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The Commentariat -- May 21, 2020
Afternoon Update:
The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Thursday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Thursday are here.
MOOM Goes Maskless. Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump on Thursday did not wear a mask during a tour of a Ford factory in Michigan being used to produce ventilators, despite the company's policy requiring everyone to wear personal protective equipment to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The president walked around the factory floor without a face covering, even as Ford executives who joined him wore masks."
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Do As We Say, Not As We Do. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "The denizens of Fox & Friends urged New York businesses to reopen en masse despite lockdown orders and a still-deadly coronavirus pandemic, but they did so from the safety of their own homes and secure locations. On Thursday morning, the trio of regular hosts were joined by legal analyst Andrew Napolitano to discuss Thursday's New York Post cover, which features a photograph of the city's skyline and a giant headline that blares 'IT NEEDS TO END. NOW.'"
David Sanger of the New York Times: "President Trump has decided to withdraw from another major arms control accord, according to senior administration officials, and will inform Russia on Friday that the United States is pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, negotiated three decades ago to allow nations to fly over each other's territory with elaborate sensor equipment to assure that they are not preparing for military action. Mr. Trump's decision may be viewed as more evidence that he is preparing to exit the one major arms treaty remaining with Russia: New START, which limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear missiles each. It expires in February, weeks after the next presidential inauguration, and Mr. Trump has insisted that China must join what is now a U.S.-Russia limit on nuclear arsenals." A Hill summary report is here.
Martin Matishak of Politico: "The Senate on Thursday confirmed Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) as ... Donald Trump's top intelligence official, in a move aimed at ending nine months of reshuffling at the top of the nation's spying establishment. Lawmakers voted 49-44 in a party-line vote to confirm Ratcliffe as the sixth director of national intelligence since the office was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.... Trump had originally picked Ratcliffe for the job in July, after the Texas Republican had put on an aggressive public display in his grilling of former special counsel Robert Mueller. But ... [Ratcliffe] soon withdrew his name amid questions about whether he had inflated his resume."
Keith Bradsher, et al., of the New York Times: "China is moving to impose new national security laws that would give the Communist Party more control over Hong Kong, threatening to erode the freedoms that distinguish the global, commercial city from the rest of the country. The proposal, announced on Thursday, reignited the fear, anger and protests over the creeping influence of China's authoritarian government in the semiautonomous region. It also inflamed worries that Beijing is trying to dismantle the distinct political and cultural identity that has defined the former British colony since it was reclaimed by China in 1997."
Kate Taylor & Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times: "The actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, a fashion designer, have agreed to plead guilty to charges that they conspired to get their daughters admitted to the University of Southern California as crew recruits, prosecutors announced on Thursday, a reversal for the couple after months of maintaining their innocence in the nation's largest-ever admissions prosecution. Under the terms of the agreement, which still needs approval by a judge, Ms. Loughlin, 55, agreed to serve two months in prison, pay a $150,000 fine and serve two years of supervised release with 100 hours of community service. If the deal is approved, Mr. Giannulli, 56, is expected to serve five months in prison, pay a $250,000 fine and serve two years of supervised release with 250 hours of community service." An ABC News story is here.
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Jeff Cox of CNBC: "First-time filings for unemployment insurance totaled 2.44 million last week as the tail effects of the coronavirus shutdown continued to impact the U.S. jobs market.... The seasonally adjusted total, while still well above anything the nation had seen in pre-coronavirus America, represents the seventh straight week of a declining pace following the record peak of 6.9 million in late March. In addition, a review from last week brought the number down substantially, from 2.98 million to 2.69 million. In the nine weeks since the coronavirus-induced lockdown has shut down large parts of the U.S. economy, some 38.6 million workers have filed claims."
The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Wednesday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Wednesday are here.
If you're having trouble getting your head around all the statistics & charts related to coronavirus testing, the Dear Leader is here to help:
When you see 'per capita,' there's many per capitas. Is it's like, 'Per capita relative to what?' But you could look at just about any category, and we're really at the top. Meaning positive on a per capita basis, too. They've done a great job. -- Donald Trump, during a meeting with the governors of Arkansas & Kansas ~~~
~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Strangely, Trump's garbled "explanation" is accidentally half-right. If you're trying to understand rates of infection, the CDC seems to be going out of its way to misinform you AND state decision-makers: ~~~
~~~ ** Alexis C. Madrigal & Robinson Meyer of the Atlantic: "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests, distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic.... The CDC is making, a best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The upshot is that the government's disease-fighting agency is overstating the country's ability to test people who are sick with COVID-19. The agency confirmed to The Atlantic on Wednesday that it is mixing the results of viral and antibody tests.... This is not merely a technical error. States have set quantitative guidelines for reopening their economies based on these flawed data points.... A negative test result means something different for each test. If somebody tests negative on a viral test, a doctor can be relatively confident that they are not sick right now; if somebody tests negative on an antibody test, they have probably never been infected with or exposed to the coronavirus.... The problem is that the CDC is clumping negative results from both tests together in its public reporting.... 'You've got to be kidding me,' Ashish Jha ... of the Harvard Global Health Institute told us when we described what the CDC was doing. 'How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.'" ~~~
~~~ Confused by the CDC's mixed-up stats? How about the CDC's mixed-up health advice? ~~~
~~~ Jessica Flores of USA Today: "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has always warned that 'it may be possible' to become infected with coronavirus by touching contaminated surfaces or objects. It just 'does not spread easily' in that manner, the agency now says, nor by animal-to-human contact, or vice versa. 'COVID-19 is a new disease and we are still learning about how it spreads,' says the CDC's recently updated guidelines. 'It may be possible for COVID-19 to spread in other ways, but these are not thought to be the main ways the virus spreads.' Dr. John Whyte, chief medical officer for the healthcare website WebMD, told Fox News that the CDC's slight update brings clarity and helps to reduce fears. 'Many people were concerned that by simply touching an object they may get coronavirus and that's simply not the case. Even when a virus may stay on a surface, it doesn't mean that it's actually infectious,' Whyte was quoted." Mrs. McC: I'm sticking with my possibly nutso system of disinfecting my grocery containers.
~~~ The CDC Is Tired of Trying to Reason with You White House People. Nick Valencia & Caroline Kelly of CNN: "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has posted 60 pages of detailed guidelines on how to reopen the United States from coronavirus pandemic stay-at-home orders on the agency's website. The guidance was a slightly shorter version of a 68-page document shelved by the White House last week after concerns it was too specific. Still, the latest CDC document was very descriptive, providing a detailed road map for schools, restaurants, transit and child care facilities on the categories to consider before reopening. The guidance was posted without fanfare amid reported tensions between the agency and the White House. CNN previously reported one of the main hold ups for publishing the CDC documents was the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights Division felt that faith-based organizations were being unfairly targeted." ~~~
~~~ Lena Sun, et al., of the Washington Post: "Guidance for reopening houses of worship amid the coronavirus pandemic has been put on hold after a battle between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House, which was resistant to putting limits on religious institutions, according to administration officials.... There are currently no plans [for the CDC] to issue guidance for religious institutions, according to three administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity...."
James Glanz & Campbell Robertson of the New York Times: "If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers. And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation-s deaths -- about 83 percent -- would have been avoided, the researchers estimated. Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May. The enormous cost of waiting to take action reflects the unforgiving dynamics of the outbreak that swept through American cities in early March.... After Italy and South Korea had started aggressively responding to the virus, President Trump resisted canceling campaign rallies or telling people to stay home or avoid crowds. The risk of the virus to most Americans was very low, he said. 'Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,' Mr. Trump tweeted on March 9.... 'At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!' In fact, tens of thousands of people had already been infected by that point, researchers later estimated." MSN has republished the NYT report here.
Carl Zimmer, et al., of the New York Times: "In labs around the world, there is now cautious optimism that a coronavirus vaccine, and perhaps more than one, will be ready sometime next year. Scientists are exploring not just one approach to creating the vaccine, but at least four. So great is the urgency that they are combining trial phases and shortening a process that usually takes years, sometimes more than a decade. The coronavirus itself has turned out to be clumsy prey, a stable pathogen unlikely to mutate significantly and dodge a vaccine." Mrs. McC: This last bit -- if correct -- is good news. A few weeks ago, I linked a story suggesting the coronavirus was mutating rapidly & therefore would be hard to stop with a vaccine as vaccines could not "keep up" to protect against the latest mutations.
Trump to Stop Taking Meds He Probably Wasn't Taking. CBS News: "President Trump will soon be ending his course of hydroxychloroquine, he told reporters Wednesday. 'I think the regimen finishes in a day or two -- yeah, I think it's two days, two days,' he said during a meeting with Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Kansas Governor Laura Kelly."
Sheila Kaplan, et al., of the New York Times: "The chief scientist brought on to lead the Trump administration's vaccine efforts has spent the last several days trying to disentangle pieces of his stock portfolio and his intricate ties to big pharmaceutical interests, as critics point to the potential for significant conflicts of interest. The scientist, Moncef Slaoui, is a venture capitalist and a former longtime executive at GlaxoSmithKline. Most recently, he sat on the board of Moderna, a Cambridge, Mass., biotechnology firm with a $30 billion valuation that is pursuing a coronavirus vaccine. He resigned when President Trump named him last Thursday to the new post as chief adviser for Operation Warp Speed, the federal drive for coronavirus vaccines and treatments.... In agreeing to accept the position, Dr. Slaoui did not come on board as a government employee. Instead, he is on a contract, receiving $1 for his service. That leaves him exempt from federal disclosure rules that would require him to list his outside positions, stock holdings and other potential conflicts. And the contract position is not subject to the same conflict-of-interest laws and regulations that executive branch employees must follow."
Where's Tony? Oliver Darcy of CNN: "The nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been conspicuously absent from national television interviews over the last two weeks, as the White House moves ahead with reopening the economy. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, last gave a television interview when he spoke to CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on May 4th. Prior to his recent absence from the airwaves, Fauci was regularly appearing on national news programs to update the American people on the country's fight against the coronavirus. While Fauci has been on 'modified quarantine' after possible exposure to the virus, he has still been present at the White House and testified remotely before the Senate last week. Fauci's absence was particularly noteworthy this week, given the positive early results regarding a vaccine developed by the biotech company Moderna in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, which Fauci's NIAID falls under."
Aris Folley of the Hill: "Wilson Roosevelt Jerman, who served as a White House butler for more than five decades, has died of COVID-19 at the age of 91, local media report. Granddaughter Jamila Garrett said in an interview with FOX 5 DC that that Jerman first began working at the White House as a cleaner under the Eisenhower administration in 1957. She said it wasn't until former President John F. Kennedy came into office in the 1960s that her grandfather was promoted to butler after building a rapport with the first couple."
The Kleptocracy, Ctd. Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "A North Dakota construction firm that has received backing from President Trump has now secured the largest border wall contract ever awarded, a $1.3 billion deal to build 42 miles of black-painted fencing through the rugged mountains of southern Arizona. The company that won the contract, Fisher Sand and Gravel, has been repeatedly lauded by the president in White House meetings with border officials and military commanders, the result of a long and personalized marketing pitch to Trump and ardent supporters of his barrier project. After its initial bids for border contracts were passed over, the company and its CEO, Tommy Fisher, cut a direct path to the president by praising him on cable news, donating to his Republican allies and cultivating ties to former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, GOP Senate candidate Kris Kobach and other conservative figures in Trump's orbit. Fisher's first and only other major border contract, for $400 million, is under review by the Defense Department inspector general after Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about improper White House influence on the procurement process."
Josh Rogin of the Washington Post: "On Friday, President Trump announced the firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, based on the recommendation of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a move that surprised official Washington and infuriated Democrats. Now, there is additional concern about Linick's replacement, Stephen Akard, who is already on the job -- and is also keeping his existing State Department position, setting up a clear conflict of interest. According to the law, the administration must notify Congress 30 days in advance before firing an inspector general. But multiple sources told me that Linick's last day was Friday, the same day Congress learned about his ouster. Akard showed up at the office on Monday morning and immediately assumed the boss's role. Yet Akard is keeping his job as the head of the State Department's Office of Foreign Missions.... Adding the inspector general's job to his duties essentially means he will be overseeing himself.... Last May, the State Department Inspector General's office issued a report after inspecting ... the Office of Foreign Missions. This was before Akard took over, but the report was scathing.... OFM had spent $48 million over the years to build an information system that didn't work and warranted urgent management attention, the OIG reported." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Of course Trump & the Trumpettes see nothing wrong with a Trump-appointed IG's inspecting himself. This is akin to Trump's declaration "I'll be the oversight" of his distribution of half-a-trillion dollars of coronavirus relief monies. MEANWHILE, Trump has named "the real criminals" in what he describes as "the biggest crime in American history." ~~~
~~~ ** "Obamagate" Unmasked. Ellen Nakamura of the Washington Post: "A Republican effort to determine who may have leaked the name of Michael Flynn in connection to his 2016 contact with the Russian ambassador has centered on the question of which Obama administration officials requested his identity be 'unmasked' in intelligence documents. But in the FBI report about the communications between the two men, Flynn's name was never redacted, former U.S. officials said. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) announced this week that he wants to subpoena witnesses over the unmasking of Flynn.... 'When the FBI circulated [the report (on the Flynn-Kislyak conversations], they included Flynn's name from the beginning' because it was essential to understanding its significance, said a former senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.... 'There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.'... [Acting DNI Richard Grenell] ... declassified [a list of Obama-era officials (including Joe Biden) who had requested the 'unmasking' of Flynn] and provided [it] to GOP senators.... The list, prepared at Grenell's request by the National Security Agency, covered requests made between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 12, 2017. The majority of requests occurred before Flynn's communications with Kislyak on Dec. 29. It was the FBI, not the NSA, that wiretapped Kislyak's calls and created the summary and transcript, the former officials said....
"The unmasking issue appears to be part of an effort by the president and his allies to tar former president Barack Obama with what Trump says was an unfounded criminal investigation into potential conspiracy between Russia and Trump associates -- or what he now calls 'Obamagate.'... The president's allies are casting the unmasking requests as evidence of a malign effort to damage Trump through leaks to the media.... Grenell’s move amounts to 'selective declassification' for political purposes, said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) in a letter to the DNI on Wednesday." The Week has a summary report here.
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: This report is extraordinary. If correct, it means that Trump, GOP lawmakers & Trump allies made up out of whole cloth the "controversy" over the "unmasking" of the hapless Flynn. What Trump called "the biggest crime in American history" not only was not a crime; it never happened. ~~~
~~~ Natasha Bertrand of Politico: "The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has requested that the acting director of national intelligence hand over the underlying intelligence reports at the center of the so-called unmasking controversy. In a letter sent Wednesday and obtained by Politico, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) raised concerns with Richard Grenell about the intel chief's decision last week to declassify the names of Obama administration officials involved in unmasking the name in intelligence reports of a U.S. person later determined to be Michael Flynn.... As the committee's top Democrat, Warner has no power to compel Grenell to comply.... The declassified list, which was provided by the National Security Agency, appears to have nothing to do with the Flynn-Kislyak calls, which were discovered by the FBI.... Grenell has been on a declassification tear in recent days as he prepares to hand the office over to his successor.... Now, Warner is asking that Grenell 'declassify and make publicly available any intelligence report concerning conversations between Lt. Gen. Flynn (ret.) and Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.'..."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily blocked the release of parts of the report prepared by Robert S. Mueller III.... The court's order, concerning a request by the House Judiciary Committee for grand jury materials that the Justice Department had blacked out from the report provided to Congress, could mean that the full report would not be made available before the 2020 election.The Supreme Court's brief order gave no reasons for blocking an appeals court ruling ordering the release of the full report while the justices considered whether to hear the case. It ordered the Justice Department to file a petition seeking review by June 1. There were no noted dissents." A Hill report is here, and an NBC News story is here.
Benjamin Weiser, et al., of the New York Times: "Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, will be released from a federal prison on Thursday on furlough, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said on Wednesday. He had asked to be released over health concerns tied to the coronavirus.... Mr. Cohen's projected release date was November 2021, according to the bureau's website, but he had sought to be released sooner because of medical issues and the risk that they would be exacerbated by the virus's spread at the prison. One law enforcement official briefed on the matter said it was expected that Mr. Cohen would serve the balance of his sentence under home confinement, but it was unclear on Wednesday whether a final decision had been made with regard to that." ~~~
~~~ David Shortell & Paul LeBlanc of CNN: Michael Cohen "is expected to serve out the remainder of his sentence at home as coronavirus continues to spread behind bars, according to a person familiar with the matter. Cohen will be released on furlough while he completes the process of being moved to home confinement...."
David L. Stern & Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his law enforcement agencies Wednesday to investigate leaked audio of private phone calls several years ago between Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine's then-president, Petro Poroshenko, and said that the conversations 'might be perceived, qualified as high treason.'... The recordings, which were first played at a news conference Tuesday in Kyiv, shed relatively little new light on Biden's role in ousting Ukraine's prosecutor general four years ago.... The recordings showed that Biden, as he has previously said publicly, linked loan guarantees for Ukraine in 2015 to the ouster of Viktor Shokin, then the country's prosecutor general.... But Zelensky's comments Wednesday could have been aimed at appeasing Trump, discrediting a rival in Poroshenko and deflecting to investigators all in one swipe.... Hours before Zelensky's news conference, he wrote in a New York Times op-ed that 'the impeachment story was not comfortable for me.... It took American and international attention away from the issues that mattered most to Ukraine and turned our country into a story about President Trump.'..."
Elections 2020
Michigan. Zach Montellaro & Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump mischaracterized Michigan's mail-in ballot policies on Wednesday while threatening federal funding to the state if election officials there do not retreat from measures meant to facilitate mail-in voting.... 'Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,' Trump tweeted. 'This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!' He then followed up with another message mentioning the official Twitter accounts for acting White House budget director Russ Vought, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and the Treasury Department. The president's tweets mischaracterized a recent policy change in Michigan. On Tuesday, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, announced that all of the state's 7.7 million registered voters would be mailed absentee ballot applications for the August down-ballot primaries and November general election, not a ballot directly. Responding to the president, the secretary tweeted that 'I also have a name, it's Jocelyn Benson,' and noted that her office was sending applications 'like my GOP colleagues in Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia.'" ~~~
State of Nevada 'thinks' that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S. They can't! If they do, 'I think' I can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections. @RussVought45 @USTreasury -- Donald Trump, in a tweet Wednesday morning ~~~
~~~ Nevada. Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent: Trump's "tweet early Wednesday morning alleging illegalities that are not illegal and threatening an unlawful withholding of federal funds unless Nevada officials bend the knee would have been comical if it were not so insidious. It has become de rigueur to dismiss Trump's tweets as a distraction, the online maundering of a pathological liar designed to distract from real issues."
~~~ Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "We ... know Trump fears vote-by-mail can hurt his []re-election chances. Trump explicitly admitted that with such Democratic voting rights measures, 'you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again.' And so, in lodging this threat, Trump is saying the corrupt part out loud -- with a bullhorn.... As a threshold matter, what Trump is threatening is illegal, according to Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. 'The federal government does not have the power to withhold funding from states because the president disagrees with something the states are doing,' Vladeck told me. 'There's no legal mechanism by which he can do that.'... Trump could try to instruct the Treasury Department not to dole out [coronavirus relief] money. Note that Trump actually cc'd the Treasury Department in his tweet-threat, an act that becomes a lot more disgusting when you understand that this is how the mechanism actually does work.... This episode shows Trump functioning as a pathetic wannabe autocrat who can't even get his corrupt threats right in another sense as well." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Sure puts the "I'll be the oversight" of coronavirus relief distribution in perspective, doesn't it?
Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast: "Embattled Sen. Kelly Loeffler's (R-GA) husband made his largest-ever federal political contribution last month with a seven-figure donation to a super PAC supporting ... Donald Trump's re-election, according to Federal Election Commission records released on Wednesday. A filing from the pro-Trump group America First Action shows that Jeff Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, donated $1 million to the group in late April, as Loeffler sought to beat back allegations of insider trading after she and Sprecher unloaded millions of dollars in stock in the wake of a closed-door Senate briefing on the novel coronavirus."
Meet Your Official, Party-Approved GOP Candidates:
California Congressional Race. Not a Bigoted Bone in His Body. Ally Mutnick of Politico: "Republican congressional candidate Ted Howze said earlier this month he had nothing to do with social media posts from his personal accounts that demeaned Muslims, accused prominent Democrats of murder and mocked a survivor of the Parkland school shooting. The 'negative and ugly ideas,' he asserted, were penned by others whom he'd given access to his accounts, but he declined to name them. In the weeks since his denial, new questions have emerged about that explanation. At least a dozen additional posts from Howze's account over a two-year period espouse conspiracy theories, suggest Hillary Clinton and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) are responsible for murder, or denigrate Dreamers, Islam and the Black Lives Matter movement. As of Tuesday afternoon, they were accessible on his personal Facebook account. Howze, his party's nominee in a competitive central California district, is endorsed by the National Republican Congressional Committee and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy. He explicitly signed his name to one of these posts and tags family members in others."
Oregon Senate Race. Mike Baker of the New York Times: "Republicans in Oregon have selected a Senate candidate who promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory, the latest sign that conservatives are increasingly willing to embrace a movement built on a baseless series of plotlines about President Trump battling a shadowy globalist cabal. Jo Rae Perkins was carrying about 50 percent of the vote in Oregon's primary as of Wednesday afternoon, vanquishing three other Republican candidates to become the party's nominee for the seat currently held by Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat. While the incumbent is considered a strong favorite, and Ms. Perkins's embrace of fringe ideas could alienate mainstream voters, she has th backing of party leaders for a seat Republicans held as recently as 2009." ~~~
~~~ Kate Riga of TPM: "Republican Jo Rae Perkins, now the official challenger to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in November, acknowledged her Tuesday night primary win with a proclamation of her solidarity with acolytes of the QAnon conspiracy theory. 'Where we go one, we go all,' she says in a Twitter video, brandishing a '#WWG1WG' sticker with the group's motto in hashtag form. 'I stand with President Trump, I stand with Q and the team,' she continues. 'Thank you anons and thank you patriots. And together, we can save our republic.'" ~~~
~~~ Will Sommer of the Daily Beast: "Perkins deleted the video on Wednesday afternoon, amid press coverage of her primary win.... In a May 5 video with QAnon promoters 'ShadyGrooove' and 'InTheMatrixxx' -- two prominent QAnon figures who have teamed up with an alleged cult leader to push their theories -- Perkins said she was initially convinced that the coronavirus lockdown was actually cover for Trump to arrest top Democrats.... QAnon supporters ... are ... convinced that Trump will soon imprison or execute top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.... Perkins added that the coronavirus is a 'fake virus' and described herself as 'red-pilled' -- QAnon code meaning she's been 'awakened' by the conspiracy theory. When Obama failed to be arrested and tried at Guantanamo, however, Perkins ... claimed on the YouTube show that the arrests had failed to happen because of some unspecified failing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY, adding that 'the judges aren't in place.'"
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Reader Comments (20)
I'm bringing forward this comment because I made it in the middle of the night. However, you'll have to read the comments by Procopius & Ken Winkes, at the end of yesterday's thread, for context:
@Procopius & @Ken Winkes: Ken, thanks for the clarification.
Procopius, if you're gong to cite a right-wing commentator -- unless s/he's a very famous one -- it's helpful to say so. I never heard of Larry Johnson, although I understand he does have a public profile.
What's worse, Procopius, if you're going to make a point of citing a right-wing commentator, you should not go on to misrepresent what he claims. In the post you cited, Johnson claims Obama sent other participants out of the room to speak only to Yates & Comey. He does not claim that Rice wasn't there for the meeting, as you imply.
Procopius, it's been clear for a long time that you're trolling us here, and I've allowed it. But even a troll should not purposely present misinformation as fact.
The revelation that the traitor Michael Flynn, working on behalf of the traitor Donald Trump, was never “unmasked”, since his name had never been redacted in the first place, meaning that this whole business about “Obamagate” is a fabrication of Trump’s, his lackeys in congress, in the administration, and on State TV, Fox, should come as no surprise. This is SOP for the Party of Traitors and ☠️. If they’re not picking your pocket or trying to kill you, so they can maintain their hold on stolen power, they’re lying to you. About pretty much everything.
Yesterday, I listened to an interview on the NPR program Fresh Air, between the host, Dave Davies, and Pulitzer Prize (not “Noble Prize”) winning journalist, Barton Gellman, who specializes in reporting on national security issues. He has just released a book about his reporting on the Edward Snowden case. It’s an absolutely fascinating discussion.
Here’s what he says about a House Intelligence Committee report on Snowden, released by the R controlled House (Devin Nunes, chair):
“...I would have to say that, not to put a fine point on it, that House Intelligence Committee report was garbage. It was a political document. It was basically a long screed about Ed Snowden, and it was filled with facts or assertions of fact that were plainly rebuttable, that they were simply wrong.”
So, the fact that these guys make shit up to suit their political requirements is no surprise. But then, get this, elsewhere in his reporting (back in 2016), Gellman points out that Snowden was painted as a dangerous threat to national security by...Michael Flynn (!!).
Flynn asserted that Snowden’s dealings with the Russians was the worst security breach in US history. This is the same Michael Flynn, by the by, who lied to the FBI about his own underhanded, treasonous conversations with the Russians designed to undermine US policy and get the Russians to help ratfuck an American election for the benefit of Himself and Donald Trump.
If these fuckers said “Nice day, isn’t it?” to me, I’d have to walk outside to make sure they weren’t lying.
It’s what they do. And now, on the basis of this made up Obamagate bullshit, the traitor Flynn is demanding that a judge vacate a decision against him.
“Unbelievable” is a response that is simply devoid of meaning anymore in the Age of Trump Treason.
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/20/859376407/journalist-who-helped-break-snowdens-story-reflects-on-his-high-stakes-reporting
And not for nothin’, but I am so fed up with weasel words and anodyne, mealy mouthed expressions regarding the blizzard of lies spit out by the traitor Trump. “Mischaracterized” and “untruthful” are not helpful. Say what it is: outright lying.
This is the sort of shit that helped get him elected the first time. The media had no problem making unfounded assertions about Hillary Clinton as they regurgitated Confederate and Trump talking points, but when it comes to the Fat Fuck, ledes like “Donald Trump today said...” without the tiniest bit of context (ie, his pathological lying) is not only not helpful, it is toxic to the continued health of the republic, which itself is currently in need of a ventilator, being secreted by Jared Kushner (since it’s “his”).
@Akhilleus: What strikes me -- and this is not exactly news -- is that the GOP has deteriorated from dishonest (Tea-Party-era, deficit-derangement birther lying & dissembling) to delusional (tapped my wires, Q-Anon, Obamagate, hydroxychloroquine, too many conspiracy theories to mention). The latest exemplars of GOP candidates are not political plotters & liars like Mitch McConnell, but true believers in not only lies but absolutely crazy lies.
William Brangham (PBS) talks to George Packer and Yuval Levin re: Trump and his administration's distain for government and how this undermined the U.S. pandemic response. (video & transcript)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-eroded-bureaucratic-processes-undermined-u-s-pandemic-response
As I said yesterday-––I feel as though we are on the brink–-we have passed the smell test and know exactly what is going down in the GOP playbook. As Akhilleus said:
“Unbelievable” is a response that is simply devoid of meaning anymore in the Age of Trump Treason."
The other test will be who comes out on top–-the little guys with the sling shots or the big giants with the cudgels and power. And of course, the people, those that believe in something besides themselves.
Central to my view of Obamagate:
If we had cut a few corners to identify and "out" someone we had good reason to suspect was cooperating with a country that had interfered with our election, so what?
If we had identified a German during WWII or a Russian in the 1950's or 60's or one acting on their behalf or one behaving in the same way, we would have judged what we'd done worthy of reward.
Clearly the 2016 election interference was the action of an enemy, a country that did and does not wish us well, not the action of a friend, so what's the beef?
Mine is that near half the country apparently has one.
I don't get it. Really, I don't.
Since subscribing to the WAPO, I have been reading some of the comments, and have there encountered a cadre of Obama haters who go on at some length about him and his evil administration's attacks on their rights and the Constitution--without ever saying what they are. All hat, no cattle arguments, every one. My own conspiracy theory is that they originate in Russia. American just can't be that dumb, I think.
And then (see above), I think again.
Ken: "all hat, no cattle arguments" –––you betcha! I stopped reading comments some time ago because they were/are so depressing–-people start arguing among themselves forgetting the original subject at hand.
You said something the other day that has stayed with me––something like "up is now down"––in other words, everything is upside down in a crazy quilt kind of way. Safe guards that we, perhaps foolishly, took for granted, are no longer secure. Our lady of liberty is still standing but she's naked––and cold.
@Ken Winkes: The whole unmasking brouhaha was a joke even when numerous credible reports claimed that several dozen Obama-era officials requested the identity of an unnamed person in what now turns out to have been an FBI report in which Flynn was named. As PolitiFact reported, " The unmaskings were requested lawfully and through a regular process. In addition, unmasking is not an unusual request; it occurred roughly 27,000 times during the first two years of Trump’s administration." They note that the number of unmasking requests/year have risen since Trump became president*.
Here's a video of a truck-driving couple's Brief but Spectacular take on surviving Covid-19. A peek into the world of those who are responsible for hauling our products hither and yon and in the process put themselves in danger.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-truck-driving-couples-brief-but-spectacular-take-on-surviving-covid-19
Bea,
Thanks.
Said "IF we had cut a few corners..." as a measure of how much things have changed, as in it wouldn't have been any big deal if we had cut a few corners to achieve the same result in that past I miss more each day.
Another, more blatant measure of the same thing is the vast difference in degree and kind of the "corruption" that gets the repective parties all excited.
A few potentially unsecured emails from one person, who did no more than her Republican predecessor in the same office--who was never investigated, of course-- drives one party bonkers for years, but that same party doesn't even blink when their president asks a personal political favor from another country in exchange for weapons.
And that's only one example where the difference is so eye-popping, I don't see how anyone can miss it.
It would be easy to come up page upon page of others.
@Ken Winkes: As far as we know, Trump is still using unsecured phones -- and besides the people without security clearances to whom he speaks, China is listening, too. Not a peep out of the "Lock-her-up" crowd, of course ... nor from the media, who amplified "the emails!!!" nearly every day.
There is no doubt that blabbermouth, incompetent, briefings-averse Putin-loving Trump is a far greater a national security risk than Hillary Clinton ever was.
By the way, if Hillary Clinton were president & had ordered a nationwide lockdown on March 1, 2020, saving tens of thousands of American lives, there also probably would have been an armed insurrection from Trumpy-Tea-Party types. I'm not kidding.
Bea,
So it comes to this:
Back then the pro-Republican, anti-Russian chant directed at those of us who protested the Vietnam War was "America. Love it or leave it."
Now, the chant might be the same, but the teams have changed spots. Republican Americans and Russia are now on the same side.
I don't know where that leaves me. Loving the America I knew, I have no place to go.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mike-pompeo-madison-dinner-taxpayer-reba-mcintyre-dale-earnhardt-neil-gorsuch-a9524561.html
Madison dinners?
What an insult to James Madison, brilliant architect of the Constitution these creeps pretend to revere.
And Reba McIntyre, too? Breaks my country heart.
Read this piece yesterday: "America’s Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further"(Atlantic / Ed Yong) The piece is an in depth analysis of how we are effected, how we respond and the likely outcomes based on the size of the US and our diverse experiences with COVID. Open to interpretation, but for me, I saw the 24/7 need for outside stimulus as a factor in loosing a collective sense of social responsibility. Perhaps Trump just tapped into the lack of empathy that was already there; amplified and legitimized it.
“ 'We had a strong sense of shared purpose when everything first hit,' says Danielle Allen, a political scientist at Harvard. But that communal mindset may dissipate as the virus strikes one community and spares another, and as some people hit the beaches while others are stuck at home. Patchworks of risk and response 'will make it really hard for the public to get a crisp understanding of what’s happening,' Rivers says."
https://bit.ly/3gcnfTF
It looks like Zelinsky is finally getting around to giving Trump that favor he asked for. Saying Biden was part of a treason a call in Ukraine. He does know that Biden might be president in a year, right? I know that Biden is not as petty and vindictive as Trump, but antagonizing someone you may have to depend on in the future is not a smart move. There can be a huge difference between a willing international partner and a reluctant one. Are all TV actors such bad politicians and so shortsighted?
This from High Country News:
https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-bureau-of-land-management-ailing-oil-companies-get-a-pass-on-royalties?
So Republicans give the oil away to their friends. Generous? Sure enough. No problem for them, since it's not their oil. It's ours.
And here we have Republicanism in a nutshell--or oil barrel.
@RAS
Don't think our astute voters can tell the difference between a call to extort a personal political favor and one to pressure another government to oust a corrupt prosecutor? To make life better for oneself or better for others?
No need to answer. I fear the question is rhetorical...
@Ken Winkes: Thanks for the heads up about Larry C. Johnson. I failed to check him out, and you're right, he seems dark indeed. I won't be forwarding anything by him in the future, and will try to be a little more diligent checking background. As I grow older I need to concentrate more on impulse control. I'm turning into the crazy uncle who forwards emails.
@Ken Winkes: You are right that most voters can not tell the difference, that is my big problem with what Zelensky said. He knows or should know how that kind of statement will be used. I'm sure that Zelensky has dealt with Russian disinformation and we know he has dealt with the insanity we call Trump. He could have called for investigations without throwing out loaded terms like treason that can be easily manipulated by untrustworthy sources. I'm sure it will not take long for rightwing headlines to be misinforming people with "Zelensky calls for investigation of Joe Biden 'treason' call." Just like what Trump was asking for.
RAS,
Your last comment reminds me of this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/nyregion/a-1964-lesson-in-fake-news-that-still-applies.html
A huge bestseller and book that was on my father's bookshelf next to Schlafly's "A Choice, Not an Echo." I think I read a little of it when I was in high school. Fake news, yes, but my father ate it up.
My more objective view of Zelensky is that he knew what he was doing. He's trying to hedge his bets. I didn't like it, and it's not good for our country but I'm not in his or in his unenviable position, dealing with autocrats, east and west.