People in public life tend to fall into one of two broad categories – those who are motivated by principle, and those motivated by power.
For RBG it was all Principle, for Mitch McConnell it’s all Power | The Smirking Chimp
Category: Trumpland Revealed
Attorney General William Barr talks to the media during a news conference about Operation Legend, a federal task force formed to fight violent crime in several cities
“Much of this equipment and technology is given under the guise of either narcotics, policing, or counterterrorism. Ultimately, a lot of it gets used to monitor protests.”
Operation Legend Is Bringing Surveillance Tech to Cities
As wildfires destroy millions of acres in California, Oregon, and Washington, and an unprecedented series of hurricanes cause historic flooding in the South, leaving parts of the region uninhabitable, the Trump administration has been racing to reverse rules designed to prevent exactly these kinds of climate disasters.
The Race to Demolish Environmental Protections
My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Rushing to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, McConnell shows power trumps principle | Robert Reich | Opinion | The Guardian
Polls currently show around 95 per cent of voters say they have already made up their mind about how they will vote in the election. This means the key task for both candidates will not be persuading undecided voters but to ensure their voting coalitions show up to vote en masse. And, most importantly, to ensure that they show up in the states that matter.
US Election 2020: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida and four other states will choose between Trump or Biden
Remember, Trump was willing to use tear gas and baton assaults against peaceful protesters just to keep them from heckling him. There’s no telling how far he’ll go to keep those same peaceful protesters from messing with his efforts to steal an election.
Right-wing Talk about “Sedition” and the Insurrection Act Has One Purpose: Stealing the Election | The Smirking Chimp
does it matter that the president is once again being a hypocrite? There’s a danger in dismissing this latest bold-faced lie. If white fear and shameless hypocrisy were central to Trump’s first term and help him clinch another four years, imagine what he will do in the next round.
Trump Doesn’t Want to Keep You Calm. White Panic Is Central to His Presidency. – Mother Jones
In what appears to be a blatant appeal to the white supremacists in his base, President Donald Trump has made clear his attempt to both defend and rewrite the history of racial injustice in the United States while eliminating the institutions that make visible its historical roots.
Attacking even the Study of Slavery History, Trump is Running for President of White Nationalists
The USPS is under assault at the very moment we need a functioning postal service to hold a free and fair election. We can defend electoral democracy by defending the post office.
Save the USPS, Defend Democracy
Donald Trump knows he is unlikely to win a fair election in 2020. But his strategies to cheat are so numerous and scattershot — did you catch that story about how acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf blocked a report about Russian propaganda? — that it’s tempting to take comfort in the hope that he has no overarching strategy to fake or steal a second term.
Trump Has a Plan to Steal the Election — in Fact, He Has a Bunch of Them | The Smirking Chimp
Few would doubt that China poses challenges for America, but we can no longer pretend that American policies are always just, or that China is the evil empire. China used to provide a major market for American agriculture and the auto industry; now it doesn’t. President Trump determined that. China used to work closely with WHO sharing their massive data on Covid-19; now they don’t. President Trump determined that. China could offer critical help in mounting an effective response to climate disaster, but that would make no sense to Trump, who sees the world as a collection of races not keeping their places. Connect the dots. At a time when no one can escape pandemic or global heating, policy may matter more than ideology. If a “Democratic” nation revokes emission standards, everyone will suffer. If a “Communist” country develops effective pandemic responses, everyone benefits so long as nations share ideas and data. Traditionally, liberals tend to embrace these kinds of common-sense strategies. Why should anyone opt for race over reason just because someone uttered the word “China”?
When is China-Bashing Racist?
FACT CHECK
The problem is that Trump’s rhetoric on those issues, like his rhetoric on almost all issues, is a complete fantasy with no grounding in reality. Let us just consider four planks of his personal platform.
How Trump brought us 11.1% Unemployment, lost Manufacturing Jobs, worsened Trade Deficits and Kowtowed to China
He killed people on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesdaay night as Republicans were fueling the white-hot furnace of fear and hate at their convention from Hell. And, once again, we must sort through the surreal emotions that leave us both shocked and not at all surprised.
Our Long-Dreaded Fear is Here | The Smirking Chimp
When Tucker Carlson set off a firestorm of criticism on Wednesday — by describing a 17-year-old Trump supporter who opened fire on protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday, killing two, as a well-meaning kid who decided he “had to maintain order” in the Democrat-run state because “no one else would” — the Fox News host was surfacing an idea that had already spread widely on the far-right.
Trump supporters defend teen who killed protesters in Kenosha
Tennessee protesters will face harsh penalties, including losing the right to vote, as punishment for participating in protests under a law enacted by the Tennessee GOP-dominant General Assembly. Right-wing Governor Bill Lee quietly signed off on the bill Thursday, AP reports.
‘This is the Opposite of What Americans Fought a Revolution For’: Tennessee to Strip Right to Vote from Protesters | Common Dreams News
![The report details how former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer [File: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/8/18/c0221ae53c79461fad5acb5162b22471_18.jpg "Russia worked to help Trump in 2016 election: Senate panel")
The report details how former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer [File: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]
Russia worked to help Trump in 2016 election: Senate panel | USA News | Al Jazeera
Washington: Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website and others to try to influence the 2016 US presidential election to help now-US President Donald Trump’s campaign, a Senate intelligence panel report said on Tuesday.
WikiLeaks played a key role in Russia’s effort to assist Republican Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton and likely knew it was helping Russian intelligence, said the report, which is likely to be the most definitive public account of the 2016 election controversy.
Putin ordered Democratic hack to boost Trump in 2016, Senate committee finds
As Trump’s postmaster thwarts the Postal Service, the USPS warns 46 states that mail-in ballots may not be delivered on time, potentially canceling out those votes
“When you see that kind of conversion from the idea that whistleblowers are something that helps keep us on the rails to the rhetoric that they’re an enemy of the people, you’re saying that it’s all political,” Stanger says. “And that’s how democracies die.”
Trump declares this a historic rebound by the best President ever and he’s your’s America. (ODT)
Photo Shoot for Fox and ads for the next 3months (ODT)
He’s talking Economic System and Private Interests here in a world in which citizens
are living under the yolks of debt and poverty. You’re declared well off in the size of debt your allowed and enslaved to. (ODT)
via We must change China or China will change us, Pompeo warns
They’re all Antifa and Trump says arrest them particularly in Portland (ODT)
via BlueLeaks Shows Worry About Masks and Facial Recognition
Money for nothing and chicks for free in Trumpland (ODT)
The Trump White House is publicly advocating a massive tax cut for wealthy U.S. investors while simultaneously urging Congress to pare back the expanded unemployment benefits currently serving as a financial lifeline for more than 30 million—and counting—jobless Americans.
“Regarding the ‘capital gains holiday,’ remember this key stat: 82% of all capital gains tax is paid by the richest 1%. A capital gains tax holiday is a pure giveaway to the rich.”
—Michael Linden, Groundwork Collaborative
Trump and the White House traeting Fauci as if he was the OPPOSITION (ODT)
President Donald Trump is reportedly shunning the infectious disease expert, who has been expressing alarm about soaring infections.
via White House Moves To Discredit Fauci Amid Bleak Warnings Over Coronavirus Surge | HuffPost Australia
Already, Fox News is spinning for Trump on this point, with Fox & Friends co-hosts claiming, “All presidents don’t read all of their briefings,” and adding, “It might have been printed in it, it doesn’t mean that he actually heard about it.”
Why would Republicans, supposedly “America first” adherents, want to prevent Americans from knowing about foreign interference in our presidential election – unless they have something to hide?
via Senate Republicans Make Sure Trump Can Hide Offers Of Foreign Election Help | Crooks and Liars
America is the New China and China is rapidly becoming the New America (ODT)
Assange’s stance on information, and his encouragement to the young to rush into the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency, is taken as an exhortation of bad faith, encouraging the theft of classified information and the ruination of secrecy. A better reading of this, urges Gosztola, is to see this as a call “to young people to help the public address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when the government abuses the classified information system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and other illegal actions.”
The new indictment has made something of a mockery of the London extradition proceedings. Judge Vanessa Baraitser conceded to being informed of the superseding document by email, but still awaits its official receipt. Prosecution barrister Joel Smith merely remarked that both parties were still pouring over its contents and implications. “If we need to involve the court … then we will inform the court at the appropriate time.” Summers was less sanguine, suggesting that the expansive larding of the new indictment would affect future management hearings. “This shows,” stated Hrafnsson, “how they are abusing due process in the UK and flaunting the legal system’s rules.”
This is precisely right. The country has been deliberately plunged into another Great Depression with the clear intention of imposing harsh austerity measures that will eviscerate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and any other social safteynet programs that benefit ordinary working people, retirees, or anyone else for that matter. None of it is random, spontaneous or spur-of-the-moment policymaking. It’s all drawn from a centuries-old Imperial Playbook that’s being used by scheming elites to implement their final plan for America: Tear down the statues, destroy the icons and symbols, rewrite the history, crush the populist resistance, create a permanent underclass that will work for pennies on the dollar, pit one group against the other by inciting racial hatred, political polarization and fratricidal warfare, promote the vandals who burn and loot our cities, attack anyone who speaks the truth, and offer unlimited support to the party that has aligned itself with the corrupt Intel agencies, the traitorous media, the sinister deep state, and the tyrannical elites who are determined to control the all the levers of state power and crush anyone who gets in their way.
The ongoing anti-white rampage of the Unpopular Front — Millennial lumpen-bourgeoisie, black criminals, academics, journalists, and woke capital — has led to more questions than answers.
Some call them communists, but the terrorists do not have any economic demands. On the contrary, they have a close relationship with corporate America. Conservatives are desperate to link them to the Democratic Party, but they don’t support Biden and have long forgotten Bernie. Others wish to blame foreign intelligence services to build energy for discredited neo-conservatism, but the Chinese are mostly sitting back and laughing at America.
What the Bourgeois Bolsheviks Want
Few alt-right performers of the Trump era have produced as much propaganda in terms of raw megabytes as Jordan has under his Striker moniker. JosephJordan, while performing as Striker, typically focuses his rhetoric on his desire to drive Jewish people out of America and to warn his audience against the threat of an “underground homosexual culture,”
Prolific Alt-Right Propagandist’s Identity Confirmed | Southern Poverty Law Center
Taking over the judiciary is the GOP’s neverending exercise (ODT)
Trump still has several months to fill more court vacancies, and McConnell will definitely make this a top priority ― especially in the lame duck, if Trump loses reelection in November. But at the moment, there are no more appeals court seats to fill. McConnell has responded by personally reaching out to Republican-appointed judges and encouraging them to retire so he and Trump can fill their seats this year.
via Trump Notches His 200th Lifetime Federal Judge | HuffPost Australia
Voter suppression, Trump’s all over it;
The US president seems to be preparing to contest a defeat in November by railing against ‘rigged’ mail-in ballots – but his party is the one attempting to suppress voters
Americans Not Welcome
The European Union is preparing to allow travelers from dozens of countries into the 27-member nation bloc starting July 1—but Americans are unlikely to be welcome for the foreseeable future due to the Trump administration’s failure to control the coronavirus pandemic.
When Truth is a slower process than spin (ODT)
via Now We Know of Two More Impeachable Offenses by Trump and Barr | The Smirking Chimp
America is waving a big stick at everyone. Trump is doing the Kim Jong Un dance ODT)
Trump administration sues to block John Bolton book
The long-established principle that Washington should respect the sovereignty of other states even when it disagrees with their internal or foreign policies has effectively been abandoned. And, as if things were not bad enough, some recent legislation virtually guarantees that in the near future the United States will be doing still more to interfere in and destabilize much of the world. Congress passed and President Trump has signed the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, which seeks to improve Washington’s response to mass killings. The prevention of genocide and mass murder is now a part of American national security agenda. There will be a Mass Atrocity Task Force and State Department officers will receive training to sensitize them to impending genocide, though presumably the new program will not apply to the Palestinians as the law’s namesake never was troubled by their suppression and killing by the state of Israel.
via America’s Supernational Sovereignty, by Philip Giraldi – The Unz Review
