Tuesday, September 15, 2020

September 14 2020

 September 14 2020

Monday through Friday September 19, 2020


Tuesday September 15


“IF YOU AREN’T MAKING NEWS, YOU AREN’T GOVERNING”: MATT GAETZ ON MEDIA MASTERY, INFLUENCE PEDDLING, AND DATING IN TRUMP’S SWAMP
In a new book, the congressman who could only have ascended in Donald Trump’s shadow lays out his strategy: make friends with the makeup artist. Always be on air. And “no dating your staff members.” 

Federal judge temporarily blocks Postal Service from sending election mailer to more voters in Colorado
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/colorado-election-mailer-usps/2020/09/14/1b9f7e7a-f696-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html

Two major Antarctic glaciers are tearing loose from their restraints, scientists say
Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers already contribute 5 percent of sea-level rise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/09/14/glaciers-breaking-antarctica-pine-island-thwaites/

Dismay as huge chunk of Greenland’s ice cap breaks off

https://apnews.com/ac55be4b1b4f7b5f0f2a862e029fc452 


After an Inlander article about her links to conspiracy theory websites, Rep. Jenny Graham responds with profanity, threats and another conspiracy website
https://www.inlander.com/spokane/after-an-inlander-article-about-her-links-to-conspiracy-theory-websites-rep-jenny-graham-responds-with-profanity-threats-and-another-conspi/Content?oid=20239155 

“I Have Blood on My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo

Judge Hammers Pa. Governor’s Unconstitutional Shutdown: ‘Liberties Protected by the Constitution Are Not Fair-Weather Freedoms’

https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/judge-hammers-pa-governors-unconstitutional-shutdown-liberties-protected-by-the-constitution-are-not-fair-weather-freedoms/?utm_source=mostpopular


L.A. deputies tackled and arrested a reporter. Her videos contradict their claims about the incident.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/14/la-sheriffs-josie-huang-npr/ 

As Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies tackled Josie Huang to the street on Saturday night, the reporter for NPR affiliate KPCC screamed repeatedly she was a journalist. Deputies arrested her anyway, leaving her with scrapes, bruises, a five-hour stay in custody — and an obstruction charge that carries up to a year in jail.


'Beyond negligent': Census workers describe logistical nightmare as deadline approaches

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/beyond-negligent-census-workers-describe-logistical-nightmare-deadline-approaches-n1239924


South Dakota’s Attorney General Told Deputies He Hit a Deer, But a Man Is Dead: Investigators

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/south-dakotas-attorney-general-told-deputies-he-hit-a-deer-but-a-man-is-dead-investigators/

Devin Nunes Determined to Keep Filing Lawsuits That He Has No Hope of Winning

https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/devin-nunes-determined-to-keep-filing-lawsuits-that-he-has-no-hope-of-winning/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69W79wOY9_c Chris Wallace instantly smacks down Trump adviser ON AIR for lying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elTP8S1mWDY ‘Show Us Your Bone Spurs’: McCain Colleague Rebukes The President’s Attacks | Deadline | MSNBC

Senior Trump official warns Facebook audience of left-wing hit squads, accuses CDC scientists of 'sedition,’ then deletes Twitter account after rant


https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-michael-caputo-video-sedition-20200914-cy4sz4rwejhvxd2urwyq3iqpju-story.html


https://va.org/poll/do-you-think-donald-trump-is-helping-or-hurting-america/comment-page-5/


https://tinyurl.com/y4voarmz USA Glows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=dSreOPz0Zcs San Francisco Looking Like Blade Runner / Mars / Chernobyl

Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/turning-point-teens-disinformation-trump/2020/09/15/c84091ae-f20a-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html

Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages at the direction of Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the prominent conservative youth organization based in Phoenix, according to four people with independent knowledge of the effort. Their descriptions were confirmed by detailed notes from relatives of one of the teenagers who recorded conversations with him about the efforts.
Turning Point Action, whose 26-year-old leader, Charlie Kirk, delivered the opening speech at this year’s Republican National Convention, issued a statement from the group’s field director defending the social media campaign and saying any comparison to a troll farm was a “gross mischaracterization.”
One parent of two teenagers involved in the effort, Robert Jason Noonan, said his 16- and 17-year-old daughters were being paid by Turning Point to push “conservative points of view and values” on social media. He said they have been working with the group since about June, adding in an interview, “The job is theirs until they want to quit or until the election.”
Four years ago, the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency amplified Turning Point’s right-wing memes as part of Moscow’s sweeping interference aimed at boosting Trump, according to expert assessments prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee. One report pointed specifically to the use of Turning Point content as evidence of Russia’s “deep knowledge of American culture, media, and influencers.”
While Facebook and Twitter have pledged to crack down on what they have labeled coordinated inauthentic behavior, in Facebook’s case, and platform manipulation and spam, as Twitter defines its rules, their efforts falter in the face of organizations willing to pay users to post on their own accounts, maintaining the appearance of independence and authenticity.

A late change to the 2020 General Election ballot sparks outcry from Alaska Democrats
Candidates no longer have their party registrations listed on the ballot. Instead, they’re only listed as the nominee of a particular party or as having entered a race through the petition process.
https://www.elections.alaska.gov/election/2020/General/SampleBallots/FED.pdf

Looking at the ballot alone, there’s no way to tell that they’re independents or non-partisan. They, along with registered Democrats who won party primaries, are listed only as “Democratic Party Nominee.”


No Democrats Allowed: A Conservative Lawyer Holds Secret Voter Fraud Meetings With State Election Officials
Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, whose work about voting fraud has been discredited, has been conducting private meetings for Republicans only.
The lawyer, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.

Republican senators in tough races obscure their position on pre-existing conditions
Sens. Gardner, Perdue, McSally and Daines are all running ads proclaiming support for the protections despite voting to repeal Obamacare and weaken them.
Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said Gardner's bill "contains a giant loophole" because insurance companies can simply "deny coverage altogether to people with pre-existing conditions."

GOP Wisconsin elections commissioner advised Green Party

One IT Guy’s Spreadsheet-Fueled Race to Restore Voting Rights
This fall, thousands will show up to vote only to find out they’ve been purged. Lots of activists—and one Ohio man with lots of cats—are on a quest to fix that.
August 13, 2020

‘We were shocked’: RAND study uncovers massive income shift to the top 1%
The median worker should be making as much as $102,000 annually—if some $2.5 trillion wasn’t being “reverse distributed” every year away from the working class.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-study-uncovers-massive-income-shift-to-the-top-1
Just how far has the working class been left behind by the winner-take-all economy? A new analysis by the RAND Corporation examines what rising inequality has cost Americans in lost income—and the results are stunning.
A full-time worker whose taxable income is at the median—with half the population making more and half making less—now pulls in about $50,000 a year. Yet had the fruits of the nation’s economic output been shared over the past 45 years as broadly as they were from the end of World War II until the early 1970s, that worker would instead be making $92,000 to $102,000. (The exact figures vary slightly depending on how inflation is calculated.)

Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID
STUDY BUDDY
The study goes against basically all scientific evidence and expert opinion. But it fits with the former Trump adviser’s anti-China posture.

GOP Senator Who Walked Out To Stop Climate Vote Loses House To Wildfire

Oregon senator goes home to find rubble, devastation after Beachie Creek wildfire roars through Santiam Canyon
MILL CITY — Fred Girod 

How former Trump adviser Steve Bannon joined forces with a Chinese billionaire who has divided the president’s allies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/steve-bannon-guo-wengui/2020/09/13/8b43cd06-e964-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_story.html


NRA's political influence dwindling ahead of the election

https://www.axios.com/nra-spending-election-216cafe9-ccbe-4160-863c-7160b812dfed.html


Mormons rejected Trump as blasphemous. Now he likely can’t win without them.

Latter-day Saints had been among the most reliably Republican voting blocs — until Trump took over the party.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/13/trump-biden-mormons-church-412234 

The public embrace of Trump by some LDS members has created fissures in a community that was once largely monolithic in its politics. Former Arizona state Sen. Bob Worsley, a Republican and the founder of SkyMall, recently began publicly organizing for Biden after he felt the Trump-aligned LDS group that hosted Pence last month implied that Church leadership supported the president.


“I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, but we think this man is an abomination,” Worsley said. He thinks more Mormons will vote for Biden than in 2016 because “some found Hillary’s husband Bill a similar lack of an example of a good moral person.”


‘This is f---ing crazy’: Florida Latinos swamped by wild conspiracy theories

A flood of disinformation and deceptive claims is damaging Joe Biden in the nation’s biggest swing state.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/florida-latinos-disinformation-413923


Breaking Points

What led Trump’s most prominent former supporters to give up on him.

https://thebulwark.com/breaking-points/ 


A Tight Trump-Biden Race in Florida: Here’s the State of Play

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/florida-trump-biden-2020.html 


Penn Wharton Budget Model

https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2020/9/14/biden-2020-analysis


Andrew Gillum says he is bisexual

https://www.axios.com/andrew-gillum-bisexual-0d0ee27d-73e3-42e7-84d1-e1df8b552fa8.html

https://www.out.com/politics/2020/9/14/florida-democrat-andrew-gillum-comes-out-bisexual

“You didn't ask the question, you put it out there of whether I identify as gay. The answer is I don’t identify as gay but I do identify as bisexual," he said in the interview, which functioned as the season 2 debut of Hall's show. "And that is something that I’ve never shared publicly before.”


Trump’s overtures struggle to register with religious voters

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/10/trump-religious-voters-411248 

Vote Common Good poll predicts an 11 percentage point swing toward Biden among evangelicals and Catholics who backed Trump in 2016, based on input from both demographics across five major 2020 battleground states: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Other polls have captured similar gains in Biden’s religious support, including an August survey by Fox News that showed the former vice president at 28 percent support among white evangelicals — up 12 percentage points from 2016 exit polls for the Democratic nominee.


In China, GitHub Is a Free Speech Zone for Covid Information

9/9/2020

https://www.wired.com/story/china-github-free-speech-covid-information/ 

One collaborative project, known as a “repository,” was named #2020nCovMemory. Founded by seven volunteers from around the world, it included everything from investigative reports published by Chinese news magazine Caixin to the diary entries of Wuhan writer Fang Fang, who criticized the local government’s suppression of information and initial failure to warn the public about the virus. Another repository, called Terminus2049—named after a planet in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series—collected sensitive articles that were otherwise inaccessible behind China’s Great Firewall, such as an interview with Ai Fen, the doctor who first discovered the virus in December. In February, Zeng joined a repository called 2020nCov_individual_archives, to crowdsource online diary entries and citizens’ accounts of everyday life during the pandemic. “It made me feel much more at peace, knowing that these stories were being saved somewhere,” Zeng says.


Historically red, this Orlando-area county is Florida's surprising new battleground

"I would say we're purple," Seminole County's property appraiser told ABC News.

Sept 14, 2020

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/historically-red-orlando-area-county-floridas-surprising-battleground/story?id=72877774



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