Last Call For Pardon The Destruction, Con't

At this point, Donald Trump may pardon people just because he can create chaos by doing it.

President Trump isn't just accepting pardon requests but blindly discussing them "like Christmas gifts" to people who haven't even asked, sources with direct knowledge of the conversations told Axios.

Behind the scenes: Trump recently told one adviser he was going to pardon "every person who ever talked to me," suggesting an even larger pardon blitz to come. As with most Trump conversations, the adviser wasn't sure how seriously to take the president — although Trump gave no indication he was joking.

The big picture: The president relishes his unilateral authority to issue get-out-of-jail-free cards. Lately, though, he's been soliciting recipients, asking friends and advisers who they think he should pardon.

Trump has also interrupted conversations to spontaneously suggest that he add the person he's speaking with to his pardon list, these sources said. The offers haven't always been welcome. One source felt awkward because the president was clearly trying to be helpful but the adviser didn't believe they had committed any crimes. The adviser also believed being on the list could hurt their public persona. The White House declined to comment.

Trump argues the preemptive pardons may be necessary because the Biden administration will target his former aides, the sources say. President-elect Biden has said he doesn't want to pursue the Trump team, and he has vowed an apolitical Justice Department.

The backstory: As Axios first reported, Trump's decision to pardon Michael Flynn set the template for a wave of pardons to friends and loyalists. One senior administration official said the practice has since expanded, with pardons being discussed "like Christmas gifts."

Trump is just going to pardon everybody, because he not only thinks he'll spite Biden by doing it, he'll create an army of instant loyalists who will never, ever sell him out to Tish James and Cyrus Vance in NY. It won't work like that, but Trump doesn't care. He's going to continue to abuse his power for as long as he has it. 

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

Donald Trump continues to tell GOP state legislatures that they must overturn the election to install him as President in a coup, and so far they are resisting him.

 

President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make the extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result.

The calls, confirmed by House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, mark the third state where Trump has directly attempted to overturn a result since he lost the election to President-elect Joe Biden. He previously reached out to Republicans in Michigan, and on Saturday he pressured GOP Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in a call to try to replace that state’s electors.

The president’s outreach to the Pennsylvania GOP House leader came after his campaign and its allies have decisively lost numerous legal challenges in the state in both state and federal court. Trump has continued to press his baseless claims of widespread voting irregularities both publicly and privately.

The president said, ‘I’m hearing about all these issues in Philadelphia, and these issues with your law,’” said Cutler spokesman Michael Straub, describing the House speaker’s two conversations with Trump. “What can we do to fix it?’”

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls to Cutler, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors, Straub said.

But late last week, the House speaker was among roughly 60 Republican state lawmakers who sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s congressional representatives urging them object to the state’s electoral slate on Jan. 6, when Congress formally accepts the results.

Although such a move is highly unlikely to gain traction, at least one Pennsylvania Republican, Rep. Scott Perry, said in an interview Monday he will heed the request and dispute the state’s electors.

The embrace of Trump’s false claims by many Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers shows how the president’s baseless attacks on the integrity of the election have gained traction with his supporters. Protesters chanting “Stop the Steal,” some with firearms, demonstrated over the weekend at the homes of Cutler in Pennsylvania and the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan.

 

Just because the coup is comically ham-fisted and Trump is doing this badly, we've now had dozens of frivolous legal challenges to the election results that Joe Biden has clearly won, and the longer the silence from the GOP goes on, the more likely officials in these states are going to be hurt or quite possibly killed by Trump's cultists.

Of course, cowardly Republican silence may actually preferable to the alternative of aiding and abetting sedition.

President Donald Trump's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill are urging him not to concede even after President-elect Joe Biden wins the Electoral College vote next week, calling on their party's leader to battle it out all the way to the House floor in January as he makes unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. 

The view of Trump's defenders is at odds with that of many top congressional Republicans, including leaders of the Senate, who believe the election will be over next Monday when electors cast their votes and make Biden's win official -- even though the Democrat's victory in the presidential race has been clear for weeks. 

But conservative House Republicans argue that next week doesn't mark the end of Trump's desperate efforts to overturn the election results, which he has failed to do through scores of fruitless lawsuits and brazen efforts to pressure state and local leaders to subvert the will of voters and appoint new slates of electors to the Electoral College. They said that Congress should engage in a full-throated debate over the results in key states because of their allegations of fraud, which have yet to be borne out in court. 

Asked if Trump should concede next Monday, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said bluntly: "No. No way, no way, no way." 

"We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said that includes, I think, debates on the House floor -- potentially on January 6," Jordan, a trusted Trump confidant, told CNN. 

It is not unusual for a losing candidate's most fervent supporters to take their case to the House floor -- something that occurred after the 2016, 2004 and 2000 presidential races. But it is unusual for the losing candidate to mount a weeks-long public campaign aimed at sowing discord and distrust over a pillar of democracy, something that Trump has done relentlessly since losing the race. 

 

So expect another month of this at the minimum, completely with an exponentially growing chance of deadly violence.

 

Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

We're now a matter of weeks away from the housing cliff that will see more than ten million Americans facing immediate eviction into the heart of winter and the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the pandemic have fallen thousands of dollars behind on rent and utility bills, a warning sign that people are running out of money for basic needs.

Nearly 12 million renters will owe an average of $5,850 in back rent and utilities by January, Moody’s Analytics warns. Last month 9 million renters said they were behind on rent, according to a Census Bureau survey.

The numbers were especially high for families with children, with 21 percent falling behind on rent, and among families of color. About 29 percent of Black families and 17 percent of Hispanic renters were behind, the Census Bureau reported. A separate analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, looking at people who had jobs before the pandemic, found 1.3 million such households are now an average of $5,400 in debt on rent and utilities, after those people had lost jobs and their family’s income plunged.

Economists say these data points show the failure of the U.S. safety net during this crisis, which is inflicting economic pain that will hurt families for years.

With coronavirus cases at all-time highs, the economic recovery has stalled and job opportunities remain scarce. Only 245,000 jobs came back in November, the slowest pace since the recovery began. Restaurants and retailers cut jobs, and more small businesses are closing, data show.

The 20 million Americans receiving some kind of unemployment aid have seen their weekly checks dwindle since August, making it harder to pay bills. About 12 million unemployed are slated to have their benefits cut off entirely at the end of the year, because lawmakers have yet to agree on extending relief for the unemployed.

“The tidal wave is coming. It’s going to be really horrible for people,” said Charlie Harak, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “The number of people who are now 90 days behind and the dollars they are behind are growing quite significantly.”

 

Understand that Republicans are 100% okay with this, because 30% of Black families and 20% of Latino families getting evicted means they can't vote, can't get federal aid, and frankly die in the winter of COVID hell. It's genocide, and politically it helps them.

 

And the only thing that matters is Republicans protecting corporations so that they can continue to exploit workers who are sick.

Congress wants an extra week of time to negotiate government funding legislation and a coronavirus relief bill, according to lawmakers and aides familiar with negotiations.

The House is eying a vote Wednesday on a one-week continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Monday.

It would move the Dec. 11 government funding deadline to next Friday, one week before Christmas.

The deadline extension will allow for another week of talks to find bipartisan agreement on an "omnibus" spending bill to keep the government open into next year. It will also allow for another week of negotiations on another round of Covid-19 relief, that could include unemployment benefits.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he anticipates the Senate to also take up a one-week stopgap bill in the hope of completing a full-year government funding package by the end of next week.

Congressional leaders have said that if any Covid-19 aid agreement is reached, it will be attached to a government funding measure to speed up passage.

Party leaders are negotiating the coronavirus relief package based on a $908 billion plan unveiled last week by a bipartisan rank-and-file group. The main sticking point is the parameters of a liability shield for companies and organizations, a GOP demand.

The emerging plan includes unemployment benefits, relief for restaurants and other small businesses, and aid to state and local governments to pay teachers, police and other workers. It does not include direct payments to Americans, which some Democrats and Republicans are still pushing for. 

 

No housing or utilities relief though. No stimulus checks. Maybe even a government shutdown.

 

Make no mistake, we're headed for absolute disaster, Trump and McConnell's final destructive stroke to impoverish and kill millions.

 

Instant humanitarian catastrophe.

StupidiNews!

• President-elect Joe Biden is expected to pick retired Gen. Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary, Austin, if confirmed, would be the first Black man to lead the Pentagon.
• Some 33 million Californians are now under stay-at-home orders under Gov. Gavin Newsom's criteria as the state's COVID-19 cases now top 1.4 million.
• Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga has announced a new round of $708 billion in stimulus spending, following some $2.2 trillion in two previous 2020 packages.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is now personally headed to Brussels as Brexit trade talks between the UK and EU have now reached a critical point with time running out at the end of the year.
• Ride-sharing giant Uber is selling its self-driving Aurora startup as the company never recovered from a fatal 2018 accident involving a self-driving vehicle hitting a pedestrian.
  

Last Call For Water We Waiting For, Con't

Climate change means your water bill is going to skyrocket in the years ahead, and for places where water is already scarce out west, you can change that timeframe to "months ahead".

Water is joining gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world.

Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike will be able to hedge against -- or bet on -- potential water scarcity starting this week, when CME Group Inc. launches contracts linked to the $1.1 billion California spot water market. According to Chicago-based CME, the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand.

The contracts, a first of their kind in the U.S., were announced in September as heat and wildfires ravaged the U.S. West Coast. They are meant to serve both as a hedge for California’s biggest water consumers against skyrocketing prices and a scarcity gauge for investors worldwide.

“Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come,” said RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray. “We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops.”

Two billion people now live in nations plagued by water problems, and almost two-thirds of the world could face water shortages in just four years, Tim McCourt, global head of equity index and alternative investment products at CME, said in an interview. “The idea of managing risks associated to water is certainly increased in importance.”

The futures will be financially settled, as opposed to requiring the actual physical delivery of water, and are based on the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index started two years ago. The index sets a weekly benchmark spot price of water rights in California, underpinned by the volume-weighted average of the transaction prices in the state’s five largest and most actively traded water markets.

Contracts will include quarterly ones through 2022, with each representing 10 acre-feet of water, equal to roughly 3.26 million gallons.

Currently, if a farmer wants to know what water will cost in California six months from now, it’s kind of a “best guess,” Patrick Wolf, senior manager and head of product development at Nasdaq, said in an interview.

The futures will allow market participants to see “what is everybody’s best guess,” he said.

 

How quickly will Republican-controlled states move to peg the price of water for utilities to commodities markets like this?  What happens to cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas when water becomes more expensive than fuel?

And yes, public water agencies will want to lock in prices ahead of time.

And pass those prices along to consumers.

This needs to stop, and the fact it's happening in California first was inevitable, but awful.

 

Lowering The Barr, Con't

Once again, Attorney General Bill Barr is threatening to quit over Trump's antics, and once again, I believe him about as far as he can throw me.

Attorney General William P. Barr is considering stepping down before President Trump’s term ends next month, according to three people familiar with this thinking. One said Mr. Barr could announce his departure before the end of the year.

It was not clear whether the attorney general’s deliberations were influenced by Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede his election loss or his fury over Mr. Barr’s acknowledgment last week that the Justice Department uncovered no widespread voting fraud. In the ensuing days, the president refused to say whether he still had confidence in his attorney general.

One of the people insisted that Mr. Barr had been weighing his departure since before last week and that Mr. Trump had not affected the attorney general’s thinking. Another said Mr. Barr had concluded that he had completed the work that he set out to accomplish at the Justice Department.

But the president’s public complaints about the election, including a baseless allegation earlier last week that federal law enforcement had rigged the election against him, are certain to cast a cloud over any early departure by Mr. Barr. By leaving early, Mr. Barr could avoid a confrontation with the president over his refusal to advance Mr. Trump’s efforts to rewrite the election results.

Mr. Barr’s departure would also deprive the president of a cabinet officer who has wielded the power of the Justice Department more deeply in service of a president’s political agenda than any attorney general in a half-century. Conversely, it would please some Trump allies, who have called for Mr. Barr to step down over his refusal to wade further into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election outcome.

Mr. Barr has not made a final decision, and the prospect of him staying on through Jan. 20 remains a possibility, the people familiar with his thinking cautioned. Should Mr. Barr step down before the end of the Trump administration, the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, would be expected to lead the Justice Department until President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is sworn in.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The White House had no comment. 

 

I actually don't care too much at this point what Barr does, this late in the game Trump really doesn't need him if he's going to pardon everybody and shit on the rug on the way out the door, I do care what Jeff Rosen, or whomever Trump appoints to replace Barr, will do under intense pressure to help Trump with his ongoing coup attempts.

 

That part worried me, yeah.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

How long until the Proud Boys or The Base decide this asshole is a martyr who maybe needs to be sprung from jail?

 

The co-owner of a New York City bar that authorities said has been defying coronavirus restrictions was taken into custody early Sunday after running over a deputy with a car, authorities said.

Danny Presti tried to drive away from his bar, Mac’s Public House, as deputies were arresting him for serving patrons in violation of city and state closure orders, Sheriff Joseph Fucito said.

Deputies attempted to arrest Presti as he left the bar early Sunday, but Presti got into his car, struck a deputy and kept driving for about 100 yards as the deputy was left hanging onto the hood, Fucito said.

Presti, 34, was eventually stopped and apprehended, the sheriff said. Charges against him were pending.

Mark Fonte, an attorney for Presti, said he had not yet had an opportunity to speak to his client. Fonte said he expected Presti to be arraigned later Sunday.

The injured deputy was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries. The deputy’s condition wasn’t immediately available.

The Staten Island bar was the site of protests last week after the sheriff’s office arrested Presti on charges of violating restrictions aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus and obstructing governmental administration.

The tavern is in an area designated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo as an orange zone because of spiking COVID-19 rates and was not supposed to be serving customers indoors. But the owners had declared the bar an “autonomous zone,” a nod to protesters who claimed control over a Seattle neighborhood in June.

A spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio said Presti’s actions showed a disregard for human life. “In both of these instances, whether it’s flouting public health laws or ramming a car into a uniformed deputy, this individual has endangered the lives of others,” said the spokesperson, Bill Neidhardt.

Authorities said the bar was still serving patrons Saturday night even though it was ordered closed entirely after Presti’s earlier arrest.

Deputies surveilling the pub saw that the front door to the bar was locked but customers were being directed to a building next door, Fucito said. From there, they were able to enter Mac’s Public House through a back door and order food and beverages, he said.

Staten Island is much more conservative than the rest of New York City and is the only one of the city’s five boroughs that voted for Republican President Donald Trump in November. The borough is home to many police officers and firefighters and is usually seen as supportive of law enforcement.

 

You want to see how quickly Staten Island goes from "Blue Lives Matter" to "All Cops Are Bastards" just wait until this story gets around. It's okay when cops come about Black folk, but when the deputies show up for white bar owners in violation of COVID-19 regulations and closures, all of a sudden it's time for revolution. 

Brutal police murders for everyone else,but they let *us* slide, because laws aren't fair when we have to obey the.

StupidiNews!

• President-elect Joe Biden is expected to name California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to his Cabinet as Health and Human Services Secretary.
• Trump legal advisor Rudy Giuliani is in a Georgetown hospital after being diagnosed with COVID-19 on Sunday.
• With time running out before a December 31 deadline, EU and UK Brexit negotiators return to the table on Monday to try to workout a last-minute trade deal.
• Both the White House and Senate Republicans, including majority leader Mitch McConnell, are reportedly on-board with a bipartisan Senate COVID-19 relief bill.
• A new Dartmouth College study finds climate change is not only affecting oceans and rivers, but streams as well, increasing stream flow, causing erosion, and flash flooding.
  

Sweden Tries Not To Go Viral, Con't

Sweden has now officially given up on the "herd immunity" fallacy and is mandating new procedures to stop the runaway spread of COVID-19 in the country.

 

Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment is over.

After a late autumn surge in infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, the government has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures.

Like other Europeans, Swedes are now heading into the winter facing restrictions ranging from a ban on large gatherings to curbs on alcohol sales and school closures—all aimed at preventing the country’s health system from being swamped by patients and capping what is already among the highest per capita death tolls in the world.

The clampdown, which started last month, put an end to a hands-off approach that had made the Scandinavian nation a prime example in the often heated global debate between opponents and champions of pandemic lockdowns.

Admirers of the Swedish way as far as the U.S. hailed its benefit to the economy and its respect for fundamental freedoms. Critics called it a gamble with human lives, especially those of the most vulnerable. With its shift in strategy, the government is now siding with those advocating at least some mandatory restrictions.

When the pathogen swept across Europe in March, Sweden broke with much of the continent and opted not to impose mask-wearing and left known avenues of viral transmission such as bars and nightclubs open, leaving it to citizens to take their own precautions.

As late as last month, Swedes enjoyed mass sporting and cultural events and health-care officials insisted that the voluntary measures were enough to spare the country the resurgence in infections that was sweeping Europe.

Weeks later, with total Covid-19-related deaths reaching almost 700 per million inhabitants, infections growing exponentially and hospital wards filling up, the government made a U-turn.

In an emotional televised address on Nov. 22, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pleaded with Swedes to cancel all nonessential meetings and announced a ban on gatherings of more than eight people, which triggered the closure of cinemas and other entertainment venues. Starting Monday, high schools will be closed.

“Authorities chose a strategy totally different to the rest of Europe, and because of it the country has suffered a lot in the first wave,” said Piotr Nowak, a physician working with Covid-19 patients at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. “We have no idea how they failed to predict the second wave.”

Last week Sweden’s total coronavirus death count crossed 7,000. Neighboring Denmark, Finland and Norway, all similar-sized countries, have recorded since the start of the pandemic 878, 415 and 354 deaths respectively. For the first time since World War II, Sweden’s neighbors have closed their borders with the country.

 

Sweden at least has enough shame left to dig their way out of this hole, although they'll be ostracized for months, if not years.  Here in the States, well, we'll be lucky if countries open their borders to us again by 2025.

 

This could have been prevented.  Republicans at the local, state, and national level chose to "let the weak be culled" instead. And we very nearly handed the country right back over to them.

 

Never forget that.

Sunday Long Read: The Viral Expert Goes Viral

Our Sunday Long Read comes to us this week from Jane C. Hu over at Undark: a profile of Twitter-centric Harvard-trained epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding, who has been one of the most prolific voices on social media apprising Americans of the horrors of COVID-19. His critics however -- and he has plenty in the medical science community -- say that he needs to be far more responsible with his rhetoric.

ERIC FEIGL-DING picked up his phone on the first ring. “Busy,” he said, when asked how things were going. He had just finished up an “epic, long” social media thread, he added — one of hundreds he’s posted about society’s ongoing battle with the coronavirus. “There’s so many different debates in the world of masking and herd immunity and reinfection,” he explained, among other dimensions of the pandemic. “We at FAS, we’ve been kind of monitoring all the debates and how we’re seeing signals in which the data goes one way, the debate goes the other,” he said, referring to his work with the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit policy think tank. He rattled off a rapid-fire sampler of hot-button Covid-19 topics: the growing anti-vaxxer movement, SARS-CoV-2 reinfection and antibodies, the body of research suggesting masks could decrease viral load, along with a quick mention of the debate among experts about what “airborne” means.

This whirlwind tour through viral Covid-19 themes felt like the conversational equivalent of Feigl-Ding’s Twitter account, which has grown by orders of magnitude since the dawn of the pandemic. The Harvard-trained scientist and 2018 Congressional aspirant posts dozens of times daily, often in the form of long, numbered threads. He’s fond of emojis, caps lock, and bombastic phrases. The first words of his very first viral tweet were “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.”

Made in January, weeks before the massive shutdowns that brought U.S. society to a halt, that exclamation preceded his observation that the “R0” (pronounced “R-naught”) of the novel coronavirus — a mathematical measure of a disease’s reproduction rate — was 3.8. That figure had been proposed in a scientific paper, posted online ahead of peer review, that Feigl-Ding called “thermonuclear pandemic level bad.” Further in that same Twitter thread, he claimed that the novel coronavirus could spread nearly eight times faster than SARS.

The thread was widely criticized by infectious disease experts and science journalists as needlessly fear-mongering and misleading, and the researchers behind the pre-print had already tweeted that they’d lowered their estimate to an R0 of 2.5, meaning that Feigl-Ding’s SARS figure was incorrect. (Because R0 is an average measure of a virus’s transmissibility, estimates vary widely based on factors like local policy and population density; as a result, researchers have suggested that other variables may be of more use.) He soon deleted the tweet — but his influence has only grown.

At the beginning of the pandemic, before he began sounding the alarm on Covid-19’s seriousness, Feigl-Ding had around 2,000 followers. That number has since swelled to over a quarter million, as Twitter users and the mainstream media turn to Feigl-Ding as an expert source, often pointing to his pedigree as a Harvard-trained epidemiologist. And he has earned the attention of some influential people. These include Ali Nouri, the president of FAS, who brought Feigl-Ding into his organization as a senior fellow; the journalist David Wallace-Wells, who meditated on Feigl-Ding’s “holy mother of God” tweet in his March essay arguing that alarmism can be a useful tool; and former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt. (“We all learn so much from you,” he tweeted at Feigl-Ding in July.) Ronald Gunzburger, senior adviser to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, even wrote a letter to Feigl-Ding attesting to how his “intentionally provocative tweet” in January “elevated the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the top of our priorities list.”

But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong. “Science misinformation is a huge problem right now — I think we can all appreciate it — [and] he’s a constant source of it,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University and the University of Arizona who serves on FAS’ Covid-19 Rapid Response Taskforce, a separate arm of the organization from Feigl-Ding’s work. Tara Smith, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Kent State University, suggested that Feigl-Ding’s reach means his tweets have the power to be hugely influential. “With as large of a following as he has, when he says something that’s really wrong or misleading, it reverberates throughout the Twittersphere,” she said.

Critics point to numerous problems. Not too long after his “holy mother of God” tweet, for example, Feigl-Ding took to Twitter to discuss a titillating but non-peer-reviewed paper that some readers interpreted as evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab; once the authors retracted the pre-print, he deleted a series of tweets from the middle of the thread. In March, Feigl-Ding tweeted a CDC graph as evidence that young people were “just as likely to be hospitalized as older generations,” but failed to mention an important detail about the age ranges represented in the graph’s bars, which didn’t actually support that claim. In August, he tweeted his support for a proposition to allow people early access to a vaccine. After criticism from epidemiologists, bioethicists, doctors, and health policy experts, Feigl-Ding deleted a few tweets at the beginning of his thread, saying they were “confusing” and “murky.” (He also argued that his critics were “spreading misinformation about what they think I said.”)

More recently, Feigl-Ding wrote a thread about coronavirus particles in flatulence, which drew criticism from researchers.

Even when his public exclamations are technically accurate, Feigl-Ding’s critics suggest that they too often invite misinterpretations. In a thread about the first study of a Covid-19 outbreak on an airplane, for example, Feigl-Ding failed to mention the important caveat that researchers suspected all but one case occurred before people got on the airplane. In another, Feigl-Ding appeared to summarize a Washington Post piece on a coronavirus mutation, but omitted crucial phrases — including the fact that just one of the five mentioned studies was peer-reviewed. It wasn’t until the sixth tweet in the thread that Feigl-Ding mentioned the important detail that the “worrisome” mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, though it could make the virus more contagious.

To Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University virologist, this represents a pattern. “[T]his is his MO,” she wrote in an email. “He tweets something sensational and out of context, buries any caveats further down-thread, and watches the clicks and [retweets] roll in.”

Such critiques of Feigl-Ding’s particular brand of Covid-19 commentary are by no means new, and previous articles — in The Atlantic as far back as January, for example, New York Magazine’s Intelligencer in March, the Chronicle of Higher Education in April, and in The Daily Beast in May — have explored questions about his expertise in epidemiology (his focus prior to Covid-19 was on nutrition) and whether his approach to public health communication is appropriate or alarmist. But as his influence has grown, and as the pandemic enters a much more worrying phase, critics have continued to debate whether Feigl-Ding, for all his enthusiasms, is doing more harm than good. Some complain that Feigl-Ding’s army of followers can be hateful when other scientists publicly disagree with his tweets. Others say that Feigl-Ding himself has been known to privately message his critics — a tack that some found unwelcome.

For his part, though, Feigl-Ding says many of his critics’ disagreements with him have come down to a difference in style. “Sometimes it’s a matter of a philosophical approach about tone: Should I say ‘whoa’ or ‘wow?’” he said — adding that he thinks of those words as a type of “subject line” for a tweet. “Some people don’t like the all-caps initial thing, but it’s more of a stylistic thing. And of course, some people think: ‘This tweet is sensational.’ I’ve heard that,” he said — adding that, indeed, he has contacted critics, but always in a professional capacity. “I [direct-message] a lot of people,’ he said, “sometimes email them when I have a question.

“We have spirited debates,” he added.

I can see both sides of the argument, lord knows the baseline we're working with here is an orange idiot who lies about the virus to the point where tens of millions are purposefully laboring under false information. But the experts are saying that Feigl-Ding gets himself in way over his head, and that sometimes being that smartest guy in the room explaining to the masses gets you in trouble.

Believe me, I know. 

Have multiple sources of information, is what I'm saying. And if you don't have the expertise to judge for yourself, listen to the people who do.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

As hate crime expert and author David Neiwert explains, Trump's Proud Boys brownshirts are gearing up for terrorist insurrections during the Biden administration...if Trump doesn't tell them outright to start a civil war to keep him in power.

It's become apparent that, even as Donald Trump tries to deny reality and continue claiming he won the election, the hate group that he ordered, on national television, to "stand back and stand by" now considers (per leadership's statements that "standby order has been rescinded," as well as other threatening statements on social media) those orders null and void: The Proud Boys are now playing the role of Trump's goon-squad defenders in the streets—and appear unlikely to stop anytime soon.

Following the initial burst of Proud Boy violence in Washington, D.C., during and after the "Million MAGA March" of November 14, the familiar black-and-yellow polos, red MAGA hats and thug tactics have been showing up on the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina; Sacramento, California; and Staten Island, New York. At each event, brawls broke out amid overheated rhetoric, much of it in Trump's defense.

The violence follows the pattern established over the previous four years—right-wing extremists organizing gangs of out-of-town thugs from rural and exurban areas to invade liberal urban centers on vague political pretexts in order to engage in threatening acts of intimidation and provoke violence that they can then blame on "antifa" and the "left." And as with all those events, the Proud Boys' presence has been to act as street enforcers for a variety of far-right causes: Denouncing the election results, protesting about COVID-19 public-health measures, or whatever else might be the right-wing grievance du jour.

Mostly, it's about creating fear and violence on behalf of a white-nationalist agenda. That's what the Proud Boys exist for, and it's why the Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a "general" hate group.

All during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Proud Boys have been whipping up a sense of public intimidation at the liberal cities where they hold rallies while spreading conspiracist misinformation about the virus, its spread, and the government orders intended to fight it. These appearances have been part of the Proud Boys' steady drumbeat of bringing the politics of thuggery to American cities throughout 2020, as the Institute for Education and Research on Human Rights has mapped out in detail, for a variety of ostensible causes.

In Raleigh last weekend, Proud Boys came out to protest North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper's pandemic-related business restrictions, particularly those on indoor gatherings. Calling it a "Pilgrims and Patriots Thanksgiving in Raleigh" event, organizers with Reopen Carolina joined arms with the Proud Boys and a Latinos for Trump group at the state Capitol. Then, as usual, they proceeded to provoke brawls with counterprotesters who held an event called "Racists Out Of Raleigh."

There were no fights, since police kept the two sides separated assiduously. So the Proud Boys turned their thug tactics to the press who came to cover the event, including a reporter for the Indy who they harassed. Their report describes it:  

 

A man in a Proud Boys bandana kept the INDY reporter from recording speeches by putting his hand in front of the camera, while others around pretended to sneeze. A woman in a white tank top and MAGA hat also told the reporter to leave. This happened a second time once the group was back at the Jones Street corner; this time, the man who had been blocking the camera told the reporter, "we can ask you to leave, or we can make you leave."

Proud Boys also showed up at another COVID-related protest in Staten Island—this time outside Mac's Public House, a tavern that had recently been busted for offering food and drinks beyond a 10 PM cutoff time mandated by New York City officials. A large, entirely maskless crowd gathered outside the pub on Wednesday night to protest the charges.

Inside the pub, there were chants of "Proud Boys in the house." According to the New York Post, a speaker also led a Proud Boys chant: "I am a proud Western Chauvinist." Afterward, they segued into singing Queen's "We Will Rock You."

According to The Sun, protesters blamed New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for the pandemic measures, with signs reading "Dictator Cuomo." One protester shouted at cops through a megaphone: "Where is your backbone? Where is your morality?"

The event in Sacramento had nothing to do with COVID-19, but instead was entirely a protest of the election results, and an insistence that Trump won the election—and heavily populated by Proud Boys and their militia cohort. One of the Proud Boys told the crowd that the organization's role was to defend "people like you that come out to rallies."

As Capital Radio reporter Scott Rodd observed, those were hollow words: 

 

But the Proud Boys also played the aggressor. CapRadio observed one Proud Boy take a swing at a member of the press for filming him. Other members, after the demonstrators returned to the barricaded area near the Capitol, remained outside the perimeter and instigated counter-protesters and passersby. Several chased after one counter-protester. Some also followed and taunted observers from the National Lawyers Guild.

By day's end, multiple brawls had broken out, and police—who declared an unlawful assembly and issued a dispersal order—reported one arrest on "assault-related charges."

Reporter Gabe Stutman of Jewish Weekly was also present, and watched as, after their rally speeches ended, "they spilled into the streets of downtown Sacramento, chanting 'Whose streets? Our streets!' and 'F*ck antifa!' while butting up against police cordons that blocked their path. The demonstrators exchanged insults and threats with roughly a dozen people identified as part of antifa ..."

Stutman notes that "each protest has followed a similar pattern," one familiar to reporters covering Proud Boys events elsewhere: First, a peaceful demonstration with speeches in a public space, followed by a march into downtown or other urban areas with the intent of brawling with counterprotesters—or, for that matter, anyone who shouts at them or protests them.

I expect this plan to change rapidly from harassment to open acts of violence, and that change is going to come in the next few weeks when Biden is declared the victor at the Electoral College later this month.

It's coming, folks.

 

An Atlanta state senator has asked for police protection after people posting on conservative social media said she should be killed over her participation in hearings on Thursday about unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud pushed by supporters of President Donald Trump.

State Sen. Elena Parent, a Democrat, said she was shaken after being informed that her home address and other personal information had been distributed online and some posted in a social media thread that she should be killed.

A thread on one far-right internet message board posted photos of Parent captured during Thursday’s hearings, misidentified her as an election worker and asked users to vote on what the appropriate form of punishment should be. The most common responses called for sexual violence to be committed against Parent and/or her execution.


“It’s really scary and very strange because I didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t have done or haven’t done in any other hearing for these years I’ve been a senator,” she said.

Parent said she was working with law enforcement and the lieutenant governor’s office to secure additional protection at least throughout the weekend. DeKalb County police told her they would increase patrols near her home.

  

The violence reminds me of a quote:

 

“Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again... said a shadow at the window... and you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time...

But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.”

 

--Emily Carroll, Through The Woods

 

The wolf is going to get lucky very soon.

Last Call For The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

Only two dozen or so Republicans admit Joe Biden is President-elect at this point, a month after the election he won by seven million votes, with California's certification on Friday making it all official. The other 220 or so "won't say" because they are cowards.

Just 25 congressional Republicans acknowledge Joe Biden’s win over President Trump a month after the former vice president’s clear victory of more than 7 million votes nationally and a convincing electoral-vote margin that exactly matched Trump’s 2016 tally.

Two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence showing otherwise. And another 222 GOP members of the House and Senate — nearly 90 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election.

Those are the findings of a Washington Post survey of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate that began the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president.

A team of 25 Post reporters contacted aides for every Republican by email and phone asking three basic questions — who won the presidential contest, do you support or oppose Trump’s continuing efforts to claim victory and if Biden wins a majority in the electoral college, will you accept him as the legitimately elected president — and also researched public statements made by the GOP lawmakers in recent weeks to determine their stance on Biden’s win.

The results demonstrate the fear that most Republicans have of the outgoing president and his grip on the party, despite his new status as just the third incumbent to lose reelection in the last 80 years. More than 70 percent of Republican lawmakers did not acknowledge The Post’s questions as of Friday evening.

They are largely hiding from answering questions about the election, neither congratulating Biden nor embracing Trump’s most strident positions and false claims. Just eight Republicans, 3 percent of all GOP lawmakers, voiced support for Trump’s current strategy of claiming victory and asking state legislatures to declare him the victor in states that he lost.

 

And at least two sitting Republicans think Trump won and a half-dozen more think he should commit treason and take over the country. They should be arrested for sedition. Mitch is ignoring it, Kevin McCarthy is smugly warning "Wait until we see who's sworn in on January 20th".

At some point these Republicans have to be made to pay a price, and frankly they never will.

The Country Goes Viral, Con't

As COVID-19 deaths, cases, and hospitalizations continue to hit record highs across the country, the CDC is finally calling for all Americans to wear masks whenever people are outside the home.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging “universal mask use” indoors for the first time as the country shatters records for coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths ahead of the holiday season.

The CDC has for months encouraged mask-wearing in public spaces with people outside the household. The new guidance, published Friday, asks people to put on masks anywhere outside their homes.

In its weekly Morbidity and Mortality report, the CDC warned Friday that the U.S. has entered “a phase of high-level transmission” as colder weather and the ongoing holiday season push Americans indoors, and said that “consistent and correct” use of face masks is critical to taming the virus.

Mask use is most crucial indoors, and in outdoor spaces where social distancing cannot be maintained, the CDC said in the report. The agency recommended mask use at home when a member of the household has been infected or potentially exposed to the virus, including those with high-risk occupations such as meatpacking or agricultural processing.

“Compelling evidence now supports the benefits of cloth face masks for both source control [to protect others],” the report said, “And to a lesser extent, protection of the wearer.”

Mitigation measures are particularly essential in light of recent research that suggests roughly 50 percent of transmission of the coronavirus is from asymptomatic people, the report said. It also recommended that communities make a plan for distributing masks to people who might struggle to access them.

Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, has called masks “the most important, powerful public health tool” in combating the coronavirus. A growing body of research shows widespread mask use can save scores of lives and stave off economic damage. One June analysis from Goldman Sachs estimated that a 15 percent increase in universal masking could prevent lockdowns and reduce associated losses of up to $1 trillion.

On Thursday, President-elect Joe Biden said that, on his first day in office, he'd ask Americans to mask up for 100 days. "Not forever. 100 days," Biden said in an interview with CNN. "And I think we’ll see a significant reduction.”

In addition to stepping up mask use, the CDC also recommended postponing travel plans. For those who do plan to travel, both domestically and internationally, the agency encouraged staying home, getting tested before and after traveling and quarantining for a week upon return, regardless of test results.

“Testing does not eliminate all risk and should be combined with other recommended public health strategies,” including mask-wearing, social distancing and quarantines, the CDC said in the report.

Despite CDC warnings, experts are anticipating a holiday travel rush. The Sunday after Thanksgiving was the busiest day of air travel in 2020, with more than 1.1 million Americans flying, about 40 percent of the traffic on the same day last year, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

 

We're already at the 3,000+ deaths per day stage. This is only going to get worse as the Thanksgiving numbers come in this month because at least half of the "92 percent of Americans who say they regularly wear masks" are outright lying to you.

People aren't wearing masks, they're "tired" of it.

Tired of selfish idiots watching 3,000 Americans die daily, too.

Mask up, folks.

An End-Of-Year Pot Shot From House Dems

House Democrats (and more than a few Republicans) have signed on to a 228-164 lame duck bill that decriminalized marijuana at the federal level, and while the legislation will never get a Senate vote, it does mean that Democrats can go to President-elect Joe Biden's position on recreational pot and tell him that can "evolve", Obama-style.

The Democratic-controlled House on Friday approved a bill to decriminalize and tax marijuana at the federal level. The bill would reverse what supporters called a failed policy of criminalization of pot use and take steps to address racial disparities in enforcement of federal drug laws.

Opponents, mostly Republicans, called the bill a hollow political gesture and mocked Democrats for bringing it up at a time when thousands of Americans are dying from the coronavirus pandemic.

Supporters say it would help reverse adverse effects of the decades-long “war on drugs” by removing marijuana, or cannabis, from the list of federally controlled substances while allowing states to set their own rules on pot. The bill also would use money from an excise tax on marijuana to address the needs of groups and communities harmed by the drug war and provide for the expungement of federal marijuana convictions and arrests.

“For far too long, we have treated marijuana as a criminal justice problem instead of as a matter of personal choice and public health,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a key sponsor of the bill. “Whatever one’s views are on the use of marijuana for recreational or medicinal use, the policy of arrests, prosecution and incarceration at the federal level has proven unwise and unjust.”

The vote comes at a time when most Americans live in states where marijuana is legal in some form, and lawmakers from both parties agreed that national cannabis policy has lagged woefully behind changes at the state level. That divide has created a host of problems — loans and other banking services, for example, are hard to get for many marijuana companies because pot remains illegal at the federal level.

The bill also would open up more opportunities for marijuana businesses, including access to Small Business Administration loans to help ensure that minorities can take part in an industry dominated by white farmers and growers.

 

Now the bill would never pass a Senate GOP filibuster, let alone get a vote in the Senate at all, because McConnell knows there's probably 53-55 votes for it. States keep legalizing recreational pot left, right, and center.  

 

Republicans will never allow a bill like this to pass until they start losing Senate seats over it. They definitely won't allow it to pass unless they can eliminate Black and brown people from being able to legally make money selling pot entirely and turn it into a multi billion dollar legalized drug cartel operation the way pharmaceutical companies, breweries, wineries, and distilleries operate today.

 

This could help in Georgia though if Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are willing to sign off on this, but the state has largely resisted decriminalization efforts, and it could backfire.

The one person that this will put pressure on is Joe Biden, and he's going to get a lot of blowback on this if he does change things at the federal level.

And all these Republicans will suddenly decide that the bill gives the government too much regulatory and taxation power should it come up again next year, which I believe it won't.

Maybe for next Christmas.

Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

Turns out sending Americans back to work for six months into a pandemic in order to save the economy not only fails to stop the pandemic, it also fails to save the economy.

 

Hiring around the U.S. slowed last sharply month as the coronavirus battered the economy, the Labor Department said Friday. Employers added 245,000 jobs in November — the slowest pace of monthly job growth since April, and about half what economists had expected.

Payroll gains last month amount a sharp drop from the 610,000 jobs added in October and 710,000 in September. The nation's unemployment rate, which has steadily declined since peaking at nearly 15% in April, ticked down to 6.7%. But it fell for a bad reason — 400,000 people stopped looking for work, meaning they were no longer counted as unemployed.

Normally, adding nearly a quarter million jobs in a single month would signify healthy growth, but the economy faces a massive jobs deficit, with about 10 million fewer jobs since April. Since then, 4 million people have dropped out of the workforce altogether, meaning they are not working or looking for work.

"With the amount of pressure that the escalating pandemic is putting on the labor market right now, it's pretty clear that a double-dip recession is a very real possibility," Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual Group, said in a note. "For those who have been out of a job since March or early Spring, this extended period of unemployment will make it even more difficult to find new, stable work."

"[T]he bottom line is that job growth has slowed markedly, and this report demonstrates yet again that it's not possible to separate the economy from the virus," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a note to investors.

Manufacturing and construction each added 27,000 jobs last month. The retail sector lost 34,000 jobs, offset by a gain of 145,000 jobs in transportation and warehousing, driven by a shift to ecommerce.

 

The right-hand side of the "V" in that "V-shaped rocket recovery" the Trumpies blather on about has broken off halfway up and is now dangling like a busted antenna on a 50-year old pair of TV rabbit ears. It's going to fall off next month. After that, if Mitch McConnell is still Senate leader, we're in for a catastrophic 2021.

Until Republicans stop sabotaging our COVID-19 efforts, the economy will never improve, and now that Biden's going to be President, they have no reason to stop doing either.

 

Remember that in the months ahead.