StupidiNews!

• In a pair of 5-3 decisions the US Supreme Court has once again passed on PA Republicans wanting to cut off counting ballots received after Election Day, and allowed NC to continue to count them.
• Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas are all reeling after a two-day ice storm that has cut power to more than half-million people.
• Germany and France are joining the growing number of European Union countries going into another round of COVID-19 lockdowns as the virus is once again rampaging across the continent.
• Government pandemic expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says a COVID-19 vaccine won't be ready until at least the new year as clinical testing continues.
• Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart will return to television with an hour-long weekly current affairs show on Apple TV+.

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

With days to go until Election Day, Trump's terrorist allies are openly calling for attacks on polling places and against Democratic voters, publicly vowing to take Trump's enemies "into custody" and "drawing their weapons if needed" at polling places in order to stop Joe Biden from winning.

 

Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes said members of his militia will be at polling locations on Election Day to “protect” Trump voters during an appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ program.

After making that claim, Rhodes made a number of unhinged statements, including saying Oath Keepers would follow directives from President Donald Trump to take members of the “deep state” into custody and “do what we have to do,” that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act before the election, that Oath Keepers will “be in range” of Washington D.C., to stop a “Benghazi-style” attack on the White House on election night, and that a war will have to be fought against Democrats on the West Coast who are “bought” by the Chinese government. Rhodes also hyped the possibility of a second civil war where his “battle-hardened” supporters kill the “street soldiers” and “command and control” of “the radical left.” He later claimed the United States is already in a civil war because “you have sitting politicians who are part of the enemy’s ranks.”

Disturbingly, Rhodes telegraphed how he will interpret election results, saying that he would consider a win by Democratic nominee Joe Biden illegitimate and evidence the election had been stolen, presaging how he and his militia might react to that outcome.

Rhodes’ Oath Keepers militia, which is comprised of “former law enforcement officials and military veterans,” is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today.” The Los Angeles Times reported Rhodes has indicated that some Oath Keepers “have signed up as poll watchers, while others plan to monitor the election armed and ‘undercover,’ drawing their weapons if needed.”

During an October 27 appearance on The Alex Jones Show, Rhodes said members of his militia are going to “stand up and protect people on Election Day” at the polls because opponents of Trump will be supposedly “coercing and threatening” his supporters as part of an effort by Democrats to steal the election.

 

Stewart Rhodes is a terrorist group leader, and Oath Keepers are flat-out white supremacist terrorists supporting Trump and his white supremacist regime. These guys are going to shoot up a bunch of polling places at this rate, and get a lot of folks killed.

And frankly, it just may be the start of a new era of violence.

A priority of the Biden administration has to be dealing with these seditious assholes and terrorist before they kill, because it seems pretty clear to me that we've got a terrorist leader gladly shouting to the rooftops that he's going to have his goons kill voters at the polls.

 

If there is violence at the polls next week, and I believe there is a very chance there will be, you can place the blame at Trump's feet.

 

Then you can toss his ass out into the street on Tuesday.

Lock them up.

Orange Meltdown, Frozen Huskers Edition

The Trump Traveling Snake Oil And COVID-19 Road Show went to Omaha last night as Trump tries to stave off oblivion in Nebraska's 2nd District where Joe Biden has a small lead. Even one electoral vote is too much for the Noxious Narcissist to lose, and in the freezing winds of a Nebraska October night, Trump literally left hundreds of his supporters out in the cold.

By the time President Trump finished speaking to thousands of supporters at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield on Tuesday night and jetted away on Air Force One, the temperature had plunged to nearly freezing.

But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear something was wrong.

The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth.

At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio traffic. Police and fire authorities didn’t immediately return messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday and declined to provide reporters on the scene with precise numbers of how many needed treatment.

The Trump campaign said it had provided enough buses but traffic on the two-lane road outside the airport was throttled to one direction after the rally, tweeted Aaron Sanderford, a political reporter at the Omaha World-Herald. The campaign didn’t immediately respond to a message from The Post early on Wednesday.

The confusion and the freezing weather added to the health risks that accompany every Trump rally during the novel coronavirus pandemic. In Omaha, an estimated crowd of more than 6,000 people jammed into risers outside the airport. Though the campaign checked temperatures and provided masks, many people didn’t wear them, the World-Herald reported.

In the lead-up to the rally, police warned that parking lots were full. With buses taking a half-hour to ferry people more than three miles away to the rally site, hundreds of attendees were late to get inside, reported Iowa Starting Line, a liberal news site.

After Trump’s speech, where he promised “we’re making that final turn” on covid-19 in a state where positivity rates exceed 20 percent, per the World-Herald, Trump flew away on Air Force One around 9 p.m. Attendees began lining up for buses to return to their cars.

By nearly 10:30 p.m., though, they were still waiting.

 

Hypothermia and COVID-19, a two-for-one deal for Husker Seniors!

Seriously, if this isn't the perfect metaphor for the entire Trump disaster over the last four years, I really can't think of a better example.

Hope people got a Runza or three to warm up.

 

Pompeo Pays The Piper, Potentially

Trump regime Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo is under investigation again, this time for his Hatch Act violations in delivering a speech at Dear Leader's National Convention two months ago.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under investigation for potentially violating a federal law that forbids federal employees from engaging in political activity while on duty or while inside federal buildings over his address to the Republican convention in August. 

The Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency, launched a probe into Pompeo's speech to the Republican National Convention while on a taxpayer funded trip to Jerusalem on August 25, according to two House Democrats. 

It is the second investigation into potential Hatch Act violations that the OSC has opened into Pompeo, whose use of resources and decision-making at the State Department, along with his wife's, have triggered a series of investigations by the agency's inspector general. 

"Our offices have confirmed that the Office of Special Counsel has launched a probe into potential Hatch Act violations tied to Secretary Pompeo's speech to the Republican National Convention," Rep. Ellot Engel, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Committee on Appropriations, wrote in a joint statement. 

"This information comes on the heels of reporting that OSC is also looking into Secretary Pompeo's stated commitment to rush out more of Hillary Clinton's emails by Election Day and as the Secretary has misused State Department resources on his speech tour of swing states," the Democrats said. 

"As we get closer to both this year's election and his own inevitable return to electoral politics, Mike Pompeo has grown even more brazen in misusing the State Department and the taxpayer dollars that fund it as vehicles for the Administration's, and his own, political ambitions," the lawmakers said. 

The State Department did not return requests for comment.

 

Pompeo may be one of the most corrupt members of Trump cabinet (and that's really saying something in this rogue's gallery) and keep in mind Pompeo hasn't even been on the job the full four years, taking over for the disastrously incompetent former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson in early 2018.

 

Of course, getting rid of various inspectors general and replacing them with cronies is only one reason Trump ripped up protections for civil service employees last week.  Expect a lot more corruption -- and for the office investigating Pompeo to be curiously understaffed to zero -- should Trump win a second term.

StupidiNews!

• The Los Angeles Dodgers won Game 6 3-1 over the Tampa Bay Rays to take the World Series four games to two, it's the first championship for the Dodgers since 1988.
• CBS has hired 24-hour security for 60 Minutes anchor Lesley Stahl after receiving "credible" death threats in the wake of Sunday's interview with Donald Trump.
• NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere was sentenced Tuesday to 120 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine after his conviction earlier this year on multiple sex trafficking crimes.
• Early voting in the US has already exceeded half of 2016's total turnout, according to the US Elections Project tracking numbers, more than 70 million ballots have already been cast.
• Pharma giant Pfizer says it will not have preliminary COVID-19 vaccine data ready before the end of the month as planned, CEO Albert Bouria is asking Americans to be "very patient".
  

Kushner's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Trump's scummy son-in-law Jared Kushner is making the final pitch to Black voters ahead of Election Day, and like most rich bigot white guys who inherited millions from his family and married wealthy, he doesn't understand why lazy Black folk simply don't choose to be not poor anymore.

 

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said Black people must “want to be successful” in order for his father-in-law’s policies to help them.

“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,” Kushner said Monday on “Fox & Friends.” “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”

Kushner’s remarks drew criticism on Twitter, where Democrats said he was implying that many Black people don’t want to be successful.

Trump’s campaign believes he’s drawing more Black support for his re-election than in his 2016 run, thanks to policies including a law he signed reducing prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, increased spending for historically Black colleges and universities and new tax benefits for investors in low-income communities.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement saying “internet trolls” had taken Kushner’s remarks out of context.

“From criminal justice reform and record HBCU funding to record low Black unemployment and record high income increases, there is simply no disputing that President Trump accomplished what Democrats merely talked about,” McEnany said.

Trump lost among Black voters by about 82 percentage points in 2016 but has closed the gap in support to about 71 points this year, according to an analysis of polling data FiveThirtyEight.com published last week. He’s improved particularly with Black men, cutting his disadvantage from 72 to 57 percentage points.

 

Unfortunately, as the article indicates, there's evidence Trump could get 12-15% of the Black vote this time around instead of 8%.  That alone would be enough to give Trump the electoral college victory by assuring Trump wins in NC, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan. The same goes for Trump doing better than he did in 2016 with Latinx voters as well.

 

Fortunately for Biden, he's doing much better than Clinton did in 2016 with white college-educated voters, seniors, and women overall. And there's plenty of evidence Biden has cut into the huge margins Trump had with white non-college voters too. That will more than make up for Trump's gains with Black and brown voters.

The point remains though that Trump regime's years of bashing Democrats and telling Black voters that the Democrats have done nothing for you (which Trump and Mitch McConnell have all but made sure is the case) is working to some extent.

Even though, as Jared Kushner demonstrates, they hold us in contempt, well beneath them.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

His name was Walter Wallace, Jr. and he was murdered in front of a dozen witnesses, shot ten times by two Philly cops, killed in the street in front of his family by monsters who made no effort to de-escalate the situation, and it was all caught on video.

Police officers fatally shot a 27-year-old Black man armed with a knife during a confrontation Monday afternoon in West Philadelphia, an incident that quickly raised tensions in the neighborhood and sparked a standoff that lasted deep into the night.

Late Monday into early Tuesday, police struggled to respond to vandalism and looting along the commercial corridor of 52nd Street, an area that was the scene of clashes between police and protestors earlier this summer. At least one police vehicle was set on fire Monday night and destroyed

By morning, an officer was hospitalized in stable condition with a broken leg after being struck by a pickup truck, police said. About 29 other officers suffered mostly minor injuries from being struck by rocks, bricks, and other projectiles, police said in a preliminary report.

Authorities detained 10 people overnight near 55nd and Pine Street, police said, and those people were set to be released pending possible charges of assaulting police or rioting. Police said officers arrested about 20 people in relation to looting at various stores in West Philadelphia, University City, Overbrook Park, and Center City, some of which were not near the protest.

Hours earlier, shortly before 4 p.m., police said, two officers responded to the 6100 block of Locust Street after a report of a man with a knife. Family members identified him as Walter Wallace Jr.

A video posted on social media showed Wallace walking toward the officers and police backing away. The video swings briefly out of view at the moment the gunfire erupts but he appeared to be multiple feet from them when they fired numerous shots.

Police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp said the officers had ordered Wallace to drop the weapon, and he “advanced towards the officers.” Gripp said investigators are reviewing footage of what happened. Both officers were wearing body cameras.

He said both officers fired “several times.” After the man was shot, he fell to the ground, and Gripp said one of the officers drove him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died.

Walter Wallace Sr., the man’s father, said his son appeared to have been shot 10 times.

The video shows the cops drawing down on Wallace as he comes around between two parked cars. They back away and when Wallace continues forward they empty their clips into him from 15 feet away.

He had a knife though, so I guess that means summary execution, since apparently no cop has ever received training on how to handle a knife without going into full murder mode. And it wasn't just one cop, both of them blasted him like he was a video game villain.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of people saying "But he had a knife and should have listened to the cops, oh well another dead n-----" and laughing while they scroll on past the story.

We've learned nothing as a country since George Floyd.

Black Lives Still Matter, though.

 

StupidiNews!

• Senate Republicans have confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court with a 52-48 vote, all Democrats and Susan Collins of Maine voted no.
• Virginia Military Institute Superintendent Gen. JH Binford Peay has resigned from leading the military college after Black students and graduates shared incidents of racism on campus.
• In a 5-3 decision, the US Supreme Court has sided with Wisconsin Republicans to block a request by Democrats to extend the state's vote-by-mail ballot acceptance deadline past Election Day.
• British PM Boris Johnson is facing a revolt by northern Tory lawmakers demanding a plan to end the lockdown in the UK, along with a major economic recovery plan for jobs and businesses.
• A new study finds link preview messages on your mobile device messaging apps could be major security risks for your data, especially Facebook Messenger and Instagram.
  

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Trump regime is throwing as much poop at the walls as it can crap out, and none of it is sticking to Joe Biden or the Democrats as even Rupert Murdoch's boys are bailing on the Tangerine Trashmaster.

By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Trump’s re-election campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Va., to launch one.

The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Herschmann knew the subject matter they were there to discuss. He had represented Mr. Trump during the impeachment trial early this year, and he tried to deflect allegations against the president in part by pointing to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. More recently, he has been working on the White House payroll with a hazy portfolio, listed as “a senior adviser to the president,” and remains close to Jared Kushner.

The three had pinned their hopes for re-electing the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski. Mr. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son’s activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.

The Journal had seemed to be the perfect outlet for a story the Trump advisers believed could sink Mr. Biden’s candidacy. Its small-c conservatism in reporting means the work of its news pages carries credibility across the industry. And its readership leans further right than other big news outlets. Its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, recently remarked at a virtual gathering of Journal reporters and editors that while he knows that the paper often delivers unwelcome news to the many Trump supporters who read it, The Journal should protect its unique position of being trusted across the political spectrum, two people familiar with the remarks said.

As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal exposé, the newspaper did its due diligence: Mr. Bender and Mr. Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Mr. Areddy interviewed Mr. Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.

Then things got messy. Without warning his notional allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for President Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew’s carefully laid plot. Mr. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance — but containing some of the same emails — to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Mr. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Mr. Giuliani’s complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story — as did The Post’s reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son’s activities.

 

Hanlon's Razor -- "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately explained by stupidity" -- in the era of Trump requires Zandar's Addendum: "Sometimes it's both." The Trump White House had an orderly plan to sell the Hunter Biden garbage dump to the Wall Street Journal, and then Rudy Giuliani got wind of it and crashed through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

Needless to say, the story fell apart over the weekend, with the NY Times delivering the final blow on Sunday night.

There is no evidence in the records that Mr. Biden was involved in or profited from the joint venture.

Encrypted messages, emails and other documents examined by The New York Times do not show Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing any role for the former vice president in the project.

Mr. Biden’s tax returns, which he has released, show no income from any such venture. There is nothing illegal about doing business in China or with Chinese partners; Mr. Trump long pursued deals in China, had a partnership with a government-controlled enterprise and maintained a corporate bank account there.

The Biden campaign has rejected all assertions that the former vice president had any role in the negotiations over the deal or any stake in it.

Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, said the former vice president never had any stake in the project. “Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever,” he said.

At the second presidential debate on Thursday, Mr. Biden said, “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”

The messages produced by Mr. Bobulinski appear to reflect a meeting between him, the former vice president and James Biden in May 2017 in Beverly Hills, Calif. The messages do not make clear what was discussed.

Mr. Bates did not answer questions about Mr. Bobulinski’s claim that he met with the former vice president. But Mr. Bates said the Chinese deal never was discussed by Mr. Biden with members of his family. “He never had any conversations about these issues at all,” Mr. Bates said.

One email sent on May 13, 2017, by another member of the venture discusses how the various partners in the deal could theoretically split up the equity and makes reference to whether “the big guy” might get 10 percent. The document does not specify who this person is, saying only “10 held by H for the big guy ?”

Mr. Bobulinski has said the reference was clearly to the former vice president.

Mr. Bates said Mr. Biden “has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”

 

And what makes this easy to confirm is that Joe Biden has openly released his tax returns for decades. The evidence is clear that there's nothing there, and this story is just as bogus as it was ten months ago when the Trump regime tried to cover up their Ukraine quid pro quo by screaming HUNTER BIDEN and taking a huge dump on the carpet.

It didn't work then. It's not working now.

That's the biggest difference from 2016.

Retribution Execution, Con't

A Trump second term means the replacement of much of his cabinet with yes men who will aid the republic's transition to a fascist autocratic police state, starting with law enforcement, intelligence services, and the military.

If President Trump wins re-election, he'll move to immediately fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and also expects to replace CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, two people who've discussed these officials' fates with the president tell Axios.

The big picture: The list of planned replacements is much longer, but these are Trump's priorities, starting with Wray. Wray and Haspel are despised and distrusted almost universally in Trump's inner circle. He would have fired both already, one official said, if not for the political headaches of acting before Nov. 3.

Why it matters: A win, no matter the margin, will embolden Trump to ax anyone he sees as constraining him from enacting desired policies or going after perceived enemies. Trump last week signed an executive order that set off alarm bells as a means to politicize the civil service. An administration official said the order "is a really big deal" that would make it easier for presidents to get rid of career government officials. 

There could be shake-ups across other departments. The president has never been impressed with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, for example. But that doesn't carry the urgency of replacing Wray or Haspel. The nature of top intelligence and law enforcement posts has traditionally carried an expectation for a higher degree of independence and separation from politics.

Be smart: While Trump has also privately vented about Attorney General Bill Barr, he hasn't made any formal plans to replace him, an official said. Trump is furious that Barr isn't releasing before the election what Trump hoped would be a bombshell report by U.S. Attorney John Durham on the Obama administration's handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. 

Durham's investigation has yet to produce any high-profile indictments of Obama-era officials as Trump had hoped. "The attorney general wants to finish the work that he's been involved in since day one," a senior administration official told Axios.

Behind the scenes: "The view of Haspel in the West Wing is that she still sees her job as manipulating people and outcomes, the way she must have when she was working assets in the field," one source with direct knowledge of the internal conversations told Axios. "It's bred a lot of suspicion of her motives." 

Trump is also increasingly frustrated with Haspel for opposing the declassification of documents that would help the Justice Department's Durham report. A source familiar with conversations at the CIA says, "Since the beginning of DNI's push to declassify documents, and how strongly she feels about protecting sources connected to those materials, there have been rumblings around the agency that the director plans to depart the CIA regardless of who wins the election.”

As for Wray, whose expected firing was first reported by The Daily Beast, Trump is angry his second FBI chief didn't launch a formal investigation into Hunter Biden's foreign business connections — and didn't purge more officials Trump believes abused power to investigate his 2016 campaign's ties to Russia. 

Trump also grew incensed when Wray testified in September that the FBI has not seen widespread election fraud, including with mail-in ballots. A senior FBI official tells Axios: "Major law enforcement associations representing current and former FBI agents as well as police and sheriff's departments across the country have consistently expressed their full support of Director Wray's leadership of the Bureau."

Trump soured on Esper over the summer when the Defense secretary rebuffed the idea of sending active-duty military into the streets to deal with racial justice protests and distanced himself from the clearing of Lafayette Square for a photo op at St. John's church. 

Trump indicated to Axios then that he "really wasn't focused on" firing Esper. One senior official cautioned that others who want the Pentagon job could be driving speculation to undercut Esper. But one source, who discussed options with Trump, told Axios he urged the president to wait until post-election to replace him. Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement that Esper "has always been and remains committed to doing what is best for the military and the Nation.”

 

Both Trump and Bill Barr will have free reign to start arresting Democrats in a second term, especially if Mitch McConnell keeps control of the Senate.  The decent to fascism will come quickly should Trump prevail in the election.

For the first time, I think Biden will win, he's held on to a big lead for long enough and there's just too many battleground states for Trump to play defense in right now for him to win them all like he did in 2016, when he was on offense, and Biden's leads in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania continue to be statistically significant, and Biden is above 50% in all three states.  That's all he needs to pick up from 2016 in order to top 270 electoral votes, and the odds are he'll win at least one or two of the other six battleground states (GA, TX, OH, NC, AZ, and FL) on top of those three.

Trump is running out of time to win this, but if he does, America is absolutely out of time.

We're done as a free nation if Trump wins.

I implore you to vote if you haven't already.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

Even Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal can no longer hide the multiple abject failures of the Trump regime on COVID-19, as the atrocities are documented. Remember the $250 million CDC advertising plan to "instill hope in America" on the virus, which was widely panned as a quarter-billion dollar slush fund for the government to campaign for Trump? It failed even worse that we could have imagined, turns out...

 

A federal health agency halted a public-service coronavirus advertising campaign funded by $250 million in taxpayer money after it offered a special vaccine deal to an unusual set of essential workers: Santa Claus performers.

As part of the plan, a top Trump administration official wanted the Santa performers to promote the benefits of a Covid-19 vaccination and, in exchange, offered them early vaccine access ahead of the general public, according to audio recordings. Those who perform as Mrs. Claus and elves also would have been included.

The Department of Health and Human Services said Friday the Santa plan would be scrapped. The deal was the brainchild of the official, Michael Caputo, an HHS assistant secretary, who took a 60-day medical leave last month. The rest of the campaign now is under an HHS review.

The Santa “collaboration will not be happening,” and HHS Secretary Alex Azar had no knowledge of Mr. Caputo’s outreach discussions, an HHS spokesman said. Mr. Caputo didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, called the news “extremely disappointing,” adding: “This was our greatest hope for Christmas 2020, and now it looks like it won’t happen.”

 

In fact, the White House has now completely given up on containing the pandemic, and wants all of America to know that you're all on your own, and whatever happens, it's not Donald Trump's fault, so deal with it.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows conceded that the Trump administration had given up in containing the coronavirus crisis that has killed over 225,000 Americans, admitting on Sunday morning that the White House is “not going to control the pandemic” and instead going to just hold out hope for a vaccine. 

Amid another COVID-19 outbreak at the White House, this time in Vice President Mike Pence’s office, Meadows appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, and anchor Jape Tapper immediately pressed the chief of staff on reports that he tried to keep news of the positive coronavirus tests from going public.

“Why would you do that? Is it because it’s another sign the way the White House has failed to contain the virus?” Tapper wondered aloud, prompting Meadows to falsely claim that wasn’t reported.

“That was in the New York Times story,” Tapper shot back.

Meadows, meanwhile, justified the attempt to keep the outbreak under wraps by saying that “sharing personal information is something we should do” before claiming that the White House also has an “obligation to let people know to contact trace” when there is a positive case.

Tapper reminded the chief of staff that the administration didn’t do that during the previous outbreak that resulted in President Donald Trump’s hospitalization, noting that Chris Christie said he was never contacted despite his own battle with the virus.

The CNN anchor went on to press Meadows on Vice President Chief of Staff Marc Short’s diagnosis, asking why Pence isn’t quarantining and out on the campaign trail considering his close contact with Short in recent days. Meadows dismissed the need for Pence to follow CDC guidelines, saying Pence is an essential worker and “he’s not just campaigning, he’s working.”

After asserting that Pence is wearing masks in public and socially distancing when possible, Meadows then expressed doubt that large gatherings cause the spread of the virus, citing recent reports that small groups and family events are leading to an increase in infections. Tapper pointed out that the virus is coming from many different places because the pandemic is out of control.

“Here is what we have to do,” Meadows declared. “We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas.”

Tapper, for his part, pressed Meadows on why we couldn’t get control of the pandemic, prompting the chief of staff to respond that it was due to it being a “contagious virus just like the flu.”

“Why not make efforts to contain it?” Tapper retorted.

“Well, we are making efforts to contain it,” Meadows insisted.

“By running all over the country and not wearing a mask? That’s what the vice president is doing,” the CNN anchor shot back.

 

Got that? Containment and mitigation are no longer options. Millions, perhaps tens of millions will get sick and hundreds of thousands will die, but as soon as the Trump regime gets that vaccine, everything will be fine.

Also, the Trump regime has no real vaccine plan either. They were going to use mall Santas to demonstrate the vaccine if they had it in time, which of course was never going to happen.

Most likely it will be another six months before a viable, effective vaccine is ready, and thanks to the Trump regime, half of America will refuse to take it anyway and scream about MAH FREEDUMBS.

The larger, more immediate problem is the White House Chief of Staff just went on live TV a week before Election Day and admitted there's no regime plan to contain a pandemic that has already sickened millions and has killed 230,000 Americans, and that they just do not care.

 

They never cared about America, they never cared about you or your family, they never cared about anyone or anything except grifting as much money from the gig as they could and helping the rest of the GOP burn down the country. 

And the country is burning already. El Paso is in lockdown for two weeks. Utah is now moving to triage, like Arizona did in the first few months of the pandemic.

With new coronavirus cases shattering records on a daily basis, Utah’s hospitals are expected to begin rationing care in a week or two.

That’s the prediction of Greg Bell, president of the Utah Hospital Association, who said administrators of the state’s hospitals confronted Gov. Gary Herbert on Thursday with a grim list: Criteria they propose doctors should use if they are forced to decide which patients can stay in overcrowded intensive care units.

Under the criteria, which would require Herbert’s approval, patients who are getting worse despite receiving intensive care would be moved out first. In the event that two patients' conditions are equal, the young get priority over the old, since older patients are more likely to die.

‘We told him, ‘It looks like we’re going to have to request those be activated if this trend continues,’" Bell recounted, “'and we see no reason why it won’t.'"

Hospitalizations normally rise after the number of new cases increases, and Utah repeatedly set new records for daily case totals last week. At least two Utah hospitals have opened overflow ICUs this month.

The state’s hospitals can shift patients around to free up bed space, Bell said, and the state has long planned to open a field hospital at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy if necessary.

But one of the defining features of intensive care is access to doctors and nurses with specialty training — and opening new beds does not mean those health care workers can staff them.

Bell said it’s now all but inevitable that hospitals will need to enact their triage protocols, known as “crisis standards of care.”

“I haven’t said, ‘It’s gonna happen’ — until [Thursday] night,” Bell said. “I told the governor, ‘It’s gonna happen. We’re going to be back here asking for crisis standards.’ ”

 

Expect more cities to go into lockdown and more states to follow hospital crisis triage protocols in November after the election.

If Donald Trump wins, we will have COVID-19 with us for every day of his second term.

And millions of us, maybe tens of millions, won't make it through to the end.

StupidiNews!

• The US Navy has confirmed two female aviators were killed in an aircraft training accident in southern Alabama on Sunday, no civilians were injured by the crash.
• The Trump campaign is counting on local TV news owned by Republican-friendly corporate donors in order to make up for advertising as Democrats continue to outraise the GOP in 2020. 
• The White House is petitioning the Supreme Court to block North Carolina's COVID-19 vote-by-mail ballot extension as Amy Coney Barrett could be confirmed by the Senate GOP Monday.
• Pope Francis has named Wilton Gregory as the first Black cardinal in the Church's US history, Gregory was the Archbishop of Atlanta's diocese and has openly supported Black Lives Matter.
• The FDA has approved remdesivir for treatment of COVID-19 just days after the World Health Organization's largest global study on the drug found no benefit for patients.
  

Last Call For The Veep Goes Viral

At least five members of Mike Pence's campaign staff have tested positive for COVID-19 in the last few days, and as far as I can tell, nobody on Pence's staff is going to do anything differently, because "it's just like the flu" or something.

At least three top aides to Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive for the coronavirus in the last few days, people briefed on the matter said, raising fresh questions about the safety protocols at the White House, where masks are not routinely worn.

Devin O’Malley, a spokesman for Mr. Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, said that the vice president’s chief of staff, Marc Short, had tested positive. A person briefed on the diagnosis said it was received on Saturday.

“Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence both tested negative for Covid-19 today, and remain in good health,” Mr. O’Malley said. “While Vice President Pence is considered a close contact with Mr. Short, in consultation with the White House Medical Unit, the vice president will maintain his schedule in accordance with the C.D.C. guidelines for essential personnel.”

The statement did not come from the White House medical unit, but instead from a press aide. Two people briefed on the matter said that the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had sought to keep news of the outbreak from becoming public.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

A Trump adviser briefed on the outbreak, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Pence adviser Marty Obst also tested positive earlier this week. Mr. Obst’s positive test was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Another person briefed on the developments, who also was not allowed to speak publicly, said that three additional Pence staff members had tested positive. Mr. O’Malley did not immediately respond to a question about others who have tested positive.

Mr. Pence’s decision to continue campaigning, despite his proximity to his chief of staff, is certain to raise fresh questions about how seriously the White House is taking the risks to its staff members and to the public as the pandemic has killed nearly 225,000 people in the United States.

Again, and I really can't stress this enough, all the evidence points towards the US being smack in the middle of a major new wave of COVID-19 infections, and not only is the Trump regime literally not doing anything about containing itit, they are actively spreading the virus through their actions.  Trump, Pence, and their infected campaign staffs are criss-crossing the country and will continue to do so for the next ten days, drawing crowds of thousands of unmasked people daily who actively refuse to take safety precautions.

There's already evidence Trump's hate rallies are spreading the virus, and we'll almost certainly pass 100,000 cases per day next month. Hospitals are filling, people are ignoring masks, and nobody seems to me mentioning the need for a lockdown again.

Maybe after the election, I guess.

Another hundred thousand dead by the end of the year won't really matter, will it?

Orange Meltdown, Con't

In public, at his hate rally/COVID-19 super-spreader events, Trump is guaranteeing a win. In private with the people who give him money, he's predicting a much different outcome, especially for the Senate GOP.

 

President Donald Trump made a prediction about the GOP's control of the Senate at a fundraiser this week, privately telling donors that it will be "very tough" for Republicans to keep control of the chamber in the upcoming election, namely because Trump refuses to support some senators, The Washington Post reported on Saturday. 

"I think the Senate is tough actually. The Senate is very tough," Trump said, according to an attendee who shared the President's comments on condition of anonymity with the Post. "There are a couple senators I can't really get involved in. I just can't do it. You lose your soul if you do. I can't help some of them. I don't want to help some of them." 

Trump's comments were made at a closed-door gathering held in Nashville, Tennessee, before the last presidential debate, according to the Post, where he said that he thinks the GOP will "take back the House." 

Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, pushed back on the notion that Trump doesn't support some Senate Republicans, according to the Post.
"The Republican-led Senate and President Trump have had a great partnership over the last four years, highlighted by the fact the chamber is poised to confirm a third Trump Supreme Court nominee in the coming days," Hunt said Saturday. 

Hours after the Post released its story, Trump told reporters that he hopes the GOP maintains control of the Senate. 

"I hope to hold the Senate, we do. I think from a presidential standpoint we're winning a lot of states including this one. I think we're doing very well here. The crowd is certainly enthusiastic. I hope that we do. I think we're gonna take back the House because people are tired of Nancy Pelosi. I think we'll take back the House," Trump told reporters after emerging from Air Force One before holding a rally Saturday night in Wisconsin.

 

Sure, man.  You'll take back the House.

 

 

 

Look, even Nate Silver has the presidential race tightening over the last week, but right now that means Biden has a nine-point lead rather than a nearly 11-point lead.  Unless something catastrophic happens in the next 10 days, Biden is going to be in position to win this.

 

 

Sunday Long Read: The Foxiest Of Cons

Our Sunday Long Read this week is how Donald Trump and Scott Walker allowed Taiwanese tech company Foxconn to scam Wisconsin taxpayers out of billions with a massive 13,000 job tech factory that never got built and never will be, and left the state holding the bag for a generation.

HOPES WERE HIGH among the employees who joined Foxconn’s Wisconsin project in the summer of 2018. In June, President Donald Trump had broken ground on an LCD factory he called “the eighth wonder of the world.” The scale of the promise was indeed enormous: a $10 billion investment from the Taiwanese electronics giant, a 20 million-square-foot manufacturing complex, and, most importantly, 13,000 jobs.

Which is why new recruits arriving at the 1960s office building Foxconn had purchased in downtown Milwaukee were surprised to discover they had to provide their own office supplies. “One of the largest companies in the world, and you have to bring your own pencil,” an employee recalls wondering. Maybe Foxconn was just moving too fast to be bothered with such details, they thought, as they brought their laptops from home and scavenged pencils left behind by the building’s previous tenants. They listened to the cries of co-workers trapped in the elevators that often broke, noted the water that occasionally leaked from the ceiling, and wondered when the building would be transformed into the gleaming North American headquarters an executive had promised.

The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.

Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones

Even the handful of jobs the company claims to have created are less than real: many of them held by people with nothing to do, hired so the company could reach the number required for it to get tax subsidy payments from Wisconsin. Foxconn failed at that objective, too: last week, Wisconsin rejected the company’s subsidy application and found it had employed only 281 people eligible under the contract at the end of 2019. Many have since been laid off.

Foxconn did not return repeated requests for comment.

It’s not unusual for either the Trump administration or Foxconn to make announcements that prove hollow. But for Foxconn, the show went on — for two years, the company, aided by the vocal support of the Wisconsin GOP, worked to maintain an illusion of progress in front of a business venture that never made economic sense.

That illusion has had real costs. State and local governments spent at least $400 million, largely on land and infrastructure Foxconn will likely never need. Residents were pushed from their homes under threat of eminent domain and dozens of houses bulldozed to clear property Foxconn doesn’t know what to do with. And a recurring cycle of new recruits joined the project, eager to help it succeed, only to become trapped in a mirage.

Months after the 2018 groundbreaking, the company was racing to hire the 260 people needed to receive the first tranche of payments from the lucrative subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. Recruiters were told to hit the number but given little in the way of job descriptions. Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones. The reality of their situation became impossible to ignore. Multiple employees recall seeing people cry in the office. “The best is when you’re in the elevator with somebody and then they just scream out of nowhere,” said an employee who experienced this several times. “They’ve had enough, because things don’t make sense here.”

“Imagine being in a job where you don’t really know if it’s real or not. Or you know it’s not real, but you don’t know it’s not real. It’s a constant thing you’re doing in your head day after day,” said one employee, who returned to the rented building Trump had spoken at, where workers had been assembling TVs, only to find the line shut down and the lights dimmed a couple of weeks after the photo op was over. “I think all of us were on the verge of a major breakdown.”

It was just the beginning. Foxconn would spend the next two years jumping from idea to idea — fish farms, exporting ice cream, storing boats — in an increasingly surreal search for some way to generate money from a doomed project. Frequent leadership changes, a reluctance to spend money, and a domineering corporate culture would create an atmosphere employees described as toxic. Many of the employees The Verge spoke with have since left the company, and all of them requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. It has been a baffling ordeal for the people who thought they were building the Silicon Valley of the Midwest — “Wisconn Valley,” Walker called it — all the more so because so many others still believe the vision.

“All people see is the eighth wonder of the world,” said an employee. “I was there and it’s not real. I mean, it’s not. This is something I can’t talk about ever again, because people think you’re crazy, like none of this could ever happen. How could this happen in the US?”

 

The project was a disaster from the beginning.

 

Key Findings:

• Foxconn said it would build a 20 million-square-foot LCD complex. Instead, it constructed an empty building 1/20th that size it calls the “Fab.” Records show Foxconn recently changed the intended use of the building from manufacturing to storage.
• The company said it would aim to employ 5,200 people at the end of 2020, a number that was to grow to the promised 13,000 jobs. At the end of 2019, Wisconsin found Foxconn employed only 281 people eligible under the terms of the contract.
• Foxconn attempted to exploit a loophole in its contract with the state by hiring a sufficient number of employees to receive subsidies just before the end of the year. Employees were hired with no actual work to do. Many were laid off after the deadline passed.
• One recruiting program targeted foreign recent graduates on student visas. Employees say these workers were targeted because they would work longer hours for lower pay, and their immigration status was used as leverage.
• Employees describe a toxic workplace, where supervisors often berated and publicly humiliated employees. Many of the original Wisconsin hires have quit or been laid off.
• Despite publicly insisting it was building an LCD factory, as early as 2018, Foxconn employees had been asked to figure out a business plan for the company in Wisconsin.
• Foxconn’s search for a viable business led it to consider everything from fish farming to exporting dairy to renting storage space. Almost every idea collapsed in corporate infighting and a reluctance to spend money.
• Very little manufacturing ever occurred with the Foxconn project. Recently, the company set up a small manufacturing line for servers.
• Foxconn raced to finish buildings and set up an assembly line in time for a visit from Trump during the 2020 campaign. It obtained a temporary occupancy permit for the empty factory building and tried to finish a glass sphere, which had no clear business purpose, before falling behind.

 

It's a failure of Trumpian proportions, and more economic carnage like this is coming to your state in a Trump second term.

 

Let's make sure that doesn't happen.