The Numbers That Matter 2020 Edition

If anything keeps me hopeful, it's this: In the 2020 Election cycle trump honestly cannot win.

Some of the things to consider:

trump has done nothing to appeal to a broad range of American voters. Any administrative successes he's had revolve around unpopular actions - a massive tax cut for the super-rich that only benefited Wall Street, an aggressive push to build a border wall against Mexico, a harsh anti-immigration program that has punished families and children especially - or relied on a strong economy that was never that strong in the first place thanks to trump's tariff wars and failures to respond to the current pandemic.

In one of the odder things hurting trump now is the one thing trump relied on to win the Republican primaries and eke out an Electoral College win that November: Racism is now hurting trump at a time it's the only thing he's got. To quote David A. Graham at The Atlantic:

As pollsters are at pains to point out, polls are snapshots and not forecasts; Biden’s lead could dissipate, though this race has been unusually stable so far. Contrary to Trump’s protestations, Biden’s lead as it exists now is real—and given how hard it has been for anything to dent Trump’s carapace, it’s worth examining closely. Stranger still, the impetus appears to be race—something that has been both Trump’s Achilles’ heel and his secret weapon throughout his political career. For some reason, it’s affecting his political standing differently than it has before...

...Polls have consistently shown that Americans disapprove of his response to protests of police violence and believe that he has worsened race relations. In the New York Times/Siena poll, race relations (33 percent) and the protests (29 percent) are the only areas where issue approval lags behind his overall vote preference. In the Harvard/Harris poll, the same two areas earn Trump his worst marks of any issue, though they are still slightly higher than his expected vote.

Voters are right that Trump is worsening race relations and handling the protests poorly. In the past two days alone, the president has retweeted (and then deleted) a video of one of his supporters shouting “White power!” and another of two white supporters pointing guns at black protesters marching past their house...

But why? Perhaps it’s just a matter of what issues are most important to voters right now. There’s always been a sizable contingent of reluctant or conflicted Trump supporters. In 2016 exit polls, only 35 percent of voters said Trump had the temperament to be president, but he won 46 percent of the popular vote. These voters are a familiar staple of news coverage too—the ones who preface their support with “I don’t always like the way he phrases it” or “I wish he would tone it down a little, but …” Until now, these voters may have been able to overlook Trump’s other flaws because he was getting done things they liked. But the pandemic has frozen progress on nearly all of Trump’s policy priorities, insofar as they were still alive anyway. Even if voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, it’s no longer much of a positive benefit. And the profusion of news coverage has made issues of race impossible to ignore.

Alternatively, perhaps voters are shifting not just their priorities but their views. As the political scientist Michael Tesler writes, there’s evidence of real shifts in public opinion on race over the past six weeks or so. While views on policing are moving in response to a wide range of incidents, it’s clear that the Floyd case—brutal, senseless, and captured in excruciating clarity on video—has captured white attention in a way other deaths at the hands of police have not...

trump is losing voters among the groups who looked past his earlier racist antics or thought his being in the White House could temper his views. As trump's behavior worsened, however, it seems to have woken a growing number of those who were on the fence to jump off. Given how trump will continue to attack with racism and division, those numbers should get worse for him.

trump's national polling has always wavered in the low 40s, barely ever reaching 50 percent except in various Far Right trackers (and even then not for long). trump's appeal at a state-by-state level hasn't been on that hot either, and considering he's only in the White House due to a state-focused and broken-as-hell Electoral College system, trump does not have any good numbers at all.

Earlier I wrote the only number that mattered was trump's Republican Base: As long as he was as popular with them (in the high 80s-mid-90s) the party leadership wasn't going to do a thing to rein him in (it did not help the Republicans that they wanted a lot of it done anyway because they personally profited from it all).

Today the dynamic is different. To win a general election across enough states to secure the Electoral College, trump has to appeal to the middle-of-the-road, Independent voters to counter the numerical advantages Democrats have. Again, trump has done NOTHING that would appeal to the moderate middle voter set. Where he beat Hillary among No-Party/Indy voters 46-42 percent in the 2016 exit polls, he's trailing Biden with that voter group by about 21 points in the 2020 polls.

This is the other thing hurting trump: Biden is a genuinely more likable figure. Not just a more likable figure than trump - duh - but also a more likable figure than Hillary back in 2016. Where all the negative press Hillary accrued over 25 years as a public figure hurt her, Biden has no such disadvantage even with having a longer public career (and even with a number of faux pas on Biden's resume).

If we can look to what Stanley Greenberg says at The Atlantic about Biden's chances:

But this moment is very different. To start, during the summer and fall of 2016, Clinton never had the kind of national poll lead that Biden now has. She led by an average of four points four months before the election and the same four points just before Election Day. This year, after Biden effectively clinched the nomination, he moved into an average six-point lead over Trump, which has grown to nearly 10 points after the death of George Floyd and the weeks of protests that have followed. The lingering apprehension among Democrats fails to recognize just how much the political landscape has changed since 2016. We are looking at different polls, a different America, and different campaigns with different leaders...

The Clinton campaign’s worst blunder came in September 2016, when the candidate described “half of Trump’s supporters” as “deplorables” and walked right into the white working-class revolt against elites. Her primary campaign against Bernie Sanders had exposed a lack of enthusiasm for her in white working-class suburbs that Barack Obama had won. Her campaign hoped to make up for the lost votes with landslide wins among women, voters of color, and voters in big cities. White working-class voters noticed the lack of respect, and Trump ran up startling margins with them: He won these men by 48 points and women by 27, according to exit polls...

While Biden has said some gaffe-quality stuff about trump's voting base, the media's attempt to float it as a campaign-breaker went nowhere. For one, it happened far too early in 2020 and for another we've had four years to see that Hillary was right. Back to Greenberg:

But much more important than all of that is the sustained, unwavering, and extremely well-documented opposition of the American people to every element of Donald Trump’s sexist, nativist, and racist vision. Indeed, the public’s deep aversion to Trumpism explains why Biden has such a poll lead...

This is where my evaluation of Biden being a Passive-Positive character is going to be a boon to the Democratic Party. Biden's congenial and likable nature on the national stage can help keep that poll lead well into November.

There's a reason why trump and his Republican allies were so desperate to stir up fake scandals against Biden like forcing Ukraine to lie about investigating Biden's son for business dealings there. They were and still are hoping to swiftboat/mudsling Biden down to trump's level of known corruption and vulgarity.

I also wrote a long time ago about first-termers running for re-election back in 2012 when Obama was doing it. As long as the incumbent is genuinely popular with the majority of voters, the incumbent should win. trump is nowhere near genuine popularity and never has been.

So as I said at the beginning of this article, trump has no honest way to win the election in 2020.

Which is why we have every reason to believe trump and his Republican buddies are gonna cheat like hell. Via David Smith at The Guardian:

(Bill) Kristol, editor at large of the Bulwark website and director of the advocacy organisation Defending Democracy Together, said in an interview: “The special circumstances with Trump are his total abandonment of any constraints and even more important, perhaps, his having people around him who’ve abandoned any constraints on the way in which they’ll use the federal government, the executive branch, to say things, do things, pretend to do things.

“Richard Nixon did a little of that in 1972, and of course presidents always tout good news in the months before the election. But this time, it’s the degree to which you could have a real sustained effort to suppress minority voting and not make it easy for young people to vote..."

Voter suppression has haunted US elections for decades but the pandemic presents Trump with new opportunities. States are seeking a massive expansion of mail-in ballots so people do not have risk their health by queuing and voting in person. The president has intensified claims that this will lead to widespread cheating, even though several studies have shown that voter fraud is extremely rare...

His wild words are often backed by organizational muscle and action. The Republican National Committee has devoted $20m to opposing Democratic lawsuits across the country seeking to expand voting. Republicans are also reportedly aiming to recruit up to 50,000 people in 15 key states to serve as poll watchers and challenge the registration of voters they believe are ineligible.

Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York, said: “What we’re seeing in some primary states is the closures of polling places in African American dominated areas and mistaken purging of Democrats from the voter rolls. Some of this is anecdotal, but it is worrying all the same. And it will, no doubt, continue through the general election...”

What the Republicans are bound to do is reduce the turnout and discourage voters from showing at all, which gives the more extremist voters eager to do it - which favors the Far Right - more power at the ballot box. By shutting down polling precincts in poor and clearly minority communities - especially Blacks who vote as a 90-95 percent bloc for Democrats - they're definitely discouraging turnout.

The closer the GOP can make the numbers between trump and Biden, the likelier they can flip the mid-sized battleground states like Michigan (and big ones like Florida) same as they did against Hillary in 2016, and steal another Electoral College "victory" even if Biden gets 50 percent of the popular vote with a 6-8 million advantage over the less-loved trump.

This is where voter turnout is the one big key for Democrats and Left-leaning voters (and the sizabler anti-trump voting bloc that's grown since 2016). The only way to beat voter suppression is to show up and force your vote through. The best way to stop the Republicans from playing their rigged game of demographics and gerrymandering is to give Biden such leads in enough states that there's no way it will get "too close to call." They can't rig the machines enough to undercount or misvote every pro-Biden check that gets plugged in. They can't hide it if 500,000 people vote for Biden and pretend it was 250,000. There's only so much the GOP can do before enough people take notice and do something about it.

Get the damn vote out, America. To every anti-trump out there, this is your chance to throat-punch that Shitgibbon. To every Liberal, every Progressive, time to realize you're in the same damn boat and vote with unity. To every person horrified by trump's hatred and sexism, rise up and be counted, dammit.

Don't let the polls distract you. They should motivate us to show up and fulfill the hopes those polls are asking for. OUR NUMBERS MATTER. Let's do this.

Little Green Footballs Bumper Sticker Generator

I only got around to one set of Honest Bumper Stickers for 2020, mostly 'cause my heart wasn't in it this year.

But that didn't stop THIS GUY (Charles Johnson) from creating a 2020 trump/pence Bumper Sticker Generator!

Yes, for only three pennies a day, you too can be a campaign supporter for the WORST PRESIDENT THIS NATION HAS EVER SEEN AND THAT'S WITH THE LIKES OF JACKSON, TYLER, BUCHANAN, JOHNSON AND HARDING.

Look! I even made one already.

IT HAS THE ADVANTAGE OF BEING AN ACTUAL trump QUOTE!!!

So dig in, America!

'Cause we're facing four more years of digging out of our graves if trump wins re-election.

What Terrifies Me July 2020 Edition

Where we are as a nation, heading into the month of July:

On the battlefields of Afghanistan where the United States still deploys troops trying to resolve a war since September 11 2001, we're getting told that Russia's GRU - Putin's dirty war handlers - started in 2018 offering bounties to Taliban militants for every American soldier confirmed killed. The reports were confirmed by American intel people and presented to trump's White House by late March of this year... whereupon trump did NOTHING except increase his praise of Putin, try to force the G7 nations to re-include Russia in their clique by late May, and pretty much sit on his ass for three months until the reports leaked to the major news outlets (even Fox Not-News confirmed the reports were legit).

While the realities of war are that there will be bloodshed and questionable acts - the whole Cold War between USSR and America was pretty much both sides using proxy nations and guerrilla fighters to make the other side bleed - the Bounty program is an aggressive, offensive step by Russia that you'd think requires a direct and hard response from the U.S. towards that nation. The specific targeting of troops during a period of time when our nation was trying to engage the Taliban into peace talks to resolve 18-plus years of war, THIS requires a harsh rebuke, proportional responses, sanctions, public condemnation on the floor of the UN, something... and trump did nothing.

The White House is now claiming the intel wasn't verified so they had no reason to react, previously it was claiming trump never even saw the report. That part is actually provable: It's been well documented already that trump does not read his daily briefs.

But one of two things are at play here: Either trump is truly ignorant of his duties and fails to do even the basic minimum required of the high office, or trump did learn of the GRU bounty program and decided to do nothing because he's too beholden to his BFF Putin to defend our own nation's interests and our own troops. Either of these should be considered serious breaches of his Oath of Office. These are impeachable offenses (again).

After all the bullshit over Benghazi, here's trump committing an even greater affront to the men and women who are serving our nation overseas, and here's the Republican Party most likely ignoring it like the hypocritical bastards they've always been.

While all this is going on, trump has fully abdicated his duties to the nation in trying to curb the spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus. No matter how he tries to deny it the pandemic and trump's failure to see the reality of it - the nation's economy cannot fully recover while COVID threatens everyone, there is no cure coming in time to help him recover the economy - condemns himself.

Speaking of the pandemic, the spike in cases over the last two weeks prove the United States is nowhere near "getting back to normal" and that the craziness of public gatherings since Memorial Day weekend have boosted the dynamics of COVID-19 into high gear. The virus is now clogging up hospitals in Florida, Texas, and Arizona to where the likelihood of COVID-related deaths are going to spike as well. We are, as God would say to us, royally fucked.

The one thing that hasn't happened is in relation to the Black Lives Matter protests that have gone global this past month. So far, in somewhat good news, the protests' disregard for social distancing hasn't led to any proven increase in COVID spread. That's probably because the protesters actually take things like masks and hand-washing absolutely seriously. In the bad news category, the protests show no sign of abating because there's no sign the police unions are going to give up their abuse of powers any time soon. This is going to be a long slog well into November and beyond...

And it's not even July yet.

The Meaning of the Mask

It hurts to see my state of Florida bring out its godforsaken high-level crazy-ass madness on the global stage, but here it was in all its infamy this week:

It's like they were being forced at gunpoint to eat their veggies and brush their teeth at night.

It's been one of the worst reactionary movements I've ever seen in my life outside of "All White Lives Matter" from its maddening tone-deafness, willful rejection of science, and desire of each of those screaming anti-mask arguers to show off their prideful selves.

The one consistent argument - aside from the conspiracy whacko stuff like 5G transmission (?!) - is how the masks will hurt them by cutting off the amount of oxygen we need. The "I Can't Breathe" excuse, which is so tone-deaf as to be crass intentionally. It's also wrong, with report after study after proven demonstration shows us.

So why are these wingnuts absolutely fucking freaking out over the wearing of something that really doesn't harm them and only costs about 6.99 to buy (cloth masks available in menswear stores NOW) or 15.99 to buy as a 50-pack off Amazon?

Masks are symbolic. They have cultural value. And in this case, in this Age of Coronavirus, the mask represents health care.

But here's the thing:

The mask is not about YOUR own health and well-being. The mask represents the health and well-being of EVERYONE ELSE AROUND YOU.

The mask does not stop you from contracting the virus. The mask reduces the odds of you spreading the virus to everyone else.

The mask is a symbol of you looking out for others, that you are a caring and thinking person, willing to do your part for the community - family, friends, neighbors, even your enemies - health.

What does it say for those who reject wearing the mask? What does it tell us when these self-absorbed people go out in public proudly displaying their faces? What level of Pride is driving these people to expose not themselves but everyone else to the risks of COVID?

It's not so much that each of these screaming, mocking people are increasing the odds they get exposed to a lethal virus.

It's that each of these screaming, mocking people are willing to get the rest of us sick. They don't care for us, they don't WANT to care for us. It would disrupt their self-perceptions of superiority.

Which symbolizes exactly how dangerous their self-centered, holier-than-thou, egomaniacal rage-driven world-view is.

Gods help us, because the people who refuse to wear the masks clearly don't give enough fucks to help us.

Their selfishness is getting everyone else killed.

In the Reach of Her Arms

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies
I say
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my step   
The curl of my lips 
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman   
That’s me
-- Maya Angelou

Oh, by the way, while everyone's been distracted by an out-of-control pandemic made worse by Republican incompetence, the 2020 Democratic primaries kind of wrapped up a week or two ago with Joe Biden winning enough delegates to secure the bid.

So now the guessing game moves on to "Who will he pick to team up as his Vice Presidential candidate?"

You know my feelings about Veeps, having been burned by the likes of Dick Cheney, but as the office is still required and the nomination still valid, I gotta put my two cents in on this.

We already know that Biden had promised - when the field of nominees went from "a lot of well-spoken and qualified women" to "what the hell happened to Kamala and Liz?" - that if chosen he'll nominate a woman Veep, so that narrows the list a bit among likely Democrats at the state and federal level.

There's been a lot of guessing since Sanders dropped out - unofficially giving Biden the lead - of the likely candidates, with some of the names more likely than others especially as a few - Amy Klobuchar just confirmed this weekend she didn't want to be in consideration - have risen in national awareness.

Names like Liz Warren, Kamala Harris (both of whom were serious Primary contenders until they fell out), Governor Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), Senator Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), Senator Tammy Duckworth (Illinois), Representative Val Demings (Florida), and Should-Have-Been Governor Stacey Abrams (Georgia) have been bandied around as the best choices.

In trying to game out which candidate gets picked, you need to consider the factors that always go into a Veep selection:

Geography: Thanks to the 12th Amendment requiring the President and Vice-President to be from different states, parties have looked at geographic balance for their top ticket. In the days of olde, that usually meant by region - North to South, and then Midwest, and then Pacific coast - although it doesn't mean as much nowadays. In terms of all 50 states and territories, the only place Biden can't choose is another candidate from Delaware. By custom he really should avoid any Mid-Atlantic state like Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, maybe even North Carolina. The best possible candidates here - Harris in California, the current Governor of New Mexico Michelle Lujan Grisham - would be obvious ones. Everything else is fair game, and in terms of value... well that's the next element.

Battleground: What matters more than Geography nowadays is the closely contested major and mid-sized states in terms of Electoral College value. Thanks to the broken nature of the EC, a state won or lost by 5,000 votes means that WHOLE Electoral value of that one state - which can sneak you past the 270 EV requirement - can skew the results. A state that can turn on the campaign ability of a well-liked Veep that also has a double-digit Electoral value - say Michigan (16), Florida (29!), or Arizona (11) - would really help fill the ticket. In this regard, Whitmer, Demings, and Abrams from Georgia (16) are the most likely choices.

Party Unity: One of several things that hurt the Democrats in 2016 - aside from the Russian meddling, media hatred of Hillary, Hillary's general unlikability with independent voters - was how the Far Left - Progressives - felt ignored by Hillary's choice of Senator Tim Kaine (VA) for her Veep. While Kaine is a solid and reliable Democratic figure, he's also a pro-business Centrist much in the same mold as Clinton. If Hillary had chosen a more Progressive, reformist candidate to balance the ticket with her - certainly not Bernie himself, because that would have been awkward and distracting - she could have kept enough of the Far Left from protest-voting for the Green Party and siphoning votes in key states.

Biden's in the same predicament: a veteran party figure with too much of a pro-business profile and Centrist ways, he may have to look for a ticket candidate with Progressive bona fides. Warren is the most likely Progressive with a recognized resume of reforms, while Harris has a hard reputation on business reforms and accountability but also a law enforcement background that may not help her rep at the moment. The Progressive creds for the remaining top women in the field are not as established but as long as they stand proud on Civil Rights, pro-choice, business reforms, and pissing trump off to no end, they should suffice.

Demographics: Already considered, because there's been a seismic shift in how women are voting since 2016. It's the big open reason why Biden pledged to secure a woman on the ticket as a show of solidarity. It's also a serious matter - especially as the issues of police brutality and racism has changed the mood of even White voters - for Biden to consider a Black Woman for this. If he goes with a White Woman even one noted as strong on Civil Rights, it may sour on some voting blocs within the party...

Charisma/Name Draw: Personality counts in an election, and as long as you're not nominating a wet blanket - or Sarah Palin - you should do fine (Even Bush the Elder won once with Dan Quayle(!)). You want someone not only able to present well at campaign speeches and debates (if any take place) but also make the Democratic Party think well of the future. Biden is old and the Dems - and the nation - are overdue for a leadership shift to younger generations.

This is where younger possibilities with nationally-recognized names gain in value. Warren is currently 71 years old, and while a marquee name with a devoted fanbase she's not necessarily the future of the party. Demings is 63 years, which puts her uncomfortably in the senior age bracket: In terms of name recognition she was just this year part of the House Impeachment process regarding trump's extortion of Ukraine, which is solid cred with the party base. Harris is 55, which puts her on the edge of the Gen X demographic (which neither helps nor hurts, to be honest). Michigan's governor Whitmer is 48, and gained national awareness during the COVID response as a target of trump's - and his Far Right fanbase's - ire, which gives her a boost. Stacey Abrams - who gained national recognition as a serious candidate for Georgia's governorship and "lost" due to questionable electoral behavior by her rival Republican who just happened to be the state officer overseeing the election itself (Kemp's failure to recuse tainted the results to where even Republicans were shamed by it) - is 46.

The way things are shaking out, Kamala Harris is the most likely candidate to be Biden's Veep. She had scored early points with the Democratic base when she attacked Biden's credibility on school business and racism, so for her to accept the ticket spot would be a gesture of unity. It'll be the first time since Lloyd Bentsen from TX (1988) that the Democratic ticket had someone on the ticket from the Western half of the U.S. (Bill Clinton being from Arkansas counted more Southern than Midwest). The biggest knocks against choosing her are that 1) California is solid Democratic state, she doesn't help flip a Battleground state 2) her experience in the legal profession as prosecutor and as State Attorney General may hide some police brutality skeletons that might sting, and 3) Harris didn't exactly run a sound national campaign and needs to show improvement as a campaigner this time around (That Active-Negative character I tagged her with didn't help). Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan - being White - could be a surprise choice, but would make sense in terms of long-term party leadership as well as helping secure a region - the Great Lakes "Rust Belt" - that didn't show up in 2016 as hoped. Val Demings would be an interesting choice and would signify Biden's interest in trying to clinch Florida (these 29 Electoral College numbers are very tempting), but like Harris she has a law enforcement background (Orlando police chief) that may rub raw with Democratic voters even though Demings is openly calling for police reforms. Stacey Abrams' name would generate the most excitement as a symbol of Black voters fighting against GOP voter suppression and her placement on the ticket could help flip Georgia to Blue (and maybe help the other Southern states encourage voter turnout), however she'd be considered inexperienced at the federal level compared to the other choices.

I'd grade it as: Harris (CA) around 60 percent odds,
Demings (FL) around 20 percent odds,
Whitmer (MI) around 10 percent odds,
Abrams (GA) around 10 percent odds.

The thing about a candidate choosing a Veep: All we learn from it is how that candidate is going to govern. Biden's choice will showcase his leadership style (which as a Passive-Positive is going to lean towards someone who works well in a Congenial team setting).

Choose wisely, Joe.

The Nation Plans Accordingly...

I hear always the admonishment of my friends:

"Bolt her in, constrain her!"
But who will guard the guardians? 
The wife plans accordingly and begins with them.

-- Juvenal, Satire VI

I've been struggling the past few days to get into words what it is I want to say about the current protests and community uprisings against police brutality, tying it in with the remembrances of Tank Man and the need for protesting injustice under all circumstances.

In the meantime, this article - written by an ex-cop under the pseudonym A.Cab (the newest acronym for All Cops Are Bastards) about the systemic bias, rage, racism, sexism, and bullying in law enforcement - on Medium has turned into the must-read thing of the moment: 

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough...

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years...

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it...

To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force: “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”

Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity...

If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.

Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith.

Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops...

Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people...

And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?

To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started...

This is where, in a sane and just world, instead of sending out more cops we need to be sending out more social workers. But gee, who wants to spend a billion dollar budget on social workers...? Back to the anonymous op-ed:

Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.

Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:

No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.
No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.
Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.
Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.
Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.
One final idea: consider abolishing the police...

As for all the calls (like this one) to "abolish the police" sounds like extreme demolition, but in the context that the op-ed writer is telling us, it's more along the lines of extreme reform. That things need to be broken down in order to rebuild something without the stain and sins of the previous shape of things. The current system, there's almost nothing good to salvage. The entire setup has to go, and a new, more humane and less violent system put in place. This requires not a revolution but determination.

A lot of this were warning signs back during Ferguson. I went back to look at what I wrote then. When the anonymous cop writes about "No More Civil Asset Forfeiture," that was one of the biggest takeaways we got from the official reports about those dark months. The way that department operated - fining the hell out of poor residents in order to raise their own revenues - created what I called an extortion racket the police couldn't give up. We had a legal system that relied on bad police behavior to the point our prosecutors and judges were accomplices after the fact. In Ferguson, much like what we've had in our cities this month, we had cops carrying firepower equal to most standing armies all to shoot and maim unarmed civilians. I still remember that quote from an actual Iraqi veteran: "We rolled lighter than that in an actual war zone."

SIX YEARS AGO, we had all these warning signs, and we've done nothing since then but let the local and county law enforcement get worse.

The need for accountability out of our guardians has always been high. The failure of our nation to hold them accountable has always been a great tragedy. Too many people have been killed and harmed already.

Who polices the police? We should, otherwise like the wife of Juvenal's satire we need to plan ourselves accordingly.

I Think It Was the Murder Hornet News That Broke Me

Remember all those years months ago when I said HOLY SHIT 2020 JUST ESCALATED.

It was all about the United States bombing an Iranian political figure/Iraqi instigator/bad-guy-at-least-to-US on Iraqi soil in a way that violated a couple of international laws. I worried - as did others - that we were seeing an escalation to an actual U.S.-Iran ground war that would have been disastrous for America at the worst possible time.

Ah, how quaint that all seems now...

Yeah, that was JANUARY 2nd of this year. And I have to admit, um, I knew it was going to be crazy coming into 2020 because 1) election year, 2) trump getting worse, 3) Republicans deflecting and defecating like mad, 4) etc.

And ever since this January, it's been... it's uh... you know how Einstein once noted that time is relative? Well, it's been feeling like an entire DECADE of history has just happened in about FIVE MONTHS.

Just... I'm not the only one who's noticed. Here's a YouTuber Julie Nolke realizing it too.

And then her JUNE self visited that APRIL self:

I started laughing at the moment she freaked over the MURDER HORNETS because I did too, and I had to laugh because I dare not cry (I would not stop if I do).

And the thing is, Julie overlooks a lot of stuff I took as major news the first half of this year. And *I* overlooked things like the Australian wild fires.

And NOBODY seems to remember that between January and February our nation IMPEACHED trump for his antics over extorting Ukraine to adversely influence our 2020 elections. That may have to do with the Republican-controlled Senate openly ignoring the evidence and protecting trump from removal. Still, in any other environment we would still be talking about that...

It would take me days right now to create a checklist of sorts for all the crazy crap that the universe has thrown at us - including evidence that there IS a parallel universe and it's going backwards in time - and I would still miss on certain things like Tiger King being a cultural meme phenomenon probably because I don't want to go watch a crazy show about deranged people abusing poor tigers and other animals for our amusement (when a retired drug dealer is the most mentally balanced and decent person in your list of suspects, there is something fundamentally wrong with this universe...).

This is part of the reason why I haven't been blogging as much here in an election year. I've been doing this long enough to have a backlog archive, and you might notice that my writings go up every four years. This year, I'm not keeping pace... and a lot of it has to do with being overwhelmed with the madness of this world. I can't keep up.

I am trying to finish an article about Tank Man, an annual effort to remember our hero for freedom, but it's getting tied into OUR ongoing protests here in the U.S. to fight for our own freedom and well-being.

This is gonna take a while.

And if anybody shows up claiming to be me from November 2020, I'll remember to ask him our Trust Password first. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW, FUTURE ME.

The Long Night of trump's Denigration

THIS MOTHERFUCKER

photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Had Lafayette Park outside of the White House cleared on his orders. With cops using tear gas and rubber bullets, they pushed out what had been a disciplined and calm protest against trump's (in)actions on racial justice.

All so trump could walk to the nearest church - St. John's Episcopal - so he could stand outside it, holding up a Bible so he could get a GODLESS PHOTO OP as though he's doing The Lord's work destroying the First Amendment, and overriding states' authority with plans to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to negate Posse Comitatus and send military troops into our own cities with orders to "shoot all looters."

To quote El Kilgore in his article:

He did not enter the church, mind you; our president is not a church-goer. Nor did he explain the reason for this juxtaposition of hellish threats of violence against American citizens and a brief appearance in front of a place of worship consecrated to the Prince of Peace...

trump also did this on pure impulse. trump did not inform the church's bishop he was going there, did not ask permission, and most obviously exploited their faith against their will:

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde all but called the president sacrilegious for this gross political exploitation of her denomination’s church. The conservative evangelicals Trump cares about most, of course, won’t listen because they generally don’t think women should be eligible for religious leadership; some don’t even consider mainline Protestants like Budde real Christians at all. They do, however, love their Bibles, and some may bridle at this heathenish politician’s cynical use of the Good Book. Even if they believe he’s inadvertently doing the Lord’s Work, they don’t want him making it just another arrogant boast in his panoply of narcissistic hymns to himself...

The Shitgibbon didn't even know how to hold the Bible properly. He kept moving it around, waving it for display and not for genuine inspiration.

trump's little speech during all this staging called out for his followers to stand by their "Second Amendment" rights, which is a call to the gun nuts to go public again with their assault rifles for intimidation (and now, actual acts of violence). There was no mention of our citizens' First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, but as you can see with how trump used the police to crush a peaceful assembly outside the White House door, he doesn't give a rat's ass about OUR freedoms.

he only cares about his appearance: Staging himself as a bully and a monster, thinking that makes him a hero and a man.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives need to fight back against this wanna-be tyrant. The Republicans in Congress - especially in the Senate - need to be SHAMED into realizing they're backing the destroyer of American freedom. The Governors need to deny trump any excuse to send soldiers into OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS before they shoot us.

The Republican War On Everybody Else just ramped up to DEFCON-2.

We are one more trumpian meltdown away from DEFCON-1.

To every person who voted for trump in 2016, to every Moderate who refused to vote for Hillary, to every Progressive who mocked any support to Hillary: GO FUCK YOURSELVES. There is no GODDAMN WAY Hillary was ever going to be THIS bad. WE WARNED YOU. This is your nightmare foisted on the rest of us. And if you think you'll be spared the damage that's to come, you're likely going to be the ones paying first...

(Update 6/8): Thanks again to Batocchio for listing me on Crooks&Liars for Mike's Blog Round-Up. Sorry I don't post as often as I should.

The Lights Are Off And Nobody's Home

Presented with comment (via Catherine Kim at Vox):

As the nation was rocked by waves of protests, the White House went dark on Sunday night.

Photos on social media showed the White House with nearly all its exterior lights out. Although it’s unclear why the administration turned the lights off, the dark building stood in stark contrast to the fires burning around the city. It also symbolized a response to what was happening outside the White House gates, as protesters continued to mourn the death of George Floyd, a black man killed last week by a police officer who pinned Floyd’s neck to the ground with his knee.

It was also reported Sunday that the president took shelter in the White House bunker on Friday as crowds gathered outside the White House that evening to protest against police violence toward the black community. The peaceful gatherings took a turn after dark as protesters clashed with law enforcement and lit fires near the building...

trump reportedly got escorted down to a security bunker, and this is something that other Presidents had done in moments of crisis - for example, Cheney was directed down there while the 9/11 airstrikes took place - so this isn't the problem.

The problem is, that in a moment where confidence and leadership was needed, IS needed, trump fled and didn't look back.

Even Dubya made a public address on the evening of 9/11 to provide even an illusion of leadership and comfort to the nation. trump could not - as every major city roiled in protest and riot - do that basic task of the Presidency.

Turning off the lights was just the extra self-owning humiliation. People compared it to when you turn off the lights on Halloween when you run out of candy, only in this case trump and his staff turned off the lights when they ran out of courage.

I saw other tweets from DC media people who claim that the White House regularly turned off the lights every evening, except I personally can't recall ever seeing that myself when I've traveled through DC at night when visiting. On television, the building is illuminated almost all the time. And I would take at his word this tweeter who claims to work nearby and who was stunned to see every light dimmed:

from @duffgoldman tweet

I mean seriously, EVERY LIGHT IS OFF. Even the porch light. You would think that SOME lights would stay on for security reasons, but even the interior lights are all off.

This is, by the by, a reminder that when trump's people moved in, they had a hard time figuring how the light switches even worked. Took them 3 years apparently but they finally got that step accomplished...

BREAKING NEWS: As I wrote this, trump finally came out of his bunker to give an address to the nation... where he pretty much invoked an Insurrection Act of 1807 to override state governors to deploy the National Guard and even military forces (a work-around of the Posse Comitatus Act) to places where trump wants to.

This, to be honest, is actually WORSE than having a coward hiding in the basement. Now, we've got a coward ordering our military into hunting us down so he can feel more macho and in-control.

But this isn't control. This is only stirring more chaos. This will embolden the ones looking for violence - and hint, it's NOT the anti-fascists and street marchers calling for justice - and make our nation's situation even worse.

And this sure as hell isn't Leadership. trump is reacting in a panic, like the coward he is, unconcerned with the consequences of his decisions that could lead to more pain and heartbreak for a United States that under his divisive rule is no longer united.

At this point, bring on Hurricane Season, Lord. Go ahead and make 2020 more of a shitshow that it's been the last five months.

Turn out the lights on America...

The Buildup To When It All Explodes

On top of all the nightmares - the pandemic, the mass unemployment, the escalating decay of America's global standing, the purging of federal oversight to curtail corruption, probably even the arrival of freaking Murder Hornets (thanks a lot, 2020) - one of the darkest yet consistent patterns of these trumpian years has been the public displays of racism. The blatant cruelty towards immigrants and the intentional separation of families as punishment. The demeaning and derogatory language towards Muslims, towards Chinese and Asians, towards Blacks.

All of it building off of a Far Right, conservative-backed Culture War that had been raging years before trump showed up on the political stage to make it worse.

As Adam Serwer noted, for all historians to document forever: The Cruelty Is the Point.

And this week, after months of outrage after outrage, it all exploded across the United States.

The buildup started earlier this year in February, when a black man Ahmaud Arbrey jogging through a mostly-white neighborhood in Georgia was shot and killed by two (further investigation upped the number to three) white men who claimed Arbrey was a suspected burglar. When their story fell apart (there were no burglary reports filed to back up their claim), the local law enforcement still refused to pursue the matter even as the outrage went national. In early May, a video made by the third suspected killer - released by him hoping to prove his buddies' argument - was shown demonstrating Arbrey was unarmed, tried to run around his attackers, got "boxed in" and was still shot to death. Within days, the state of Georgia took over the investigation and arrested the shooters. There is still anger and outrage at how slowly the justice system even responded to the matter, with serious allegations of how at least one of the shooters having ties to that justice system implying privilege and protection for them.

And while all of that was going down, earlier this month in Minneapolis things got worse, when George Floyd got arrested over a possible counterfeit $20 (I originally heard it was a bad check bouncing) and it led to his death-by-cop (via Catherine Kim at Vox):

The death of George Floyd, 46, was captured on video and was later widely shared on social media. In the footage, an officer pins Floyd’s neck to the ground as Floyd is begging, “Please, I can’t breathe” — a moment that closely resembles the pleas of Eric Garner, a black man who died from an officer’s chokehold in 2014. Another police officer watches the scene unfold as bystanders voice their concerns for Floyd. One person comments that Floyd has a bloody nose while another yells, “Bro, you’ve got him down, let him breathe at least, man...”

Although the video doesn’t capture the moments leading to the arrest, the Minneapolis Police Department said they were responding to a call that a man was trying to use a $20 counterfeit bill, according to the Star Tribune. In a statement, the police department said officers arrived at the scene to find Floyd — who matched the description of the suspect — sitting on a car and appearing to be intoxicated. They added that Floyd physically resisted the police and seemed to be “suffering medical distress,” which is why they had called for an ambulance.

The police’s excessive use of force seemingly has no excuse: The department does not permit the technique that was used to pin Floyd’s head to the ground, according to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Four officers involved in the case were fired by Tuesday afternoon, and the FBI has now opened a civil rights investigation on the incident...

Just to point out: The knee-to-neck method is specifically prohibited by the police department as policy, and the cop violated that policy. The cop kept his knee on Floyd's neck for eight minutes (from the probable cause filing), and Floyd was clearly dead five minutes in. He kept his weight on Floyd's neck for three extra minutes to make sure.

And from there, our nation went into the cycle of protest, and police crackdown, and shockwave of more protests to where stores have been smashed, building set on fire, and thousands hurt with rubber bullets, batons, and worse.

Right now nearly every major city has seen its marches, and several of them reporting serious destruction and harm.

Making things worse: Reports of "outside agitators," of people - a good number of them white folk - are intentionally causing the arson and damage as a means of escalating the rage and hate. At a moment our nation needs to calm down and avoid bloodshed, we're instead racing towards street war.

This feels different than the last big wave of protests against police brutality, back when Ferguson ripped apart communities and forced an ongoing debate between "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter." But when you watch that video clip of Floyd's murder, of his gasping "I can't breathe" in a dark echo of Eric Garner, how can you accept the argument that there's not a campaign of intimidation and force by law enforcement upon the minorities of our cities?

We had different political leadership back in 2014, when Obama was there to speak to our better angels and prevent the spread of violence. But this is the Darkest Timeline now, with trump in the Oval Office, and trump has been busy sending out more tweets to threaten "thugs" with lines like "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Christ help us. trump's not working to mend the wounds, he's looking to rend us further into violence against each other, so he can steal a little more, cheat a little more, ruin this nation's future a lot more.

This does feel like a civil war this weekend, the divisions not by state line but by cultural obsessions and willingness to spill the blood of men and women who are marching for the sheer simple call of "No More Police Brutality."

This year 2020 just gets worse all the time.

Just the Facts Jack In This Age of trumpian Bull

One of the more frustrating things about The Darkest Timeline has been how trump would take to his Twitter account to post and retweet nonfactual statements, wild accusations, and straight-up lies.

However over the past week or so, trump has gone overboard pushing a discredited conspiracy theory about former Congresscritter-turned-MSNBC-talking-head Joe Scarborough, a story involving a staff worker who died at a district office back in 2001. It's gotten so bad that the woman's widower sent formal letters to Twitter and the press begging for the social media outfit to use its authority to delete the offending tweet(s).

The public outcry against trump's abuse of Twitter's code of conduct had been an ongoing protest ever since 2017 - no previous President Loser of the Popular Vote has been so vulgar towards the general population the way trump has - but this moment seemed to have crossed a line even for the notoriously lax Twitter bosses.

The next time trump went to Tweet an outrageous falsehood - about the legitimacy of vote-by-mail - Twitter took the extraordinary step of adding a footnote that basically accused the Tweet (and trump) of being wrong. Let's refer to Gilad Edelman at Wired for the rest:

What prompted Twitter to finally break the seal was a two-tweet tirade about the supposed dangers of expanding vote-by-mail during the coronavirus pandemic...

Later that evening, Twitter added a note to the bottom of the tweet: a big exclamation mark and a message reading “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” which linked to a Twitter Moment fact-check. “Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud,” read the bold heading. Beneath it came some bullet points on vote-by-mail, followed by a curated feed of tweets picking apart Trump’s various recent claims about it...

The Twitter spokesperson said that flagging Trump’s vote-by-mail tweet was the debut of a similar policy to protect “civic integrity” by correcting false information about voting or the census. Twitter didn’t say so, but it surely helped that this particular tweet contained one nugget of rock-solid, certifiably false information: the claim that California was sending ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” In fact, ballots are going only to registered voters...

This is, for the most part, the first time trump has been contradicted in real-time pretty much to his face (nearly every other countering in the media has been indirectly through op-ed articles and pundit shows).

It's telling that Twitter still hasn't confronted trump on the personal attacks he's done on their service, which are offensive and wrong and deserve him getting his account suspended (AKA Twitter Jail). Still, any little bit helps... Because trump's response to getting punched back has been to lash out in full meltdown. Via Charlotte Klein at Vanity Fair:

Trump threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies the day after being fact-checked by Twitter. “Republicans feel that social media platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” the president wrote in a post on Wednesday. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”

Funny thing about the First Amendment, it's not on trump's side here:

The president, notes the Associated Press, does not have the power to “unilaterally regulate or close the companies, which would require action by Congress or the Federal Communications Commission,” and Trump’s call to expand regulation on such tech giants “appeared to fly in the face of long-held conservative principles on deregulation...”

Anything trump tries to do to punish Twitter will likely lead to lawsuits taking years to resolve, by which time trump could be out of office (and fleeing for a country without extradition).

The facts, obviously, aren't going to slow trump down on this. he's threatening to issue an Executive Order (remember when Republicans attacked Obama for his EOs?) to compel Twitter and other social media outlets - Facebook and YouTube, both services facing increasing pressure to police their websites for disinformation over COVID-19 and other conspiracy nutcase theories - to bend to his will. trump doesn't have the legal standing but he has the ego of the bully to make life harder for the companies attempting to curtail his - and his cronies' - ongoing efforts to gaslight the world.

But the facts should matter. And these social media sites have an obligation, not only to the First Amendment but also to the common interest of properly informing the public. Forcing trump to confront his falsehoods in real-time, cutting off the Russian bots trying to overwhelm our attention with disinfo, and making sure Americans have the correct facts ought to be their agenda here on out.

Because as we've seen with three years of trump's gaslighting, lies and disinformation kills.

Quick Notes On trump's Schemes for the 2020 Convention

Given the other things to condemn trump for during this pandemic crisis, ignoring the obvious need to cancel a large gathering of his OWN PARTY is three different levels of stupid, but that's what we should expect anymore. Via Daniel Politi at Slate:

President Donald Trump began Memorial Day with a threat, warning that he was seriously considering moving the Republican National Convention from Charlotte if there are no guarantees that the state will have lifted any restrictions on how many people can gather in closed spaces by late August. In a series of tweets on Monday, Trump said he needed guarantees from the Democratic governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, that Republicans would be able to fill Charlotte’s Spectrum Center to capacity during the convention...

Cooper, Trump insisted, must “immediately” give Republicans an answer “as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied,” Trump wrote. If he can’t guarantee that then the GOP will have to “reluctantly” another site for the convention, “with all of the jobs and economic development it brings...”

A few points where trump is wrong: Political conventions do not bring a lot of economic development or jobs; It is - even under these risky circumstances where a lot of places have cancelled conventions- difficult to find another large-sized convention facility to move to on short notice, so in some respects trump is bluffing here; and anybody even thinking of showing up at an event with more than ten people - all of whom are coming from 50 states plus territories bringing any variant of coronavirus with them - is basically condemning about two-thirds of fellow attendees with a virus that's gonna wreck their lungs, kidneys, and other major organs.

There's a reason why the comic-cons and library cons and marketing cons are all cancelled or delayed: nobody is stupid enough to host these things right now, no matter how much pressure the CEOs and Republicans are pushing to re-open.

Of course, trump is both projecting and deflecting when making his decisions. Back to Politi:

The president’s tweets also come a few days after the New York Times reported that Trump was open to participating in a smaller convention, although he reportedly often wondered to aides why they couldn’t simply move it to Florida, where the reopening process is moving along more quickly. Trump has also openly wondered whether North Carolina’s Democratic governor would try to hurt Republicans with rules regarding the convention. “It’s got a Democrat governor, so we have to be a little bit careful with that, because they’re playing politics,” Trump told a Washington Examiner columnist earlier this month. “They’re playing politics, as you know, by delaying the openings.”

Cooper has insisted that his decisions regarding COVID-19 restrictions have nothing to do with politics. “A pandemic cannot be political,” Cooper told CNN. “If it is, we lose that ability to work together.”

There are several terrifying aspects at play here. Above all, trump seems to think the pandemic is a partisan hoax meant to embarrass himself and the Republicans who are pushing quick re-openings to re-spark an economy that's nowhere near safe and ready.

Second point, trump's thoughts about Florida is likely not about Orlando or Tampa or Miami's Convention halls - which can handle such events - but likely his Doral resort (trump may say otherwise, but I doubt the heavily Democratic-controlled metros will play ball with him because they'll want the same CDC regulations as North Carolina/Charlotte) so he can make money.

Third point, trump may be accusing the Dems of playing politics but he's the one trying to use this issue to force NC Governor Cooper into speeding up any re-opening schedule to favor trump. Look at how trump is trying to use the threat of "lost jobs and economic opportunity" should the convention move away. That's a stick-no-carrot approach that trump has used before, which doesn't work too often because without that "carrot" Cooper has no reason to submit to trump's whims here.

If anything, should trump and the Republicans try to host ANY kind of gathering while this pandemic is taking place, they are taking a serious risk with not only their health but the health of every resident in Charlotte or elsewhere forced to handle this ill-advised convention.

There are other ways to do this now. Just not with trump's sociopathic ego-stroking need to play to a cheering crowd in front of him.

But this is how trump rolls, isn't it. His ongoing sadistic need to serve his own while everyone else sickens and suffers.

Horrifying stuff, America.

This is not the time for trump's ego to make more of us sick.

Quick Memorial Day 2020 Rage Post

So I know this is Memorial Day weekend, traditionally the start of THE SUMMER SEASON, but this is 2020 and we're three months into an official COVID-19 Pandemic and one of the key things we need to be doing is SOCIAL DISTANCING and avoiding crowded places, which is why there's no Summer Blockbuster Movie Summer to be pining over - I am missing my Wonder Woman sequel, damn you trump - and why whatever meager travel plans I had for my birthday this month are on hold and why for the LOVE OF GOD we need to be avoiding the beaches and water holes and yet here's a bunch of things on Twitter and the news outlets about how FAR TOO MANY of our fellow Americans are breaching the safety guidelines, JESUS CHRIST, such as reports coming out about the turnout at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri:

...They appear to show people gathering at Redhead Lakeside Grill and Yacht Club in Osage Beach at Lake of the Ozarks. We've blurred the faces in the photos, until we learn more about the event, and why so many people were allowed inside.

The pictures show people close together, with no masks...

5 On Your Side reached out to the Camden County Sheriff's Department who said, the state does have social distancing guidelines, but "It doesn't seem people are following it very well here."

The Sheriff's Department has not been called to any incidents so far, and said they do not have any penalty to enforce because there are no orders in place to require social distancing...

For all the morans running around screaming "TYRANNY" about their "FREEDOM" to NOT wear masks in public and all, there's actually few laws in place to enforce these things. It's meant to be voluntary, in that PEOPLE ARE SUPPOSED TO RESPECT THE REALITY THAT SOCIAL CONTACT CAN SPREAD THE VIRUS, SO JUST FCKING DON'T DO IT. /headdesk

And of course Florida - even though we've been better than most in being that voluntary and self-aware about social distancing - even the Sunshine State had to go crazy for Memorial Day weekend because guess what happened out at Daytona Beach already:

...Police believe the crowd that shutdown traffic in the city was part of an unofficial event shared on social media.

“Traffic is completely shut down with probably 200 people in the middle of the road,” a voice from the helicopter said over radio. “Trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s people, looks like they’re climbing on top of a car,” the pilot can be heard saying over the radio...

Subsequent Twitter posts showed mobs of shoulder-to-shoulder crowds.

And this can't be the only place. Think of how many states have famous gathering spots, beaches and parks that thousands go to for the big summertime events... I'm in Florida, from Jacksonville to Daytona to Cocoa to Melbourne to Palm Beach to Pompano Beach to South Beach to the Keys to Sanibel to Sarasota to ALL of Pinellas County's gulf side to Weeki Wachee to Panama Beach to Pensacola, goddamn we are Beach Party Central and I dread how many residents went crazy this weekend just out of decades of social conditioning to party on a three-day weekend.

What the GODDAMN HELL, America.

You're getting told by a number of Republican politicians that "all is well" and you lot go on a Darwin-Award-worthy jaunt that will get half of you showing COVID fevers within the next 5-14 days.

This is the second wave we've been warned about. And we were nowhere near finishing the first wave of the pandemic.

We are so royally fucked.

Florida Pandemic Update: Republicans Caught Fudging the Numbers

This has been breaking since last night, via Langston Taylor at the Tampa Bay Times:

One day before a top Florida Department of Health data manager lost her role maintaining the state’s COVID-19 data, she objected to the removal of records showing people had symptoms or positive tests before the cases were announced, according to internal emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis said she had been fired.

According to the emails, department staff gave the order shortly after reporters requested the same data from the agency on May 5. The data manager, Rebekah Jones, complied with the order, but not before she told her supervisors it was the “wrong call...”

The dashboard that Jones managed is the best official source for in-depth data on how the deadly pandemic is moving through the state. Studying it is the surest way to know where outbreaks are growing and where testing is being done. Without access to the data, Floridians would have to rely on the word of officials and politicians without being able to verify for themselves...

In her Friday email to subscribers of a COVID data listserv, Jones said she was reassigned on May 5 “[f]or reasons beyond my division’s control” and warned that whoever took over may be less straightforward.

“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it,” she wrote.

“They are making a lot of changes. I would advise being diligent in your respective uses of this data.”

Jones also told CBS12 in Tallahassee on Monday that she refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen” the state...

DeSantis did this before when a medical expert challenged the narrative that the GOP Governor was trying to sell to the public a month ago. That narrative, by the by, is that "ALL IS WELL!" and we should re-open the entire state to business so that corporations can resume generating profits at the expense of everyone's health and safety.

For DeSantis to justify reopening just six weeks after shutting things down to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, he has to have numbers showing a consistent decrease in infectees getting reported. If there's even one day of the numbers going up, it breaks the count and resets to a new one. Given how the virus can flare up - even in contained locations like Singapore and South Korea, a surge can happen - it's next to impossible for the numbers to behave the way DeSantis wants.

So he'll do the next best Republican thing he can think of: Lie about the numbers. And he can only get away with that if he can control the data.

There's a huge problem to all this: Florida, like a lot of places in the U.S., does not have enough testing kits and resources to check the population on a regular basis to identify and isolate hot spots at a given notice. Without that, a high number of our neighbors and coworkers and family members are going to be walking around spreading COVID without warning until it's too late. Flare-ups will be unavoidable.

This is also in violation of what had been a strong set of transparency rules - the famed Sunshine Law - that is supposed to keep our leaders accountable to the voters.

And because DeSantis will now be lying about the numbers, they will be uncountable. Leaving him and his Republican cronies unaccountable.

This is a major scandal for Florida. Our own leadership is intentionally working to hide or fake the numbers of an ongoing health care crisis just so they could force a lot of poor residents back to work, just so the rich can get richer while the rest of us get sick and risk dying.

What the hell can the residents do to fight back against their own government?!

Rat-Tailed Donny Is a Second Hand Hood

Everyone else is documenting the crazy, but what the hell here's my twelve cents after hearing about trump's latest "What The Goddamn HELL Is the Shitgibbon Saying Now?" marathon. Via Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

On Monday afternoon, President Trump told the press that he’s taking a drug called hydroxychloroquine as a preventative to ward off the coronavirus — a practice for which there is no evidence and that could, in theory, have negative side effects as serious as hallucinations and heart failure.

“I take it,” Trump said. “So far, I seem to be okay.”

Hydroxychloroquine is an anti-malarial drug that a non-randomized study from a French lab, publicized in March, initially suggested could be used as a treatment in fighting the coronavirus. In March, Trump frequently touted the drug, calling it “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” But further studies have concluded that it is not effective in many cases and should not be routinely used to treat patients.

As previously noted at this blog, at Vox, and elsewhere, the hydroxychloroquine doesn't help against COVID and actually increased the death rate, most likely from the negative effects mentioned earlier. In short, it's NOT a drug you should be taking unless you're dealing with an actual condition - malaria, I think lupus - it's meant for. Back to Beauchamp:

Trump seems to be taking it not as a treatment for COVID-19 — he’s apparently tested negative — but as a preventative to protect himself from contracting it. There’s no medical evidence supporting the idea that this would work, and the risk of potential psychiatric and cardiac side effects, which are serious, would likely strongly outweigh any (hypothetical) benefits...

One of two things:

1) Either trump really is taking a drug that has no proven effect in combating COVID-19, which has documented side effects that could leave him (more) brain-damaged and dying from heart attack. He's doing this despite the likely medical advice he's supposed to be getting from the experts supposed to inform him on how to combat the pandemic, which shows AGAIN the poor judgment and obsessive self-destructive behavior trump's been showing for decades.

2) trump is lying. Either to allay any fear he himself is sick, or lying to keep his fanbase ill-informed, dependent on him instead of the experts, and likely getting those ill-informed dupes to buy more of the drug - is there any amazement that a solid number of his critics think he's getting kickbacks on drug sales? - to use without care or concern.

Nearly everybody I know on Twitter pretty much talked me into believing the latter instead of the former. Option 1) is so reckless and lethal that even a moran like trump wouldn't seriously volunteer himself to do. Option 2) fits his modus operandi of bullshitting the public, posing himself as a decisive, gung-ho leader, and then backing off with another round of lies to pretend he never said the first set of lies anyway.

The Twitter hashtag #HESLYING was a popular trend for the whole afternoon.

But this is what trump is stuck with. he refuses to make the hard choices - keep up the social distancing, take the economic hits of closing half our public spaces, spend money on keeping people alive and out of debt - that our nation needs right now to survive not just the next few months but what's looking like the rest of the year (and well into 2021).

trump wants that easy rescue. he wants a magic elixir at the doorstep to cure all ails and solve all woes.

trump is still digging hard for a miracle cure.

Problem is, he's pushing a deadly drug like some street-corner hoodlum that'll kill us faster than the virus.

Problem is, trump is digging our graves instead.

Tell It to the Judge, trumpshirts

There's a lot going on today so I may blog more than once, just letting you know.

One thing I'm waking up to is a follow-up on a thing I blogged last week, about how Attorney General Barr (trump's Roy Cohn) forced the withdrawal from Michael Flynn's plea bargain in order to force the judge overseeing the matter to end the case. In order to make it look like Flynn should never have made a plea deal in the first place, in order to make it look like Obama's Department of Justice and Mueller's investigative team entrapped Flynn without cause.

You have to remember, Flynn was a major contact between a lot of foreign players, not only Russia but also Turkey, and was getting caught in a lot of questionable plots to where the entire Intel Community was waving red flags about him. Flynn was also one of trump's inner circle handlers, which made the connections between trump and Russia a lot harder to ignore.

One of the earliest moves Mueller made during the inquiry into what and how Russia did to meddle in the 2016 election, the special prosecutor was able to get Flynn to plead down to "lying to investigators" in order to avoid jury trials over some of the more flagrant stuff Flynn - and his son - was caught doing. It was a foundation on which a lot of other cases and plea deals involving trump's people was based.

When trump was able to get Barr set up as Attorney General, Flynn changed his mind on the deal, and had been trying to wrangle his way out of it. The move Barr pulled last week was the final step - so it seemed - to let Flynn off the hook. No deal, no case, and then trump and his buddies can start claiming everything Mueller did was a conspiracy, a setup by Obama and the Deep State (the whole #Obamagate thing we've been seeing re-emerge this past week by Russian Twitter Bots) to destroy trump's God-approved destiny.

However, like a lot of trumpian schemes, this one wasn't thought out well enough. Judge Sullivan overseeing this matter had ways to keep the case going, and last night he used those steps and even opened up the availability of another weapon to hold Flynn (and Barr) accountable. To Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine:

First, earlier this week, a retired judge and two former U.S. Attorneys pointed out that this apparent legal coup does not have to end the matter. In an op-ed, the three legal eminences argued that the court has the power to bring in outside legal advisers to argue the case, even if the government has dropped its prosecution, and potentially still sentence the defendant.

Then, earlier this evening, the New York Times reported that Barr’s lawyers misled the court about the testimony of a key figure in the Flynn case. The Justice Department told the judge, Emmet Sullivan, that FBI notes indicated its agents only interviewed Flynn in order to trap him into lying. An FBI agent involved in the Flynn interview told the Department this wasn’t true, a fact the DOJ failed to include in its request to let Flynn go.

Then tonight, Judge Sullivan dropped a bomb. He announced that he would not simply rubber stamp Barr’s maneuver to free Flynn. Instead, he is bringing in a judge to review the case and provide the pushback against Flynn’s defense lawyers that is missing now that the DOJ has essentially joined in with Flynn’s legal team.

What may matter even more is the judge Sullivan picked for this job: John Gleeson, a former mob-busting prosecutor and, more to the point, one of the co-authors of the Post op-ed urging Sullivan to take this step...

I'm not there in person to witness much of this, but I get the impression that Sullivan is pissed.

I get the impression that Sullivan did not like getting lied to by Barr and the DoJ lawyers undercutting their own plea deal. That Times report that lawyers misled the judge on testimony is usually the point where said judge throws people into jail for contempt of his/her court.

I recall Sullivan is someone who, when AG Barr redacted the Mueller Report, fought to get parts of it unredacted for his review of Flynn's plea deal (The Justice Department refused). Sullivan did confront Flynn back in 2018 with the words "you sold out your own country," reportedly due to information Sullivan has on Flynn's corruption that hasn't been made public (yet).

And we're looking at the possibility that Sullivan can add charges regarding Flynn's misconduct in his courtroom. The reality that Flynn changed his testimony - at least once - while the plea deal was still on the table makes him open to a contempt of court perjury charge. Via Adam Gabbatt at The Guardian:

...Sullivan... said he had asked John Gleeson, a former federal judge in New York, to recommend whether Flynn should face a new criminal contempt charge for perjury. Gleeson has also been asked to make the case for why the DoJ’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case should be rejected...

What this does mean is that Flynn's lawyers have more work on their hands. This means Barr and his DoJ team cannot wash their hands of this and walk away. This is being done with an outsider in Gleeson who can't be pressured by Barr or trump to play their game of "loyalty or fired."

What this means is that trump, his inner circle of corrupt bastards, and his Russian cronies cannot pretend this whole thing was a manufactured Obama/Hillary trap. Sullivan seems dead set on making sure someone - Flynn - is held accountable for the sins they caused.

This puts the pressure back on trump. Sure, he could pardon Flynn, he's done that for a number of people undeserving of mercy. I do question if a pardon frees someone held on a judge's contempt order, but we'll find out. And the pardon runs the risk of Flynn being vulnerable to further testimony without Fifth Amendment protections. It also means Flynn has to admit he did (some) of the things he's being pardoned for, meaning trump can't hide the connections his 2016 campaign had with foreign powers (especially Russia).

trump and Roy Cohn Bill Barr are not going to sweep this under the rug like Putin hoped they could.