The Trump regime is warning that it will begin targeting countries that continue to do business with Venezuela's sanctioned government for additional "significant" economic sanctions.
• Former 2012 GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman is stepping down as Trump's Ambassador to China in October, Huntsman is slated to join the race for Utah Republican Mike Lee's Senate seat. 
• Disney says it will offer its Hulu, ESPN Plus, and Disney Plus streaming services in one bundle, delivering a direct broadside to the similarly priced Netflix.

Last Call For The Dinosaurs And The Trump Meteor

American historian and author Lawrence Glickman digs up the bones of that most unfortunate of political dinosaurs, the Republicansaurus Moderateus, and gives a fitting eulogy for a spineless creature who was wiped out by its own cowardice and pathos, with a lesson about Dwight Eisenhower.

Consider, for example, the widely reprinted front-page piece Eisenhower wrote for the New York Herald Tribune in late May 1964, listing attributes for the next Republican president. Although never mentioning Goldwater, the list offered a frontal attack on Goldwaterism: support for civil rights, domestic spending programs and the United Nations. But within a week, Eisenhower walked back this stunning rebuke, saying any interpretation of the piece as a criticism of Goldwater was a “complete misinterpretation.” He scolded reporters, “You people read Mr. Goldwater out of the party, I didn’t.”

In June, Eisenhower again seemed on the brink of full-throated opposition. He prodded Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton to run, before reversing course and telling Scranton that he did not wish to be part of any “cabal” to stop Goldwater. He also refused to meet with 27 Republican anti-Goldwater legislators in Pennsylvania who wanted him to endorse Scranton, even as they presciently warned him that “Eisenhower-moderate Republicanism will be irreparably harmed if you remain out of this fight.”

At the Republican convention in July, the former president moved from refusing to challenge Goldwater to endorsing the nominee’s hard-right philosophy. Eisenhower’s speechwriters had prepared a conciliatory address, which both endorsed Goldwater and praised the principles of moderation with which the former president was so closely associated. But in the last third of his speech, the tone changed dramatically as Eisenhower read seemingly discordant remarks that he had inserted at the last minute.

He began with articulating a shared grievance about the media, which “couldn’t care less about the good of our party.” Then he went even further, sympathizing with some of Goldwater’s more controversial positions on civil rights and the welfare state, two of the core principles that had so differentiated moderate Republicans like Eisenhower from Goldwater and his supporters.

The former president notably wielded the language of what had only recently been labeled the “white backlash” against the civil rights movement. He warned against “maudlin sympathy for the criminal,” cautioning against transforming him into “a poor, underprivileged person who counts upon the compassion of our society and the laxness or weakness of too many courts to forgive his offense.” The crowd delighted in this racialized dig at the liberalism of the Supreme Court, which had recently proclaimed “the right to remain silent.”

Rather than emphasizing the chasm between moderation and extremism, the former president highlighted his points of agreement with Goldwater, seemingly out of ideological conviction rather than simple party loyalty. This continued over the next few months. Several times, he went out of his way to endorse Goldwater’s proposal to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority, which he described to CBS’s Walter Cronkite as “not a radical move at all — it’s just getting private enterprise into a lot of things that are now the government’s doings.” Employing the language of the anti-New Dealers, he also called the TVA “creeping socialism.”

This embrace culminated with a “Conversation in Gettysburg,” a half-hour TV program produced by the Republican National Committee and aired nationally on NBC in September 1964. The former president and the nominee discussed their common ground, with Eisenhower dismissing the charges that Goldwater was a warmonger as “actual tommyrot.” He also volunteered the view, closely associated with conservatism, that “too much power” is “centralized in Washington” and represented “a danger to our freedom.”

The Republican party has never been moderate in my lifetime, and even decades before I was born it was the party of Lee Atwater, Barry Goldwater, and "Democrats are Socialists."  Even Eisenhower capitulated 55 years ago, not because of his differences, but because of what he had in common with Goldwater.

Nothing's changed since.

Return Of The Blue Wave, Con't

Republicans are in such dire trouble in suburban House districts that our media is actually writing stories about how something Republicans are doing may be bad for them as a party. Even more shocking is an admission that gun control is actually a losing issue for Trump and the GOP.

The renewed debate captures a dilemma for Trump as he revs up his reelection campaign with appeals to rural Americans steeped in a rich gun culture. But he risks alienating upper-income suburbanites, who can make or break his prospects, if he’s seen as unwilling to take action to stop frequent mass shootings.

All of the major Democratic candidates are running on gun control measures, including tougher background checks and banning assault weapons, setting up a stark contrast with Trump.

“Every time the country experiences a tragedy of this nature the Republican brand takes a hit,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Republican former congressman who lost to a Democrat his suburban Miami-area district in 2018. “Because many, many Americans perceive that Republicans are unwilling to act on gun reform, due to the influence of the NRA and other organizations.”

“Certainly in swing suburban districts there is broad support for” policies like universal background checks and 72-hour waiting periods, Curbelo said. “A lot of voters, especially young voters, have lost their patience with this issue.”

A Marist poll last month, commissioned by NPR and PBS, found that 57% of American adults support banning “the sale of semi-automatic assault guns such as the AK-47 or the AR-15,” while 41% oppose it. Support for such bans was 62% among suburbanites, 74% among women in the suburbs and small cities, and 65% among white college graduates.

But the survey found broad opposition to banning semi-automatic assault weapons among the core elements of Trump’s coalition — 67% among Republicans, 67% among conservatives, 65% among white men without college degrees, and 51% among rural Americans.

So if Trump goes along, he's done.  But if he doesn't, his party is toast.  And the party of white supremacy is circling the wagons and throwing out race traitors already.

The Nebraska Republican Party on Monday called for GOP state Sen. John McCollister to re-register as a Democrat after he accused the party of enabling white supremacy in the United States.

“John McCollister has been telegraphing for years that he has little if nothing in common with the Republican voters in his district by consistently advocating for higher taxes, restrictions on American’s Second Amendment rights, and pro-abortion lobby,” Nebraska Republican Party Executive Director Ryan Hamilton said in a statement. “His latest false statement about Republicans should come as no surprise to anyone who is paying attention, and we’re happy he has finally shed all pretense of being a conservative.”

Hamilton added that he'd be "happy to send a change of voter registration form along to his office so he can make the switch officially and start, for once, telling the truth to voters in his district.”

McCollister gained national attention on Sunday after sharing a series of tweets condemning the Republican Party for what he described as its complicity in "obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party."

"The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country," McCollister said on Twitter. "As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth."

House Democrats have already passed a background check bill, but of course Mitch McConnell refuses to bring it up for a vote, and there's no indication he will do anything other than issue more empty platitudes as Republicans are already planning to come up with more useless token legislation that will do nothing, all while Mitch is tweeting images of his political opponent's literal gravestone.

It's going to take major GOP Senate losses in 2020 over gun control before anything will change, losses bad enough to cost the GOP control of the upper chamber.  And if enough voters figure that out, even Mitch may end up losing his power...

Trump Trades Blows, Con't

This is currently on the Opinion page of the NY Times:

Trump has to get the needle off of domestic politics, so he's gone ballistic on the foreign entanglements.  Friday's threat of new tariffs on the remaining $300 billion or so in Chinese imports, along with Beijing blaming the US for Hong Kong protests, has become the final straw.

And like millions of Americans witnessed this weekend, Donald Trump is a bully and fundamentally weak leader and the Chinese government has decided that the best way to deal with Trump is to punch the bully in the mouth until he's forced to leave.  Trump's trade war with Beijing has now turned Pyrrhic.

China confirmed reports that it was pulling out of U.S. agriculture as a weapon in the ongoing trade war.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said Chinese companies have stopped purchasing U.S. agricultural products in response to President Trump’s new 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods.

“This is a serious violation of the meeting between the heads of state of China and the United States,” the Minister of Commerce said in a statement Monday that was translated via Google.

The department also said it would “not rule out” tariffs on newly purchased agricultural goods after August 3.

China is one of the largest buyers of U.S. agriculture. Bloomberg News reported that Beijing may stop importing them completely in response to new tariffs by the United States. According to reports by Chinese State media, it would also consider slapping tariffs on U.S. agricultural products that it already bought.

Those stories helped exacerbate fears on Wall Street pushing stocks to their worst day of the year. Now that China has confirmed the reports, it could add to pressure on equities. Stock futures fell Monday, implying a 480 point drop Tuesday.

U.S. farming has been a hot-button issue in the ongoing trade war. The president said that he had secured large quantities of agricultural purchases when he met with President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in June. Trump later accused China of not following through, leading him to announce on Thursday 10% tariffs on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese imports.

The Dow plunged nearly 800 points on Monday.  Futures show today will be just as bad, as the Trump regime's response is equally scorched Earth.

The U.S. Treasury has just taken the extraordinary step of designating China as a currency manipulator, something no administration has done since the days of Bill Clinton.

With the action, the trade war between the U.S. and China has entered a new phase that will likely see both countries stepping up both their rhetoric and actions in the trade dispute that has now dragged on for over a year.

As a result of the ongoing hostilities between the U.S. government and China, the flood of investment dollars that once came from Chinese technology companies and investors into U.S. technology companies has slowed. Acquisitions and investments made by Chinese companies have been unwound over concerns from the Committee of Foreign Investments in the U.S. and tariffs slapped on Chinese imports have hit U.S. stock prices (including in the technology sector).

The news of Treasury’s move comes less than 24 hours after the Chinese government announced a complete halt on U.S. agricultural imports. More significantly, the Bank of China has let the country’s currency slide in value against the U.S. dollar to above the seven-to-one figure that was considered a line-in-the-sand for trade.

Odds of a serious economic recession heading into 2020 just became very, very real.

Given the escalation, economists’ fears that global markets could slip into a recession within the next nine months are more likely to be realized, according to reports from Morgan Stanley, quoted by CNBC.

“We take its literal message of planned tariffs quite seriously. There’s a pattern of responding to insufficient negotiation progress with escalation,” Morgan Stanley said in an analyst report.

But trade wars are easy to win, right?

Meanwhile, with China turning into a conflagration, oil has taken a bath.  That means Trump has to cause oil prices to spike again and he's found his solution.  Late last night the Trump regime declared total economic sanctions on one of China's biggest trading partners: Venezuela and the "illegitimate" government of President Nicolas Maduro.

President Donald Trump on Monday announced the US would expand its existing sanctions against Venezuela with an executive order to impose a total economic embargo against the country.
The embargo freezes assets of the government of Venezuela and associated entities and prohibits economic transactions with it, unless specifically exempted. Exemptions include official business of the federal government and transactions related to the provision of humanitarian aid. 

The executive order marks an escalation from the already expansive US measures against the Venezuelan government since the start of the country's chaotic political and economic crisis earlier this year.
In a letter to Congress outlining the action Monday night, Trump said, "I have determined that it is necessary to block the property of the Government of Venezuela in light of the continued usurpation of power by the illegitimate Nicolas Maduro regime, as well as the regime's human rights abuses, arbitrary arrest and detention of Venezuelan citizens, curtailment of free press, and ongoing attempts to undermine Interim President Juan Guaido of Venezuela and the democratically-elected Venezuelan National Assembly." 

Venezuela's political turmoil stems from presidential elections last year wherein Maduro secured another six-year term in a process widely viewed as a sham. Opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself acting president earlier this year. 

While several nations -- including China and Russia -- have supported Maduro in the wake of the election, Trump has been a vocal champion for Guaido. 

"In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly invoked the country's constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant. The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law," Trump said early this year in a statement recognizing Guaido as interim president.

In all seriousness, it won't take much to topple the US economy into a 2008-style free-for-all that will end up crushing the country.  That event may have just happened.

Stay tuned.  Trump's economic war is about to turn hot.

Last Call For Everyone But Me

As if it was ever going to happen, Donald Trump completely ignored his own complicity in last weekend's deadly mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton and instead blamed video games, mental illness, and the media.

President Donald Trump focused on internet radicalization and mental illness in an address to the country on Monday, characterizing the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend as a product of isolated evil mixed with mental illness.

“Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger—not the gun,” Trump said.

Apart from promises to direct resources to improving mental health resources for isolated and troubled people and identifying warning signs from potential mass shooters, Trump also called for an end to “the glorification of violence in our society,” with a focus on “gruesome and grisly” video games. “It is too easy for troubled youths to surround themselves with a culture of violence,” he said. “Cultural change is hard, but each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life.”

Trump also had two slightly more aggressive proposals. He suggested he would promote increased use of involuntary commitment in certain cases of mental illness, and he said he was looking to encourage the death penalty in mass shootings. “I am directing the Department of Justice to propose legislation ensuring that those who commit hate crimes and mass murders face the death penalty, and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.”

Trump didn’t entirely dismiss the issue of firearms: He did propose national red flag laws—those that allow police or family members to request that law enforcement confiscate firearms from people who may prove a danger to themselves or others—in the speech. But he did not revisit his promise made online earlier that morning to support “strong” background checks.

The speech hit some traditional notes in moments of tragedy: Trump called for bipartisanship and sent condolences to the two American cities, as well as to the Mexican president, for the loss of lives. But he also fixated on the language of violence, with phrases such as “twisted monster,” “barbaric slaughters,” and “evil contagion.” He also called the violence “domestic terrorism,” though he fell short of linking the terrorism to race.

He did mention the white supremacist manifesto written by the El Paso shooting suspect that echoed some of Trump’s rhetoric on immigration. In the four-page screed, the suspected gunman confessed an intense hatred toward Hispanics and immigrants, whom he blamed for “cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.” In his remarks Monday, Trump described the El Paso gunman as being “consumed by racist hate” and called for the country to condemn racism and bigotry. “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul,” he said.

As a strange conclusion to his speech, Trump offered his condolences to the victims’ families, and, confusingly, wished that “God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo”—a city 150 miles away from Dayton.

So Trump wants an end to violent video games, and oh yes, it's time to lock up the mentally ill, because that's never been a problem in US history.

Meanwhile, he just keeps on going naming new targets for his brownshirts to gun down.

He just keeps getting worse.