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

This time America got lucky and a white supremacist terrorist was stopped before he could shoot up an Ohio synagogue.

An Ohio man has been arrested for making threats toward a local Jewish community center in New Middletown.

James Reardon Jr., 20, has been charged with telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing and is being held in the Mahoning County Jail on $250,000 bond with a court hearing planned for Monday morning.

On Friday, the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force raided Reardon’s house and seized a cache of weapons and ammunition, including dozens of round of ammo, multiple semi-automatic weapons, a gas mask and bulletproof armor.

"Grateful for the work of the FBI, local law enforcement and our community partners in the Youngstown Jewish community. We will continue to employ all our resources to stop the spread of white nationalism and violent extremism," the Anti-Defamation League in Cleveland tweeted.

Police initially became aware of Reardon on July 11 when he posted a video on Instagram of a man shooting a semi-automatic rifle with sirens and screams in the background. He tagged the Jewish Community Center of Youngstown in the post.

"That kicked off an intense investigation, a very rapidly evolving investigation, because of the way the world is," New Middletown Police Chief Vince D’Egidio told Youngstown ABC affiliate WYTV.

"Because of the way the world is", as if we somehow didn't have a direct line to draw from the man in the White House and the anti-Semitic hate he surrounds himself with and uses on a regular basis to repeated potential mass slaughter of American Jews.

But sure, let's just pretend Donald Trump has nothing to do with it.

The Evil Behind Deportation Nation

The Washington Post takes a look at the Trump Regime's rogues gallery of racists, grifters, enablers, parasites, and yes men that run our country, and the worst of the lot by far is the Minister of White Supremacy himself, Trump's immigration adviser Stephen Miller.

Effusive in praising his boss, Miller said he experienced a “jolt of electricity to my soul” when he saw Trump announce his presidential run, “as though everything that I felt at the deepest levels of my heart were for now being expressed by a candidate for our nation’s highest office before a watching world.”

With sections of the West Wing under summer renovation, Miller has been working out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door, setting up in the Secretary of War suite, a spacious, elegant command post appointed with oil paintings, fine leather furniture and a small forest’s worth of hardwood.

Barely a decade removed from college, Miller is at the seat of power. His authority has grown in recent months as he engineered a leadership purge at the Department of Homeland Security, removing or reassigning the head of every immigration-related agency in a span of just seven weeks.

And his long-sought policy goals are reaching fruition. On Monday, Miller secured tighter immigration rules that can disqualify green-card applicants if they are poor or deemed likely to use public assistance, cutting off a pathway to U.S. citizenship for those immigrants who could become a burden on taxpayers, or “public charges.”

Miller’s horizon extends beyond one or even two presidential terms. He views the public charge rule as vital to his goal of reducing immigration, and he has told colleagues it will have “socially transformative effects” on American society.
“Immigration is an issue that affects all others,” Miller said, speaking in structured paragraphs. “Immigration affects our health-care system. Immigration affects our education system. Immigration affects our public safety, it affects our national security, it affects our economy and our financial system. It touches upon everything, but the goal is to create an immigration system that enhances the vibrancy, the unity, the togetherness and the strength of our society.”

This account of Miller’s role in the White House and his relationship to Trump is based on interviews with Miller and 22 current and former administration officials, nearly all of whom have worked directly with him. His colleagues speak of him with a mix of admiration, fear and derision, impressed by his single-minded determination and loyalty to the president, despite an awkward and sometimes off-putting style. Some of the same co-workers who deplore his political machinations say he can be charming and likable when he’s not angling toward an outcome.

Miller often launches into pedantic arguments with others in the White House, citing lengthy, arcane statistics that he mentally stores like munitions. He reads “every economic analysis, every think tank paper, every Wall Street Journal editorial on immigration,” said another colleague.

Obsessed with terminology, Miller tells others in the West Wing that how issues are talked about — and what terms the media and legislators use — is often as important or more important than anything else.

The words and phrases that Miller uses are verbatim white supremacist dogma.  And his attention to detail means he is knowingly using this framing and phraseology in order to advance his twisted cause and to signal to fellow travelers that this is now White House policy.

Remember, Miller doesn't want to stop undocumented from entering the country.  He wants to end legal immigration, and he wants to reverse America's demographic changes by deporting tens of millions of "undesirables" out of the country.

He's flat out evil.

Sunday Long Read: 400 Years Of Slavery

The N Y Times, along with several writers and historians, have put together the 1619 Project, a look at how America started as a slave nation and how it has struggled with that ever since, as we enter our fifth century as a nation and as a people that still has yet to fully come to terms or even to define them.

In August 1619, just 12 years after the English settled Jamestown, Va., one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock and some 157 years before the English colonists even decided they wanted to form their own country, the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates. The pirates had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship that had forcibly taken them from what is now the country of Angola. Those men and women who came ashore on that August day were the beginning of American slavery. They were among the 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War. Almost two million did not survive the grueling journey, known as the Middle Passage.

Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire. Through backbreaking labor, they cleared the land across the Southeast. They taught the colonists to grow rice. They grew and picked the cotton that at the height of slavery was the nation’s most valuable commodity, accounting for half of all American exports and 66 percent of the world’s supply. They built the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sprawling properties that today attract thousands of visitors from across the globe captivated by the history of the world’s greatest democracy. They laid the foundations of the White House and the Capitol, even placing with their unfree hands the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome. They lugged the heavy wooden tracks of the railroads that crisscrossed the South and that helped take the cotton they picked to the Northern textile mills, fueling the Industrial Revolution. They built vast fortunes for white people North and South — at one time, the second-richest man in the nation was a Rhode Island “slave trader.” Profits from black people’s stolen labor helped the young nation pay off its war debts and financed some of our most prestigious universities. It was the relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies and the products of their labor that made Wall Street a thriving banking, insurance and trading sector and New York City the financial capital of the world.

But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.

The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.

Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.

The very first person to die for this country in the American Revolution was a black man who himself was not free. Crispus Attucks was a fugitive from slavery, yet he gave his life for a new nation in which his own people would not enjoy the liberties laid out in the Declaration for another century. In every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.

My father, one of those many black Americans who answered the call, knew what it would take me years to understand: that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true “founding fathers.” And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us. 

This collection of essays is mandatory reading, or should be, for every American.  We'd understand the country and ourselves much more if we did.

Return Of The Blue Wave, Con't

Perpetually DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT DONALD TRUMP Maine Sen. Susan Collins should now be deeply concerned about keeping her job, as Cook Political Report has shifted her 2020 reelection race to true toss-up status.

Collins won her last reelection bid in 2014 by more than 30 points but is expected to face a much tighter race this time around, with the leader of the state's House of Representatives, Sara Gideon (D), announcing she would challenge the four-term senator.

A press release Friday from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) claimed that the incumbent senator's support had cratered in the state following her confirmation vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year, a controversial vote that Democrats argue pushed her outside the label of "moderate."

"This is the latest in a string of bad news for the vulnerable incumbent, who has continued to lose support among Mainers and seen her net approval drop by a 'stunning' amount since President Trump took office," the DSCC said in a press release, quoting a Morning Consult analysis.

The senator defended her vote to confirm Kavanaugh last month in an interview with The New York Times, telling the newspaper she did not regret her vote "in the least."

Gideon, meanwhile, hammered Collins for the vote in her campaign announcement earlier this year.

“At one point, maybe Sen. Collins was different, but she doesn’t seem that way anymore: taking over a million dollars from drug companies and the insurance industry and voting to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court,” Gideon said.

No current Republican senator has paid more in the polls than Collins.  Like the article says, she won in 2014 by 30 points, running against her was unthinkably quixotic even a few years ago.

Now she's in serious trouble, along with Republican incumbents Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona.

If Democratic Sen. Doug Jones can keep his seat in Alabama, Democrats can pick up at least three seats.  They'll need to pick up more to send Mitch McConnell to the showers, but two open GOP seats, one in Tennessee and one in Kansas are in play, and support for North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis isn't very deep.

It'll take some lifting, but then again, I figure Trump wrecking the economy will have an effect.

Vacationless Nation

America, you're getting screwed out of your time off, and it's costing us tens of billions of dollars.

Workers in the United States left a record number of vacation days on the table last year, equating to billions in lost benefits, according to research from the U.S. Travel Association, Oxford Economics and Ipsos. 

A total of 768 million days went unused in 2018, a 9% increase from 2017. Of those, 236 million were completely forfeited, which comes out to $65.5 billion in lost benefits.

Fifty-five percent of workers reported that they did not use all of their vacation days. If American workers used their time off to travel, the study says, the economic opportunity amounts to $151.5 billion in additional travel spending and would create 2 million American jobs. 

One of the main culprits for the increase in unused vacation days is that the number of earned days off is increasing faster than workers are using them. Workers did not use an average of 27.7% of their earned days off in 2018, up from 25.9% in 2017. 

Although there was a large increase in unused vacation days, on average, American workers took more days off in 2018: 17.4, up from 17.2 off in 2017. However, that is a significant drop from the 20.3 average vacation days used from 1978 to 2000.

But of course in Trump's America, you do what you are told, worker.

The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was to either spend Tuesday standing in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak, or to take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” read the rules that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those that showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.

“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” the rules said.

Those that decided to sit out the event would have an excused absence, the company said, and would not qualify for overtime pay on Friday. The company has a 56-hour workweek with 16 hours of overtime. That means those workers who attended Mr. Trump’s speech and showed up for work on Friday meeting the overtime threshold are being paid at a rate of time and a half, while those that didn’t go to hear the president are being paid the regular rate, despite the fact that both groups did not do work on the site on Tuesday.

This is just what Shell wanted to do and we went along with it,” said Ken Broadbent, business manager for Steamfitters local 449.

The local has 2,400 workers on the site and Mr. Broadbent said he would not “bad rap about it one way or another.”

“We’re glad to have the jobs. We’re glad to have the project built,” he said. “The president is the president whether we like him or dislike him. We respect him for the title.”

We all serve at the pleasure of Dear Leader Trump now, and our corporate masters will see to it that we do.

Now get back to work.

Last Call For The Purge: Trump Edition

The State Department's inspector general dropped a bombshell report this week finding the department's international affairs bureau was a disaster where career staffers found insufficiently loyal to Dear Leader Trump were targeted for harassment and even retaliatory action.

A report by the State Department’s inspector general concludes that leadership of a leading department bureau mistreated and harassed staffers, accused them of political disloyalty to the Trump administration, and retaliated against them.

In response to repeated counseling by more senior State officials that he address staff concerns, the report concluded, Kevin Moley, assistant secretary for international affairs, “did not take significant action.”

The report, released Thursday, is a sweeping condemnation of Moley and more specifically of his former senior adviser, Mari Stull. A former lobbyist and consultant for international food and agriculture interests, Stull left the department in January following press reports that, among other things, she had compiled a list of staffers deemed insufficiently loyal to the Trump administration.
The 30-page report — based on what it said were interviews with dozens of current and former employees, as well as documents — chronicled numerous episodes of Stull berating and belittling employees, and Moley’s repeated failure to deal with complaints reported to him.

Both Stull and Moley, it said, “frequently berated employees, raised their voices, and generally engaged in unprofessional behavior toward staff,” and reportedly moved to retaliate against those who had held their jobs under the previous administration.

Stull, it said, referred to some employees as “Obama holdovers,” “traitors,” or “disloyal,” and accused some of being part of the “Deep State” and the “swamp” — terms that President Trump has used to refer to federal employees. All of those so accused, the report said, were career staffers and not political appointees.

Some staffers said Moley accused them of “undermining the President’s agenda,” the report said.

In a response appended to the report, Moley said he had no recollection of much of the counseling, and said the description of his behavior with employees “does not represent the person I am or have ever been.” He said accounts of the departure of two senior bureau officials was inaccurate, and that he had not witnessed Stull’s reported behavior.

Stull, the report said, declined to speak to investigators.

Recommendations included in the report advised Undersecretary of Political Affairs David Hale, who supervises the international affairs bureau, to develop a “corrective action plan to address the leadership and management deficiencies,” and to consider other action, “including disciplinary action.”

The State Department response, contained in the report and repeated Thursday by a Department spokesman, accepted the recommendations. Noting that Stull was “no longer with the Department,” it said that “with regard to the second employee,” Moley, it would submit a “corrective action plan” within 60 days.

A slap on the wrist at best.

You serve at the pleasure of Dear Leader Trump.  This government and this country now exists to benefit him.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

Congressional Republicans are in their home districts for the August recess, avoiding town hall meetings and questions about Trump, but they have been given their talking points on mass shooters and white nationalism just the same, and they are absolutely disgusting lies.

Congressional Republicans recently circulated talking points on gun violence that falsely described the El Paso massacre and other mass shootings as “violence from the left.”

A document obtained by the Tampa Bay Times and sent by House Republicans provides a framework for how to respond to anticipated questions like, “Why won’t you pass legislation to close the ‘gun show loophole’ in federal law?” and “Why shouldn’t we ban high-capacity magazines?" The answers are boilerplate Republican arguments against tougher gun restrictions.

But it also included this question: “Do you believe white nationalism is driving more mass shootings recently?” The suggested response is to steer the conversation away from white nationalism to an argument that implies both sides are to blame.

“White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form," the document said. “We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa."

Yep.  It's the "left's" fault!

U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, included the talking points in a newsletter that he emailed this week to his Florida constituents. His spokeswoman Summer Robertson said they were “provided by the House Republican Conference," the caucus arm in charge of devising messaging strategy for its members. The conference’s internal strategies are not usually made public.

Robertson said that the inclusion of El Paso was a mistake. It was supposed to say Dayton, the site of a second mass shooting 13 hours later where nine people died.

The El Paso shooter is alleged to have intentionally targeted Mexicans when he killed 22 people at a Walmart on the Texas-Mexico border on Aug. 3. In a manifesto published just before the attack he expressed white nationalist and anti-immigrant beliefs, using language that echoed President Donald Trump’s characterizations of illegal immigration.

The Dayton Daily News reported that the shooter in Ohio had attended a protest of a Ku Klux Klan rally and other outlets have reported his political leanings aligned with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist. The motivations of the Dayton shooters killing spree, though, are less clear. He reportedly was obsessed with violence and once made a list of girls he wanted to kill. He fatally wounded his sister in the rampage.

The GOP conference talking points ascribed other shootings as leftist violence despite ambiguous, if not contradictory, evidence. The shooter that wounded U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, a Democrat, was paranoid about government and obsessed with the Arizona Congresswoman, a law enforcement investigation found. His political persuasions were mixed and did not appear to be a factor. Nor does it seem that the May shooters at a Colorado high school — both teenagers and bullied students — were motivated by politics.

But that sure doesn't matter to Republicans who just want to blow smoke up your ass in order to have yet another excuse to avoid anything on gun safety or background check legislation that the vast majority of American adults want to see passed.

Just another day in Gunmerica.

It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

As I've said on multiple occasions, like most malignant narcissists, Donald Trump views the world through the lens of loyalty.  Specifically, people who please him are good, and people who oppose him are vermin to be crushed.  The Washington Post lists a pile of instances where Trump's penchant for petty vengeance has driven national and international policy.

By pressuring the Israeli government to bar entry by two members of Congress, President Trump once again used the power and platform of his office to punish his political rivals.

It’s a pattern that has intensified during the first two and a half years of Trump’s presidency, as he has increasingly governed to the tune of his grievances.

The president has grounded a military jet set for use by the Democratic House speaker, yanked a security clearance from a former CIA director critical of him, threatened to withhold disaster aid from states led by Democrats, pushed to reopen a criminal investigation targeting Hillary Clinton and publicly called for federal action to punish technology and media companies he views as biased against him.

Taken as a whole, Trump’s use of political power to pursue personal vendettas is unprecedented in modern history, said Matthew Dallek, a political historian who teaches at George Washington University.

“It’s both a sign of deep insecurity on his part and also just a litany of abuse of power,” he said. “I don’t think anyone really has done it as consistently or as viciously as Trump has. No one has used the power of the bully pulpit in such a public way.”

The Post needs to batten down the hatches for another round of FAKE NEWS and ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE. But at what point does Trump cross the line from Petty vindictiveness to full-blown abuse of executive power?

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented several instances in which Trump sought to pressure the Department of Justice to pursue a criminal investigation into his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, for her use of a private email server. In his report, Mueller found that Trump encouraged then-attorney general Jeff Sessions in 2017 to reverse his recusal from any Clinton-related matters to pursue new charges.

The FBI closed its investigation into Clinton’s email practices in 2016 without charges, a decision Trump pledged as a candidate to reverse. Sessions did not reverse his recusal but did assign the U.S. attorney in Utah, John Huber, to examine the Clinton investigation. Trump fired Sessions in November.

Democrats, some of whom have called for Trump’s impeachment, have said his attempts to have Clinton prosecuted represent a clear example of abuse of power.

Trump has also wielded his authority over the federal budget to intervene in spending decisions related to various natural disasters. He has publicly shown disdain toward disaster-stricken states where Democrats outnumber Republicans, and in some cases threatened to withhold disaster funding from them.

As historic wildfires ravaged California earlier this year, Trump lamented the amount of money the federal government was spending to provide relief.

I fully expect Democrats, when that impeachment rocket takes off, will nails Trump the hardest on his abuses of power.  And Trump has nobody but himself to blame for making them so visible and so easy to document.

StupidiNews!

• NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his wife avoided any serious injuries as the private jet they were in rolled off the runway in east Tennessee and caught fire, everyone was able to escape.
• Gibraltar officials have allowed an Iranian oil tanker to pass despite the Trump White House requesting that the tanker be held over for US naval inspectors to board the vessel.
• North Korea has fired at least two more missile test projectiles into the sea on Friday as South Korea is warning that dialogue between the two nations is now "over".
• The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as the White House plans to claim executive privilege over his testimony.
• Apple will unveil iOS 13 and its news lineup of Apple iPhones on September 10, the tech giant's flagship phone faces stiff competition from Samsung, LG, and Google and shrinking market share.

Last Call For The Also-Rans

As I noted earlier today, former Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper had the grace to step out of the 2020 Presidential contest to run for Senate, but he won't have an easy time in the primary.

Former presidential candidate John Hickenlooper is considering a Senate run.

In his announcement declaring he is dropping out of the presidential race, Hickenlooper said he'll "give some serious thought" to running for Senate. A decision could take weeks.

More than 10 Democrats are already hoping to challenge Sen. Cory Gardner in 2020.

On Thursday, several candidates announced they would not drop out should Hickenlooper join the race.

"This won't be a coronation," State Sen. Angela Williams, a current Senate candidate, said.

Senate candidate Mike Johnston also implied he is staying in the race.

“I am so grateful for the support we have received from people in places across the state, am energized by the campaign that lies ahead, and excited to win back control of the Senate and get to work for the people of Colorado," Johnston said in a statement.

Andrew Romanoff also told FOX31 he won't drop out.

"I'm running for Senate -- I intend to stay in this race -- because I'm running to get things done," Romanoff said.

Alice Madden also announced she would not drop out.

Beto O'Rourke on the other hand has no plans for running for the Senate in Texas, despite his near zero numbers in the polls.

Beto O'Rourke returned to the campaign trail Thursday with a speech in his hometown of El Paso. The former Texas congressman, who had effectively suspended his campaign after the mass shooting in El Paso earlier this month, laid out a new approach to his candidacy. He said that instead of prioritizing early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, he would instead concentrate on communities where President Trump has been "terrorizing, and terrifying and demeaning our fellow Americans."

"As we head back on the campaign trail today, I know there is a way to do this better. And that came to me last week someone asked if I was going to be heading back to Iowa to go to the Iowa State Fair," O'Rourke, who has repeatedly accused the president of racism in recent weeks, said. "And I said, 'No, I can't go back for that, but I also can't go back to that.'"

During the speech, O'Rourke also announced plans to immediately visit Mississippi in the wake of the ICE raids that detained 680 people last week. O'Rourke also said he would travel to Arkansas, where he will keynote the Arkansas Democratic Party's Third Annual Clinton Dinner.

I'm really kid of hoping Hickenlooper loses the primary and Republican Sen. Cory Gardner then loses in November to whoever beats Hickenlooper, just so we can go "I told you so" to both these jackasses.

You should have run for the Senate from the beginning.

The Cruelty Is The Point, Con't

As I said last week, there was very little doubt that the Netanyahu government of Israel would risk angering Donald Trump over banning two Democratic Muslim congresswomen from the country.  Today Israel made it clear they will do whatever it takes to stay in Trump's good graces.

Israel will bar Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country as part of a landmark visit, in a move that is already fueling a political firestorm in Washington.

Omar and Tlaib — the first two Muslim women in Congress — were slated to arrive this weekend, but President Donald Trump had lobbied Israeli leaders to block them from entering the country and lashed out again at the pair on Thursday.

The controversial decision announced by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely comes despite pleas from top lawmakers in both parties to allow the delegation visit to take place.

“The decision has been made. The decision is not to allow them to enter,” Hotovely told an Israeli radio station.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who returned from his own visit to Israel this month, repeatedly asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to allow the freshman lawmakers to enter the country, only to be rejected.

Hoyer and other pro-Israel Democrats like Nita Lowey of New York, Brad Schneider of Illinois, Ted Deutch of Florida and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey also personally lobbied Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., to allow the visit.

And the trip got a bipartisan endorsement after Hoyer and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced their support for the Omar-Tlaib visit during a press conference last week in Jerusalem.

But Trump slammed Tlaib and Omar — two fierce critics of the president who have called for his impeachment — on Twitter Thursday morning and encouraged Israel to block them.

"It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep.Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds," Trump said. "Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a disgrace!"

And so Israel did what it was told, because Donald Trump wanted to hurt two black Muslim women who dared to oppose him, and the message that he now has the power to do as much harm as he can to anyone who wrongs him, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.  He's even dragging other countries into doing his bidding now.

A sitting US leader openly exacting revenge against his political opposition like this is repugnant.

But only if people actually do "do something about it".

So the question is what do Democrats do about this?  Will they be cowards like the GOP that now openly fears Trump and will do whatever he wants?  Will they be cowards like Israel's government and do whatever Trump wants?

Because if the answer is "nothing" then it's not repugnant.

It's the new normal.

Trump's Labor Pains

The Trump regime is moving ahead with a major priority in the workplace and one I warned for years was coming: allowing any federal contract employer to obtain a religious exemption in order to nullify existing fair labor and discrimination laws.

The 46-page draft rule from the Labor Department would apply to a range of so-called religious organizations — including corporations, schools, and societies — provided that they claim a “religious purpose.”

Labor Department spokesperson Megan Sweeney confirmed to BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that the rule would apply to for-profit corporations with federal contracts. This would allow those companies discriminate and keep their contract, given that they obtain a religious exemption.
The Trump administration makes clear that a corporation needn’t focus entirely on religion to qualify, saying, “The contractor must be organized for a religious purpose, meaning that it was conceived with a self-identified religious purpose. This need not be the contractor’s only purpose.”

“A religious purpose can be shown by articles of incorporation or other founding documents, but that is not the only type of evidence that can be used,” says the rule, which grants companies many opportunities to claim that faith or morals guide their intent.

The National Center for Transgender Equality said in a statement the rule could allow “firing or refusing to hire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It could also lead to federal contractors refusing to hire women or unmarried workers who are pregnant or parents, or even discrimination on the basis of race.”

For example, the policy could allow a company that supplies machinery to the federal government to fire a woman simply because she’s a lesbian if it obtains a religious pass.

Workers could still take employers to court, but there is no federal law explicitly protecting LGBTQ workers. And under the proposed rule, the Labor Department wouldn’t need to take enforcement action or cancel lucrative contracts with businesses that make religious claims as the basis for bias.

The new rule would not eliminate longstanding nondiscrimination executive orders — such as a 2014 order banning LGBT discrimination — but rather create a pathway to get around them.

Echoing a sentiment from a Labor Department press release, Sweeney tried to downplay that fact that the plan would allow discrimination, saying in a statement, “The proposed regulation does not exempt or excuse a contractor from complying with other applicable requirements outside of the religious employer exemption.”

But this ignores the heart of the plan: The draft rule exists to create a carveout that protects businesses that raise a religious motive. The Labor Department, according to the proposal, “will find a violation of [the nondiscrimination order] only if it can prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a protected characteristic other than religion was a but-for cause of the adverse action.”

So, all a federal contractor has to do is go to the Trump Labor Department and request a religious exemption.  Once that's granted, the business is free to do what it wants as far as employees hired and fired that work on federal contracts.

That's expected to affect about 450,000 employees, but it's only the beginning of this mess.

StupidiNews!

• Six police officers were wounded in a shootout with a gunman in Philadelphia, the suspect was captured and the officers escaped serious harm after a SWAT team evacuated the suspect's home.
• The White House and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are "deeply concerned" by Chinese troops massing on the border with Hong Kong in response to recent protests.
• A Russian passenger jet made an emergency landing at Moscow's airport after striking a flock of gulls shortly after takeoff, four minor injuries were reported and all 233 on board were safe.
• South Korean President Moon dialed down the rhetoric against Japan in a speech on the anniversary of WWII as tensions between the two nations remain high over trade and historical disputes.
• The former Amazon employee who is accused of stealing data on millions of Capital One accounts is now being accused of having data from over 30 other corporations according to US attorneys.

Last Call For Trump Trades Blows, Con't

As I keep saying, the one thing that would absolutely end Donald Trump in 2020 is an economic recession, and America got another market red alert today that indicates we're careening towards a nasty one right now.

Recession signals intensified Wednesday in the United States and in some of the world’s leading economies, as the damage from acrimonious trade wars is becoming increasingly apparent on multiple continents.

The U.S. stock market tumbled to its worst day of the year on Wednesday, after a reliable predictor of looming recessions flashed for the first time since the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 800 points, or about 3 percent, and has lost close to 7 percent over the past three weeks.

Two of the world’s largest economies, Germany and the United Kingdom, appear to be contracting even as the latter forges ahead with plans to leave the European Union. Growth also has slowed in China, which is in a bitter trade feud with the United States. Meanwhile, Argentina’s stock market fell nearly 50 percent earlier this week after its incumbent president was defeated by a left-wing opponent.

Whether the events presage an economic calamity or just an alarming spasm are unclear. But unlike during the Great Recession, global leaders are not working in unison to confront mounting problems and arrest the slowdown. Instead, they are increasingly at one another’s throats.

And President Trump has responded by both claiming the economy is still thriving while dramatically ramping up his attacks on Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell, seeking to deflect blame.

Wednesday’s sharp sell-off was caused by an unusual development in the bond market, called an “inverted yield curve,” that often foreshadows a recession.

For the first time since the run-up to the Great Recession, the yields — or returns — on short-term U.S. bonds eclipsed those of long-term bonds. Normally, the government needs to pay out higher rates to attract investors for its long-term bonds. But with so many losing confidence in the near-term prospects of the economy and rushing to buy longer-term bonds, the U.S. government now is paying more to attract buyers to its 2-year bond than its 10-year note.

That inverted yield curve usually precedes a recession by about a year, which would be lethal to Trump's reelection prospects if that holds true.  I say "usually" because the yield curve first inverted in December 2005 before the Great Recession, and it basically took two years for that to happen.

We'll see what happens, but with the Trump regime running things, I would expect that massive recession sooner rather than later.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr gave a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police on Monday and it not only confirmed Barr has no interest in criminal justice reform and will absolutely roll it back by decades if given the option, but it also made it very clear that the nation's top cop wants a fascist police state, and that he wants the nation's law enforcement officers to help him establish it.

Attorney General William Barr delivered an emotionally charged speech defending law enforcement this week to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) for its 64th Biennial Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. FOP is the US' largest fraternal police organization. 

"To my mind, there is no more noble profession than serving as a police officer," Barr said. "You put your own life and well-being on the line to protect your communities."
He added: "Your families spend anxious nights, so we can sleep in peace. You never know what your day may bring — what uncertainty, danger, or threat you might face. But you still get up, put on your uniform and badge, kiss your loved ones, and head out to face whatever risks might come your way." 

But Barr went on to say that police officers are "fighting a different type of war ... an unrelenting, never-ending fight against criminal predators in our society."

"Even in a healthy society, violence, lawlessness, and predation lie just below the surface," the attorney general said. "In the final analysis, what stands between chaos and carnage on the one hand, and the civilized and tranquil society we all yearn for is the thin blue line of law enforcement. You are the ones manning the ramparts — day in, and day out." 

After telling the crowd that "we need to get back to basics," Barr said that public figures in the media and elsewhere should "underscore the need to 'Comply first, and, if warranted, complain later.'" 

"This will make everyone safe — the police, suspects, and the community at large," he said. "And those who resist must be prosecuted for that crime. We must have zero tolerance for resisting police. This will save lives."

If a law enforcement official in any other country said these words in public, we would call it what it is: pure violent police state fascism.  But this what America's Attorney General is saying, that it is the responsibility of the media to tell people to comply with law enforcement, and that resistance will have zero tolerance.

That, along with Barr's lionization of police as "soldiers" who are "manning the ramparts" in a "never-ending fight" against the people they are supposed to serve and protect, should warrant his immediate dismissal.

Sadly, he has just given the nation's largest police union the green light for "zero-tolerance" to be used against the people.  But he was far from done in naming enemies of the police.

During his speech Monday, Barr singled out local prosecutors for being soft on crime and accused them of making police officers' jobs more difficult. 

"There is another development that is demoralizing to law enforcement and dangerous to public safety," he said. "That is the emergence in some of our large cities of district attorneys that style themselves as 'social justice' reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law."

The Trump regime has made it clear that they have no respect for the judicial in any way if it ever criticizes the White House, and rule of law is what Donald Trump and Bill Barr says it is.  Getting hundreds of thousands of armed police on your side in a "different kind of war" is exactly as dangerous as it sounds.

Barr isn't just covering for Trump.  He's a dangerous fascist.  Period.