Monday through Wednesday
Ocala homeless fined, jailed: nowhere to sleep legally
By KARINA ELWOOD / The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
July 11, 2020
https://apnews.com/b8910d486707dfa11f9356bbfb892fc7Lumped together covid testing and antibody testing
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trump_fauci_mistakes_anonymous.php
https://twitter.com/DWUhlfelderLaw/status/1283211974378127360 St. Johns County, Florida Commissioner proposed a mandatory mask mandate during Tuesday’s meeting, but the motion failed as none of the commissioners would second, even as one of their colleagues is in “critical” condition due to complications from COVID-19.
https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1283235046112059392 ViacomCBS has ended its relationship with Nick Cannon: "We are deeply troubled that Nick has failed to acknowledge or apologize for perpetuating anti-Semitism, and we are terminating our relationship with him"
July 15 followup: Nick on the attack
A ViacomCBS spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that it was severing ties with Cannon after it emerged that the performer had said on his podcast that Black people are the “true Hebrews” in addition to discussing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories involving the Rothschild family.
First COVID-19 vaccine tested in US poised for final testing
July 14
The experimental vaccine, developed by Fauci’s colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will start its most important step around July 27: A 30,000-person study to prove if the shots really are strong enough to protect against the coronavirus.
Moderna’s share price jumped nearly 15 percent in trading after U.S. markets closed. Shares of the company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have nearly quadrupled this year.
Trump’s ‘law and order’ is a code for maintaining personal power
July 14
It’s laughable, really, that President Trump is presenting himself as the candidate of “law and order” in the 2020 presidential campaign. His record in office has been one of illegality and disorder.
Glenn Kessler, The Post’s Fact Checker, noted Tuesday that the Trump campaign has spent $6.7 million to run an ad in 12 battleground states that claims: “Joe Biden’s supporters are fighting to defund police departments. Violent crime has exploded. You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” In awarding the ad four Pinocchios, Kessler noted that the former vice president had actually said in early June, “No, I don’t support defunding the police.”
Trump is about raw power — the kind that comes from ignoring the rule of law.
Postal Service memos detail ‘difficult’ changes, including slower mail delivery
Analysts say the memos recast the USPS as a business rather than a government service
July 14
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told employees to leave mail behind at distribution centers if it delayed letter carriers from their routes, according to internal USPS documents obtained by The Washington Post and verified by the American Postal Workers Union and three people with knowledge of their contents, but who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
Lincoln Project video editor is out over crude tweets about female anatomy
July 14
Ben Howe, who came of age politically making anti-Obama ads during the rise of the tea party, did not publicly tout his work for the super PAC formed by a group of high-level Republican operatives who have broken ranks with the party over Trump’s presidency until a recent interview with Vanity Fair. He was described in the article as “the creative mind, video editor, and, he said, sometimes narrating voice on many of the group’s ads.”
The 19th, a nonprofit news outlet, had emailed the Lincoln Project about a series of Twitter posts made by Howe in the years after Trump’s election that deployed female anatomy as an insult, calling rivals a “vagina” or “twat,” or in some instances using a more profane term.
Last week, the Daily Dot resurfaced tweets from Howe that defended Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. They were published by Talking Points Memo shortly after they were made in 2014 and have since been deleted.
Howe said he had written “ill advised” and “inexcusable” tweets and was grateful for the work he’d been involved in.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/lincoln-project-ben-howe-michael-brown/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-howe-red-state-id-have-shot-mike-brown-in-face
“Some people just need a tap on the shoulder to change. Others need a slap in the face. Me? I’ve often needed a piano dropped on my head. The piano fell years ago, but I suppose I’m still crawling out from under the wreckage in some ways,” he said in a statement. “I’m better than I’ve been. And I intend to be better than I am.”
GOP Governors Losing Residents' Support on COVID-19
July 14
Sessions loses runoff in Alabama as Trump helps vanquish a key supporter he came to despise
July 15
Lincoln Project Co-Founder Rick Wilson Ambushed Over Bush Support By Colbert’s Cartoon Anchors
Rick Wilson, the co-founder of anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, was ambushed on Monday night by the cartoon anchors on Stephen Colbert’s parody news show Tooning Out the News.
Wilson’s interview started off well, with the anchors praising him for his efforts in sabotaging Trump, until Inside the Hill cartoon host Sarah Sabo faulted him for calling the president “a whining b*tch addicted to Twitter.”
“Yes, he is a b*tch. That is the biggest insult, comparing someone to a woman,” Sabo responded. “I hate us.”
The hosts later pointed out that seven of The Lincoln Project’s members were affiliated with President George W. Bush, mocking the Bush-Cheney administration for always doing “what was right for the country, that country being Saudi Arabia.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNvuYPpX0C0 Rick Wilson squirms talking anti-Trump Super-PAC, The Lincoln Project
Former Atomwaffen Division Leader Pleads Guilty to Swatting Conspiracy
July 14
John Cameron Denton, 26, of Montgomery, Texas, is a former leader of the Atomwaffen Division in Texas. From October 2018 to at least April 2019, Denton and several others
According to court documents, Denton participated in a conspiracy that conducted three swatting calls that occurred here in the Eastern District of Virginia: a former Cabinet official living in Northern Virginia on Jan. 27, 2019; Old Dominion University on Nov. 29 and Dec. 4, 2018; and Alfred Street Baptist Church on Nov. 3, 2018.
Additionally, Denton chose at least two targets to “swat”: the New York City office of ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism; and an investigative journalist that produced materials for ProPublica. Denton chose the two targets because he was furious with ProPublica and the investigative journalist for publishing his true identity and discussing his role in Atomwaffen Division.
Denton pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, interstate threats to injure. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison when sentenced on November 17.
---------
Kanye’s Short-Lived Attempt to Get on the 2020 Ballot
"In order to qualify for the ballot in the Sunshine State, West would need to gather 132,781 valid signatures from Florida voters in less than a week."
The article gives an insider's view of the action from July 4 through July 14. West did not get on the ballot. The people hired to work on the campaign have been let go. The campaign is apparently over. West registered to vote in Wyoming.
https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/1283399515719032832 According to my calculations
@kanyewest’s presidential aspirations lasted one full Scaramucci
-----------
This about the candidate they say echos QAnon and was not Trump endorsed, beat an entrenched Trump thumper in the R primary. She has to some extent disavowed QAnon but watch out.
Pork sliders sold by Republican House candidate who supports QAnon gave customers diarrhea: records
Lauren Boebert's pork sliders allegedly poisoned dozens at a local rodeo, sending some home with bloody diarrhea
Lauren Boebert, supporter of the QAnon "deep state" conspiracy theory movement and newly-minted Colorado Republican congressional candidate, has put her restaurant front and center in her campaign.
Shooters Grill, which Boebert co-owns with her husband in Rifle, Colo., has a schtick. Wait staff are required to wear holstered and loaded guns as they serve customers. (For years, they were not required to take training courses.)
"It keeps that feeling of the old West alive," Boebert told local TV news station FOX31 in 2019. "The customers have their jokes with the waitresses: 'If I don't tip are you going to hurt me?'"
But three years ago, Boebert's food apparently posed a greater risk to customers than untrained staff after her pork sliders allegedly poisoned dozens of people at a local rodeo, making them nauseous and sending some home with bloody diarrhea, The Daily Beast first reported.
Boebert shot to national headlines in recent weeks when she beat Scott Tipton, a five-term, Trump-endorsed incumbent, in the Republican primary by nine full points. It was the first time a challenger has beaten a sitting congressional representative in Colorado in 48 years.
--------------
Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times (do I care? Why?)
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4ay47q/bari-weiss-is-leaving-the-new-york-times
https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
https://twitter.com/i/events/1283059136830169088
Ivanka’s Tone-Deaf Advice to Millions of Unemployed Americans: Find Something New
Voters will have their chance to do just that this November.
In the midst of this economic crisis facing millions of Americans, enter Ivanka Trump with advice for the unemployed: Embrace the chaos, she urges, and “Find Something New.” The initiative comes as her most recent diamond-encrusted middle finger to American families since the pandemic hit.
The campaign’s website, which boasts ties with companies like Apple, reads like a choose-your-own-adventure where options like vague certificate and intensive programs are presented but with scant detail on how to pursue such paths, much less pay for some of them. Click on Apple, for example, and you’re simply rerouted to a page offering free beginner coding courses that surely won’t be enough to even land you an interview with the company. It’s the equivalent of directing someone to Indeed.com, wishing them good luck, and congratulating yourself for helping them in a meaningful way.
Additional ads are expected to be produced. All will appear nationwide across TV, digital and print platforms in time and space donated by various media companies, the Ad Council said.
Funding was provided by more than 20 corporations and organizations, including Apple, IBM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
https://findsomethingnew.org/
Find Something New
https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a33313819/ivanka-trump-find-something-new-jobs/
Hilarious send up
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NepotismBarbie&src=trend_click
NepotismBarbie was trending on Twitter
-----------------------------------------------------------
Roger Stone Can Be Tried, Again
Hours before the commutation, Stone said in an interview that he thought Trump would help him because the president “knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.” Stone thought that his silence would buy a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card from his friend. But, like everyone else who’s dealt with Trump, Stone got a raw deal.
We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has.
The administration is undermining public health
By Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher and Richard Besser
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/14/cdc-directors-trump-politics/
As of this date, the CDC guidelines, which were designed to protect children, teachers, school staffers and their families — no matter the state and no matter the politics — have not been altered. It is not unusual for CDC guidelines to be changed or amended during a clearance process that moves through multiple agencies and the White House. But it is extraordinary for guidelines to be undermined after their release.
On Sunday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos characterized the CDC guidelines as an impediment to reopening schools quickly rather than what they are: the path to doing so safely.
Trump Administration Strips C.D.C. of Control of Coronavirus Data
Hospitals have been ordered to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all patient information to a central database in Washington, raising questions about transparency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/coronavirus-data-trump-cdc.html
https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html
“Centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response under former President Barack Obama. “It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like C.D.C. to do its basic job.”
https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/index.html
Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee, has raised questions about the TeleTracking contract, calling it a “noncompetitive, multimillion-dollar contract” for a “duplicative health data system.”
The CDC director said the fall and winter ‘will be one of the most difficult times we have experienced’
Plus, a vaccine may be months away and probably longer, parents are struggling with back-to-school decisions, teachers are weighing risks, and more.
“The time is now. The data is clearly there. Masking works,” Redfield said. He went on to say the president and vice president need to “set an example.”
Also Tuesday, Redfield co-authored a JAMA essay pointing out that masks slow the spread of COVID-19, and that even homemade masks help. The essay said:
Universal Masking to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Transmission—The Time Is Now
John T. Brooks, MD1; Jay C. Butler, MD1; Robert R. Redfield, MD1
> The public needs consistent, clear, and appealing messaging that normalizes community masking. At this critical juncture when COVID-19 is resurging, broad adoption of cloth face coverings is a civic duty, a small sacrifice reliant on a highly effective low-tech solution that can help turn the tide favorably in national and global efforts against COVID-19.
The CDC published a study focused on a hair salon in Springfield, Missouri. Two stylists there were symptomatic COVID-19 patients who, while infected, came into contact with a combined 139 clients. But, the study said, the stylists wore masks — and no symptomatic cases resulted from that exposure.
Kansas Rep. Steve Watkins charged with voter fraud
Summary
Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay, a Republican, announced the charges about a half-hour before Watkins, a first-term Topeka Republican, was set to appear on a televised debate with his primary challengers Jake LaTurner and Dennis Taylor on KSNT.
Watkins used a Topeka UPS store as his registration address for the 2019 municipal election and allegedly voted in the wrong city council district. Sources say Watkins was living with parents at the time, but used the UPS address to obscure that fact.
Watkins won the 2nd Congressional District seat in 2018 with 47.6 percent of the vote against Democrat Paul Davis’ 46.8 percent.
----------------------------------
Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on: Peter Navarro
When you ask me whether I listen to his advice, my answer is only with skepticism and caution: Opposing view
Peter Navarro Opinion contributor
Some of the links should be checked out, but this piece promotes Navarro and his narratives.
So on a day when Biden unveiled a $2 trillion climate plan during a speech in Delaware, Trump took to a podium outside the Oval Office and, after announcing moves to punish China for its treatment of Hong Kong, criticized the former vice president and sought to draw a distinction between their two candidacies.
“When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is ‘hoax,’” Biden said. “When I think about climate change, the word I think of is ‘jobs.’ Good-paying union jobs that put Americans to work.”
Elder Abuse at the White House
The president of the United States, ladies and gentlemen, was in full Mad King mode, rambling, confused, disjointed, parading his grievances with barely a wave from afar at coherence. It was as if a hive of buzzwords exploded in his head: statues, boats, vandalism, socialism, suburbs.
The White House Called a News Conference. Trump Turned It Into a Meandering Monologue.
The president spoke in the Rose Garden for 63 minutes. He spent only six of those minutes answering questions from reporters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-news-conference.html
What followed instead was an hour of presidential stream of consciousness as Mr. Trump drifted seemingly at random from one topic to another, often in the same run-on sentence. Even for a president who rarely sticks to the script and wanders from thought to thought, it was one of the most rambling performances of his presidency.
For instance, in discussing cooperation agreements with Central American countries to stop illegal immigration, he had this to say: “We have great agreements where when Biden and Obama used to bring killers out, they would say don’t bring them back to our country, we don’t want them. Well, we have to, we don’t want them. They wouldn’t take them. Now with us, they take them. Someday, I’ll tell you why. Someday, I’ll tell you why. But they take them and they take them very gladly. They used to bring them out and they wouldn’t even let the airplanes land if they brought them back by airplanes. They wouldn’t let the buses into their country. They said we don’t want them. Said no, but they entered our country illegally and they’re murderers, they’re killers in some cases.”
Daphne Caruana Galizia
https://twitter.com/sweatyhabibti/status/1283058127609499655 remember the Panama Papers and how Daphne Caruana Galizia, the woman who reported on them, was mysteriously murdered?
Sara Gideon Wins Nomination to Challenge Susan Collins in Maine Ms. Gideon, backed by the Senate Democratic campaign arm and outside political groups, had long been the favorite to challenge Senator Collins, the sole remaining New England Republican in Congress.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/sara-gideon-maine.html
Ms. Gideon, backed by the Senate Democratic campaign arm and a number of outside political groups, had long been the favorite to challenge Ms. Collins, the sole remaining New England Republican in Congress. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the race a tossup, and the election has already become the most expensive in Maine history.
Having defeated two progressives — Betsy Sweet, a lobbyist, and Bre Kidman, a lawyer — Ms. Gideon is set to receive another windfall: at least $3.5 million raised by a crowdfunding campaign during and after the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh. (Because organizers vowed to return the donations if Ms. Collins voted against his confirmation, the senator has condemned the money as a bribe seeking to influence an official act.)
Andrew Cuomo Ascends to the Mountaintop With His Pandemic Poster
July 14
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/arts/design/cuomo-covid-poster-new-york.htmlTrump Loving Cartoonist Sues The Anti-Defamation League for Defamation
CARTOONISH
Ben Garrison insists the ADL knew his drawing of Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster being controlled by George Soros was based on fact.
Garrison’s suit doesn’t just allege reputational damage, it also defends the cartoon on the merits. In one portion of the lawsuit, Garrison claims that the ADL had to have known that McMaster actually was under the sway of Soros, and that Soros therefore owed his loyalty to the Rothschilds—the exact situation laid out in the cartoon.
Breonna Taylor protesters sat on the Kentucky attorney general’s lawn. Police charged 87 with felonies.
Sitting on the green grass of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s front lawn, dozens of peaceful protesters in matching face masks and T-shirts on Tuesday afternoon chanted, “Breonna Taylor, say her name!”
The activists had come to demand Cameron, a rising star in the Republican Party and the state’s first black attorney general, charge the three police officers who fatally shot Taylor, 26, inside her home while executing a no-knock warrant on March 13.
Cameron asked police to remove the protesters from his property, a Louisville Metro Police Department spokesman said in a statement shared with The Washington Post. When 87 demonstrators refused to leave, officers arrested them one-by-one, restraining their hands with zip ties and escorting them to police vehicles to be taken to the jail. Each one was charged with a felony and two misdemeanors, police told The Washington Post.
“Due to their refusal to leave the property and their attempts to influence the decision of the Attorney General with their actions, each person was charged with Intimidating a Participant in a Legal Process,” a police spokesman said. They also face disorderly conduct and trespassing charges, both misdemeanors.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky denounced the felony charges filed against the protesters, calling them “overblown, outrageous and inappropriate.”
The 87 people arrested Tuesday included Minneapolis NAACP President Leslie Redmond, activist Linda Sarsour and “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” co-star Porsha Williams.
Ivanka Trump posts photo holding Goya beans, draws criticism for using her position to promote a product
In an apparent show of support for the company, Ivanka Trump posted the photo of herself along with the slogan, “If it’s Goya, it has to be good.” She also included the Spanish translation in postings on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
31% of children tested for COVID-19 in Florida have been positive, state data shows
Almost one-third of Florida children tested are positive for the coronavirus
The state’s outbreak continues to surge as new data reveal children may be more impacted than previously thought.
Nearly one-third of children tested for COVID in Florida are positive. Palm Beach County’s health director warns of risk of long-term damage
“They are seeing there is damage to the lungs in these asymptomatic children. ... We don’t know how that is going to manifest a year from now or two years from now,” Alonso told reporters. “Is that child going to have chronic pulmonary problems or not?”
As the Trump disaster gets worse, a new political theory helps explain it
Law professors David Pozen and Kim Lane Scheppele present “executive underreach” as a species of leadership failure that’s as destructive as executive overreach, defining it as:
But crucially, the paper links this phenomenon to fundamentally illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies: Hostility to science and expertise; and the leader’s abiding faith in his ability to confuse the public with disinformation as a substitute for acting in the national interest, all typical of “demagogic populists” like Trump and Bolsonaro.
Executive Underreach, in Pandemics and Otherwise
A Resurgence of the Virus, and Lockdowns, Threatens Economic Recovery
Hopes for a rebound are endangered by prolonged closures of schools, renewed state restrictions on business and fears of a difficult autumn and winter.
The Last Reporter in Town Had One Big Question for His Rich Boss
His newspaper has withered under a hedge fund. His industry was in turmoil even before a pandemic. But Evan Brandt won’t stop chronicling his town.
Meanwhile, the hedge funds and private equity firms that own many newspapers often siphon away profits rather than reinvest in local journalism. Frequently associated with this business model is the Alden Global Capital hedge fund, which controls The Mercury, Mr. Brandt’s employer for 23 years.
He keeps another memento as well: a photograph of the time he paid an unannounced visit to the Long Island mansion of the president of Alden Global Capital. Basically, his boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s — who knows how many bosses?
In 2011, the Mercury’s owner, the Journal Register Company, was bought by Alden Global Capital. The hedge fund’s publicity-shy owners, Randall D. Smith and Heath Freeman, were often referred to as vulture capitalists, having made their fortunes by buying and monetizing distressed properties.
Their MNG Enterprises — also known as MediaNews Group — controls about 200 publications, including The Denver Post and The Boston Herald. It also has a 32 percent stake in the Tribune Publishing Company, which owns several major newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune, and has recently indicated interest in buying the McClatchy chain of newspapers.
“You rent an apartment, open all the walls, sell the plumbing, and rip out and sell the hardwood floors,” he said. “Then you walk away. You don’t pay the rent, and you don’t care about your neighbors.”
What value do you place on local news?
Four States Are Sharing Driver's License Info To Help Find Out Who's A Citizen
To help figure out the U.S. citizenship status of every adult living in the country, the Trump administration has made agreements to accumulate driver's license and state identification card information from states including Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota, NPR has learned.
In the past year since the administration failed in its attempt to add the now-blocked citizenship question to 2020 census forms, the Census Bureau has been gathering state and federal records to produce anonymized citizenship data under directives from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the bureau, and an executive order Trump issued in July 2019.
Apple and Ireland win appeal against the European Commission’s $15 billion tax ruling
Romain Dillet
Back in 2017, the Commission said Apple received illegal state aid and should have paid more taxes. But the General Court, Europe’s first instance court, says that this argument doesn’t represent a legal basis.
Exclusive: Secret Trump order gives CIA more powers to launch cyberattacks
The “very aggressive” finding “gave the agency very specific authorities to really take the fight offensively to a handful of adversarial countries,” said a former U.S. government official. These countries include Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — which are mentioned directly in the document — but the finding potentially applies to others as well, according to another former official. “The White House wanted a vehicle to strike back,” said the second former official. “And this was the way to do it.”
July 15, 2020 - Biden Widens Lead Over Trump To 15 Points In Presidential Race, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Trump Job Approval Rating Drops To 36 Percent
Biden Leads But Many Anticipate Secret Trump Vote
White House officials sent document to Pentagon criticizing Vindman after impeachment testimony
The Pentagon got the document as Vindman was on track to be promoted to colonel. Sources said the accusations could block a promotion if found to be true.
The Pentagon conducted a command-level investigation into the allegations, looking for evidence to substantiate the claims about Vindman’s conduct while he was detailed to the NSC, the people familiar with the document said. But ultimately the military could not corroborate any of the accusations, the people familiar with it said. Included in the list was an accusation that Vindman had verbally abused a colleague, a senior administration official said.
The list of allegations suggests that the White House tried to derail the promotion of an Army officer the president said he wasn't "happy" with and viewed as disloyal. It could also suggest White House retaliation against Vindman for his impeachment testimony went beyond ousting him, and his twin brother, from the NSC in February, before their time was up.
Will Biden’s War on the Suburbs Become a Campaign Issue?
In re AFFH, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing , this is Trump targeting Biden because during the Obama years, AFFH targeted Westchester county NY.
As I explain in Spreading the Wealth, https://www.amazon.com/Spreading-Wealth-Robbing-Suburbs-Cities/dp/1595230920
Trump tweet not cited, but quoted as "At the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs, and others, I am studying the AFFH housing regulation that is having a devastating impact on these once thriving suburban areas. Corrupt Joe Biden wants to make them MUCH WORSE. Not fair to homeowners, I may END!"
After the Obama-Biden administration intervened, Westchester’s local government flipped from Democratic to Republican. Rob Astorino was elected county executive and fought the Obama administration for years, although his hands were largely tied by a legal agreement signed by the previous Democratic county executive. (Astorino is now running for state senate, by the way, in a hotly contested race.) That gives you a sense of how powerful AFFH can be as a political issue. AFFH flipped the county that Bill and Hillary Clinton call home from blue to red. The question is whether President Trump will make AFFH and Biden’s anti-suburban plans an issue in the presidential election. The answer, I think, is “probably.”
Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier
Online profiles describe him as a coffee lover and politics junkie who was raised in a traditional Jewish home. His half dozen freelance editorials and blog posts reveal an active interest in anti-Semitism and Jewish affairs, with bylines in the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel.
His university says it has no record of him. He has no obvious online footprint beyond an account on the question-and-answer site Quora, where he was active for two days in March. Two newspapers that published his work say they have tried and failed to confirm his identity. And experts in deceptive imagery used state-of-the-art forensic analysis programs to determine that Taylor’s profile photo is a hyper-realistic forgery - a “deepfake.”
The threat is drawing increasing concern in Washington and Silicon Valley. Last year House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff warned that computer-generated video could “turn a world leader into a ventriloquist’s dummy.” Last month Facebook announced the conclusion of its Deepfake Detection Challenge - a competition intended to help researchers automatically identify falsified footage. Last week online publication The Daily Beast revealed a network of deepfake journalists - part of a larger group of bogus personas seeding propaganda online.
PROGRESSIVE WAVE ROLLS THROUGH TEXAS WITH BIG WINS IN DALLAS, AUSTIN, AND HOUSTON
The Democratic national party’s pick for Senate, M.J. Hegar, meanwhile, found herself locked in a much closer fight than expected with Royce West, though by the end of the night, she appeared headed for a general election race against Republican Sen. John Cornyn.
Is this mostly about suburbs in Texas?
he Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility
The popular book aims to combat racism but talks down to Black people.
Diangelo also writes as if certain shibboleths of the Black left—for instance, that all disparities between white and Black people are due to racism of some kind—represent the incontestable truth. This ideological bias is hardly unique to DiAngelo, and a reader could look past it, along with the other lapses in argumentation I have noted, if she offered some kind of higher wisdom. The problem is that White Fragility is the prayer book for what can only be described as a cult.
Two crimes benefited Trump’s campaign in 2016. Ever since, the president has worked to block scrutiny of those schemes.
“He’s resisted cooperation with all manner of duly authorized investigations — it’s a comprehensive stonewalling to protect his legal and political liabilities,” said Alan Charles Raul, who served as associate counsel to President Ronald Reagan and now is representing Stone jurors in a proceeding to determine whether confidential juror questionnaires will be made public.
“I think he signals clearly to his subordinates, others in government and people outside government that if they don’t rat him out, if they don’t flip and cooperate with government investigators, then they’ll be rewarded. If they do cooperate with criminal or congressional investigations, he will retaliate,” he added.
Al Franken: How Biden wins
The first, of course, is that a Trump victory would be a disaster for everything Democrats hold dear. Here's a short list -- democracy, economic justice, social justice and justice. That leaves out a whole bunch -- for instance, providing health care for all Americans and global warming. Stuff like that.
Secondly, between now and November, Trump and the Republicans will do everything they can to cheat. That means using every tool possible to suppress votes, including a full court press to prevent vote-by-mail, even if we are still deep in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Third, if Trump loses a close election, he may very well refuse to leave.
The nation is in a downward spiral. Worse is still to come.
George Will
Because of his incontinent use of it, the rhetorical mustard that the president slathers on every subject has lost its tang. The entertainer has become a bore, and foretelling his defeat no longer involves peering into a distant future: Early voting begins in two states (South Dakota and Minnesota) 61 days from Sunday, which is 107 days before Election Day.
The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump.
This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like.
The Cowardice of Open Letters
They’re badly written, open to doubt, and fundamentally unnecessary.
GRAEME WOOD https://www.theatlantic.com/author/graeme-wood/
Major LGBTQ rights group breaks with Sen. Susan Collins, endorses Democratic opponent Sara Gideon
The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy organization, is opposing Sen. Susan Collins’s reelection bid in Maine and endorsing her Democratic opponent, Sara Gideon. It’s the first time that the HRC has opposed Collins, a key Republican vote on LGBTQ rights, for reelection.
Before today, the HRC had gotten some criticism for not endorsing against Collins. Two other influential liberal groups, Planned Parenthood and the League of Conservation Voters, had already endorsed Gideon. But the HRC held back, in part, because Gideon’s more liberal primary opponents identified as bisexual and non-binary. The pro-LGBTQ Victory Fund had endorsed another Gideon opponent; in March, that candidate ended his bid and supported the front-runner.
Gideon is one of several Senate candidates, all Democrats, who will receive the HRC’s support Wednesday. They include Colorado’s John Hickenlooper, Iowa’s Theresa Greenfield, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Texas’s MJ Hegar, as well as Massachusetts Sen. Edward J. Markey, who is facing Rep. Joe Kennedy in a September primary.
Minneapolis park board will vote to repeal nudity ordinance
On Wednesday, the park board will take its first of three votes needed to repeal the ordinance with a final reading and vote set for mid August.
As it stands currently, a Minneapolis Park Board ordinance PB2-21 states no one 10 years or older is allowed to expose their genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast below the top of the areola in a park or parkway, but in a push from park board commissioner Chris Meyer to repeal the ordinance, that could all change.
Currently, Minneapolis city ordinance 385.160 allows women and transgender people to go topless on city streets, but the park board's ordinance prevents this from happening in the city’s parks.
A Simple Step to Help Keep You Safe: Walmart and Sam’s Club Require Shoppers to Wear Face Coverings
The U.S. is the accidental Sweden, which could make the fall ‘catastrophic’ for Covid-19
Some states, especially in the South, began easing restrictions in late April. But many people seemed to take “bars and restaurants can reopen with capacity limits” as “back to normal!” An entrenched culture of “don’t tell me what to do” just about ensured the opposite of Swedes’ placing greater restrictions on themselves than the government did. And that’s what happened.
In early-reopening Tennessee, 20- and 30-somethings packed Nashville clubs, skin-to-skin with scores of strangers (and few face coverings). That pattern repeated from pool parties at Lake of the Ozarks to bar openings, such as one in Michigan blamed for more than 100 cases.
Call it “individualism, cultural libertarianism, atomism, selfishness, lack of social trust, suspicion of authority,” The Week columnist Damon Linker wrote, “it amounts to a refusal on the part of lots of Americans to think in terms of … what’s best for the community, of the common or public good. Each of us thinks we know what’s best for ourselves. We resent being told what to do.”
Twitter hack stories
Trump Campaign Manager Out In Last-Minute Shakeup
I am pleased to announce that Bill Stepien has been promoted to the role of Trump Campaign Manager. Brad Parscale, who has been with me for a very long time and has led our tremendous digital and data strategies, will remain in that role, while being a Senior Advisor to the campaign. Both were heavily involved in our historic 2016 win, and I look forward to having a big and very important second win together. This one should be a lot easier as our poll numbers are rising fast, the economy is getting better, vaccines and therapeutics will soon be on the way, and Americans want safe streets and communities!
'He Shouldn't Be Doing That': Trump Weighs In On Navarro Op-Ed Attacking Fauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, said recent White House attacks on his record are backfiring, calling the episode "bizarre" in interviews with The Atlantic.
The magazine published Fauci's comments after one of President Trump's senior advisers on trade and China, Peter Navarro, wrote an op-ed for USA Today in which he argued that Fauci "has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on."
It was one of a series of salvos against the immunologist by the White House, which has struggled to explain why top aides appear to be at open war with a widely respected scientist whom an overwhelming majority of Americans say they trust more on the coronavirus than the president, or almost anyone else.
"I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that. I think they realize now that that was not a prudent thing to do, because it's only reflecting negatively on them," Fauci told The Atlantic. "I can't explain Peter Navarro. He's in a world by himself."
Kids Shipped in Armoires? The Person Who Started the Wayfair Conspiracy Speaks
July 10
Is it possible Wayfair involved in Human trafficking with their WFX Utility collection? Or are these just extremely overpriced cabinets? (Note the names of the cabinets) this makes me sick to my stomach if it's true," redditor PrincessPeach1987 posted on Thursday, alongside a screenshot from Wayfair's mobile website featuring four storage cabinets—products named Neriah, Yaritza, Samiyah and Alyvia—that cost between $12,699.99 and $14,499.99.
In 'Eyes Wide Shut' Stanley Kubrick Captured Horrors of Jeffrey Epstein Era
July 12
George Floyd's death: Police body camera footage emerges
A New Understanding of Herd Immunity
No comments:
Post a Comment