Tuesday Reads: Ramp-Gate, Water-Gate, and Other News
Posted: June 16, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 7 CommentsGood Morning!!
After Trump’s obvious difficulty walking down a ramp after his speech at West Point on Saturday, his questionable health is finally being discussed by major news sources.
The New York Times: Trump’s Halting Walk Down Ramp Raises New Health Questions.
President Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there.
Mr. Trump — who turned 74 on Sunday, the oldest a U.S. president has been in his first term — was recorded hesitantly descending the ramp one step at a time after he delivered an address to graduating cadets at the New York-based academy on Saturday. The academy’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, walked alongside him. Mr. Trump sped up slightly for the final three steps, as he got to the bottom.
Another video circulated of Mr. Trump taking a sip of water from a glass tucked inside his lectern on the dais at West Point. Mr. Trump held the glass with his right hand and brought it to his mouth, but appeared to momentarily have trouble lifting his arm farther. He used his left hand to push the bottom of the glass so that it reached his lips.
More from the NYT:
“The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The last thing I was going to do is ‘fall’ for the Fake News to have fun with. Final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!”
There was no evidence that the ramp was slippery, and the skies were clear during the ceremony.
The videos again raised questions about the health of Mr. Trump, whose advisers have never fully explained his abrupt visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November, saying at the time only that it was intended to get a jump on his annual physical….
Mr. Trump’s difficulty traversing stairs and ramps has come up before, most notably in January 2017, when he clutched the hand of Theresa May, then the British prime minister, as they walked at the White House.
The Washington Post: As Trump casts Biden as ‘sleepy Joe,’ his critics raise questions about his own fitness.
For Trump, who has tried to cast his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, as “sleepy” and mentally absent, the attacks over his own wellness appeared to hit close to home. The president defended himself by offering a credulity-straining explanation for his unsteady gait, describing the standard-looking ramp as “steep” and “very slippery.”
In the first presidential race in which the combined age of the two leading candidates exceeds 150 years, mental acuity and physical health have become a central theme as the 77-year-old Biden and the 74-year-old Trump compete for votes. While previous presidential contests have included whisper campaigns and rumors about candidates’ health, the open charges of senility flying between the two camps sets the 2020 contest apart, said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
“These kinds of rumblings used to happen behind the scenes,” she said. “And now, because of both social media and the attack style of campaigning that Trump uses, there’s been this turning point.”
The Trump campaign’s eagerness to focus on Biden’s verbal gaffes could be a “double-edged” sword as attention turns back to the president’s own behavior, she said.
Joe Biden even released an ad after Trump’s troubles with the ramp and the water glass.
The Washington Post: ‘Like a baby deer on a frozen pond’: Late-night hosts mock Trump over ‘Ramp-gate’
In a now-viral video, Trump was seen Saturday taking small, visibly tentative steps as he walked down a standard-looking ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the academy’s superintendent, hovered nearby, keeping pace with the president while he slowly descended.
“You know, for a guy who constantly talks about how tough he is, he sure walks like a baby deer on a frozen pond,” Meyers quipped, playing footage of the Trump’s walk. “What is wrong with him? Are we going to have to get him an Acorn Stairlift?”
And from Stephen Colbert:
On CBS, host Stephen Colbert kicked off his show with a cold open that treated Trump’s brief walk as if it were a riveting sports broadcast.
“Daredevil Donald is about to tempt the fates by trying to walk down a gentle decline,” an announcer said. “Let’s take a look at the ramp. Check out that pitch, a precipitous 4.8-degree slope.”
As video played of Trump taking his first step, the announcer provided an energetic play-by-play.
“And there he goes! Attacking the slope with a precise shuffle,” the voice said. “One foot and then the other comes to meet it. Much like a bride walking down the aisle. His main goal: Just stay upright.”
Later in the show, Colbert said that now it made sense why Trump chose to come down the escalator in 2015 ahead of announcing his presidential bid.
“If it had been a ramp, he’d still be coming down,” Colbert joked. “But you can’t blame the guy, any time he’s around the military those damn bone spurs act up.”
More late night jokes at the WaPo link.
Raw Story reported on Trump whisperer Maggie Haberman’s assessment on CNN: Trump upset with coverage of his health as questions swirl over his potential maladies: Maggie Haberman.
Appearing on CNN’s “New Day” to discuss the state of Donald Trump’s health, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times said whether the president is hiding illness or not, coverage of his problems walking down a ramp, as well as footage of him struggling to raise his right arm high enough for him to take a drink, is troubling to the president.
With CNN medical expert Sanjay Gupta begging off from diagnosing Trump, the New York Times reporter was asked about the political implications for the president.
“Perhaps no one more sensitive to how his health and stamina is portrayed in public than the president himself and you saw that in his tweet explaining this over the weekend, trying to explain that slow walk down the ramp,” New Day co-host Alisyn Camerota began. “What is the president’s level of concern, given that he has not been shy about attacking his political opponents as somehow not being up to the job?”
“Look, this is never coverage the president wants of anything related to his health,” the reporter replied. “As you know he invited it by responding to the videos [on Twitter]. It wasn’t just the video of him on a ramp; there was another video of him having trouble lifting a water glass to his mouth, where he had to use his left hand to basically finish helping his right arm guide it to his mouth at a speech at West Point — he never likes coverage like this.”
“As I said, he invited it by tweeting about it,” she continued. “I think Sanjay is right. We don’t know what the issue is, we don’t know from looking at this video. We know the president has had issues with stairs before, but as Sanjay also says, there are a lot of questions around the president’s physical fitness, because he has dictated a note to a doctor in 2016, because he had this still unexplained, other than saying he wanted to get a jump on his physical, abrupt visit to Walter Reed [Hospital] last year.”
One more from Jennifer Rubin: Trump is in denial about his and others’ health.
On Saturday, at his address at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., he needed two hands to sip a glass of water. His tottering, baby steps down a ramp while exiting was the latest episode in which he seemed to have trouble navigating uneven footing….
We will likely never know until he is out of the White House what mental and/or physical ailments may afflict him. Two things are clear, however. First, it is an entirely legitimate topic for the campaign. The media should not relent in asking questions and demanding to speak with his doctors. Second, former vice president Joe Biden, a spry and fit 77-year-old, would be foolish not to mention it during the campaign. Trump increasingly seems like he is from another era, not someone who can make America great, but rather someone who never left the 1950s. His doddering appearance and faltering speech only add to the image of a man fading before our eyes.
More news to check out, links only:
The Independent: Trump dismisses uptick in US coronavirus cases and suggests a ‘stop’ to testing.
The Daily Beast: Trump’s COVID Data Crunchers See Coronavirus Racing Down America’s Major Highways.
Business Insider: Fauci said US government held off promoting face masks because it knew shortages were so bad that even doctors couldn’t get enough.
The New York Times: Pence Tells Governors to Repeat Misleading Claim on Outbreaks.
ABC News: Robert Fuller’s hanging death under investigation despite ‘initial signs’ of suicide: Officials.
The Cut: Everything We Know About the Killing of Rayshard Brooks by Atlanta Police.
Market Watch: Seattle bans police crowd-control weapons, saying they’ve been used ‘without provocation’
The Washington Post: Officials familiar with Lafayette Square confrontation challenge Trump administration claim of what drove aggressive expulsion of protesters.
The Washington Post: What has the Trump administration done with a half-trillion dollars?
The Washington Post: President Trump says his family is unified. A niece’s book could explode that image.
New York Magazine: Trump’s Niece to Make a Big Addition to the Genre of Tell-all Trump Books.
I know this isn’t much of a post, but I’m really struggling with following the news these days. What’s on your mind today?
Monday Reads: SCOTUS Decides
Posted: June 15, 2020 Filed under: just because 6 CommentsGood Day Sky Dancers!
There are some important Supreme Court Decisions that were announced today worth celebrating. We’ve finally got some good news while heading to Independence Day 2020. I was beginning to wonder if the birthday of our democracy/republic would be truly meaningful this year but it appears it still could be. Protestors of racial injustice have shown us our First Amendment is still alive.
This news comes the same day as the results of a new Gallup Poll show “U.S. National Pride Falls to Record Low”.
American pride has continued its downward trajectory reaching the lowest point in the two decades of Gallup measurement. The new low comes at a time when the U.S. faces public health and economic crises brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in police custody.
Although a majority of adults in the U.S. still say they are “extremely proud” (42%) or “very proud” (21%) to be American, both readings are the lowest they have been since Gallup’s initial measurement in 2001.
At the same time, 15% of Americans say they are “moderately proud,” 12% “only a little proud” and 9% “not at all proud.”
These latest data are from a May 28-June 4 poll, which also found 20% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., and presidential approval fell back to 39%. The poll’s field period encompassed the arrests of the police officers charged in Floyd’s death as well as the nationwide protests that were sparked by the incident and President Donald Trump’s controversial responses to them.
And now for the Decisions:
From ABC NEWS:
The Supreme Court issued its opinion Monday on a historic case about LGBT employment discrimination, with the majority deciding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, also applies to gay or transgender people.
“In Title VII, Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.”
It was a 6-3 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Gorsuch joining the more liberal side of the court — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer.
Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, while Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Takiyah Thompson says she is taking responsibility for climbing on a ladder, putting a rope around a Confederate statue outside the old Durham County Courthouse and helping tear it down.
Yes, Joe Biden, this too is a big fucking deal. Here is some analysis via Politico: “Supreme Court finds federal law bars LGBT discrimination in workplace”.
Writing for the court’s majority, Gorsuch accepted arguments that the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition on sex discrimination in employment also effectively banned bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity, even though few if any members of Congress thought they were doing that at the time.
“Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees,” Gorsuch wrote.
“But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands,” he continued. “When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.”
LGBT activists were thought to face an uphill battle at the high court because Congress has spent more than four decades considering, but failing to pass, measures intended to expand the coverage of the 1964 law by explicitly adding sexual orientation to the list of protected traits.
Additionally, we have this one:
The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up a legal battle over whether local governments can declare themselves sanctuaries and refuse to help federal agents enforce immigration laws.
As is the usual custom, the court declined to say why it won’t hear the issue. Two of the court’s most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said they would have voted to hear the case.
The Trump administration asked the court to hear its appeal of lower court rulings that upheld a California law related to immigration. It bars police departments and sheriff’s offices from notifying federal agents when immigrants are about to be released after serving sentences for local crimes.
And Wait!!!! ONE more!!!!! From WAPO: “Supreme Court passes up challenges from gun groups on laws they say violate Second Amendment”. It’s a bad day to be a radical right wing reactionary which includes our AG, the Faux POTUS, and more than a couple of those SCOTUS judges.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up new cases for next term that gun rights groups claimed denied Second Amendment rights.
The court did not accept a batch of nearly a dozen cases that gun groups had hoped the court, fortified with more conservative members, might consider. Among them were cases involving restrictions in Maryland and New Jersey to permits for carrying a handgun outside the home.
The court earlier this term had dismissed a challenge from New York about transporting guns, and three justices objected, with the newest, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, adding that it seemed likely lower courts have been too quick to uphold state and local gun control measures.
Liberty Monument in New Orleans deface before its final removal.
And yes, Drunky MacDrunkFace is the worst thing on the court right now. So, the major focus beyond this next birthday of the signing of our Declaration of Independence is our voting the Orange Abomination out of office. We have to be especially vigilant.
From Marc Elias at Democracy Docket: “Republicans are Planning a Bigger, Much More Aggressive, Much Better-Funded Voter Suppression Program in 2020”.
Imagine having $20 million and using it to oppose voting rights. That is what the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Trump campaign announced they will do in response to voting rights lawsuits my firm and I filed on behalf of the Democratic Party and progressive groups such as Priorities USA. While normally candidates and parties insist that high voter turnout is good for them, the Republicans are bypassing that fiction and going all-in to shrink, rather than expand, the electorate. Already, signs point to a massive Republican effort to prevent voters of color and young voters from voting in 2020.
A Trump political advisor in Wisconsin was recently caught on tape bragging about the fact that “traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places” and advising Republicans to “start playing offense a little bit.” He alerted: “That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”
Republicans are planning a “bigger,” “more aggressive,” and “much better-funded program,” because this November will be the first presidential election since 1980 that the RNC will be unencumbered by a court monitored consent decree prohibiting gross forms of voter suppression. Though voter suppression runs deep in the Republican Party, without this consent decree, the RNC can “start playing offense” and operationalize voter suppression like we haven’t seen in 40 years.
The clusterfuck primaries of Georgia and Wisconsin are only the beginning.
Anyway, it continues to be a year of shock and awe.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: June 13, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, caturday, Civil Rights, Civil War, Donald Trump, Fox News, Harris Faulkner, John F. Kennedy, Racism 16 Comments
Good Morning!!
On Thursday, June 11, Lawrence O’Donnell discussed the speech on Civil Rights that President John F. Kennedy gave from the Oval Office on that day in 1963. The purpose of the speech was to propose the Civil Rights bill that passed after Kennedy’s assassination. Fifty-seven years later, we’ve made some progress, but systemic racism still runs rampant in this country. I thought I’d share some excerpts from that long-ago speech today.
NPR: John F. Kennedy’s Address on Civil Rights.
On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation on the most pressing domestic issue of the day: the struggle to affirm civil rights for all Americans. His administration had sent National Guard troops to accompany the first black students admitted to the University of Mississippi and University of Alabama.
Excerpts selected by NPR:
…It ought to be possible… for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.
…It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.
Painting by Ekaterina Mateckaya
It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case….
…This is not a sectional issue…Nor is this a partisan issue…This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right.
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.
The heart of the question is — whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities. Whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free….
…It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the fact that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.
Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality…
You can watch the entire speech at C-Span. I watched it yesterday and it made me so sad. The comparison between Kennedy and the current occupant of the White House so so glaring. Not only was Kennedy capable of compassion and empathy, but he also spoke eloquently, in complete sentences and paragraphs. Today we have a fraudulent “president” who babbles nonsense, effortlessly lies about everything and has no idea how to do the job he holds even if he actually wanted to be a leader.
Cat in the window, by Joanna DeRitis
Speaking of Trump’s incoherent babbling, on Thursday he gave another strange Fox News interview with Harris Faulkner (who is black). For Fox, the questions were pretty tough. You can read the transcript and watch video excerpts at Factbase.
The most stunning moment in the interview was when Trump claimed to have done more for black Americans than any previous president, including Abraham Lincoln. Business Insider: Trump says Abraham Lincoln ‘did good’ for the Black community but that ‘the end result’ is ‘questionable.’
“So I think I’ve done more for the Black community than any other president, and let’s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln because he did good, although it’s always questionable, you know, in other words, the end result —” Trump said before Faulkner interjected.
“Well, we are free, Mr. President, so I think he did pretty well,” she said, referring to Lincoln.
“We are free,” Trump said. “You understand what I mean.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Faulkner said.
This isn’t the first time Trump has claimed he’s done more for the Black community than his predecessors.
“This may well be the president’s most audacious claim ever,” Michael Fauntroy, a professor of political science at Howard University, told The New York Times earlier this month. “Not only has he not done more than anybody else, he’s done close to the least.”
Of course it’s not really clear what Trump was trying to say, because his speech is so incoherent. At Slate, Jeremy Stahl tries to make sense of Trump’s words: What Was Trump Trying to Say About Abraham Lincoln?
A lot of people saw the transcript of those words—and perhaps watched the clip—and interpreted Trump as having said that “the end result” of Lincoln’s presidency—i.e., winning the Civil War, preserving the union, and ending the atrocity of chattel slavery—was “always questionable.” [….]
By Utagawa Hiroshige
I would never definitively state that I believed Trump didn’t mean the most racist possible interpretation of one of his often hard-to-grasp word salads. Indeed, he has in the past questioned the fact that the Civil War needed to occur, stating in 2017 that had Andrew Jackson been president at the time he would have stopped the Civil War from happening because he would have realized “there’s no reason for this.”
“The Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask the question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?” Trump said back then.
As my former colleague, Jamelle Bouie, wrote at the time, that statement—apparently that Jackson could have come up with a perfect “deal” to prevent the Civil War—was as dangerous as it was ahistorical.
Given that past remark, it’s certainly plausible that Trump’s brain is so rotted from his own racism that he would say that the end results of Lincoln’s presidency were “questionable.” Based on the context of the question, though, and more recent comments from Trump, I think that is unlikely.
I interpret this particular word salad to be an attempt by Trump to validate his recent tweet that his administration “has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln.”
Trump was likely attempting to say that while “I think I’ve done more for the black community than any other president,” he would ask that in such a ranking “let’s take a pass” on including Lincoln, because it’s an unfair comparison, but—even if he were to go head-to-head with Lincoln for the title of “best president for black people ever”—despite the fact that Lincoln “did good,” it would still be “always questionable” whether Trump was better, because you have to consider “the end result” of each man’s presidency.
Okay . . . I guess that’s as good an interpretation as any.
At Vox, Zach Beauchamp discusses another howler from the interview: Trump: “The concept of chokehold sounds so innocent, so perfect.”
When asked about police use of chokeholds on suspects like George Floyd, who was killed after a Minneapolis officer pinned him by the neck with his knee for nearly nine minutes, Trump initially told Faulkner that “I don’t like chokeholds,” even saying that “generally speaking, they should be ended.” But he contradicted that pretty quickly, saying that when you’ve got someone who is “a real bad person … what are you gonna do now — let go?”
He even went further, saying that “the concept of chokehold sounds so innocent, so perfect,” if a lone police officer is attempting to detain someone.
Deborah DeWitt, Birdwatching
His position, as far as I can tell, seems to be that maybe sometimes individual officers need to use chokeholds, but the more police there are, the less likely it is they’ll need to use one:
TRUMP: I think the concept of chokehold sounds so innocent, so perfect. And then you realize, if it’s a one-on-one. But if it’s two-on-one, that’s a little bit a different story. Depending on the toughness and strength — you know, we’re talking about toughness and strength. There’s a physical thing here too.
FAULKNER: If it’s a one-on-one for the [officer’s] life …
TRUMP: And that does happen, that does happen. You have to be careful.
The most relevant part here isn’t the president’s views on the details of self-defense tactics, but rather the lack of empathy in the way he talks about the issue. The only world in which police using chokeholds could sound “innocent” or “perfect” is a world in which you don’t think about what happens to people when they’re literally being choked — or one where you assume that it won’t happen to people like you.
A recent LA Times investigation found that 103 people were “seriously injured” by police using “carotid neck restraints” in California between 2016 and 2018. Black people, who make up 6.5 percent of the state’s population, were 23 percent of those injured in such holds.
Trump’s thinking seems so deeply shaped by his sense of generalized police innocence, his unwillingness to really process the fact of racial discrimination in police use of force, that he’s capable of saying out loud that chokeholds sound “innocent.”
What all this interpretation really boils down to is that Trump is disastrously incapable of doing the job of POTUS. And yet we’re stuck with him, so writers struggle to figure out what the hell he is talking about.
Stories to check out today
David Smith at The Guardian: ‘He just doesn’t get it’: has Trump been left behind by America’s awakening on racism?
The Washington Post: Trump says he’ll ‘go on and do other things’ if he loses in November.
Julian Borger at The Guardian: ‘Trump thought I was a secretary’: Fiona Hill on the president, Putin and populism.
The New York Times: Trump’s Actions Rattle the Military World: ‘I Can’t Support the Man’
NBC News: From ‘beautiful letters’ to ‘a dark nightmare’: How Trump’s North Korea gamble went bust.
The New York Times: Trump Moves Tulsa Rally Date ‘Out of Respect’ for Juneteenth.
The Daily Beast: Survivors of KKK’s Ax Handle Attack Appalled at Trump Speech.
The Washington Post: Republicans and Trump want a Jacksonville convention party. Some locals are worried about the area’s health.
The Daily Beast: A Black Man Was Found Hanging From a Tree—Residents Don’t Buy That It Was a Suicide.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: Michael Flynn Writes Column Confirming He Is Definitely Insane.
USA Today: Fired Florida scientist builds coronavirus site showing far more cases than state reports.
Friday Reads: Really Freaking Over It All
Posted: June 12, 2020 Filed under: Black Lives Matter, corruption, court rulings, COVID19 24 Comments
Good Day
Sky Dancers!
I’m just tired of the constant bombardment of absolutely outrageous actions, words, and plans coming out of the Trumpist Regime. There appears no end to what Trump and his cronies think they can get away with and still be considered fit to work and walk around in pubic.
Watching Trumpists downplay the dangers of a pandemic running rampant in many parts of the country is just one of these outrages that sets me off. Trump wants business as usual and so he’s getting it through mouthpieces like Larry Kudlow who has no business being employed by anyone, let alone our government. He’s also flouncing around the country spreading hate and discontent and furthering his profile as the nation’s racist-in-chief. This is from the AP.
At the White House, aides now routinely flout internal rules requiring face masks. The president’s campaign is again scheduling mass arena rallies. And he is back to spending summer weekends at his New Jersey golf club.
Three months after President Donald Trump bowed to the realities of a pandemic that put big chunks of life on pause and killed more Americans than several major wars, Trump is back to business as usual — even as coronavirus cases are on the upswing in many parts of the country.
While the nation has now had months to prepare stockpiles of protective gear and ventilators, a vaccine still is many months away at best and a model cited by the White House projects tens of thousands of more deaths by the end of September.
Amid renewed fears of a virus resurgence, financial markets — frequently highlighted by Trump as a sign of economic recovery — suffered their worst drop since March on Thursday. The market opened on the upside Friday morning.
At the White House, though, officials played down the severity of the virus surge and sought to blame it on factors beyond Trump’s forceful push to reopen the economy, which he’s counting on to help him win reelection.
“I spoke to our health experts at some length last evening. They’re saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that: There is no second spike,” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday on “Fox & Friends.”
He said COVID-19 cases are increasing only in certain spots of the country, but that nationally, the rates of new cases and fatalities have flattened out. “There is no emergency,” Kudlow said. “There is no second wave. I don’t know where that got started on Wall Street.”
Yascha Mounk–a contributing writer at The Atlantic— wrote this today “The Virus Will Win. Americans are pretending that the pandemic is over. It certainly is not.” There is a huge list of what our country and our so-called leadership is doing wrong.
A second wave of the coronavirus is on the way. When it arrives, we will lack the will to deal with it. Despite all the sacrifices of the past months, the virus is likely to win—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it already has.
In absolute terms, the United States has been hit harder than any other country. About a quarter of worldwide deaths have been recorded on these shores. And while the virus is no longer growing at an exponential rate, the threat it poses remains significant: According to a forecasting model by Morgan Stanley, the number of American cases will, if current trends hold, roughly double over the next two months.
But neither the impact of mass protests over police brutality nor the effect of the recent reopening of much of the country—including the casinos in Las Vegas—is reflected in the latest numbers. It can take at least 10 days for people to develop symptoms and seek out a test, and for the results to be aggregated and disseminated by public-health authorities.
Even so, the disease is slowly starting to recede from the public’s attention. After months of dominating media coverage, COVID-19 has largely disappeared from the front pages of most national newspapers. In recent polls, the number of people who favor “reopening the economy as soon as possible” over “staying home as long as necessary” has increased. And so it is perhaps no surprise that even states where the number of new infections stands at an all-time high are pressing ahead with plans to lift many restrictions on businesses and mass gatherings.
I am horrified that bars in my neighborhood are opening tomorrow albeit at 25 % capacity and that the local AirBnbs are filling up with folks with license plates from CoVid Death Zones like Georgia, Alabama, Texas and the like. I’m just blessed most folks from Arizona don’t get this far east or they’d be here to spreading it merrily around our vulnerable population too so they can have a little Disneyfied Adult Entertainment at our expense.
Then, there’s the endless parade of current and former Trumpist Regime appointees that coulda whoulda shoulda done something but just sat there and let the chaos flow all over us and expect a voice in the criticism now. Oh, and a big pay check … they expect that too …
This outrage pretty well sums up my thoughts on Bloodless John Bolton and the release of his “tell all”. He should of told all when we could’ve impeached the ass and saved lives.
This is from Axios who have gotten an advance copy of the book. Like I said, it seems to me that we should all boycott buying it since he obviously didn’t care enough about the country to come forward with this out of patriotism instead of greed.
“Scoop: John Bolton to argue Trump misconduct”
John Bolton taunts President Trump, his former boss, on the back cover of his forthcoming book: “Game on.”
- In a memoir coming June 23 that the White House has tried to delay, former national security adviser Bolton will offer multiple revelations about Trump’s conduct in office, with direct quotes by the president and senior officials, according to a source familiar with the book.
Why it matters: Bolton, who was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President George W. Bush, is a lifelong conservative and longtime Fox News contributor who is well-known by the Trump base, the source pointed out.
- In “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” Bolton will go beyond Ukraine, and argue there was “Trump misconduct with other countries,” the source said.
- Axios agreed to grant anonymity to the source in order to give readers a window into the book ahead of publication.
Behind the scenes: People close to Trump have been worried about the book because Bolton was known as the most prolific note taker in high-level meetings, Jonathan Swan reports.
- Bolton would sit there, filling yellow legal pad after yellow legal pad with notes.
- In short: Bolton saw a lot, and he wrote it down in real time. And when he left, the White House never got those notes back.
Jordan Fabian and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg have more to offer on this: “Bolton Book to Relate Trump Chaos, How Re-Election Drove Policy.”
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” Bolton writes in the book, titled “The Room Where It Happened,” the publisher said in a release.
The former top security aide, who was ousted last September, will argue the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry was too narrow and should have focused on more than Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. Simon & Schuster promised Bolton will offer details on other similar moves by Trump across the full range of his foreign policy and the national security adviser’s efforts to stop them.
Bolton declined to testify in the House’s impeachment probe, and instead deferred to the federal courts if a subpoena would be legally valid. House Democrats did not issue a subpoena, saying a lengthy legal battle would unnecessarily prolong the impeachment process.Bolton said during a February speech at Vanderbilt University he did not regret his refusal to testify because it “would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome.”
“I sleep at night because I have followed my conscience,” he said, according to USA Today.
So glad he can sleep well at night. I sure as hell wish I could.
Bill Barr continues to dismantle democracy daily. Can this Judge stop him from setting Michael Flynn Free? From WAPO: “Court appears reluctant to order judge to immediately drop criminal case against Michael Flynn”.
A federal appeals court in Washington on Friday appeared reluctant to order a judge to immediately dismiss the guilty plea of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, suggesting courts have the authority to review whether Justice Department moves to drop a prosecution are “in the public interest.”
Flynn, joined by the Justice Department, had asked the appeals court to force U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to quickly close the case and put a stop to Sullivan’s examination of the government’s unusual decision to drop the charges against the retired three-star general.
But Judges Karen Henderson and Robert Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit expressed skepticism of Flynn’s argument that Sullivan cannot conduct an independent evaluation or name an outside party to argue against the Justice Department’s May 7 motion.“If Judge Sullivan had just kept this motion waiting and languishing, that’s one thing,” Henderson told Flynn attorney Sidney Powell. “But he has set a hearing for mid-July. For all we know, by the end of July he will have granted the motion. You also know courts have said he’s not a ‘mere rubber stamp’ either. There’s nothing wrong with him holding a hearing — there’s no authority I know of that says he can’t hold a hearing.”
Wilkins agreed, citing two cases in which he said the Supreme Court upheld the authority of federal judges “to perform an independent evaluation” before granting a government motion to drop a prosecution.
“You’re saying the Supreme Court got it wrong,” he asked.“No,” Powell said, “I’m saying the independent review of the record consists of just that, and the record in this case is extremely well documented of prosecutorial misconduct, and suppression of [exculpatory] evidence which would warrant dismissal in any circumstance.”
So, one final scream on Trump, his rallies, and his plan to host his triumphal speech in Jacksonville Florida violating yet another sacred day in US History. So, of course, the first is holding a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth which is the site of a horrific massacre of African Americans on May 31 and June 1, 1921.
https://twitter.com/CuriousGreg/status/1271200992747552768
And now this!
There is no end to his hateful racists actions, words, and sentiments.
So, I know all of this is depressing because living in our country right now is an ongoing nightmare. He has no respect for the US Constitution, our American laws and values, or any of us for that matter.
I hope you have a very peaceful weekend and that you’re fortunate enough that you can stay safe at home with your beloveds!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: June 11, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bill Barr, Boston, Christopher Columbus statues, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Houston, Judge John Gleeson, Kennedy Mitchum, Merriam-Webster, miami, MN, Racism, Richmond, St. Paul, VA 12 Comments
A statue depicting Christopher Columbus is seen with its head removed at Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park on June 10, 2020 in Boston. (Photo by Tim Bradbury/Getty Images)
Good Morning!!
The movement inspired by the murder of George Floyd has inspired more than the Black Lives Matter protests. People are toppling statues now, and not just the ones of confederate traitors.
Someone beheaded the Christopher Columbus statue in Boston’s North End yesterday. (The North End used to be Boston’s “little Italy.”) WBZ (CBS) Boston: Beheaded Christopher Columbus Statue In Boston Will Be Removed From North End Park.
The Christopher Columbus statue in Boston’s North End will be removed after it was beheaded early Wednesday morning. Mayor Marty Walsh said it will be put in storage and there will now be conversations about the “historic meaning” of the incident and whether it will ever go back up.
The statue in Christopher Columbus Park on Atlantic Avenue was surrounded by crime scene tape as the head lay on the ground next to the base.
Now, as police investigate how it happened, local indigenous groups are calling on the mayor to remove the statue for good.
“It’s a park dedicated to white supremacy,” said Mahtowin Munro of the United American Indians of New England. “It’s a park dedicated to indigenous genocide.” [….]
The head was also cut off back in 2006. The statue was doused with red paint in June 2015 with the words “Black Lives Matter” spray-painted on the base.
Another statue of Columbus was taken down at Minnesota’s state capitol in St. Paul. Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Protesters topple Columbus statue on Minnesota Capitol grounds.
Protesters lassoed a statue of Christopher Columbus outside the State Capitol Wednesday afternoon and pulled it to the ground, saying their action was a step toward healing for Indian communities.
People danced in a circle around the Christopher Columbus statue after it was toppled on Wednesday night on the Minnesota State Capitol grounds in St. Paul.
Dozens of people gathered by the statue on the grounds outside the Capitol before pulling it down. American Indian Movement activist Mike Forcia talked to a State Patrol captain sent to the scene to encourage protesters to follow a legal process for removing the statue, which has stood on the Capitol grounds since 1931. Forcia said they had tried that route many times and it had not worked.
The protesters then looped a rope around the statue and quickly pulled it off the stone pedestal and to the ground. The patrol officer watched from a distance as protesters sang and took photos with the statue for about half an hour.
State officials said they had been warned about the action via social media. It was mentioned at a news conference an hour and a half earlier with Gov. Tim Walz. Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said then that the patrol would meet the protesters and seek an alternative resolution.
In Richmond, VA, a Columbus statue was pulled down, set on fire, and rolled into a lake. Another Columbus statue was vandalized in Houston and another in Miami.
Two other stories of note on the topic of racism and Black Lives Matter protests:
Associated Press: Pope sends strong message to US Catholics after Floyd death.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis called George Floyd by name, twice, and offered support to an American bishop who knelt in prayer during a Black Lives Matter protest.
Cardinals black and white have spoken out about Floyd’s death, and the Vatican’s communications juggernaut has shifted into overdrive to draw attention to the cause he now represents.
Christopher Columbus statue dumped in lake in Richmond, VA
Under normal circumstances, Floyd’s killing at the hands of a white police officer and the global protests denouncing racism and police brutality might have drawn a muted diplomatic response from the Holy See. But in a U.S. election year, the intensity and consistency of the Vatican’s reaction suggests that, from the pope on down, it is seeking to encourage anti-racism protesters while making a clear statement about where American Catholics should stand ahead of President Donald Trump’s bid for a second term in November….
Last week, Francis denounced the “sin of racism” and twice identified Floyd as the victim of a “tragic” killing. In a message read in Italian and English during his general audience, Francis expressed concerns about violence during the protests, saying it was self-destructive.
Read more at the link.
Kennedy Mitchum wasn’t expecting much when she emailed Merriam-Webster last month, but she wanted to let the dictionary publisher know that she thought its definition of the word racism was inadequate.
So she was surprised when an editor responded and even more surprised that the company agreed to update the entry.
Mitchum has gotten into a lot conversations about racism and injustice where people have pointed to the dictionary to prove that they’re not racist. It’s happened a lot more lately as the world reacts to the death of George Floyd while in the custody of four Minneapolis police officers….
Kennedy Mitchum
“I kept having to tell them that definition is not representative of what is actually happening in the world,” she told CNN. “The way that racism occurs in real life is not just prejudice it’s the systemic racism that is happening for a lot of black Americans.”
Merriam-Webster’s first definition of racism is “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” [….]Mitchum said she sent her email on a Thursday night and got a reply from editor Alex Chambers the next morning.
After a few emails, Chambers agreed that the entry should be updated and said a new definition is being drafted.
“This revision would not have been made without your persistence in contacting us about this problem,” Chambers said in the email, which was provided to CNN. “We sincerely thank you for repeatedly writing in and apologize for the harm and offense we have caused in failing to address this issue sooner.”
Meanwhile, a backlash against Trump and his pet AG Bill Barr is building over the violent clearing of Lafayette Square to facilitation Trump’s ludicrous Bible photo op last week.
Tom McCarthy at The Guardian: ‘An abuse of power’: alarm grows over top Trump lieutenant’s military masquerade.
…[T]he top law enforcement official in the country, the attorney general, William Barr, is facing an internal crisis of confidence and growing calls for his own resignation.
Barr stands accused of directing violence against peaceful demonstrators outside the White House earlier this month, and with peddling a conspiracy theory advanced by Donald Trump in an attempt to smear protesters, who enjoy wide public support.
Trump/Barr attack on protesters in Lafayette Park
In the first 16 months of his tenure, Barr caught criticism for compromising justice department independence with his seemingly lockstep defense of Trump, whether he was protecting the president from the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller or intervening in criminal cases against the former Trump aides Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
But Barr’s critics now fear that he has taken a new step, of trying on a military hat as the president’s top lieutenant in the antagonistic posture the White House has taken against street protests that have sprung up after the killing of George Floyd, an African American man, in Minneapolis by white police officers.
A bit more:
The attorney general’s denial at the weekend that systemic racism was a problem in US law enforcement prompted new calls for his resignation.
“I think there’s racism in the United States still, but I don’t think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist,” Barr told CBS News’ Face the Nation. “And I would say, you know, the president, before any of this happened, was out in front on this issue.”
On no planet has Trump been “out in front” in the campaign against racist policing, said Kandace Montgomery, director of Black Visions, a Twin Cities-based activist organization.
“William Barr is a white man who is serving a racist administration, so of course he’s going to deny the fact that the current law enforcement system is systemically racist,” Montgomery said.
Bill Barr checking out the “troops” before ordering them to attack peaceful protesters.
The Washington Post: More than 1,250 former Justice Dept. workers call for internal watchdog to probe Barr role in clearing demonstrators from Lafayette Square.
More than 1,250 former Justice Department workers on Wednesday called on the agency’s internal watchdog to investigate Attorney General William P. Barr’s involvement in law enforcement’s move last week to push a crowd of largely peaceful demonstrators back from Lafayette Square using horses and gas.
In a letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, the group said it was “deeply concerned about the Department’s actions, and those of Attorney General William Barr himself, in response to the nationwide lawful gatherings to protest the systemic racism that has plagued this country throughout its history.”
“In particular, we are disturbed by Attorney General Barr’s possible role in ordering law enforcement personnel to suppress a peaceful domestic protest in Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, for the purpose of enabling President Trump to walk across the street from the White House and stage a photo op at St. John’s Church, a politically motivated event in which Attorney General Barr participated,” the group wrote.
The group asked Horowitz to “immediately open and conduct an investigation of the full scope of the Attorney General’s and the DOJ’s role” in that and other events.
“The rule of law, the maintenance of the Department’s integrity, and the very safety of our citizens demand nothing less,” the group wrote.
Barr was also publicly excoriated by former Judge John Gleeson for his attempt to drop charges against Michael Flynn. Paul Waldman at The Washington Post: A retired judge’s sharp rebuke of William Barr confirms the worst.
Judge John Gleeson
Back in May, long after Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in their investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election — which got him fired as national security adviser after 24 days on the job — Barr took the extraordinary step of seeking to drop the case against him before he could be sentenced. In response, the judge in the case asked a respected retired judge to make a recommendation about how this highly unusual situation should be handled.
That retired judge, John Gleeson, not only recommended that Flynn be sentenced as planned but issued a scathing report condemning the Justice Department’s actions in the case:
In his argument, Gleeson said the government’s “ostensible grounds” for seeking dismissal were “conclusively disproven” by its own earlier briefs; contradict the court’s prior orders and Justice Department positions taken in other cases; and “are riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact.”
A former federal prosecutor and judge for 22 years in Brooklyn — best known for putting the late mob boss John Gotti behind bars and presiding over the trial of “Wolf of Wall Street” stockbroker Jordan Belfort — Gleeson wrote that judges are empowered to protect their court’s integrity “from prosecutors who undertake corrupt, politically motivated dismissals. That is what has happened here. The Government has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the President.”
Not only that, Gleeson stated that “Flynn has indeed committed perjury in these proceedings, for which he deserves punishment,” but recommended that instead of a separate prosecution, Flynn’s misdeeds should be taken into account when he is sentenced for the crime he pleaded guilty to.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
Of course there is much more news out there. I’ll add some links in the comment thread and I hope you will too.
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