Florida leads the nation in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations as the Sunshine State becomes the epicenter of the delta-driven fourth pandemic wave.
The state saw 110,477 new coronavirus infections over the most recent seven day period from July 23 through Thursday, according to the weekly report released Friday. Florida averaged more than 15,780 infections a day.
It’s the first time since early January that the state surpassed 100,000 infections in a single week.
Florida accounts for nearly one out of every four new infections and hospitalizations in the country, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...
No longer is this a pandemic affecting mostly Florida seniors or those with pre-existing conditions. Now it is younger, healthier, unvaccinated adults who are falling ill. New Florida infections and hospitalizations are being driven by adults in their 20s to 40s, state data shows. They account for 53 percent of infections and about 34 percent of hospitalizations...
And what does Florida's governor Ron DeSantis want to do?
Florida's governor on Monday threatened state legislative action to prevent face masks from being mandated in schools throughout the Sunshine State.
During a COVID-19 roundtable discussion in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis once again reiterated his firm stance that school districts should not impose mask mandates on students and staff members, even as coronavirus cases surge due to the highly contagious Delta variant.
"Our view is that this should absolutely not be imposed. It should not be mandated," DeSantis said...
DeSantis never took the shutdowns and masking and social distancing guidelines to heart anyway, even back in 2020. He saw it all hampering businesses, the tourist trade, the bars and restaurants whose owners pay him big bucks to keep the doors open and the staffers underpaid.
DeSantis has already decided. He's decided to let the COVID Delta variant win. He's decided to reach the higher levels of elected office on the backs of our sick and dying kids.
There is no other way to explain this.
Gods help us. DeSantis won't do a damn thing until there's 10,000 dead teens and children piled up on his doorstep.
The United States has sold the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to an anonymous buyer. The price of the sale was also kept confidential.
The album was previously owned by Martin Shkreli, the infamous "Pharma Bro" who raised the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000 percent and was later convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison. He was forced to hand it over to the United States in 2018 as a part of a $7.4 million forfeiture judgement.
The announcement was made today by Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, the Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. "Shkreli has been held accountable and paid the price for lying and stealing from investors to enrich himself," said Kasulis. "With today's sale of this one-of-a-kind album, his payment of the forfeiture is now complete."
Shkreli purchased the 31-track album at auction in 2015 for a reported $2 million. It was promoted as a "unique work of art" with no physical or digital duplicate in existence, and included appearances from the wider Wu-Tang family from Redman to Killarmy. Upon learning that it was Shkreli who bought the album, Wu-Tang member RZA told Bloomberg that the group decided to give "a significant portion of the proceeds to charity..."
DAMN YOU, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. TELL US WHO BOUGHT THE WU-TANG ALBUM.
Are we gonna have to plan that Wu-Tang/Bill Murray heist after all???
The select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is holding its first meeting Tuesday. Four police officers are giving testimony about the physical and verbal assaults they faced responding the the riot that day.
The four officers — Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell of the Capitol Police, and Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan Police — each gave opening statements and are answering questions from committee members.
Gonell recounted the events of that day and the impact it has had on law enforcement officers: "For most people, Jan. 6 happened for a few hours," he said. "But for those of us who were in the thick of it, it has not ended..."
NPR should provide live links to the hearings, as well as other websites.
It's that kind of evidence that if confirmed by committee would establish trump's refusal at the very least to take the riot seriously, which could lead to charges of negligence on the then-President Loser of the Popular Vote (especially from Capitol Police who survived that day and the family members of those who died). Any additional evidence confirming how trump egged that mob into action against Congress could lead to charges of insurrection...
These are things the Republican leadership do not want happening, because trump still has his mob at his beck and call and if becomes clear he's getting handcuffed over this he will incite that mob again, and again against fellow Republicans who won't bow to him...
The committee only would have the merit of documenting the atrocities for the public who still need to know what happened... and for future history, as long as it aids rather than blocks the ongoing criminal investigations that have already arrested a sizable number of rioters... and the committee can add to the already-overwhelming proof that insurrection happened. It all becomes a question of if (sadly not when) the people truly responsible for the violence that day (trump trump and more trump) gets held accountable...
trump and his Republican allies would rather whitewash and ignore the violent events of that day, because it clashes with their Grand Narrative of libruls and minorities as the violent rioters. trump would rather pretend it was all fun and games, while giving enough freedom to his brownshirt army of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to prepare for the next round of violence he'll want to commit to keep his own corrupt ass out of a New York jail cell.
This committee - with any luck - will remind the majority of Americans of how craven and desperate and violent trump's own side has been, and how trump and his people threaten to get worse.
We shouldn't be watching these hearings for entertainment, everybody.
We should be watching these hearings to find out how we fight back.
It's become clear in 2021 that the Republican Party still kneels and begs for table scraps at the foot of the eternal Shitgibbon known as trump.
As the near-unstoppable cycle of election campaigning kicks up for 2022, a number of high-profile Republican candidates at the state and Congressional level have spent a lot of effort playing to trump's unstable world-views and conspiracy rants. Noticeable among these sycophants is George P. Bush, son of... one of the Bush brothers, hold on let me check the Wikipedia biography oh yes it's JEB! - who is entering the political stage by running for state-level office in Texas. Specifically for State Attorney General, running as a challenger against the incumbent Ken Paxton.
In order to win, George P. has spent his early days campaigning even further to the right than Paxton, going so far as to openly worship at the foot of trump (party kingmaker) himself. All of this in spite of the open contempt the Bush family itself has towards trump, whom they view as destroying a Republican Party they built and once dominated themselves.
Donald Trump just endorsed incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) over the GOP primary challenger, George P. Bush—who sold out his own family to kiss Trump’s ass. No hero in this tale, just a reminder that there’s no honor among thieves—and a deal with the devil can backfire. https://t.co/sRUg0qQpg4
I wonder what George P. will do now. Probably crawl back to the Bush Family Compound and convene a session with their current elders to decide the next step of revenge against Paxton. I wonder how many judges in line to handle Paxton's indictments still owe a favor or three to the Bushes...
In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.
Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty...
The Far Right are driven by Purity Tests: if any of them even flinches or looks like they're changing their mind on something, that person gets driven out. And right now the Purity Test requires these contrarian SOBs to oppose COVID vaccination on the flimsiest of pretexts, based on bad information from fellow contrarians who are neither experts nor correct.
Pro-Trump vaccine resistance exacts a harsh cost from pro-Trump loyalists. We read pitiful story after pitiful story of deluded and deceived people getting sick when they did not have to get sick, infecting their loved ones, being intubated, and dying. And as these loyalists harm themselves and expose all of us to unnecessary and preventable risk, publications—including this one—have run articles sympathetically explaining the recalcitrance of the unvaccinated...
Compassion should always be the first reaction to vaccine hesitation. Maybe some unvaccinated people have trouble getting time off work to deal with side effects, maybe they are disorganized, maybe they are just irrationally anxious. But there’s no getting around the truth that some considerable number of the unvaccinated are also behaving willfully and spitefully. Yes, they have been deceived and manipulated by garbage TV, toxic Facebook content, and craven or crazy politicians. But these are the same people who keep talking about “personal responsibility.” In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet...
We are not going to see an end to this until both the monsters distributing misinformation and the fools eagerly lapping it up answer for their sins. And by then, half our school-bound kids (our states are forcing everybody back to in-person classes!) will likely be sick and dying.
Ahh, this has been one of those days where the Schadenfreude ("malicious joy") was tasty and warm.
First Part: I don't know if I ever told you my sports fandom, but as a long-time Tampa Bay resident I am true to my school when it comes to rooting for the Bucs (NFL), Lightning (NHL), and the Rays (MLB). Ah, if only Arena Football was still playing...
You might have noticed it whenever I rant against donald trump: Thanks to his moronic ass, he manipulated the USFL - a spring pro football league that was struggling but popular - back in the early 1980s into a legal fight against the rival NFL that backfired on him, killed the USFL, and ended the Tampa Bay Bandits franchise. So yeah, that still hurts.
Anywho, right now is a great time to be a Tampa Bay sports fan. Our Lightning hockey team just accomplished back-to-back championship seasons (2019/2020 and 2020/2021), a difficult run in any professional sport. The Bolts have been one of the more successful southern ice hockey teams, proving the haters - the traditionalists who argue hockey should be played in cities that actually get snow - wrong with Stanley Cup wins in 2004 and a valiant effort in 2015.
Over in baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays are in the hunt for another AL East division title, having won that last season en route to their second overall World Series matchup (sadly losing to the L.A. Dodgers in 6). The Rays are at the top of the baseball world the past 13 years (since 2008) as one of the small-market teams that figured out a winning formula that's garnered a number of wild card berths, division titles, and so on. Even in the dire situation of playing in one of the worst ballparks, under constant threat of relocating, the Rays are winners while large market teams struggle to stay above .500 in the wins column.
On top of that, the Tampa Bay Bucs are coming off the high of a Super Bowl victory this past season. The first pro sports franchise in the area (1976), infamously one of the worst teams in the NFL having the first ever winless season in 1976 and losing their first 26 games, the Bucs were a laughingstock franchise due to bad ownership and dumb decisions (their rookie drafting faux pas remain some of the worst in league history). Things turned around with new ownership in the 1990s, a good coach finally leading the team (Dungy!) although he got traded out for another good coach (Chucky!) who did get the Bucs to their first Super Bowl in the 2002 season... only to have it all crash and burn by 2008 when Gruden's unbalanced team-building (over-reliance on expensive free agents) bankrupted the cap space and the team sunk back into malaise.
The Bucs went through another series of questionable coaching hires - ahem #FireSchiano - and desperation to find a franchise QB, leading up to the 2020 season when the team made the fateful decision to let could-have-been Jameis Winston go and bring in a veteran team leader... Tom Freaking Brady.
There are few sports cities that have seen ALL of their franchise teams make the championships the same year, fewer still to have all of them WIN those championships (dammit, Rays...). Like I said, what a time to be a Tampa Bay sports fan. CHAMPA BAY, people!
We've made boat parades a thing, everybody!
Brady throwing the Lombardi Trophy at 1:05 on the YouTube clip became an instant meme.
Brady made two jokes at Trump’s expense. First, he made fun of Trump for refusing to accept defeat:
Tom Brady: "Not a lot of people think that we could've won. In fact, I think about 40% of the people still don't think we won."
Biden: "I understand that."
Then, twisting the knife, he made a second joke:
Brady: “We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing and they started calling me Sleepy Tom. Why would they do that to me?”
While this sounds more gentle than this first joke, it is in fact much more deeply vicious. In Trump’s mind, Biden is a pathetic loser, and he is the winner. Like Tom Brady.
Yet here was Brady, inverting the whole hierarchy. Biden is the winner, like Brady, and Winners now are guys who get called sleepy by the Losers for making a small mistake on the way to their triumph...
In Trump’s mind, the two men were parallels to each other: both Winners, and natural companions on the basis of their mastery of their respective fields. “He’s a friend of mine, he’s a great guy, and he’s a great athlete obviously, but he’s a winner,” Trump told TMZ in 2016. “I think Tom is totally innocent. I think Tom is — first of all, I know him, he’s such an honorable guy, and I’m with him all the way.” Trump has repeatedly expressed his regret that he “could have had Tom Brady” as his son-in-law, rather than the nerdy Jared Kushner.
The relationship always had an asymmetric quality. Brady repeatedly expressed discomfort at Trump’s public adulation, and has declined to talk about who he voted for. In 2017, he skipped a White House invitation to celebrate a previous Super Bowl win, citing his need to attend to his ailing mother. The snub, according to the Washington Post, sent Trump into a rage...
Getting dissed like this in public will undoubtedly drive trump even further into madness. But what can trump really do? Any insult he lobs at Tom Brady will be weak and laughable. Brady has proven himself a Winner on the global stage multiple times, the only Quarterback in NFL history to win SEVEN Super Bowls and named MVP five times, holding nearly every passing record in the book, pulling this all off well into his mid-40s when most QBs retire by their 30s, and poised in 2021 to make a serious run for yet another Super Bowl with a veteran Bucs team that lost no talent from last year and may have an easier run this season.
Brady's a goddamned Winner. All trump can do is pose and pretend and brag lie about wins he never really achieved.
And now, the Second Part of the Schadenfreude Day:
Thomas Barrack, a longtime friend of Donald Trump's who chaired the former president's inauguration committee, was arrested Tuesday on federal charges that he acted as an agent of a foreign government.
Note: when the report first got out, the Justice Department had to clarify that Barrack wasn't getting arrested over the investigation into questionable fund-raising for that inauguration committee. Yeah, that's still ongoing...
Prosecutors said Barrack, 74, parlayed his close ties to the Trump White House to advance the interests of the United Arab Emirates.
Along with Barrack, Matthew Grimes, 27, of Aspen, Colo., and Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, 43, a UAE national, are accused of acting and conspiring to act as agents of the Middle Eastern nation between April 2016 and April 2018. Grimes worked for Barrack at an investment management firm.
Prosecutors said the three defendants did not provide the required notification to the U.S. attorney general that they were acting as agents of a foreign government.
Barrack is also charged with obstructing justice and lying to federal agents...
Court papers said Barrack exploited his close ties to Trump as far back as the 2016 campaign when he inserted language favorable to the UAE into a speech about energy policy. Prosecutors said Barrack also asked for a wish list of policy goals at various points throughout the Trump administration, and they said he advanced the UAE's interests in television appearances and an opinion article...
Barrack is the latest person in or near Trump's inner circle to be charged with federal crimes...
It's like you need a scorecard to keep up with all the people in trump's personal circle getting hit with federal felony charges. Seriously, I've been doing a mental check of all the people I've ever known from high school to now, how many of them have been charged with felonies, and out of hundreds of people I can't recall a single one. Okay, my family's history of speeding tickets don't count.
All of it based on trump's desperation for wealth backed by foreign powers, so trump can pretend being a billionaire Winner when he was really a clown living on credit.
What a Sucker trump's turned out to be.
What a day to be a trump hater! MMmmmmmmm, tasty tasty Schadenfreude indeed. Now bring us more tax evasion arrests from the New York grand jury PLEASE AND THANK YOU...
You'd think the legal system under a Biden administration would be fighting harder to punish both the liars and thieves that made up trump's administration, or at least go after the January 6 Insurrectionists with more fervor.
A Florida crane operator who walked onto the Senate floor during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has been sentenced to eight months in federal prison and two years of supervised release.
Paul Hodgkins' sentencing is the first in a felony case stemming from the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters. It is viewed as a potential bellwether for how other Capitol defendants charged with similar offenses are likely to be treated.
Hodgkins pleaded guilty last month to a single count of obstructing an official proceeding. On Jan. 6, he marched from then-President Donald Trump's rally near the White House to the Capitol, where he walked inside and onto the floor of the Senate while carrying a red "Trump 2020" flag...
There’s a temptation to view what Ross did as simply politics, which in a way it was: When he repeatedly made false statements to Congress under oath about the administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, Ross was operating in the service of a broader lie being repeated by multiple Trump officials and advocates. But that makes it worse, not better...
I can’t say why they decided Ross’s case did not warrant prosecution, though it’s true that people are not often prosecuted for lying to Congress. That doesn’t mean it’s unheard of, however. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former factotum, pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress on Trump’s behalf. Figures in the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals were also indicted for that crime.
Upon taking office, the Trump administration decided it wanted to add a citizenship question to the census for the first time in 70 years. The reasons were plain: The administration was doing its best to intimidate immigrants, both documented and otherwise, and a citizenship question would make them fearful about answering the census. That would make their communities look smaller, which would then deprive them of resources and political power.
But the administration couldn’t just come out and say that. So it came up with one of the dumbest cover stories in an administration that was full of them: adding a citizenship question to the census, they said, was necessary for the Justice Department to properly enforce the Voting Rights Act. It made no sense at all, and nobody believed it for a moment.
But on two occasions, Ross was questioned under oath about it and made specific factual assertions — assertions that were false. Ross testified that his department (Commerce has authority over the Census Bureau) only pursued the citizenship question because it was asked to do so by the Justice Department.
But emails obtained in a lawsuit revealed that not only was that false, but Ross and his aides had pressured a reluctant Justice Department to essentially create a bogus paper trail that would give support to the lie that the whole thing was the department’s idea...
In a sane and just world, it's that kind of deceit in government that ought to trigger warrants and court trials. But why not, why allow one of trump's biggest corrupt cronies to skip merrily away from ANY accountability? Back to Waldman:
It wouldn’t be too surprising to hear that the department figured it wasn’t a serious enough crime to justify indicting someone so high-ranking. But that’s just the trouble: When you communicate that you can perjure yourself before Congress with impunity, the result will be more perjury.
And it reinforces the idea that in politics, anything is justified — manipulating the system, lying to the public, lying under oath, anything — and you might well get away with it. At this particular moment in our history, is that a message we want to send?
It's as though there's a strain of cowardice within Democratic ranks that pursuing justice against partisan and corrupt Republicans could stir up more trouble for themselves rather than push back against the lies that break our nation further into pieces.
The only way we can rebuild America is to return to our efforts to build towards justice. We need to hold the likes of Ross - and William Barr, and Steve Mnuchin, and trump himself - accountable for the lies they spewed that warped our reality.
I just wish Biden and Garland and other Democratic leaders realize that, and act soon. trump's lies keep spreading every day that we don't do anything about that.
Update 7/20: It turns out myself and the other Paul - and other commentators - jumped the gun on this. The decision to NOT go after Ross for perjury was done under Barr's watch, not Garland's.
An update on the Wilbur Ross story from yesterday: Turns out that the decision not to prosecute him for lying to Congress was made during the Trump admin, so everyone who said "Damn you Merrick Garland!" was jumping the gun a bit.
With less than a week before the opening ceremonies begin at this year's Tokyo games, at least two players on the South African soccer team have tested positive for COVID-19 inside the Olympic Village.
The two players, Thabiso Monyane and Kamohelo Mahlatsi, are the first athletes to test positive for the coronavirus at the site of the Olympic Village in the Japanese capital. A video analyst for the team, Mario Masha, also tested positive.
All three have been isolated, along with those who were in close contact with them...
The announcement of the new cases comes at a moment of deep trepidation inside Japan about the wisdom of holding the games, with Tokyo already under its fourth state of emergency since the pandemic began. With vaccination rates in the country lagging behind those in the United States and much of Europe, there are fears that an influx of thousands from around the world could spark new outbreaks. The state of emergency will mean no spectators during the games inside the capital, but even without international fans, more than 18,000 people are expected to come in for the games.
Though the results announced Sunday are the first cases to appear in athletes, there are growing concerns that others will test positive before competition begins later this week...
COVID can hide in a person between five to fourteen days, meaning the negative tests yesterday won't cover for the positive tests likely to trigger next week at the start of the Olympics itself.
While a majority of the athletes may be vaccinated, and most of the on-site workers as well, that's no guarantee of complete immunity. The vaccines help in reducing the harmful effects, and reduces the likelihood of spreading the virus further, but there's still odds that COVID could spread and affect far too many athletes to effectively hold the sporting events.
We've cancelled Olympics before, when world wars condemned us. We've had boycotts between the two sides of the Cold War. Did it break the hopes of athletes of those eras who missed out? Yes, there were many who missed their chances to shine on the global stage. But at least we didn't risk their lives in the process.
But we're risking the reality that too many athletes intermingle -it's one of the few joys of this international event for them - and they're bound to become vectors of the pandemic towards each other. Even with Tokyo refusing to provide solid beds and condoms to discourage the sex that happens each Olympics, there's other ways of socializing and moments during competition when COVID can spread in an instant. And then you'll have hundreds sick all at once, unable to participate and likely infecting those still unvaccinated.
The Olympics organizers might be praying to every deity in the phone book, and it WILL take divine intervention to make sure most of the Olympians survive this summer.
It is utter madness we are relying on that instead of common goddamn sense. Cancel the Olympics.
“Don’t Fauci My Florida,” read drink koozies and T-shirts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign team rolled out just as his state sees some of the highest coronavirus hospitalizations, new infections and deaths per capita in the country. It’s the latest example of Republicans running on their opposition to virus-fueled shutdowns and mask mandates. A pandemic hero to some and villain to others, Fauci has become a high-profile target.
While the merchandise is focused on Florida before the 2022 gubernatorial race there, DeSantis is seen as a potential front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. A key part of his pitch: He resisted public health experts’ calls for stricter measures against the spread of the coronavirus, spurring criticism on the left and praise from the right for keeping his state’s schools and economy comparatively open...
While discussing the Florida budget this summer, DeSantis said his state’s rosy financial outlook would not have been possible “if we had followed Fauci.”
“Instead we followed freedom,” he said.
His campaign’s “Team DeSantis” Twitter account announced the new merchandise Monday. The Fauci items are listed alongside “Keep Florida Free” hats and red koozies that take aim at face coverings with a DeSantis quote: “How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?”
Every ICU doctor and nurse would like to ask DeSantis' marketing geniuses this: "How the hell are they going to drink a beer with a ventilator tube down their throats?"
The campaign team did not respond to The Washington Post’s questions Tuesday, and Fauci did not respond to a request for comment...
DeSantis and his Republican buddies are touting "freedom" but what they're really doing is KILLING THE UNVACCINATED IN FLORIDA.
Christ. This isn't freedom: This is genocide.
As Digby herself notes:
That (fighting the pandemic) is meaningless to him. He’s owning the libs and that’s the key to success in the GOP.
He’s also killing his own voters — only the unvaccinated are dying at this point and most of them are Republicans — which seems to be politically foolish but whatever. But now that kids are getting it, and young parents, this seems even more cruel than before. In fact, it should be criminal that these right wing nihilists aren’t doing everything they can to tamp down this virus...
Our state leadership can't be bothered with deaths unless it's something that screws with their Narrative. Like the unborn fetus they so brazenly defend except for the point after that fetus is born because then that newborn has no postnatal care or social aid waiting for it.
But DeSantis isn't all that great for business or our schools or our communities because at this rate in another two weeks our hospitals are going to be overwhelmed and half the state is going to have to close down no matter what with half the workforce and half the school populations sick or dying on us.
Let me repeat. This isn't freedom: This is genocide.
And it's DeSantis' responsibility, which he's refusing to accept. Which makes it his fault.
In the first federal court reckoning since the failure of the so-called “Kraken” litigation, a judge on Monday told pro-Trump lawyers Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and their co-counsel that she was concerned that their legal team allowed dodgy affidavits to be filed.
“The court is concerned that these affidavits were submitted in bad faith,” U.S. District Judge Linda Parker said in a blockbuster remark...
More than half a year ago on Dec. 7, Judge Parker decisively rejected Powell and Wood’s effort to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan in a scathing, 36-page ruling.
“Plaintiffs ask this court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters,” Parker wrote. “This, the Court cannot, and will not, do.”
“The People have spoken,” she added.
Named after a mythical octopus-like creature, the “Kraken” is the name that Powell gave to her quadruple-armed effort to overturn election results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. Each bid failed, and every appeal was rejected. Parker convened the hearing on Monday to consider whether every lawyer who participated in legal offensive in her court should face sanctions, up to their referrals for disbarment proceedings...
...Systematically questioning what, if any, vetting the “Kraken” legal team performed on a stack of affidavits, Judge Parker tore apart the allegations inside one of those declaration.
“This is really fantastical,” Parker said.
“How could any of you as officers of the court submit this affidavit?” she added...
My observation here is: Why the hell isn't Judge Parker whipping out Ye Olde Hammer of Contempt of Court to toss each of trump's inept and inaccurate lawyers straight into jail cells? Under any measurement of Common Sense, Wood and Powell and the others committed serious unethical acts and perpetuated an ongoing fraud on both the nation and the electoral process. Those lawyers made themselves look like fools - without evidence of fraud, without any legal history to back up their claims - and mocked each courtroom doing so.
I understand what Parker is doing now is reviewing the matter for sanctions, which seem to imply fines and disbarment charges when she makes her ruling. However, she should be able to issue Contempt charges under her own power as Judge, as a means of maintaining control of her courtroom.
Either there's a concern that going this route turns trump and his lawyers into martyrs, or that there's possibly a standard of judicial ethics restraining Parker (or any other judge that has do deal with trump's decades-long attack on the legal system) from going there.
But from where I'm sitting, EVERYTHING that trump and his legal lackeys have done have been open and blatant acts of contempt towards everything the rule of law should stand for.
Contempt of Court is the FIRST thing those bastards should be held accountable for.
When I was applying for jobs in academia years ago, I figured that, depending where I was applying, my whiteness and maleness would work against me or in my favor. It never occurred to me to resent the idea that I might lose out to an equally qualified non-white person or a woman because I believe that diversity in education is an imperative to maybe, perhaps one day overcoming or at least ameliorating the effects of racism and sexism. On more than one occasion, some other white guy would ask me if I was upset that I might lose out on a dream job because of affirmative action or diversity hiring.
And my answer was always the same: "I'm not angry at people today for getting jobs. I'm not angry at people today for considering race and sex as factors. I am pissed off as hell at all the stupid, racist, sexist white men in the past who fucked it all up."
See, what gets me, time and again, is trying to conceive of all the people whose genius, whose talent, whose abilities were never even given a chance because of the actual laws and the unspoken rules of white male domination and oppression. If you really think about it, that loss is overwhelming. It's incalculable. And it is frankly entirely rational, entirely normal, entirely expected that trying to wrap your head around it is going to make a white person feel like shit.
Frankly, we white people should feel shame. We should feel anger. And rather than deny those feelings, rather than repress them and revolt against them, we should embrace them, learn from them, and grow from them. Otherwise, we'll just keep doing all the things that make future whites ashamed and angry, perpetuating the very system that we're pretending we've defeated...
History is not some distant memory, some tale to be told over dinner or a campfire like a fable of old. History is living, reaching from the past affecting the actions we take today as we attempt to redefine our futures.
If what you get from that is that white people are bad and that you don't want to feel bad, that's on you. For chrissake, as a white person, why wouldn't I feel like shit about the fact that the country wouldn't exist without the enslavement of one race and the genocide of another, both done by white people? Why wouldn't I feel like shit that the white-run government didn't enforce the very laws that it created to bring about equality between the races? Why in the world wouldn't I feel like shit about lynching and terrorism by whites against Black people? As someone who grew up white in the south, why wouldn't I feel like shit about the Supreme Court-endorsed apartheid that prevented Black people from prospering for a hundred years after slavery? Why wouldn't I feel like shit about policies like red-lining and banking discrimination and environmental ghettoes? We're now talking about things white people have done in my lifetime, not 400 years ago.
Goddamn, you'd have to be so deep in denial, so delusional, so sociopathic to not think that whiteness has been used as a weapon against non-white people. Don't tell me not to feel like hell. Tell me how you agree that we need to accept it, teach it, learn it, and change it...
The Republicans - driven by their cultural conservativism and their religious puritanism and their greed - dare not confront that past because it exposes the sins they are committing now in their pursuit of permanent political power. They cannot share that power with others they deem inferior by race and by gender and by creed. So they wage war on our nation's own history, to purge it of our sins like Rosewood and Tulsa and Sand Creek and Camp Logan and Port Chicago and the Trail of Tears.
Rather than learn from those horrors, the wingnut Right would have us all forget it... so they can repeat those mistakes in the here and now.
We're seeing the results already of the conservative witch hunt against teachers exposing racism: A Tennessee school board fired a teacher for quoting Ta-Nehisi Coates' works. Say hello to the modern update of Jim Crow, America. You're not reading this in your history books, you're reading this on today's Twitter feed.
Republicans don't want us to learn, Republicans don't want America to reform and refocus and improve. They don't want to do the smart, simple thing that Rude Pundit and I agree our nation needs to do:
A truly great country doesn't have to keep saying it's great. A truly great country can handle more than one idea about itself. A truly great country is one that recognizes its mistakes and treats them as the chance to become, what's the phrase, "a more perfect union," as our flawed, racist, but, yes, wise founders said.
This may be 2021. There may be vaccines out there to help us reduce the risks of the coronavirus, but we're running into mutant strains of COVID (currently the Delta strain) alongside the problem of people refusing to get vaccinated. THAT is causing the infection counts to go back up. Follow the report from Ian Hodgson with the Tampa Bay Times for example:
The highly contagious delta variant is spreading rapidly in Florida and is the dominant strain of the COVID-19 virus in the country, according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC data released Tuesday shows that the delta variant accounted for 13.2 percent of new COVID-19 cases in Florida as of June 19. That’s up from 2.3 percent as of June 5.
“We shouldn’t be surprised at how quickly the delta variant is spreading here,” said Derek Cummins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, “given what we saw elsewhere in the world where it took over...”
New infections and hospitalizations have increased in recent weeks as the delta variant spreads. Nearly 16,000 new coronavirus cases were detected in Florida last week, a 35 percent increase over the week before. Florida also saw 1,963 new hospitalizations from June 27 to July 4, an increase of 18 percent.
As more and more elderly residents are vaccinated, fatalities due to the coronavirus continue to fall, with 213 new deaths recorded in Florida in the past week, down from 280 per week early last month...
The elderly in Florida may be close to full vaccination rates, but what about the rest of the state's population? Teens, college-age adults, even those in their 30s and 40s aren't close to getting covered.
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the state are still below levels seen as recently as April, but are a worrying sign as vaccination rates stagnate across the state. Fifty-three percent of eligible Florida residents have been fully vaccinated, and 62 percent have received at least one shot.
The delta variant may be as much as 50 percent more infectious, according to a Public Health England report published last month. This means the virus will spread faster, especially among unvaccinated individuals...
It's been pretty much six full months of an aggressive vaccination campaign, and we're barely past 53 percent full protection.
Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine.
An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 1.1%.
And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average...
In Arkansas, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, with only about 33% of the population fully protected, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rising.
“It is sad to see someone go to the hospital or die when it can be prevented,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson tweeted as he urged people to get their shots.
In Seattle’s King County, the public health department found only three deaths during a recent 60-day period in people who were fully vaccinated. The rest, some 95% of 62 deaths, had had no vaccine or just one shot...
In the St. Louis area, more than 90% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have not been vaccinated, said Dr. Alex Garza, a hospital administrator who directs a metropolitan-area task force on the outbreak.
“The majority of them express some regret for not being vaccinated,” Garza said. “That’s a pretty common refrain that we’re hearing from patients with COVID...”
WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE GODDAMNED WOODS WITH THIS PANDEMIC, AMERICA. The sad sick thing is that our nation's population both seem unwilling to go back into quarantine - the drawn-out isolation for much of 2020 drove us mad apparently - and unwilling to fully embrace a vaccine program that is proving to work well helping people survive.
We've gotten to the point where Biden's yelling and begging to the American people to get covered is falling on deaf ears. Even the Republican governors like Hutchinson in Arkansas are trying to get their own - and it is mostly the Republican base refusing to get their shots - and they're failing.
Do we as a whole nation even have the willpower anymore, are we burned out from fatigue? Are we all resigned to letting this pandemic get the better of us?
The Iggles of Philadelphia said some brutal things about Captain Brady falling off a cliff, but I'm pretty sure the British changed their tune when Brady won more battles over the Ramhorns of Los Angeles and the Chieftains of Kansas City.
We fought for the right to root for Tampa Bay to have some of the best winning teams of recent memory! GO BOLTS! GO RAYS! GO BUCS!!! CHAMPA BAY!
Okay, so, while Americans go about enjoying the 4th of July as our Independence Day, just how do other nations perceive the UTTER GREATNESS OF EAGLELAND BOO RAH!
Well, on the bright side, they see us teaming up with lions to shoot zombie Hitlers...
Thank GOD we have Chris Evans giving us America's Ass...
Oh CMON we're not all about pizza and hamburgers and cursing every other word... (realizes I'm grilling bacon cheeseburgers for dinner this 4th) Oh SONOFABITCH...
I'm sure the Europeans are going to be more accurate when describing Americans!
We're LOUD?! WE'RE LOUD?!?!? OH CMON... and again with the food! We got our food from YOU peeps! /cries
For what I've been told, he came to the United States through Baltimore (not everyone entered the nation through Ellis Island, after all) looking for work in construction, probably in bridges. I think he had an engineering background, one of the few books he left behind to us is on Road Making by W.M. Gillespie, and it's filled with handwritten notes (and it's really dinged up).
If I recall my family's oral history right, he married a fellow immigrant named Rose who hailed from Ireland.
My Aunt Dot visited recently and shared a photo of him. This is so far the only photo I have of my great-grandfather Ernst Paul.
This is the man I am named after.
This is the immigrant who came from Germany to settle in the United States and start a family here.
He is why I consider myself the son of immigrants.
I should not be the only one who should think that way.
We Americans are all - in some form or another, and voluntary or otherwise - the sons and daughters of immigrants from a hundred other countries and a thousand different cultures.
On this 4th of July, on EVERY 4th, we Americans should take a minute and remember those who braved the journeys and took the risks to make it to a new nation, to put down new roots, to BUILD America into what it is today. Regardless if our ancestors came from Germany or Ireland or France or China or Japan or Vietnam or Mexico or Peru or Brazil or Nigeria or Egypt or India or anywhere else on this Small Blue Dot floating in sunlight.
On this day in 1863, General Lee ordered Pickett's Charge across the wide-open fields of Gettysburg, into military infamy. So important was this battle, our nation maintains a national park surrounding the city of Gettysburg itself. So it is vitally important to remember, as you read the maps of the national park, that at no time did the Confederate forces reach that McDonalds' drive-thru right off of Business US 15!
...what?
They didn't have McDonalds' back then?! How historically inaccurate is THAT!!! Damn the man. No wonder Pickett was pissed afterwards, he wasn't able to get any Shamrock Shakes!
Seriously, I wonder sometimes what it would have been like for the locals to grow up in the middle of a national monument.
(Note: I had originally inserted a You Tube clip about the battlefield preservation, but the more I watched it the more I worried it was a big-ass advert to sell memorabilia, so I deleted it. I will insert instead a better, more honorable You Tube clip)
The charges allege that Weisselberg and the Trump Organization did not properly pay taxes related to $1.7 million worth of “fringe benefits” Weisselberg received as part of his salary — most notably apartment and car leases for Weisselberg and private school tuition for his grandchildren. The specific charges also include conspiracy and grand larceny, but those too are related to these fringe benefits. Both Weisselberg and the company pleaded not guilty.
But reports in recent months have made clear that Vance’s investigation is focused on more than just corporate perks. He has also been probing matters close to the heart of the Trump Organization’s business practices, examining whether the company overvalued certain properties to score favorable loan terms while undervaluing them to pay less in property taxes. He even obtained Trump’s tax returns after a battle that went to the Supreme Court...
It's a question of understanding just how trump and his CFO were trying to cheat the tax system:
As CFO of the Trump Organization, Weisselberg received an official salary. But he also received various lucrative perks on top of that — “fringe benefits.” These included:
An apartment lease: Trump’s company paid the lease and utility bills for an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that prosecutors say has been Weisselberg’s primary residence since 2005.
Car leases: Trump’s company paid the leases on two Mercedes-Benz cars used by Weisselberg and his wife.
Private school tuition: From 2012 to 2017, either Trump or a Trump trust paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition to a New York City private school for two of Weisselberg’s grandchildren.
Though fringe benefits such as these aren’t technically part of an employee’s salary, they have monetary value and as a result should be considered taxable income paid by the employer. (Certain types of fringe benefits, like employer-provided health insurance, are excluded from taxation, but most aren’t.)
Prosecutors allege that both the Trump Organization and Weisselberg participated in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on these perks. They argue that the Trump Organization should have paid payroll taxes, and that Weisselberg — whom they allege also hid his New York City residency — evaded more than $500,000 in federal taxes, more than $100,000 in state taxes, and more than $200,000 in New York City taxes...
I recall seeing a Twitter post questioning "Why even play around with these schemes when trump could have simply paid Weisselberg better or at least properly report these benefits for tax purposes?" A good answer to that may be due to what trump (and Weisselberg and others) were trying to avoid: Accountability for their debts.
As someone who has written for decades about corporate crime, I was reading the Trump O/Weisselberg indictment going, "Yah, ok..hmm..yah..ok..Wait..HOLY SHIT!" The Trump Org is in deep, deep trouble. And not because of the criminal charges. Because of its bank loan covenants.../1
...this means it cannot readily convert its assets into cash as needed. Worse, because of the incredible incompetence and business idiocy of Trump, cash on hand (and access rapid loans through what is known as the commercial paper market) is small. So, the company survives.../3
...to figure out how he was going to generate enough cash to pay interest on bonds. He couldn't. With his dad, he tried laundering money through Trump Castle to get past a requirement with his bank loans brought on by his junk debt, but got caught. Everything crashed down.../5
...all bank loans with a business come with "lending covenants." These are basically a series of requirements, some of which include "you'll behave" in minor character. But *the most important part* of any loan covenant is the "books and records" portion. It is included in.../9
...it's all or nothing, like pregnancy: You either are or you arent. The books and records either are truthful or they aren't. Which brings us to count 12, which I think you can now understand the significance of: pic.twitter.com/xSJkwvimmR
Basically, trump may think he can lie and bluff and cheat and call it good business, but the banks he tries to deal with can't. They have to answer to the government where they operate, and to that body of laws regulating banking practices, and they need to cross every T and dot every I otherwise regulators can fine the shit out of them and even shut them down. If they can't trust the client they're dealing with, they'll stop dealing with him.
And they should have been avoiding trump already. By the 1990s his bad habits of borrowing like mad and bankrupting like mad scared away most American-based banks. trump was able to find overseas buyers for his bull, Deutsche Bank in particular. But now, if Eichenwald is right, every one of those banks ought to be freaking out and making phone calls:
...they turn over every relevant book and record pertaining to these issues. If they refuse...BOOM. Loans pulled. If they do and the banks don't like what they see...BOOM. Loans pulled. If the loans come due (which 100s of millions do next year) no way they get refinanced..../13
I've mentioned it before: the gambit for the Presidency was trump's last big con. He had always been a "clown living on credit" posing as a billionaire to his admirers when he had no true value to his name. He had nothing else waiting for him past that. He had been running from scheme to scheme, trying to find something that would make him a real billionaire instead of the puffed-up fraud his debts made him seem. That was it for him, he had nowhere else to go. It was one of the biggest reasons why he was so desperate to steal the legal election away from Biden: delaying the inevitable call from his creditors that would bankrupt him forever.
The criminal charges that still await trump on this - as soon as Weisselberg gets a good plea deal, he'll flip, and the only thing Weisselberg has of value is whatever dirt he has on trump - are still pending, but it's the hit to his gaslighting ego about wealth and success that will be an even bigger blow. Once the bills come due, he won't even be able to lie to himself anymore.
