Jul 01 2020

Fake News Media Hoax

Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, Sgt. Benjamin Hines, and Cpl. Robert Hendriks were escorting a convoy to Bagram Airbase in April of 2019 when a Car Bomb blew up as they passed and not only killed them but injured 3 other Soldiers and 2 Contractors (damn Mercs deserve what they get).

As is SOP, an investigation ensued to identify the Terrorist Insurgents and bring them to Justice.

Or just vaporize them, their families, and any Goatherd unlucky enough to be within a Half Mile or so with an Airstrike, as well as those standing around in the way because they’re a nuisance.

It’s the United States way of making war.

In one of those Stopped Clock coincidences they may actually have found them this time.

White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019
By JAMES LaPORTA, Associated Press
June 30, 2020

The intelligence that surfaced in early 2019 indicated Russian operatives had become more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2012 during the Obama administration.

The National Security Council and the undersecretary of defense for intelligence did hold meetings regarding the intelligence. The Pentagon declined to comment and the NSC did not respond to questions about the meetings.

Concerns about Russian bounties flared anew this year after members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in U.S. currency. The funds bolstered the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.
…
The intelligence in 2019 and 2020 surrounding Russian bounties was derived in part from debriefings of captured Taliban militants. Officials with knowledge of the matter told the AP that Taliban operatives from opposite ends of the country and from separate tribes offered similar accounts.

Everybody knows he can’t read. Yes, but…

The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

So. HE WAS VERBALLY BRIEFED BY JOHN BOLTON! Kinda makes that argument a non starter. It’s in the part of the Bolton Book he Classified because it made him look like a Traitor who didn’t care about the Troops.

Let’s hear some more about those warnings.

Intelligence reports on Russian bounty operation first reached White House in early 2019
By Karen DeYoung, Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima and Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post
June 30, 2020

Intelligence provided by captured Afghan militants suggested the bounty operation was in existence as far back as 2018, according to three people familiar with the matter, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.
…
Intelligence analysts believe that the bounties probably resulted in the deaths of three Marines killed in April 2019 when the vehicle they were traveling in was blown up just outside Bagram, the main U.S. air base in Afghanistan, according to four people familiar with the matter.
…
Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, which U.S. officials say ran the bounty program, was known to have been given a relatively free hand to engage in operations to rattle the Americans, according to several people familiar with administration assessments.

At the same time, the Russians were believed to want revenge for a number of perceived American transgressions, particularly against Russian interests in Syria. Among them were U.S. air and artillery strikes in February 2018 on forces in Syria that included members of the Wagner Group, a mercenary force run by a Russian businessman close to Putin that includes former members of Russian military and intelligence units. The U.S. strikes killed hundreds of attackers.

What did I tell you about Mercs?

But in February of this year, after discoveries of questionable militant cash flows and the interrogation of prisoners in Afghanistan, information again made its way to the NSC. In late March, after a restricted, high-level meeting at the White House, the CIA was tasked with assessing it.

CIA analysts determined that the information was credible and showed a Russian plot to target U.S. and coalition forces, current and former officials familiar with the matter said. One former official said that there was a significant amount of intelligence and that it left little doubt among those examining it that Russia was targeting American forces.

The National Security Agency, which examines intercepted communications, took a more skeptical view of the 2020 information and the credibility of the underlying sources, people familiar with the information said. But some said the disagreements between the NSA and the CIA have been overstated by Trump administration officials.

Potentially important intelligence is traditionally shared with the president and senior officials before it has been fully vetted, assessed and subjected to the scrutiny of several intelligence agencies, a former official said.

The 2020 information was deemed credible and significant enough to be included this spring in the President’s Daily Brief, which is produced for the president and shared with top aides. In May, it was converted for broader distribution in The Wire, a regular CIA compendium of intelligence reports, which may be accessed by other agencies as well as certain congressional officials, people familiar with the matter said.

Is this Benghazi!, BENGAHZI!, BENGAHZI!!!?

Alas probably not. Twenty Two hours of hearings about not passing a Military Miracle achievable only by using Transporters (Anytime now Scotty).

But I am more convinced than ever that Unindicted Co-Conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is an Agent of Influence of the Rossiyskaya Federatsiya and a Traitor to the United States of America.

Suspicions of Russian Bounties Were Bolstered by Data on Financial Transfers
By Charlie Savage, Mujib Mashal, Rukmini Callimachi, Eric Schmitt, and Adam Goldman, The New York Times
June 30, 2020

American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations.

Investigators also identified by name numerous Afghans in a network linked to the suspected Russian operation, the officials said — including, two of them added, a man believed to have served as an intermediary for distributing some of the funds and who is now thought to be in Russia.

The intercepts bolstered the findings gleaned from the interrogations, helping reduce an earlier disagreement among intelligence analysts and agencies over the reliability of the detainees. The disclosures further undercut White House officials’ claim that the intelligence was too uncertain to brief President Trump. In fact, the information was provided to him in his daily written brief in late February, two officials have said.

Afghan officials this week described a sequence of events that dovetailed with the account of the intelligence. They said that several businessmen who transfer money through the informal “hawala” system were arrested in Afghanistan over the past six months and were suspected of being part of a ring of middlemen who operated between the Russian intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U., and Taliban-linked militants. The businessmen were arrested in what the officials described as sweeping raids in the north of Afghanistan as well as in Kabul.

A half-million dollars was seized from the home of one of the men, added a provincial official. The New York Times had previously reported that the recovery of an unusually large amount of cash in a raid was an early piece in the puzzle that investigators put together.
…
The Times reported last week that intelligence officials believed that a unit of the G.R.U. had offered and paid bounties for killing American troops and other coalition forces and that the White House had not authorized a response after the National Security Council convened an interagency meeting about the problem in late March.

Investigators are said to be focused on at least two deadly attacks on American soldiers in Afghanistan. One is an April 2019 bombing outside Bagram Air Base that killed three Marines
…
Intelligence about the suspected Russian plot was included in the President’s Daily Brief in late February, according to two officials, contrasting Mr. Trump’s claim on Sunday that he was never “briefed or told” about the matter.

The information was also considered solid enough to be distributed to the broader intelligence community in a May 4 article in the C.I.A.’s World Intelligence Review, commonly called The Wire, according to several officials.

A spokesman for the Taliban has denied that they accepted Russia-paid bounties to carry out attacks on Americans and other coalition soldiers, saying that the group needed no such encouragement for its operations. But one American official said the focus had been on criminals closely associated with the Taliban.

In a raid in Kunduz City in the north about six months ago, 13 people were arrested in a joint operation by American forces and the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, according to Safiullah Amiry, the deputy provincial council chief there. Two of the main targets of the raid had already fled — one to Tajikistan and one to Russia, Mr. Amiry said — but it was in the Kabul home of one of them where security forces found a half-million dollars. He said the Afghan intelligence agency had told him the raids were related to Russian money being disbursed to militants.

Two former Afghan officials said Monday that members of local criminal networks had carried out attacks for the Taliban in the past — not because they shared the Taliban’s ideology or goals, but in exchange for money.

In Parwan Province, where Bagram Air Base is, the Taliban are known to have hired local criminals as freelancers, said Gen. Zaman Mamozai, the former police chief of the province. He said the Taliban’s commanders are based in two districts of the province, Seyagird and Shinwari, and that from there they coordinate a network that commissions criminals to carry out attacks.

And Haseeba Efat, a former member of Parwan’s provincial council, also said the Taliban have hired freelancers in Bagram District — including, in one case, one of his own distant relatives.

“They agree with these criminals that they won’t have monthly salary, but they will get paid for the work they do when the Taliban need them,” Mr. Efat said.

I find it hard to believe the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation couldn’t find a more graceful way to transfer the money instead of a known GRU associated account but sometimes the Russians like to leave their fingerprints all over things (Polonium? Where do you get Polonium? Not from your Kiddie Chemestry Set) to send a message.

Jul 01 2020

Pondering The Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Frank Bruni: Is Trump Toast?

There’s a persuasive argument that the 2020 election is already over.

Only two of the past six presidents before Donald Trump lost their bids for re-election. That’s good news for him.

But their stories are bad news for him, too.

In their final years in office, both of those presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, experienced a noticeable slide in popularity right around the time — early May through late June — that Trump hit his current ugly patch.

According to Gallup’s ongoing tracking of the percentage of Americans who approve of a president’s job performance, Carter’s and Bush’s numbers sank below 40 percent during this period and pretty much stayed there through Election Day. It’s as if they both met their fates on the cusp of summer.

And the cusp of summer has been a mean season for Trump, who has never flailed more pathetically or lashed out more desperately and who just experienced the Carter-Bush dip. According to Gallup, his approval rating fell to 39 percent in early June from 49 a month earlier. So if Carter and Bush are harbingers, Trump is toast.

Amanda Marcotte: Russia bounty shocker: Trump never cared about the troops — only racism and re-election

Trump harangued NFL players for kneeling, but did nothing about Russia paying bounties to kill American soldiers

t’s safe to say that few things have obsessed Donald Trump more than his outrage at professional athletes who have chosen to kneel during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. Particularly in the fall of 2017 — while he was still smarting from the national outrage at his description of the white supremacists who rioted in Charlottesville as “very fine people” — Trump went on a rampage against the NFL kneelers, trying to position his racist response as patriotism and love for U.S. troops.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired,'” Trump ranted at an Alabama rally in September 2017. [..]

It was always preposterous that Trump’s antipathy to the kneeling athletes was about patriotism and “supporting the troops,” rather than flat-out racism. Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who started the kneeling tradition (and who lost his job in the NFL for it), came up with the idea of taking a knee after consulting with a friend who was a Green Beret on the best way to speak out against racism without insulting the troops or the flag.

Moreover, in the past few weeks Trump has been on a tear about the supposed importance of maintaining monuments and military bases honoring Confederate generals and leaders. When you consider that hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops died fighting the white-supremacist traitors who started the Civil War, Trump’s attachment to Confederate iconography should have been definitive proof he doesn’t care about “the troops.”

Richard Cordray: Why the CFPB’s loss at the Supreme Court is really a win

For six years, I served as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In 2010, Congress determined that this important new agency should have a single leader, with independent tenure protections, to make the hard decisions about how best to protect consumers against big banks and financial companies.

Our aggressive work to protect people from being cheated and mistreated understandably aroused opposition from some of these powerful companies. And so, ever since, the financial industry has been peppering the bureau with various challenges to its constitutionality. Among them was the claim that a single director of an agency wielding so much power does not square with strong notions of presidential control over the executive branch of the government. Some courts accepted this claim; others rejected it. Eventually, the case found its way to the Supreme Court, and Monday, in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the court issued a 5-to-4 ruling striking down the bureau’s leadership structure as unconstitutional.

On its face, that sounds like a major blow. The court’s holding that the agency was established in an unconstitutional manner might seem to jeopardize everything it does and all that it has ever done. Certainly, when the financial companies first began raising these claims, they did so with a desire to put the CFPB out of business once and for all.

But that is not the upshot of the decision. If anything, this ruling is a sheep that comes in wolf’s clothing. Although the court did invalidate the independent tenure of the CFPB’s single director, seven of the nine justices stopped right there and refused to go further. By carefully slicing off the tenure protections for the director, they left all other aspects of the agency in place. In fact, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. pointedly noted that “the CFPB’s structure and duties remain fully operative without the offending tenure restriction.”

Max Boot: Welcome to the United States of ‘Idiocracy’

When Mike Judge’s movie “Idiocracy” came out in 2006, almost no one saw it. (The film grossed less than $500,000 at the box office.) Now everyone should see it.

Luke Wilson plays an average Joe who is put into suspended animation and reawakens 500 years later to find himself the smartest person in America because everyone else has gotten so dumb. The No. 1 TV show features contestants being hit in their private parts; crops are watered with a sports energy drink, causing a famine; and the president is a former wrestler and porn star who curses freely and fires automatic weapons on TV.

Is there a better prophecy of our end times? The only thing “Idiocracy” really got wrong was its timeline. It has taken just 15 years, not 500, for America to become an idiocracy. Don’t believe it? Look at our response to the coronavirus pandemic. [..]

It is easy, and correct, to blame this epic failure on abysmal leadership. We have an irrational, incompetent president who spent months denying the reality of the disease (remember when he claimed it would “miraculously” go away by April?), while suggesting cures including a risky malaria drug and bleach injections.

Now President Trump is holding rallies in places such as Tulsa, where the disease is surging; campaign aides even removed signs from the arena urging rallygoers to practice social distancing. Trump is planning a Republican convention in a state, Florida, that has become a new hot spot of the disease. How idiotic can you get?

Jennifer Rubin: Tech companies are finally being shamed into action

At a time President Trump zealously protects Confederate statues, the Senate refuses to act on further financial relief, Republican governors insist the surge of novel coronavirus cases will not prompt a rollback in reopening plans and Republicans refuse to address systemic racial injustice in a serious way, you might get the feeling that a significant number of politicians think they are not accountable to the public. Whether it’s due to gerrymandering, the advantages of incumbency or simple arrogance, they continue to play to a thin stratum of ideologically extreme donors and right-wing media outlets. In November, the voters might surprise many of them, finally exerting the kind of accountability for anti-democratic, anti-scientific and anti-equality conduct.

In the meantime, however, corporate America, while far from perfect, has actually become more responsive to public opinion. It has come to appreciate (as we saw in the gun debate after the shooting in Parkland, Fla.) that consumers do not want to patronize companies they perceive as acting in antisocial or irresponsible ways. They might not, for example, want to shop at stores that sell guns or finance gun sales. More recently, on the racial justice front, the New York Times reports that “companies like Nike, Twitter and Citigroup have aligned themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement.” Netflix is committing $100 million to support African American communities. (Others are making less significant gestures, raising questions about the depth of their commitment.)

Now major corporations are undertaking an effort to change how tech companies respond to hate speech. A widespread advertising boycott of Facebook has shamed the platform’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in a way that lawmakers have failed to do. Per the Times: “Marketing giants like Unilever, Coca-Cola and Pfizer announced that they were pausing their Facebook advertising. That outcry has grown, hitting the company’s wallet.” By refusing to be associated with content that is racist or poses a threat to our democracy, such corporations have forced Facebook to take some initial steps, such as agreeing to an audit by the Media Rating Council: [..]

Jul 01 2020

I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

In Stars Hollow we’ve had quite a few Coronavirus deaths and some of my neighbors feel this is a disproportionate amount.

Not really. We have Senior Housing and Convalescent and Long Term Care Facilities and they’re all Cesspools of Pus (Had to buy a Turntable Ladder Truck for the big ones. Fortunately Zoning keeps these eyesores on the edges of Town.).

So are Prisons.

It doesn’t get any better. Bread Substitute and Icky Wax.

Jul 01 2020

Cartnoon

Not too early to think about your menu, especially if you’re going to do something elaborate like ‘Cue.

Of course if you just want to scorch a steak and grill an ear of corn that’s fine too.

Jul 01 2020

Night Sweats

I have nightmares.

Of course they’re all about death because they always are and some are quite obvious like the ones I get of being swallowed when I sleep in a too soft bed, others are a little more esoteric like the one I have of a perfectly straight line that becomes more and more jangled as you approach either limit until you finally wake up screaming only it’s a barely audible croak.

That one’s about death too. They all are.

Transcript–

Trump will do anything to be re-elected. His opponents are limited because they believe in democracy. Trump has no limits because he doesn’t.

Here’s Trump’s re-election playbook, in 25 simple steps:

  1. Declare yourself above the law.
  2. Use racist fearmongering. Demand “law and order” and describe protesters as “thugs”, “lowlife” and “rioters and looters”. Describe Covid-19 as “Kung-Flu”. Retweet posts from white supremacists. In your campaign ads, use a symbol associated with Nazis.
  3. Appoint an attorney general more loyal to you than to America, and politicize the Department of Justice so it’s lenient on your loyalists and comes down hard on your enemies. Have it lighten the sentence of a crony convicted of lying under oath. Order investigations of industries you dislike.
  4. Fire US attorneys who are investigating you.
  5. Fire independent inspectors general who are looking into what you’ve done. Crush any whistleblowers you find.
  6. Demean and ignore the intelligence community. Appoint a director of national intelligence more loyal to you than to America. Demand that the head of the FBI pledge loyalty to you.
  7. Pack the federal courts with judges and justices more loyal to you than to the constitution.
  8. Politicize the Department of Defense so generals will back whatever you order. Refer to them as “my generals”. Have them help clear out protesters. Order the military to surveil protesters. Tell governors you’ll bring in the military to stop protesters.
  9. Purge your party of anyone disloyal to you and turn it into a mindless, brainless, spineless cult.
  10. Get rid of accumulated experience and expertise in government. Demean career public servants. Hollow out the state department, the Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, and public health.
  11. Reward donors and cronies with bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, government contracts, regulatory rollbacks and plum jobs. Put their lobbyists in charge of your agencies. Distribute $500bn in pandemic assistance to corporations in secret, without any oversight.
  12. Coddle dictators. Don’t criticize their human rights abuses. Refuse to work with the leaders of other democracies. Withdraw from international treaties.
  13. Create scapegoats. Demonize migrants and lock up asylum-seekers at the border even if they’re children. Put a white nationalist in charge of immigration policy. Blame Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese.
  14. Denigrate and ridicule all critics. Describe opponents as “human scum”. Attack the mainstream media as purveyors of “fake news” and “enemies of the people”.
  15. Conjure up conspiracies against yourself supposedly led by your predecessor and your opponent in the last election. Without any evidence, accuse your predecessor of “treason”. Fabricate a “Deep State” out to get you.
  16. Downplay real threats to the nation, such as a rapidly spreading pandemic. Lie about your utter failure to contain it. Muzzle public health experts. Urge people to go back to work even as the pandemic worsens in parts of the country.
  17. Encourage armed supporters to “liberate” states from elected officials who disagree with you.
  18. Bribe other nations to investigate your electoral opponent and flood social media with lies about him.
  19. Use rightwing propaganda machines like Fox News and conspiracy theory peddling One America News to inundate the country with your lies. Ensure that the morally bankrupt chief executive of Facebook allows you to spread your lies on the biggest media machine in the world.
  20. Suppress the votes of people likely to vote against you. Intimidate voters of color. Encourage Republican governors to purge voter rolls, demand voter ID and close polling places.
  21. Seek to prevent mail-in ballots during the pandemic. Claim they will cause voter fraud, without evidence. Threaten to close the US postal service.
  22. Get Vladimir Putin to hack into US election machines, as he did in 2016 but can now do with more experience and deftness. Promise him that in return you’ll further destabilize America as well as Nato. Allow him to put a bounty on killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
  23. If it still looks like you’ll be voted out, try to postpone the election.
  24. If you’re voted out of office notwithstanding all this, refuse to leave. Contest the election, claim massive fraud, say it’s a conspiracy, get your cult of a political party to support your lies, get your propaganda machine to repeat them, get your justice department to back you, get your judges and justices to affirm you, get your generals to suppress any subsequent rebellion.
  25. Declare victory.

Memo to America: Beware Trump’s playbook. Spread the truth. Stay vigilant. Fight for our democracy.

Jul 01 2020

The Breakfast Club (The Game Of Life)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

The Civil War Battle of Gettysburg begins; The first nuclear weapons test in peacetime; TR’s assault on San Juan Hill; Britain’s Princess Diana born; Hong Kong returned to China; Actor Marlon Brando dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Johnny Mandel (November 23, 1925 – June 29, 2020)

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

There’s nothing more satisfying than having an idea and seeing it through to find out that, not only did you like it, but the audience and critics all seemed to agree.

Carl Reiner (March 20, 1922 – June 29, 2020)

Continue reading

Jun 30 2020

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Obamacare Versus the G.O.P. Zombies

Ten years of failed promises to come up with something better.

Covid-19 cases are surging in states that took Donald Trump’s advice and reopened for business too soon. This new surge — is it OK now to call it a second wave? — is, on average, hitting people younger than the initial surge in the Northeast did. Perhaps as a result, rising infections haven’t been reflected in a comparable rise in deaths, although that may be only a matter of time.

There is, however, growing evidence that even those who survive Covid-19 can suffer long-term adverse effects: scarred lungs, damaged hearts and perhaps neurological disorders.

And if the Trump administration gets its way, there may be another source of long-term damage: permanent inability to get health insurance.

Remarkably, last week the administration reaffirmed its support for a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which would, among other things, eliminate protection for Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. If the suit were to succeed, having had Covid-19 would surely be one of the pre-existing conditions making health insurance hard, perhaps impossible, to get.

Now, the legal argument behind the case is beyond flimsy: The lawsuit claims that the 2017 tax cut effectively invalidated the act, even though that was no part of Congress’s intention. But with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, nobody knows what will happen. And Trump’s support for the suit makes it clear that if re-elected he will do all he can to destroy Obamacare.

Eugene Robinson: Trump’s only campaign promise is to make bigotry safe again

“White power!” shouted the elderly man, raising his fist as he drove his golf cart past a group of demonstrators advocating racial justice. On Sunday, President Trump offered an “amen.”

A white couple stood outside their St. Louis mansion aiming deadly firearms — the man wielding a semiautomatic rifle, the woman waving a handgun — at Black Lives Matter protesters who were peacefully marching past. On Monday, Trump joined that hallelujah chorus, too.

In both cases, Trump offered his encouragement to white tribal fear and anger in the form of retweets on his Twitter feed. There’s plenty of bad news the president might want to overshadow: the explosion in covid-19 cases in Sun Belt states he pushed to reopen prematurely, for example, or the reports that Russia offered bounties for killing U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan. But why choose “white power” as the bright, shiny object he wants everyone to focus on? Why not some other, less incendiary bit of nonsense?

The logical conclusion is that, in his desperate campaign to win reelection, Trump has decided to position himself even more explicitly as the defender of whiteness and all its privileges. Certainly, in his ideologically flexible career, maintaining the primacy of whiteness is a rare constant.

Bernie Sanders: A 10% cut to the US military budget would help support struggling Americans

If this horrific coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it is that national security involves a lot more than bombs

At this unprecedented moment in American history – a terrible pandemic, an economic meltdown, people marching across the country to end systemic racism and police brutality, growing income and wealth inequality and an unstable president in the White House – now is the time to bring people together to fundamentally alter our national priorities and rethink the very structure of American society.

In that regard, I have been disturbed that for too long, Democrats and Republicans have joined together in passing outrageously high military budgets while ignoring the needs of the poorest people in our society. If we are serious about altering our national priorities, then there is no better place to begin with than taking a hard look at the bloated $740bn military budget that is coming up for a vote in the Senate this week.

Incredibly, after adjusting for inflation, we are now spending more on the military than we did during the height of the Cold War or during the wars in Vietnam and Korea. [..]

Will we be a nation that spends more money on nuclear weapons, or will we be one that invests in jobs, affordable housing, health care and childcare for those who need it most?

Dean Obeidallah: It’s not enough to delete Trump’s ‘white power’ video tweet

President Donald Trump on Sunday morning told America who he believes are “great people.” They’re the supporters who scream “white power” in response to those who call the President a racist.

That, at least, seemed to be the message from Trump’s sharing of a two-minute video showing residents from a Florida community known as The Villages driving in golf carts adorned with signs such as “Trump 2020” and “America First.” As these Trump supporters approached anti-Trump protesters, some of whom were holding up Black Lives Matters signs, one protester yelled Trump is a “racist.” In response, one of the golf cart drivers screamed: “White Power! White Power!”
Trump’s tweet was no longer on Twitter by late Sunday morning. White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement that the President did not hear the “white power” shouts when he tweeted the clip. [..]

rump’s sharing this video was not a mistake. The President, who finds himself trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by up to 14 points in a range of polls, is simply following his successful 2016 campaign playbook, where he trafficked in bigotry to divide Americans. We saw it from his baseless claim that Mexico was sending “rapists” to calling for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering America to, during the campaign, retweeting open white supremacists such as one with the name “White Genocide” — another white supremacist rallying cry.
But what could’ve been seen as disturbing dog whistle racist politics by a candidate is even more jarringly out of place in 2020.

Tim Wu: American Companies Are Sick. Here’s How to Cure Them.

Mergers and buyouts work, but they can exacerbate economic inequality. Here are some different strategies.

Many companies in the United States are currently in a particular kind of distress. They have solid business models for normal times, yet as the pandemic lingers they are slowly dying, victims of weak demand or supply problems. These businesses are not broken or fundamentally flawed; their health is jeopardized only by exceptional circumstances. They are not doomed; they’re just sick.

Many of these companies are on the lookout for survival strategies that would avoid a ruinous liquidation of their assets. This means they may be more open than they ordinarily would to private buyouts and mergers. But a wave of buyouts and mergers, though seemingly better than letting struggling companies die, would only intensify the economic inequality that has become this country’s curse.

That is why we need to rethink what rescuing companies looks like in this moment.

The danger is that cure will be as bad as the disease. A rescue of struggling businesses fueled by cheap debt will lead to a restructuring of the American economy into fewer and fewer centers of corporate control. That consolidation, in turn, will increase the already excessive power of corporations and widen the already yawning gap between rich and poor.

Jun 30 2020

The Breakfast Club (Facts First)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Adolf Hitler purges rivals in Nazi Germany; America’s food and drug safety take a big step forward; ‘Gone With the Wind’ published; Tonya Harding banned from figure skating; Singer Lena Horne born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Mark Twain

Continue reading

Jun 29 2020

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

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Charles M. Blow: Yes, Even George Washington

Slavery was a cruel institution that can’t be excused by its era.

On the issue of American slavery, I am an absolutist: enslavers were amoral monsters.

The very idea that one group of people believed that they had the right to own another human being is abhorrent and depraved. The fact that their control was enforced by violence was barbaric.

People often try to explain this away by saying that the people who enslaved Africans in this country were simply men and women of their age, abiding by the mores of the time.

But, that explanation falters. There were also men and women of the time who found slavery morally reprehensible. The enslavers ignored all this and used anti-black dehumanization to justify the holding of slaves and the profiting from slave labor.

People say that some slave owners were kinder than others.

That explanation too is problematic. The withholding of another person’s freedom is itself violent. And the enslaved people who were shipped to America via the Middle Passage had already endured unspeakably horrific treatment. [..]

I say that we need to reconsider public monuments in public spaces. No person’s honorifics can erase the horror he or she has inflicted on others.

Slave owners should not be honored with monuments in public spaces. We have museums for that, which also provide better context. This is not an erasure of history, but rather a better appreciation of the horrible truth of it.

Richard L. Hasen: Bring On the 28th Amendment

Efforts by Trump and his allies to suppress the vote are only part of the problem.

What if we made voting an agent of equality, not inequality? And how can we get there?

If you are a college student or a working recent high school graduate, poor, Latino, or someone who moves more frequently, you are less likely to vote. Seniors are much more likely to vote than young people, in some elections at twice their rate. Those with college degrees vote in higher numbers than the less educated. Minority voters are more likely to wait longer in line to vote in person, sometimes for hours, and they, young people, and first-time voters are more likely to have an absentee ballot rejected for nonconformity with technical rules. Poor voters are less likely to have the time off work to vote at all, much less wait in a long line to vote. Voters in big cities, who tend to be younger, poorer and browner, have coped with more serious election problems than others in voting in person and by mail during our coronavirus-laden primary season, like the voters in Milwaukee voters who saw 175 out of 180 polling places closed during the April 7 Wisconsin primaries.

In a democratic system, we expect our elected officials to be responsive to the views and interests of the voters. If the universe of voters — and, of course, campaign donors — is skewed toward older, wealthier, better educated whiter voters, political decisions will be as well. We need equality in voting rights and turnout to assure responsive representation and social policy that reflects everyone’s needs, not just those most likely to turn out with their votes and dollars.

Let’s start with the causes of the problem. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare three pathologies with how we protect voting rights in the United States, and why the skew in voter turnout remains persistent.

Jennifer Senior: Trump’s Napalm Politics? They Began With Newt

Gingrich wrote the playbook for it all. The nastiness, the contempt for norms, the transformation of political opponents into enemies.

Approximately one billion news cycles ago — which is to say, on June 9 — a businesswoman named Marjorie Taylor Greene finished first in the Republican primary in Georgia’s deeply conservative 14th Congressional District, northwest of Atlanta, which means that after a runoff she’s all but assured a seat in the House of Representatives next year.

Unfortunately, she is a cheerful bigot and conspiracy-theory fluffernutter. She subscribes to QAnon, the far-right fever dream that says Donald Trump is under siege from a cabal of deep-state saboteurs, some of whom run a pedophile ring; she says African-Americans are being held back primarily by “gangs.” (She’s left behind a contrail of unsavory videos through cyberspace, if you’d care to Google.)

The House Republican leadership is trying to distance itself from this woman, as if she belongs to some other party from a faraway galaxy. She doesn’t. Her politics are Trumpism distilled. And Trumpism itself isn’t a style and philosophy that began in 2016, with Trump’s election, or even in 2010, with the Tea Party. It began 40-odd years ago, in Greene’s own state, with the election of a different politician just two districts over.

I’m talking about Newt. You really could argue that today’s napalm politics began with Newt.

The normalization of personal destruction. The contempt for custom. The media-baiting, the annihilation of bipartisan comity, the delegitimizing of institutions.

Russell Moore: Changing the state flag is not about forgetting Mississippi’s past. It’s about acknowledging it.

Until now, the only flag of my home state that I would display are scraps, barely holding together, lying on the shelf next to me right now. This remnant of the Mississippi flag was a gift from a man who served in the National Guard patrolling my hometown of Biloxi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He found the shredded flag clinging to the ground next to the lighthouse, and gave me what was left of it. In time, it fell apart, and all I kept were the parts that held together — stripes of red, white and blue.

For me, this tattered flag was a reminder of the fragility and resilience of my home state and its people, of the ties that hold it together and the winds that have torn it apart. But I love this particular symbol not just for what’s there — bits of red and blue and white holding together despite it all — but also for what’s missing. The part that fell away was the Confederate emblem: the ugly reminder of our state’s legacy of white supremacy and exclusion.

In a development that many Mississippians had longed for but never really expected to happen in our lifetimes, the state’s House and Senate on Saturday began the process of changing the flag adopted in 1894 as a backlash against Reconstruction. The way has been cleared for legislation, which Gov. Tate Reeves (R) has said he would sign, to introduce a new state flag that, finally, would represent all Mississippians.

Robert Reich: Donald Trump’s re-election playbook: 25 ways he’ll lie, cheat and abuse his power

From now until November, opponents of the most lawless president in history face a fight for democracy itself

Donald Trump will do anything to be re-elected. His opponents are limited because they believe in democracy. Trump has no limits because he doesn’t.

Here’s Trump’s re-election playbook, in 25 simple steps: [..]

Memo to America: beware Trump’s playbook. Spread the truth. Stay vigilant. Fight for our democracy.

Jun 29 2020

History of the World According to Cats

Jun 29 2020

The Breakfast Club (Out Of Breath)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

The U.S. Supreme Court effectively voids state death penalty laws; Jerusalem reunified under Israeli control after the Six-Day War; Singer Rosemary Clooney and actress Katharine Hepburn die.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation’s out of breath. We ain’t running no more.

Stokely Carmichael

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Jun 28 2020

The Breakfast Club (Flattening the curve)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club!

AP’s Today in History for June 28th

An assassination in Europe sparks World War I; Elian Gonzalez and his father leave for Cuba; Boxer Mike Tyson disqualified for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear; Richard Rodgers and Mel Brooks born.

Breakfast Tune When I Paint My Masterpiece – The Band/Bob Dylan – Banjo Cover

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

 


 

 

Something to think about over coffee prozac

 
Officials Warn Defunding Police Could Lead To Spike In Crime From Ex-Officers With No Outlet For Violence
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