;)
The Commentariat -- October 24, 2020
Afternoon Update:
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Saturday are here: "The latest coronavirus surge is raging across the American heartland, most acutely in the Midwest and Mountain West. This harrowing third surge, which led to a U.S. single-day record of more than 85,000 new cases Friday, is happening less than two weeks from Election Day, which will mark the end of a campaign dominated by the pandemic and President Trump's much-criticized response to it.... The virus will be front of mind for voters in several key states: in Ohio, where more people are hospitalized than at any other time during the pandemic, and especially Wisconsin, home to seven of the country's 10 metro areas with the highest numbers of recent cases. On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court blocked Gov. Tony Evers' emergency order restricting the size of indoor gatherings to 25 percent capacity on Friday.... President Trump and many supporters blame restrictions on business activity, often imposed by Democratic governors and mayors, for prolonging the economic crisis initially caused by the virus. But the experience of states like Iowa, which recently set a record for patients hospitalized with Covid-19, shows the economy is far from back to normal even in Republican-led states that have imposed few business restrictions."
** Jenny Gross of the New York Times: "White supremacists and other like-minded groups have committed a majority of the terrorist attacks in the United States this year, according to a report by a security think tank that echoed warnings made by the Department of Homeland Security this month. The report, published Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that white supremacist groups were responsible for 41 of 61 'terrorist plots and attacks' in the first eight months of this year, or 67 percent. The finding comes about two weeks after an annual assessment by the Department of Homeland Security warned that violent white supremacy was the 'most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland' and that white supremacists were the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years." Mrs. McC: Meanwhile, Trump & Barr continue to cite Black Lives Matter & antifa as the sources of lethal violence.
Edgar Sandoval & Troy Closson of the New York Times: "New Yorkers flooded polling places on Saturday, the first day of early voting in the state.... Saturday was the first time New Yorkers were allowed to vote early in a presidential election, which is expected to produce record voter turnout.... Recent mishaps involving absentee ballots drove many voters to the polls on Saturday.... Late last month, the city's Board of Elections came under fire after as many as 100,000 voters in Brooklyn received absentee ballots with the wrong names and addresses.... Unlike in many other states and the rest of New York, where people can cast ballots at any early voting center in their county, voters in New York City are allowed to vote early only at assigned locations."
Shawn Boburg of the Washington Post: "In the days leading up to the Sept. 30 [Trump rally] in Duluth, Minn., local officials had privately pressed the campaign to abide by state public health guidelines aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, documents show. In response, the campaign signed an agreement pledging to follow those rules, limiting attendance to 250 people. On the day of the rally, however, Trump supporters flooded onto the tarmac at Duluth International Airport. They stood shoulder to shoulder, many without masks.... Held two days before Trump was diagnosed with covid-19, the rally was attended by more than 2,500 people, airport officials estimated.... Emails and other documents obtained by The Washington Post through open-records requests show that Duluth officials insisted on adherence to the rules, and that the campaign responded by making commitments it ultimately did not keep. The documents also show that local officials suspected the campaign would violate the agreement, but shied away from enforcing public health orders for fear of provoking a backlash." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Officials always should have made the Trump campaign turn over at least a $1 million bond before any event. You can't trust those people as far as a mouse could throw President Fatso.
Trump's Bad Bet. David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: "As Trump fights to save his political career, another key part of his life -- his business -- is also under growing stress. In the next four years, Trump faces payment deadlines for more than $400 million in loans -- just as the pandemic robs his businesses of customers and income, according to a Washington Post analysis of Trump's finances. The bills coming due include loans on his Chicago hotel, his D.C. hotel and his Doral resort, all hit by a double whammy: Trump's political career slowed their business, then the pandemic ground it down much further. If Trump is reelected, these loan-saddled properties could present a significant conflict of interest: The president will owe enormous sums to banks that his government regulates. National security experts say Trump's debts to Deutsche Bank, a German company, and foreign deals may constitute security risks if they make him vulnerable to influence by foreign governments."
Barbie & Ken Very Upset Their Indifference to National Pandemic Makes Them Look Bad. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are threatening to sue the Lincoln Project over billboards the anti-Trump group put up in Times Square assailing them over the White House's coronavirus response. In a letter to the group posted on Twitter on Friday night, an attorney for the president's daughter and son-in-law demanded the 'false, malicious and defamatory' billboards be taken down. Marc Kasowitz warned that if the ads stay up, 'we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages.' The Lincoln Project was defiant, saying in a scathing public statement that the billboards would stay up."
They Learned from the Master to Whine & Deflect Responsibility. Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "... Donald Trump's top advisers have plunged into a bitter round of finger-pointing and blame-shifting ahead of an increasingly likely defeat. Accusations are flying in all directions and about all manner of topics -- from allegedly questionable spending decisions by former campaign manager Brad Parscale, to how White House chief of staff Mark Meadows handled Trump's hospitalization for Covid-19, to skepticism that TV ads have broken through. Interviews with nearly a dozen Trump aides, campaign advisers and Republican officials also surfaced accusations that the president didn't take fundraising seriously enough and that the campaign undermined its effort to win over seniors by casting Democrat Joe Biden as senile. Finger-pointing is a common feature of campaigns that think they're losing, but it's happening at an uncommon level in this campaign. Shifting responsibility has been a staple of the Trump presidency -- and his lieutenants are now following suit."
The Definition of Self-Dealing. Stephen Gandel of CBS News: "Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's former company landed a $5 million highway-shipping contract last month with the United States Postal Service. DeJoy continues to own a multimillion-dollar stake in XPO Logistics as of early October. The $5 million deal is the first regular contract for a postal route that XPO Logistics has signed with the USPS in more than a year. XPO's last highway contract with the USPS was in December and was temporary. The one before that was signed in July 2019.... The USPS database shows the contract has one of the highest annual rates out of more than 1,600 contracts the Postal Service initiated with outside firms in its most recent quarter, which is the first full quarter DeJoy has served as head of the agency." --s
Jack Stubbs & Christopher Bing of Reuters: "Russian hackers piggy-backed on an Iranian cyber-espionage operation to attack government and industry organizations in dozens of countries while masquerading as attackers from the Islamic Republic, British and U.S. officials said on Monday. The Russian group, known as 'Turla' and accused by Estonian and Czech authorities of operating on behalf of Russia's FSB security service, has used Iranian tools and computer infrastructure to successfully hack in to organizations in at least 20 different countries over the last 18 months, British security officials said. The hacking campaign, the extent of which has not been previously revealed, was most active in the Middle East but also targeted organizations in Britain, they said." --s
Loveday Morris of the Washington Post: "Polish President Andrzej Duda has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, his spokesman announced on Saturday, the latest in a string of world leaders to be infected.... In addition to President Trump, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko are among other world leaders to have contracted the virus." Mrs. McC: Not coincidentally, every one of them is a careless, authoritarian right-winger.
~~~~~~~~~~
Presidential Race, Etc.
Sydney Ember of the New York Times: "... Joseph R. Biden Jr. sought Friday to amplify the closing argument he delivered on the debate stage a night earlier, accusing President Trump of failing to stem the ballooning coronavirus crisis and vowing more aggressive federal action for the 'dark winter ahead.' In a speech near his home in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden denounced Mr. Trump's familiar assertion that the pandemic was 'rounding the corner' and 'going away' even as cases surge across the country, placing the blame for the rising death toll squarely at the president's feet.... During his address, Mr. Biden laid out the immediate steps he would take to rein in the coronavirus if elected. He also said he would ask Congress to put a bill on his desk by the end of January outlining the resources needed for the country's public health and economic response to the virus. Mr. Biden said he would ask every governor to institute mask mandates; if they refused, he said, he would work with local officials to get local mandates in place nationwide. And he said he would require masks in federal buildings and on interstate transportation." This is an item from Friday's debate live updates. ~~~
~~~ Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "Joe Biden pledged Friday that if elected president he will begin reaching out to state and local leaders during the transition to begin crafting a coronavirus relief bill that he could sign by the end of January. In remarks in Wilmington, Del., after the final presidential debate, the Democratic nominee said he would look to gauge 'what support they need and how much of it they need.'... Biden again skewered President Donald Trump's handling of the virus.... 'If this is a success, what's a failure look like?' he [asked]. 'We're more than eight months into this crisis, and the president still doesn't have a plan.'"
Holly Otterbein, et al., of Politico: "Joe Biden's plan to move to a clean energy economy isn't new to those who've been paying attention: For months, he's promised to put the country on a path to be carbon-neutral by 2050. But Biden, who's been extraordinarily cautious throughout the campaign while talking about fossil fuels, clearly believes he botched his own strategy on Thursday night. Within minutes of the debate, where he said he wanted to transition away from the oil industry, Biden walked back his remarks with reporters. On Friday, his running mate Kamala Harris reaffirmed the ticket's support for fracking. And two members of Congress from oil- and gas-rich areas immediately distanced themselves from the Democratic nominee.... Donald Trump's campaign has spent the day rejoicing at Biden's remarks, crowing on a call with media outlets on Friday it 'put the nail in the coffin' for him in Pennsylvania. But in a sign of their confidence here in the presidential race, many Democrats in the critical battleground state, including those in fracking country, are largely shrugging it off."
We're going to quickly end this pandemic, this horrible plague that came in from China.... You look at what is going on and we're rounding the turn, we're rounding the corner. We're rounding the corner beautifully. -- Donald Trump at a superspreader rally in Florida's huge retirement community the Villages, Friday, the day of the highest number of reported coronavirus cases reported ~~~
~~~ ** Superspreader-in-Chief. Erin Mansfield, et al., of USA Today: "As ... Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign rallies during the past two months, he didn't just defy state orders and federal health guidelines. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake. The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.... The earliest post-rally spikes occurred even as the nation's overall case counts were in decline from a peak in mid-July. When U.S. cases started climbing in mid-September, Trump did not alter his campaign schedule but continued holding an average of four rallies a week."
Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "President Trump ... had a ready deflection for the 'kids in cages' accusation [when the topic came up at the presidential debate Thursday]. It was Mr. Biden's fault. 'They said, "Look at these cages; President Trump built them,"' Mr. Trump said. 'And then it was determined they were built in 2014. That was him.'... The Obama administration separated children from adults at the border only in cases when there was a doubt about the familial relationship between a child and an accompanying adult or if the adult had a serious criminal record. Mr. Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy was a deliberate act of family separation, meant to deter migrants from trying to enter the United States. It directed prosecutors to file criminal charges against everyone who crossed the border without authorization, including parents, who were then separated from their children when they were taken into custody. That policy was ended amid international outcry, but its repercussions remain."
Elahe Izadi & Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post: "During the final presidential debate, President Trump made reference to 'the laptop from hell,' 'AOC plus three' and 'Russia, Russia, Russia.'... The material was very familiar to -- and maybe only familiar to -- regular viewers of Fox News opinion hosts such as Sean Hannity. 'I feel like he almost was speaking the language of Fox prime time,' Chuck Todd ... said on NBC after the debate. 'If you watch a lot of Fox prime time, you understand what he's saying. If you don't, you have no idea.'... 'Some of the punches he threw at Joe Biden I don't think landed, because unless you were Sean Hannity, you probably had no idea what he was talking about,' CNN host Jake Tapper said." Mrs. McC: We thought Trump's vocabulary had grown more and more limited, but it turns out he's just dropped a normal English vocabulary & replaced it with right-wing buzzwords & phrases. (Also linked yesterday.)
Prize for Best String of Words in the Debate Goes to Donald Trump: "I take full responsibility. It's not my fault...."
Prize for Audacity Goes to Donald Trump: To Kristen Welker: "I am the least racist person in this room."
Presidential Election 2016. Sarah Blaskey, et al. of the Miami Herald: "Donald Trump’s team knew they couldn't win the 2016 election simply by persuading people to vote for Trump.... So the campaign and its allies used big data to target Black communities along Miami-Dade County's historically disenfranchised Interstate 95 corridor. There, residents became some of the 12.3 million unwitting subjects of a groundbreaking nationwide experiment: A computer algorithm that analyzed huge sums of potential voters' personal data -- things they'd said and done on Facebook, credit card purchases, charities they supported, and even personality traits -- decided they could be manipulated into not voting. They probably wouldn't even know it was happening.... They called it 'deterrence.'... Behind the 2016 deterrence campaign was Cambridge Analytica ... at a time when Stephen Bannon, eventually hired to lead the Trump campaign, was the firm's vice president[.]" --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "... Republicans are hostile to greater democracy, where democracy means equal representation in a federal system of separated powers. Name a proposal that would enlarge the scope of American democracy -- more states, a national popular vote, a larger House of Representatives -- and Republicans (or their conservative allies) are almost certain to oppose it.... The Republican Party ... is a minority party representing a demographically narrow segment of the American electorate. It needs stasis -- institutional and constitutional -- to survive. Democrats do not.... The question of whether Democrats will abolish the filibuster or expand the courts or create new states, should they win power, is actually a question of whether Democrats will bring dynamism to the American political system.... But if they have any desire to reverse the damage of the past four years -- if they want to return to something like normalcy -- then the path to stability begins with transformation."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Davey Alba of the New York Times: "... Fox News is giving more airtime to the unverified Hunter Biden emails than it did to the hacked emails from [John] Podesta in 2016, according to an analysis from the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies disinformation.... In contrast, most viewers of CNN and MSNBC would not have heard much about the unconfirmed Hunter Biden emails, according to the analysis.... As for online news outlets, 85 percent of the 1,000 most popular articles about the Hunter Biden emails were by right-leaning sites, according to the analysis. Those articles, which were shared 28 million times, came from The New York Post, Fox Business, Fox News and The Washington Times, among other outlets."
Florida. Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald: "A generation more familiar with TikTok, Instagram and XBox has the potential to make the difference in Florida's toss-up presidential race between two seventy-somethings. Younger voters this year have been registering and casting ballots in bigger numbers than previous years and, if the presidential race in Florida is as close as polls predict, it will be decided by the margins. There about 1.1 million additional new Florida voters between 18 and 34 in 2020 than there were in 2016.... According to an analysis by Catalist, a progressive polling organization that is monitoring Florida's voting trends among a slightly broader age group, ages 18 to 39, turnout has increased 44% among those voters compared to 2016." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Georgia. Frank Bajak of the AP: "A ransomware attack that hobbled a Georgia county government in early October reportedly disabled a database used to verify voter signatures in the authentication of absentee ballots. It is the first reported case of a ransomware attack affecting an election-related system in the 2020 cycle. Federal officials and cybersecurity experts are especially concerned that ransomware attacks -- even ones that don't intentionally target election infrastructure -- could disrupt voting and damage confidence in the integrity of the Nov. 3 election." --s ~~~
~~~ Republicans Donate to Crazy Candidate. Sam Stein of the Daily Beast: "After weeks of wavering, the national Republican party has formally thrown its support behind Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican House candidate who is openly supportive of QAnon. The National Republican Congressional Committee donated $5,000 to Greene's congressional campaign on September 25, according to campaign finance records -- the maximum amount the committee can donate. The donation formalizes the GOP's acceptance of Greene's candidacy after top officials in the party had signaled hesitancy in backing her."
Iowa. Trip Gabriel & Astead Herndon of the New York Times: "Iowa's governor [Kim Reynolds] is not on the ballot next month. But her defiant attitude toward the advice of health experts on how to fight the coronavirus outbreak, as her state sees a grim tide of new cases and deaths, may be dragging down fellow Republicans who are running, including Mr. Trump and Senator Joni Ernst. Ms. Reynolds, the first woman to lead Iowa, is an avatar of the president's approach to the pandemic, refusing to issue mandates and flouting the guidance of infectious disease experts, who say that universal masking and social distancing are essential to limiting the virus's spread. Defying that advice has eroded support for both Mr. Trump and Ms. Reynolds in Iowa, especially among voters over 65, normally a solid Republican constituency, according to public and private polls."
Pennsylvania. State Supremes Are Getting Sick of the Trump Campaign's Whining. Zach Montellaro of Politico: "The Pennsylvania state Supreme Court ruled Friday that ballots in the state cannot be rejected because of signature comparisons, backing up guidance issued by the state's chief elections officer heading into Pennsylvania's first presidential election with no-excuse mail voting. The ruling is a defeat for ... Donald Trump's campaign and other Republicans, who had challenged the decision by Pennsylvania election officials.... [The opinion was] signed by six of the seven justices, including five Democrats and one Republican. The seventh justice, another Republican, concurred with the ruling." Mrs. McC: This is the fifth or sixth voter case the Trump campaign has lost in state court.
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
Campbell Robertson, et al., of the New York Times: "The United States is in the midst of one of the most severe surges of the coronavirus to date, with more new cases reported across the country on Friday than on any other single day since the pandemic began. Since the start of October, the rise in cases has been steady and inexorable, with no plateau in sight. By Friday evening, more than 82,000 cases had been reported across the country, breaking a single-day record set on July 16 by more than 6,000 cases. By that measure, Friday was the worst day of the pandemic, and health experts warned of a further surge as cold weather sets in."
Trump Eliminated Vaccine Safety Office. Carl Zimmer of the New York Times: "For now, Operation Warp Speed, created by the Trump administration to spearhead development of coronavirus vaccines and treatments, is focused on getting vaccines through clinical trials in record time and manufacturing them quickly. The next job will be to monitor the safety of vaccines once they're in widespread use. But the administration last year quietly disbanded the office with the expertise for exactly this job, merging it into an office focused on infectious diseases. Its elimination has left that long-term safety effort for coronavirus vaccines fragmented among federal agencies, with no central leadership, experts say. [Plus:] In 2016, President Barack Obama set up a global health security office at the National Security Council. But in 2018, the Trump administration disbanded that office, saying it was streamlining bureaucratic bloat." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: The irresponsibility of All the Best People is breathtaking. With any luck, Trump will be living in an undisclosed location somewhere in Moscow by the time Americans have access to vaccines, but it will be a big, expensive job to re-establish the "safety central command" that the Trumpies disbanded.
The Trump Plan to Defeat the Coronavirus. Thanks to RockyGirl for the link. And thanks to the Biden campaign.
The Washington Post's live updates of Covid-19 developments Friday are here: "The average number of covid-19 hospitalizations has risen in at least 38 states over the past week -- a trend that cannot be explained by more widespread testing -- according to data tracked by The Washington Post." (Also linked yesterday.)
Lena Sun & Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration has been pressuring health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to endorse the use of border hotels to hold migrant children before deporting them, a practice the government halted last month under court order, according to federal health officials. Career CDC officials have declined to sign off on a declaration requested by the Department of Health and Human Services affirming that the use of hotels to detain migrant children is the best way to protect them from the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to one HHS official who has seen the declaration.... The request from HHS is the latest example of the administration's efforts to use government scientists and physicians to advance the president's political agenda." (Also linked yesterday.)
Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: A scatter graph produced by "Carnegie Mellon's CovidCast, an academic project tracking real-time coronavirus statistics, yields a particularly vivid illustration of how mask usage influences the prevalence of covid-19 symptoms in a given area. For all 50 states plus D.C., this chart plots the percentage of state residents who say they wear a mask in public all or most of the time (on the horizontal axis) and the percentage who say they know someone in their community with virus symptoms (on the vertical axis).... [For those of you who passed Statistics 101:] The R-squared of CovidCast's mask and symptom data is 0.73, meaning that you can predict about 73 percent of the variability in state-level covid-19 symptom prevalence simply by knowing how often people wear their masks." Ingraham points out several factors that could have influenced the results. "Nevertheless, the chart is particularly useful in the context of all the other high-quality evidence showing that masks reduce the transmission of the coronavirus and other respiratory diseases." (Also linked yesterday.)
Susanne Craig, et al., of the New York Times: "In President Trump's telling, he is a committed philanthropist with strong ties to many charities.... And according to his tax records, he has given back at least $130 million since 2005, his second year as a reality TV star. But the long-hidden tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show that Mr. Trump did not have to reach into his wallet for most of that giving. The vast bulk of his charitable tax deductions, $119.3 million worth, came from simply agreeing not to develop land -- in several cases, after he had shelved development plans.... The New York attorney general is investigating whether the appraisals on two of Mr. Trump's easement donations were improperly inflated to win larger tax breaks, according to court filings. Mr. Trump's pronouncements of philanthropic largess have been broadly discredited by reporting, most notably in The Washington Post, that found he had exaggerated, or simply never made, an array of claimed contributions. His own charitable foundation shut down in 2018 amid allegations of self-dealing to benefit Mr. Trump, his businesses and his campaign."
I don't make money from China. You do. -- Donald Trump, to Joe Biden, presidential debate Thursday ~~~
~~~ ** Dan Alexander of Forbes: "... Donald Trump, who declared 'I don't make money from China' in Thursday night's presidential debate, has in fact collected millions of dollars from government-owned entities in China since he took office. Forbes estimates that at least $5.4 million has flowed into the president's business from a lease agreement involving a state-owned bank in Trump Tower. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China signed a lease for space in 2008, years before the president took office, paying about $1.9 million in annual rent. Trump is well-aware of the deal.... Government-owned entities in China hold at least 70% of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Suddenly, a routine real estate deal became a conduit for a foreign superpower to pay the president of the United States." Even though Eric Trump said in early 2017 that his father would donate to the U.S. Treasury profits from "all the properties," Donald Trump has not donated the profits from the Chinese bank lease. "Trump has other financial connections to China." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Biden has released decades of his tax returns. There's no evidence Biden has "made money from China." This is just the 999th iteration of Trump's infamous & despicable projection.
So it's now my great honor to sign the VA Mission Act, or as we all know it, the Choice Act, and to make Veterans Choice the permanent law of our great country. -- Donald Trump, June 6, 2018 ~~~
~~~ "Trump's Mendacity Is a Hallmark of His Presidency." Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: "The first time President Trump claimed false credit for the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act -- which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2014 -- was on June 6, 2018. That day, as Trump signed the Mission Act, a modest update to the bipartisan VA Choice legislation, he seemed to conflate the two.... In the coming weeks, Trump began systematically erasing from the legislation's history not just Obama but also the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).... That didn't stop Trump from falsely claiming -- as he did at a tank factory in Lima, Ohio, in March 2019 -- that McCain, his frequent political rival, failed to make any progress on the VA Choice Act. 'McCain didn't get the job done for our great vets and the VA, and they knew it,' Trump said. More than two years after signing the Mission Act..., Trump has repeated some version of his VA Choice Act mistruth more than 156 times.... The president's handling of the VA Choice legislation offers a crystalline window into the anatomy of a Trump lie: the initial false claim, the subsequent embellishment and gilding, the incessant repetition and the clear evidence that he knows the truth but chooses to keep telling the falsehood -- all enabled by aides either unwilling or unable to rein him in."
Lisa Rein, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump's extraordinary directive allowing his administration to weed out career federal employees viewed as disloyal in a second term is the product of a four-year campaign by conservatives working from a little-known West Wing policy shop. Soon after Trump took office, a young aide [-- James Sherk --] hired from the Heritage Foundation with bold ideas for reining in the sprawling bureaucracy of 2.1 million came up with a blueprint. Trump would hold employees accountable, sideline their labor unions and give the president more power to hire and fire them, much like political appointees.... The result this week threatens to be the most significant assault on the nonpartisan civil service in its 137-year history: a sweeping executive order that strips job protections from employees in policy roles across the government. Exactly which roles would be affected will be up to personnel officials at federal agencies, who were tasked on Friday with reviewing all of their jobs and deciding who would qualify."
Caitlin Dickerson of the New York Times: "... about 600 people [are] stranded in ... a refugee camp on the doorstep of the United States, one of several that have sprung up along the border for the first time in the country's history. After first cropping up in 2018, the encampment across the border from Brownsville, Texas, exploded to nearly 3,000 people the following year under a policy that has required at least 60,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for the entirety of their legal cases, which can take years.... Many have been living in fraying tents for more than a year.... The Trump administration has said the 'remain in Mexico' policy was essential.... The Mexican authorities have blamed the American government for the situation. But they have also declined to designate the outdoor areas as official refugee camps in collaboration with the United Nations, which could then have provided infrastructure for housing and sanitation.... The U.S. Supreme Court agreed this week to review the policy after it was successfully challenged in the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit."
Deb Reichmann & Matthew Lee of the AP: "... Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan will start to normalize ties with Israel, making it the third Arab state to do so as part of U.S.-brokered deals in the run-up to Election Day. The deal, which would deepen Sudan's engagement with the West, follows Trump's conditional agreement this week to remove the North African nation from the list of state sponsors of terrorism if it pays compensation to American victims of terror attacks. It also delivers a foreign policy achievement for Trump just days before the U.S. election and boosts his embattled ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Recently, the United States brokered diplomatic pacts between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Jordan recognized Israel in the 1990s." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: A photo accompanying the story pictures Trump in the Oval surrounded by 11 men & one woman applauding Donald Trump. They appeal to be Cabinet members & aides. They are standing close together, and none is wearing a mask except the woman, who is seated & appears to be pregnant. There is nothing Trump would change about his response to the coronavirus because he has saved millions of lives by cancelling some flights from China. ~~~
~~~ Sounds as if Bibi thinks Joe will will the election:
~~~ Quint Forgey of Politico: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday passed up an opportunity to knock Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, seemingly deflating ... Donald Trump in the presence of reporters in the Oval Office.... Trump asked Netanyahu: 'Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi? Sleepy Joe? I think -- do you think he would have made this deal somehow? I don't think so.' Netanyahu hesitated before offering a halting answer: 'Well, Mr. President, one thing I can tell you is we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America. And we appreciate what you've done enormously.' The smile on the president's face faded as he listened to the prime minister's response."
~~~ Just after Netanyahu shoots down Trump's flagrant attempt to get him to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, Trump makes fun of reporter Jeff Mason's mask. ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Oh, wait. The whole "agreement" may be fake, nothing more than Trump's attempt at a mini-October surprise. It seems one of the party's to the agreement has not agreed to it:
~~~ ** Times of Israel: "Following the announcement of Sudan's normalization agreement with Israel on Friday, Sudan's acting foreign minister said the agreement still depends on approval from the Sudanese legislative council, which has not yet been formed as the government goes through transition.... It remains unclear when a transitional parliament will be formed amid negotiations between the civilian and military parts of the transitional government. Whether or not to normalize ties with Israel has been a matter of vehement debate within Sudan's transitional government, with its military wing, headed by Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan, said in favor, but [Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla] Hamdok opposed. Trump announced the Israel-Sudan deal on Friday at the White House in a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sudan's leaders." --s
All the Best Friends. Nicole Hong & Jesse Drucker of the New York Times: "Ken Kurson, a close friend of ... Jared Kushner, was taken into federal custody on Friday and charged with cyberstalking in connection with his divorce. Mr. Kurson, who now runs a media company and works in the cryptocurrency industry, helped write a speech for the president's 2016 campaign. When Mr. Kushner owned The New York Observer, the weekly newspaper, he appointed Mr. Kurson to be its editor in chief in 2013. Mr. Kurson was also a longtime associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani.... Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused Mr. Kurson of sending threatening and stalking messages to several people.... The F.B.I. has also gathered evidence that Mr. Kurson engaged in a similar pattern of harassment during his divorce proceedings in 2015, including installing software on someone's computer to monitor keystrokes, the criminal complaint said. He also used aliases to contact that person's employer to report false allegations of misconduct, according to the complaint." (Also linked yesterday.)
Justice System For Sale. Robert Maguire of CREW: "A close informal advisor [Leonard Leo] to President Trump who has been deeply involved in all three of his Supreme Court nomination battles is the sole trustee of a mysterious group [Rule of Law Trust (RLT)] that brought in more than $80 million in 2018, according to a previously unreported tax return uncovered by CREW. The filing vastly expands the amount of money known to be flowing into the growing constellation of dark money groups tied to Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo and provides new details about his role in a secretive firm that was responsible for one of the largest donations received by President Trump's inaugural committee.... [The group] claimed it had no employees and no volunteers in its first year and listed what appears to be a virtual office in Virginia as its main address.... There's no apparent public information to demonstrate what that work entails, not even a website." --s
Ted Barrett & Clare Foran of CNN: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not answer questions about his health Thursday, only saying there were 'no concerns' after reporters asked him about what appeared to be bruises and bandages on his hands in recent days. 'Of course not,' McConnell told reporters in the Capitol when asked if he had any health issues people should know about.... In 2019, McConnell fractured his shoulder after he tripped and fell at his Kentucky home. He also underwent triple heart bypass surgery in 2003." With photos. --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Lois Beckett of the Guardian & Agency: "A rightwing extremist boasted of driving from Texas to Minneapolis to help set fire to a police precinct during the George Floyd protests, federal prosecutors said. US attorney Erica MacDonald said on Friday that she had charged Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old Texas resident, with traveling across state lines to participate in a riot. The charges are the latest example of far-right extremists attempting to use violence to escalate national protests against police brutality into an uprising against the government, and even full civil war. The case also reveals the extent of the coordination between violent members of the nascent far-right 'Boogaloo Bois' movement operating in different cities across the country.... Video shot [the night of May 28] shows a person later identified as Hunter firing 13 rounds from a semiautomatic assault-style rifle on the 3rd precinct police station while people believed to be looters were inside."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Russia. Bellingcat: "On October 15, 2020, the European Union imposed sanctions on six senior Russian officials and a leading Russian research institute over the alleged use of a nerve agent from the Novichok family in the poisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.... Russian officials said the country had nothing to do with Navalny's poisoning.... [In 2018] Russia had ... stated that it had no ongoing chemical weapons program and had destroyed all of its prior arsenals.... A year-long investigation by Bellingcat and its investigative partners ... has discovered evidence that Russia continued its Novichok development program long beyond the officially announced closure date.... Crucially for our conclusions, we have identified evidence showing close coordination between ... two institutes and a secretive sub-unit of Military Unit 29155 of Russia's military intelligence, the GRU." --s
Vatican. Jason Horowitz & Natalie Kitroeff of the New York Times: "Pope Francis was an hour into a sprawling interview with a Mexican journalist at his Vatican residence in 2019 when he was asked if he had changed since his time as archbishop of Argentina, when he staunchly opposed gay marriage. Francis responded that he had always defended the church's teaching on marriage, then began to delve into the question of legalizing same-sex relationships when suddenly the video skipped forward. 'One changes in life,' he said. The words that went missing -- expressing support for same-sex civil unions -- surfaced only this week in a new documentary.... But the clip also became the subject of sudden intrigue over when and where the pope made the remarks, and why they were only now being made public. Two people close to the [Mexican broadcaster Televisa]..., said that the Vatican had required that the interview be filmed with Vatican cameras and that the Vatican be given control over the footage. The Vatican cut out the pope's remarks on same-sex unions in the edited version provided to Televisa, the two people said.... The Church allowed a documentary filmmaker access to the Vatican archives, including the raw footage of the Televisa interview. The filmmaker put the clip in a new documentary...." (Also linked yesterday.)
News Lede
NBC News: "Colorado has seen three of its largest wildfires in state history occur this year, two of which are still growing. The largest wildfire currently burning in the state is the Cameron Peak Fire, which has scorched more than 206,000 acres, according to the fire-reporting site InciWeb. As of Friday morning, it was 57 percent contained. The blaze erupted on Aug. 13 and flared up recently due to warm and dry weather, prompting evacuation warnings for several areas. The cause of the fire is still being investigated. Firefighters in the state have also been responding to the East Troublesome Fire, which has grown to more than 170,000 acres, now the second-largest in Colorado. It was only 5 percent contained as of Friday morning."
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Wrote and posted here the other day a comment on the slippery slope to credulousness.
I blamed religion, my go-to scapegoat for all things ignorant. I haven't changed my mind about how religion trains us to accept the unseen's existence, but when it comes to umderstanding why we slip so easilily into the conspiratorial mire, it's not as if the real world isn't running its own conspiracy academy.
I'd call it the Dark of Night School, where we learn how to get by with things we'd never attempt in daylight. It's the school where we practice the dark arts of cheating, stealing, and lying, of all things obfuscatory. It holds classes in embezzlement, in pocket lining, strong arming, in all kinds of corruption, and in how to con the rubes. Oh, and there's a special course on how to nislead and manipulate with advertising applicable especially to the world of politics where there is no required truth in advertising.
The Dark of Night School is not exclusive. Most of us have taken at least a night classs there, so we know it exists. We know from our own experience that things happen behind the scenes, often in secret. That people do things in the dark they would not do ih daylight, and what we call crime calls the dark its home.
Hence real-world conspiracy. It does exist. The cheaters and the manipulaotrs are there, burrowing away behind the curtain.
We are not surprised at the CREWS report above. Another secret entity at work, doing things it would rather no one knows anything about. We call it Dark Money for a reason.
We don't have to point to QAnon to find conspiracies. They are everywhere--and some of them are real.
And I'm guessing most of real-world conspiracies in both business and politics are conceived and perpetrated by the Right.
The Right is comfortable living and working in the Dark.
THE SUPER SPREADER
It's enough to digest Trump's botched response and horrific handling of the virus– but quite another to realize, as Rachel coined him last night:
THE JOHNNY APPLESEED of the corona.
"Trump's personal ego-feeding desire to do in-person unmasked events" is not just "callous or tone deaf but one of the things driving this epidemic into the stratosphere right now–-he's an epidemiological menace!" she said.
It's quite extraordinary, isn't it? A U.S. president actually responsible for the deaths of its citizens and we blanch at other dictators for the callous treatment of their people–-we got one who spreads his seeds everywhere he can!
And yet he has not been restrained.
A long read, but maybe of interest:
(Tho' the study summarized originated at Stanford, let me hasten to say Dr. Atlas makes no appearance therein.)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/24/upshot/these-526-voters-a-year-later.html?
In line with my earlier post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/24/trump-may-be-running-sleaziest-presidential-campaign-ever
The handy elements of the Republican playbook?
Stoke anger, fear, resentment and blame across races, classes, parties. Then disseminate lies that support and further inflame those feelings.
It's a neat trick.
It obscures the absence of any policy that might ease some of the real race and class problems behind those tensions--the last thing Republicans want to do--and it costs almost nothing. Just some media ownership and a lot of hot air.
So....it's dishonest....lazy....and cheap. For a greedy Republican, what's not to like?
@Ken: Interesting piece. Notice that the pictures of the Republicans were void of people of color.
Your religious mention of course corresponds to mine and I remember what Caroline Fraser wrote regarding this topic. Only people of serious ill will, she said, or intellectual deficiency or down right political greed would oppose equality for women, for minorities, and for people of slender means. She brought up that formidable rock ribbed Republican, Phyllis Schafly, whose "feminism" was the Antichrist, who would rather see America come apart at the seams than submit to our godless demands. She wanted America to remain safe for Mom and apple pie, she wanted the protective laws (no rights for homosexuals) that ensured inequality. What was reeling for many of us at the time was the number of women who agreed with her; the many men who agreed was not surprising.
Fraser then reminds us of the revival at the time of that old time religion, different tunes but the same messages; the kind that arises when a society is forced, like an individual, to face its own deepest conflicts and retreats into the mindlessness of unreason. Within two decades there were evangelicals everywhere, prayer breakfasts in the White House, and Americans in unheard numbers announcing their belief in angels. It was also at that time that Thomas Frank asked "What's the Matter with Kansas" and many of us, living elsewhere, were wondering what was the matter with all those that appeared to fear and become anxious at the thought of welcoming into the democracy all those not like themselves.
And here we are years later in the quagmire we find ourselves in. Praise be!
@Ken Winkes & @PD Pepe: The propensity to believe outlandish conspiracy theories seems to me to be a nature-or-nurture or chicken-and-egg question. Do people believe in an omnipotent supernatural being because they're taught or because they have a natural, genetic predisposition to believe in such unseen phenomena? Is it that belief then that makes them susceptible to believing Hillary is in the basement eating pizza & drinking babies' blood cocktails? I don't know.
But the inability to recognize a likely-preposterous conspiracy theory is certainly an intellectual flaw. I'm not talking about being taken in by a plausible-but-false story, but the QAnon theories, for instance, are not even slightly believable to someone possessed of any degree of grounding in reality.
Watched the Borat film this morning around 2:30am. And just came upon this piece by David Sims of The Atlantic that perfectly captured my own take. "The whole scene (with Guiliani) is so cringe-inducing that it’s a relief when Borat himself bursts into the room, interrupting the encounter..."
As I e-mailed a friend, that interruption most likely saved the film for release.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/10/borat-2020/616848/