With all the deadly energy of a massive hurricane

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that to defeat the coronavirus the nation needs more than a vaccine, it needs national and international health organizations that it trusts. Without that trust people will likely refuse the vaccine. Sumner told a couple stories where that was the case. But the nasty guy has withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization and he has forced the CDC to revise it protocols on when to test for the virus in a way that will reduce testing and allow the virus to spread. That reduces the trust in both.



Joan McCarter of Kos reported that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is to regularly brief Congress about current and ongoing threats, such as Russia meddling in our elections. Those briefings are now to be only written, depriving Congress of a chance to query out details and probe the depths. So Russia may be stealing our election, but we’re not going to share details. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff have declared this is not acceptable and, as their release said, “will consider the full range of tools available to the House to compel compliance.”

Jay Rosen tweeted in response to the ODNI news:

Get ready for all rituals and routines that were part of normal constitutional government to essentially stop working between now and November, as what @mashagessen (following Bálint Magyar) calls an "autocratic attempt" begins to crest. It's like waiting for a storm surge.

Anil Dash responded:

This is well put. We’re seeing authoritarianism approaching on the radar with all the deadly energy of a massive hurricane, and almost no major media coverage warning people of the danger.

R. Bell tweeted:

Most of the US political and pundit class - including Dem leaders - still fail to recognize what @sarahkendzior and a few others have seen all along: Trump *isn't trying* to be a US president; he *is succeeding* at building a dictatorship.

David Neiwert of Kos reported that the Proud Boys, a group of far-right thugs, protested in the suburb of Gresham, OR. The protest was because the city had a Black Lives Matter flag on the city plaza. Wrote Neiwert:

These events serve a twofold purpose: First, to threaten and intimidate pro-Black Lives Matter protesters; and second, to create violent and menacing images intended to persuade the people who live in these suburbs and elsewhere—people who are far removed from most of the events—that protests of any kind against police brutality promote “antifa,” “anarchism,” and Marxism, representing the “violent left.”

All this helps promote the far-right claim that Black Lives Matter is a violent “hate group”—while in fact it largely embodies the opposite of such organizations, and indeed has come into its own as a global civil rights movement in the past six months.

Which, more than anything, is a message that white supremacists do not want anyone to hear.

Speaker Pelosi appeared on CNN to say she would accept the results if Trump wins reelection. Jennifer Cohn, an election security advocate, tweeted a response:

Again. It is not up to @SpeakerPelosi. It is up to the voters. If she wants to help, she should fight for transparency re: the “appalling” and “chilling” information that @SenBlumenthal says has been improperly classified. THAT wld be helpful. This was not.

Replies to Cohn question whose side Pelosi is on. Is she conceding already?

Benjamin Franklin also tweeted a response to Pelosi’s comment:

Committing your party to accepting the results of a clearly sabotaged and rigged election (postal service), which your opponent declares he can't lose, after leading an impeachment of the President for attempting to cheat in the election (Ukraine), is beyond inexplicable.

I am not the bad guy for saying something seriously wrong is going on here. I am looking at public events and statements and they don’t add up. Something is seriously wrong.

Alexandra Erin tweeted a thread:

I am straight up blocking people I see expressing the opinion that the Constitution means Trump is automatically not the president if he loses/stops the election.

Four years have not taught you nothing in law or government is automatic? Four years? This is wishful thinking.

Nothing magic happens at noon on January 20th. Nothing magically changes. I hate that we have to argue about this *before he's even lost*. But it's dangerous smugness, dangerous complacency, to think that it won't be treated as a difference of opinion, a partisan issue.

We still have to have the election and win the election, but the idea that our system is prepared to deal with anybody already inside the White House who absolutely doesn't go along with the results voluntarily... it's not. It hasn't ever been, and it's really not right now.
...
"Are you seriously saying the Constitution is a matter of opinion?"

Has been for two hundred years. And more importantly: can you stop me? Can you physically stop me from arguing that it's, like, your opinion man?

If you can't... can you stop Trump? McConnell?

Does anything physically prevent every national name Republican still in government from going to the Sunday news shows and saying, "Well, at the time the twentieth amendment was ratified, I don't think anyone foresaw a party spending four years undermining a president."

They will treat it as a political dispute, a matter of opinion, and literally all the people with guns and federal powers related to using guns will either be on Trump's side or on the side of not using guns to settle political disputes. All of them.

Yes, she is saying that these Republicans might be accusing the Democrats of spending four years undermining the nasty guy, though they won’t mention how the Republicans spent eight years undermining Obama.



Franklin tweeted the front pages of the The Washington Post with the headline “Trump draws stark battle lines,” and The New York Times with the headline “Accepting Bid, Trump Paints Biden as Unsafe.” Then he added:

The national media, and I cannot emphasize this enough, is on Trump’s side.

Normal people don’t think, they passively receive their ideas from newspapers and TVs and earnestly repeat them, and if the news is not painting trump as dangerous or even leading with his illegal use of the White House then the normal people will have no idea what’s going on.

They are not being incompetent, they are not chasing ratings, they have actively aligned with Trump and are working in his interest no different than state media in an authoritarian country. But they’re happy for you to think they’re greedy or dumb.

It’s not just the traditional media, it’s also the social media giants like twitter and Facebook. They allowed and are allowing extremist content to flourish as part of an active alliance. They want you to think they’re greedy or dumb but something more sinister is at work.

SimonF added “Funny how he attacks the media but they're a great help to him.”

Franklin replied:

It's a trick to get people to trust them and to prevent anyone from pointing out that the media is the enemy of the people by saying it first.

When the nasty guy refers to the media as the enemy of the people he is using “the people” for a stand-in for himself. When Franklin here says it he really does mean the media is acting like an enemy of the people, meaning us.

Franklin linked to a thread from the week before:

Some asked for a realistic description of the danger we’re in. Okay, it’s not pretty. There is literally not a single institution capable of saving us, they were all taken over before 2016, and our key leadership positions are filled with enemies pretending to be friends.

The entire thing hinges on people not knowing this and because the national media is under the control of our enemies, there’s no platform that can reach the entire country to warn them. If you try telling an averagesomeone, they won’t believe it and will shut down or get angry.

Social media? Infiltrators have turned that into a comedy club with a fantasy tone.

So you can’t even warn people that we are in trouble and being led by our enemies, it just can’t get through. So we’re fighting with more than half of our people totally asleep. When effective communicators arise, they are smeared by a coordinated network of influencers.

This has been the situation for four years. During this time, our enemies have further consolidated power to the point where they can destroy the post office knowing there will be no resistance. They’re going to steal the election and no one will stop them. No one believes this.

The only way out of this there ever was is mass protest, but because there are dozens of fake magic bullets each of which have a cult following, it is not possible to convince people we need to act. And we have less than 90 days to remedy this.
...
And yet, there’s hope. There is a slim window when people will be forced to reckon with reality and before the seizure of power is complete. Perhaps then they can be galvanized to action when there is no other choice. But it is a slim, slim window within roughly 90 days.

Even then, it means civil unrest. It means fistfighting q cultists in the streets. It means dodging rubber bullets. It means blood and struggle and horror. And unless you, personally, are ready to go through hell to win we will end up in hell but without even a struggle.

If you are not willing to die for the country, then it will surely kill you. You’re on a list, we’re all on a list, and our enemies will purge anyone that poses a danger to the new order to
the cheers of Q cultists. And that is the realistic assessment of the situation.

Gred Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, included a bit from a recent poll: “Even the president’s most fervent supporters, after explaining their affinity for him, will stop and say something to the effect of, “His tweets drive me nuts” or “I would never speak the way he does.” Then Dworkin quotes Christopher Orr:

It is almost always interpreted--and is clearly meant to be interpreted--as "I'd never speak/tweet that way because THOSE ARE BAD THINGS TO SAY, AND I DISAPPROVE OF THEM." But what if the unspoken 2nd half is often or even usually something closer to "I'd never speak/tweet that way, BUT BOY WOULD I LOVE TO IF I COULD GET AWAY WITH IT."

After all that we need a cat video, a cat that can do for itself.

Can radicalize people to violence at alarming speed.

I read through the transcript of another episode of Gaslit Nation by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is So Many Cults, So Little Time. This episode was released last Wednesday, the 26th, while the GOP convention was still going on.

The episode begins with quotes from Michael Cohen, a one-time nasty guy fixer and confidant.

I was complicit in helping conceal the real Donald Trump. I was part of creating an illusion. Later this week, he's going to stand up and blatantly lie to you. I'm here to tell you, he can't be trusted and you shouldn't believe a word he utters. So when you watch the president this week, remember this, if he says something is huge, it's probably small.
...
The president is going to talk to you about law and order. That's laughable. Virtually everyone who worked for his campaign has been convicted of a crime or is under indictment, myself included. So when the president gets in front of the cameras this week, remember that he thinks we're all gullible, a bunch of fools.

I was a part of it and I fell for it. You don't have to like me, but please listen to me.

Kendzior and Chalupa turn to the nasty guy’s children and how dysfunctional the family is. They bring them up because perhaps half of the RNC speakers were named Trump. The nasty guy is building a dynasty. But it probably won’t include Don Jr. and Eric. However, it will include the pandemic prince and princess.

When a regime promotes nepotism (and the nasty guy isn’t the only one with family in the regime) there is no discussion of policy, there is only gossip about palace intrigues. Kendzior is annoyed with the New York Times because they focus on the gossip and don’t look at the breaches of law, and theft of elections and basic rights.

One of the speakers at the convention was Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. It is considered highly inappropriate for a Sec. State to speak at a political event. Even worse, he did it from Jerusalem. That’s bad because Pompeo is a “Rapture fiend.” For those not up on conservative Christian end-times theology, I’ll explain the Rapture is when the true believers are taken up into heaven to protect them just before the apocalypse. So what Pompeo is doing is goosing events to trigger the Rapture (we’ll leave out how bad the theology of trying to make events so bad the Rapture happens – and lucky for Pompeo he believes he can make life hell on earth and the Rapture will make sure he doesn’t have to face the consequences). Back to what Kendzior said about him:

That is what Mike Pompeo is about. He has said so openly in speeches that he thinks that this is the apocalypse. He thinks that this is the end times and that he's on the right side of God and the corruption and brutality that he's participating in is something that is divinely sanctioned. Again, this is a deeply frightening thing to have to contend with, with this person as not only Secretary of State, but before that the head of the CIA.

Kendzior predicted the media will get it all wrong, framing inhumane actions as God’s will.

Chalupa said:

People have to have honest conversations with themselves about what their plan is in November should Trump and Barr be successful in stealing this election. What is your plan? Prepare yourself now, especially prepare yourself emotionally so you don't fall into despair. I just think everything that's been unfolding, especially this week alone, it's just going to accelerate from here on out.

Don't expect November to bring any relief. It's just going to be an acceleration of this constant far-right plummet towards authoritarianism that we've already been undergoing the last four years. And on top of that, even if Biden and his coalition of voting rights groups and lawyers–election protection lawyers–manages to pull off a victory, a free and fair election in November, we still have to contend with the Trump Family Republican Party.

For example, Fox News will still be out there, as will all those GOP senators recently removed from office (I hope!).

Many in the GOP say the nasty guy really isn’t part of the GOP. Pulling on a few decades of GOP actions, Chalupa said:

That's exactly who you are. You've always been anti-science. You've always been pro superstition. You've always been trying to turn our democracy into a theocracy, even though the founding fathers were very clear on the separation of church and state.

You’ve always been chipping away at the rights of women, voting rights. You needed to steal elections in order to come to power and so forth. You've always been the pro corruption, destroying the planet party. The Republican Party is the party of death. Donald Trump is the Republican Party, Donald Trump has always been the Republican Party since the time of Richard Nixon. It's the same players, it's the same bad actors.

So have an emotional backup plan to deal with these people. We might have to fight for ten years to get rid of them.

I had mentioned that the GOP did not write a platform this year, that the one from 2016 is still in effect. That means there is nothing in the platform for dealing with COVID-19 and the accompanying economic calamity. They have no intention of addressing them. Said Kendzior:

This is because their goal is to strip America down and sell it for parts. That has always been their goal. And a sick, weakened, impoverished America is easier to take apart than a strong, healthy, powerful America. They are trying to kill us. You can see that through their actions in response to the pandemic and they don't care who knows. And yes, you're absolutely right that this is an extension of what the Republican Party has been building to since the years of Watergate.

Talking about the Cold War and who won it (the oligarchs) Kendzior said:

And a lot of the events that have transpired since have just continually shifted control of the world and its resources away from representative government, away from institutional accountability, away from transparency and towards elite domination–criminal elite domination–as this line between government, and corporations, and organized crime, that line began to break down.

So, yeah, I just summed up all of Gaslit Nation's episodes in one paragraph.

Talk turned for a moment to the pandemic prince. Kendzior said:

Yes, and this realignment of the Middle East, which has been something that's been a goal of his long before he entered the White House. I thought there are multiple international actors whose goal in getting Trump into the White House was actually to get Kushner into the White House, and to get Kushner near classified information and get him in a position where he can make policy decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of Americans or of America itself.

They have to do with pleasing these international actors, among them, Netanyahu and MBS. They also have to do, with some degree, with getting him out of the enormous amount of debt he was in before he took power.

The discussion turned to QAnon. Kendzior wrote about them in her book Hiding in Plain Sight but the group has become more mainstream with a member running for Congress, so it’s important to talk about them again. Yes, QAnon is dangerous – any cult is dangerous, though this one has a history of violence.

The main claim of QAnon is that the US is controlled by sadistic pedophile elites. This claim is accurate. Gaslit Nation has covered the operation run by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell. They procured underage children for many political elites, then they had damaging evidence they could dangle over their client’s heads. We heard little about Epstein in the 2016 election because the nasty guy was accused of raping a 13-year-old that Epstein procured.

So this story was denied for a long time, but came out anyway. QAnon supporters can then say, yes, I was right. So all this other stuff must be true too. And it’s not. The best propaganda has a core of truth. This truth is more powerful because officials and journalists refuse to acknowledge it.

Some anonymous official, code named Q, supposedly has left coded clues on the internet. Q claims the nasty guy is in office to take down the “Deep State” and is the savior of these abducted and abused children who have been hidden somewhere. The nasty guy supposedly will free them and bring about justice. Because children are involved this taps into people’s emotional center.

The nasty guy is not the savior of abused children. He has been accused of being one of the abusers. The QAnon story came at a time when the #metoo movement was thriving and elite predators were being exposed. It seemed possible the connection between the nasty guy and Epstein would come under scrutiny. So this was likely a way to flip the script – portray the accused abuser as savior.

QAnon has accused a number of public figures of cannibalism, murder, and child abuse. It has then threatened those people and extended the threats to their supporters. The nasty guy is using this to portray ordinary people as threats, prompting QAnon to also threaten the same people. Thus the nasty guy has weaponized QAnon for political propaganda.

The way to shut down QAnon is to be honest about Epstein and colleagues. But people, including Democrats, have refused to tackle the core claim of Epstein’s child trafficking. There’s a good reason: They don’t know who of their own will be implicated.

We don’t know who Q is. He’s portrayed as a government official. It is quite possible he is an invention of a Kremlin disinformation campaign, helping the nasty guy divert from one crisis or another.

Kendzior discussed savior syndrome. It flourishes during autocratic consolidation as frightened citizens search for meaning in the inexplicable actions of their failed leaders. They say the once trusted officials are not incompetent or corrupt, they’re playing 3D chess. “Their motives must be presented as pure; their tactics, impeccable and impenetrable. The abdication of the admired is too much for those seeking saviors to process, no matter their political predilection.” They tell skeptics to shut up and trust the plan.

Kendzior added:

That's why we're seeing savior syndrome flourishing yet again on the Democratic side. I think people have finally abandoned “Pelosi's going to save us”, which is where they went after “Mueller is going to save us” failed. And now it's on the “2020 election will save us”, even though that election is being rigged and compromised before our eyes. So this is a very dangerous tendency that flourishes during times like this, where people are so frightened that they don't know who to trust, they just want to follow.

They don't want to think, and so I encourage you–we know, we know how scary it is right now, this is a genuinely frightening time–but try to keep your wits about you, keep your individuality, your propensity for critical thought. It's not bad to ask questions.
…
So it's not like a matter of intelligence; it's a matter of emotional manipulation. And they're doing it among the most sensitive of topics. Topics that resonate greatly with parents, or just with anyone who worries about children and topics that are rooted in a grain of truth. … One of the things that we needed to get to the bottom of is, who is part of this movement? Who is funding this movement? What is the ultimate goal? How will it be weaponized during the election?

Chalupa said about average people:

They want to give up personal responsibility because they themselves are exhausted, they themselves are under a great deal of pressure, this is an economic crisis. There's a health crisis, so why is it up to me to fix this? So people are looking for some outside force to come along. And so all of these conditions combined make some people really vulnerable to this cult mentality.

Chalupa reminded is all elections, including local, are important. For example, New York City (where Chalupa lives) has adopted the Green New Deal and there is a city climate czar. This czar has been suing the oil giants for destroying the planet. The market value of ExxonMobil has dropped and it has been removed from the Dow Jones stock index. Local matters too.

Chalupa then talked about the pandemic prince. The Daily Beast reporter Erin Banco uncovered details. Such as back in 2017 the pandemic prince asked the Russian ambassador for a back channel to Russia, to the delight of the Russians. There were also meetings on how this US administration and Russia could collaborate while maintaining plausible deniability.

Since 2016 Putin has been spreading Kremlin linked money across the US. These tentacles lock the target in. The business ties become so close that they don’t want to jeopardize the money and won’t hold Putin accountable. This is blood money. And blood money makes the world go round. So many people were making blood money with Stalin’s Soviet Union they didn’t investigate Stalin’s genocide in Ukraine (the uncovering of that genocide is the subject of Mr. Jones, a movie that Chalupa wrote). Putin is working to recreate that protection.

Strange that the US collaboration with Russia seems to work only one way. What the US gets from them tends to be useless.

The pandemic prince is behind all the worst moves of the nasty guy’s administration. He has ties to Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and various Russian Oligarchs. It is them he serves, to them our money goes, through them are rights are taken away.

Kendzior said:

I kept thinking, the litmus test of whether we have an entrenched mafia State is whether Kushner is indicted. They could have gone after him a long time ago, the lies on his security clearances where he lied about illicitly meeting with foreign officials during the campaign, but also before.

That alone was enough to get him out of office, out of power early, away from classified intelligence. We're going to be living with the ramifications of Kushner's presence in this position whether he stays or not. If they do actually manage to get rid of him, he's not going to keep State secrets. He's not going to work on behalf of American interests or on behalf of the American people.

He is part of this axis of autocrats that is trying to destroy this country from without and from within. So he's incredibly dangerous and it's been alarming to me that Mueller did not indict him, the other officials didn't. And this article is just another example of the incredible damage that he's done and the incredible danger that we're in. And so I ask again, where are our officials on this?

Why is he not stopped when there's a pandemic and he is in charge of it, and he's depriving Americans of necessary medical equipment while he makes deals with dirty oligarchs who attack our elections? How much more do you need? How much more clear cut does this have to be? How much longer does the evidence list have to get?

I’ve got a few QAnon stories in browser tabs. They sat there because I wanted to take the time to explain what Qanon is. Thankfully, I waited long enough that Gaslit Nation could explain for me. So here they are, reinforcing the points GN made.

Benjamin Franklin tweeted:

People think I'm being hyperbolic or exaggerating when I say that child human traffickers are taking over the government but all the evidence is right in front of you, as if Jeffrey Epstein wasn't enough.

Qanon is necessary to hide the complicity of the GOP, which has been well documented, and defuse a scandal capable of bringing down the entire Republican Party and government.

The problem is that this idea sounds so much Iike Qanon, and is so spooky, that well meaning respectable people are afraid to look at what’s staring them in the face. This is by design.

This is the design: When someone brings up the real scandal it can be dismissed with, “Oh, that’s just QAnon.”

In another thread Franklin tweeted:

There are lots of things that attempt to debunk Q, but I’m not aware of any that say “Q is bullshit but actually a lot of the stuff it contains is actually kind of true”. Epstein is real, NXIVM is real, Craig Spence is real, Franklin scandal is real.

Q weaves together the very real scandals into a “theory of everything” that says Trump is the savior. The only thing that can beat Q is a theory of everything in which he is the villain, which has the added benefit of being true.

But you can't win these arguments with Q people, strangers or friends, unless you understand that something big and bad is going on. Not totally clear what but how can you read these articles and say that *nothing* is going on? And it's not just the USA.

Franklin then linked to articles in The Daily Beast and Vice about a sex cult with a plot to take over Mexico, the Thatcher government in Britain covering up a pedophile ring, and a journalist arrested for investigating a pedophile orphanage in the British island of Jersey.

Franklin added:

There's something going, it's international and deeply entrenched, and it only gets worse the more reading you do. You can't beat Q without addressing this, I promise.

David Neiwert of Daily Kos wrote:

A series of recent reports suggest that the cult may be growing so rapidly and spreading so widely—amplified, seemingly, by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying intense use of the Internet by users following stay-at-home orders—that it is threatening to grow beyond a mere trend into a tsunami of irrational conspiracism and terrorist violence that conceivably could swamp the entire nation.

Neiwert then went into detail of these reports. Then he discussed how QAnon is becoming violent. Finally, he references a study from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

What makes QAnon so potent, the study found, is that it’s a kind of meta-theory: A great gathering ground of multiple conspiracist belief systems under one umbrella, compatible with existing structures.

QAnon is becoming a part of such groups as paramilitary groups, and white supremacists. It is no longer fringe, but an ideology that can radicalize people to violence at alarming speed.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported on Marjorie Taylor Greene winning the GOP primary for a House seat in Georgia. It’s a safe GOP seat, so she’ll have no trouble winning in November. Her win is a problem because she has spouted QAnon theories. Wrote Sumner:

Greene’s words were roundly condemned by Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, both of whom declared her “offensive.” But the racism and conspiracy theories weren’t offensive to Republican voters. Racism and conspiracy theories are what the Republican Party is about these days. In fact, they are all that it is about. After all, both McCarthy and Scalise have backed up every ludicrous claim by Trump. They’ve been right there, carrying the torch, leading the party toward a horde of people … waving torches.
…
[QAnon] provides a source of hate. And the modern Republican Party is all about hate.
Somehow the people who lit this fire still don’t grasp that it’s going to burn everything.

Michel Martin of NPR talked to Travis View, who co-hosts the “QAnon Anonymous” podcast. They first discussed Greene’s win, then backed up to mention some of the theories Greene has promoted. Since she became a candidate she has tried to distance herself from QAnon, but has not denounced it. View added that they see the nasty guy as their savior, that they worship him. That the nasty guy did not denounce them and instead praised them is a really big deal. The FBI has warned that QAnon is a possible source of extremism.

Christopher Bouzy tweeted:

Inauthentic accounts linked to Russia are masquerading as QAnon followers, and these accounts are targeting high profile people on social media. We believe they are attempting to discredit people with a large following who tweet/talk about social issues and voting.

We believe these accounts are a national security threat, and we are extremely concerned because the President of the United States recently praised and embraced QAnon.

Other threats get the privilege of being defused

The Republican Nationalist Convention is thankfully over. The nasty guy gave an acceptance speech in which he droned on for more than an hour – the only acceptance speech longer than this one is the one he gave four years ago.

Kos of Daily Kos summarized it this way:

So we’ve had a convention where half the time they pretend Covid-19 never happened, touting job numbers that are long obsolete, woefully out of date. The other half, they’re claiming that only Trump can save us from the problems that were created in Trump’s America.
…
Republicans just spent four days proving that they are incapable of crafting a message that frees their president of culpability for the state of the nation.

Kos included a tweet from Joe Biden:

President Trump doesn’t want a second term. He wants a do-over.

And one by Zach Schonfeld:

Every RNC speech is like "This dangerous national unrest that is occurring now, three years into the Trump presidency, will NOT happen when Donald Trump is president."

Even with a snooze of a speech from the nasty guy, and the one from the vice nasty guy wasn’t much better, there were alarming things in this convention. I’ve covered many of the illegal things. Here’s an alarming thing, tweeted by Leah McElrath:

Trump’s daughter is speaking from behind the Presidential seal.

This isn’t an accident.

They’re trying to normalize nepotism and lay foundation for a fascist dynasty.

Michael McFaul listed several other alarming things – methods, messages, and symbols that autocracies use. Some of them:

* Cult of personality.

* Government resources for personal electoral gain (yeah, he used the White House as a backdrop).

* Blatant disregard for law and for facts.

* Us v. Them populism, though populist leaders have little in common with “the people.”

* The opposition is the “enemy of the people.”

* Good tsar v. bad boyars. The leader’s problems are because of bad regional managers.

There is one important difference. We still don’t know the outcome of the election.

Jen Hayden of Kos reported that some people who attended the RNC convention in person have already tested positive for the virus.

In another tweet McElrath quoted Aaron Rupar:

"The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order" -- Kellyanne Conway makes a case that the killings of peaceful protesters will benefit Trump politically.

McElrath responded:

Authoritarians create the conditions for chaos and violence to enable them to justify oppression the name of law and order.

This is textbook authoritarian rhetoric.

(Remember when I used to do “Authoritarianism Alert” at the bottom of tweets and was ridiculed as an alarmist?)

Greg Sargent tweeted a thread with a link to an article from the Washington Post:

The extraordinary juxtaposition on Tuesday night -- open lawbreaking combined with an invented narrative in which Biden and Dems are the corrupt party -- showed a GOP that has unshakable confidence in its ability to act with utter impunity.
...
Trump is using levers of government to illicitly hold power:

* Lawbreaking at convention

* Senate Rs manufacturing fake Hunter/Ukraine probe

* Bill Barr downplaying 2016 Russian sabotage

* Intel officials muting truth about Russian meddling right now

In a sense Trump campaigned in 2016 on his own corruption: All politicians are crooked, so elect me; I'll break rules for *you.*

Media treats this as populist grandstanding.

But now we need to be clearer. Trump is trying to hold power via illicit means.

McElrath tweeted, discussing either the nasty guy campaign or the RNC (it makes no difference):

They aren’t worried about swaying American voters because they aren’t intending to win the election in a legitimate way.

All of this is for him.

And his cultists.

That’s why they’re creating a false reality. They’re speaking only to him and those who live within his delusion.

Andrea Chalupa tweeted a bit from what Hillary Clinton told Joe Biden:

Don't concede if the election is close.

She added this is going to drag out.

Imani Gandy tweeted:

if trump is reelected, he’s likely getting four more SCOTUS appointments.

Breyer and RBG won’t make it 4 more years. Thomas and Alito might bounce to make room for younger more right wing conservatives.

By 2025, 6 of the 9 justices could be trump appointees.

Marinate on that.

We literally cannot let this happen.

We just can’t.

Those 6 justices will make sure that NOOOOOOOTHING progressive gets done. No healthcare. No Green New Deal. But religious people will sure as hell be able to discriminate against pretty much whomever because religious freedom.
...
With Biden we have a way forward. We don’t have a way forward with trump.

Progressive policy will be dead on arrival until 2065.

Trevor Noah of The Daily Show commented on the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. Blake was hit in the back by seven bullets and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Noah commented that wild animals on the loose get less lethal treatment, and added.

I never thought I would wish for Black people to be treated at least like a wild bear, but here we are.

After Blake was shot there were, of course, demonstrations. A 17 year old proto supremacist came to Kenosha with his guns and shot three people, killing two. Noah said:

It made me wonder, it really made me wonder why some people get shot seven times in the back while other people are treated like human beings and reasoned with and taken into custody with no bullets in their bodies.

How come Jacob Blake was seen as a deadly threat for a theoretical gun that he might have and might try to commit a crime with, but this gunman who was armed and had already shot people, who had shown that he is a threat, was arrested the next day, given full due process of the law, and generally treated like a human being whose life matters?

How did Dylann Roof shoot up a church, James Holmes shoot up a movie theater and both live to tell about it? Why is it that the police decide that some threats must be extinguished immediately while other threats get the privilege of being defused?

I'm asking these as questions, but I feel like we know the answer. The answer is that the gun doesn't matter as much as who is holding the gun. Because for some people, Black skin is the most threatening weapon of all.

Jen Hayden of Kos reported the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team decided that the situation in nearby Kenosha was no time for sports. They sat out their Wednesday game. The other NBA teams followed suit, as did Women’s NBA, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer. The Bucks called on the Wisconsin state legislature to reconvene to deal with police accountability and brutality. The football season hasn’t started (and, depending on the virus, may not). The Detroit Lions canceled Wednesday’s practice, as did the Indianapolis Colts.

A game was about to start between the Mets and the Marlins baseball teams. The Mets were already on the field. As the first Marlin approached the batting box both teams came out of their dugouts, formed lines, took their hats off, and held a long moment of silence. Then both teams walked off the field, leaving a Black Lives Matter t-shirt covering home plate.

Well done.

Leveraging the symbols of American power to maintain that power

About 1500 people in Detroit have died from COVID-19. Their families have not been able to properly grieve. So Mayor Mike Duggan has authorized a day of mourning. It will be for families next Monday and for the general public afterward.

The city was able to get photos for 900 of the victims. Each photo was enlarged to “billboard size” (though I don’t think that means to the size of standard highway billboards) and placed around Belle Isle, a park on an island in the Detroit River. On Monday 14 caravans of families will be escorted through the display, a memorial drive, at appointed times. Because the virus is still raging family members agreed to stay in their cars.

Radio station WRCJ has been asked to play appropriate music from 9-4 while the caravans are in operation. This is the classical music station in town that I listen to. On Monday they won’t confine their playlist to classical. They’ll add at least gospel and other piece for a Detroit audience in mourning.

The display will be open to the public at least Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m pretty sure the Sunday paper will have more details. I hope to be able to see it.

I am so glad Detroit is doing this. There has been so little public recognition of so many dead. I hope other cities begin to plan similar events.



If I get really busy with something, or if I get tired of reading the news, I don’t get all the way through a day’s worth of articles from Daily Kos. That happened yesterday. So much of my reading today was about yesterday’s news. I haven’t gotten far in today’s news. So my post for today is based on two nights of the GOP convention, not three.

The GOP has been screeching that Dem candidate Joe Biden is captive of the radical left. Kos of Kos explained why much of America isn’t buying that idea. 1) Biden at his convention didn’t look and act like someone captive by the radical left. None of the speakers did. 2) There were a great number of Republican speakers at the Democratic convention. 3) Several speakers at the GOP convention are obviously from the radical right. 4) They tried that tactic in 2018 and it produced a Dem majority in the House.

But they’re doing it again because the nasty guy doesn’t know any other way to campaign and this is his party.

Madame nasty (Melania) gave a speech for the convention and managed to be unique in showing an ounce of humanity. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that because she didn’t rant the corporate press is fawning over her. Wrote McCarter:

She has demonstrated nothing but complicity with the horrors her husband has wrought on the nation, and because she didn't yell at anyone Tuesday night, she's "restored a sense of normalcy" to Trump. Could the corporate media be more desperate to keep this horror show alive for four more years?

Mark Sumner of Kos reported there were videos shown as part of the convention that featured busy workers. They were “designed to sell the idea that Donald Trump created every job on his way to saving the world.” One little problem – these are not American workers. The video is from Ukraine.

Madame nasty did her speech from the Rose Garden. Tonight the nasty guy will do the same. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that some news outlets are framing this as “blurring the lines” between campaigning and governing. Eleveld replied:

Let's be clear: This isn't a "blurring." It's Trump campaigning on the taxpayer dime, leveraging the symbols of American power that have been entrusted to him in service of maintaining that power.

It's a completely egregious violation of the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits federal employees from participating in political activity while in a government building or while wearing an official uniform or insignia.
...
This is exactly the kind of controversy the White House wants, and it fits perfectly into their courting of grievance voters. Rather than talking about the 180,000 who have died on Donald Trump's watch and perhaps how more Americans can be spared from the pandemic, Team Trump would much rather be signaling to their base: We can do whatever we want and no one can stop us.

That's exactly the license of privilege Trump supporters live for.

Back when the nasty guy cleared Lafayette Park so he could walk across it to pose in front of a church I wrote about a new fence having been put up around the White House and adjoining areas. That fence has come down … and a new barricade has been put up, as Kerry Eleveld reported. This is now a fortress within Washington. It is hard to see the White House from the Mall.



The Republican National Convention ends tonight after the nasty guy speaks. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that in honor of this week Bend the Arc, a Jewish activist group, has created a parody website for the Republican Nationalist Convention (sorry, I’m not linking directly, even to a parody). Einenkel thinks it would be funnier if it wasn’t 100% accurate. Some quotes from the site: “Building a country just for us: “We’ve always stood for white wealth and power. We just couldn’t say so out loud. But now? We’re ok with it!” “Dog-Whistling Workshop with Matt Gaetz.” “RED states. WHITE people. BLUE lives.”



I listen to Radiolab podcasts, though I have gotten a ways behind. Today I listened to an episode from last March. The crew was coming to terms with how to work around the virus and exploring some of the issues related to it. This half hour episode has two segments. The first discusses exponential growth, which is the speed at which the virus spreads if we don’t intervene (such as by wearing masks and staying home). One example of exponential growth was to aks would you prefer to be paid for a month’s work either a flat million dollars or a penny on the first day, two on the second, four on the third, and so forth for thirty days? And when talking about the spread of a virus at what point does one bring up the exponential spread? Start when the case count is low and one sounds alarmist. Wait too long and the virus may become too well established.

The second segment discussed the angst of seeing the case count every day. Would we react to other things, like cancer, if the cases per day was reported every day? Would we do something about overpopulation if the news consistently reported the number of babies born each day?

Lampoonish spectacle of cultish authoritarianism

Because of the nasty guy saying he wants to make the cut in payroll taxes permanent if he’s reelected, several prominent Democratic senators asked Stephen Gross, chief actuary for Social Security, how long our retirement payments would last. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported his answer: Social Security would be depleted in 2023, well before the end of the next presidential term. The disability payments would end next year.

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, pointed out that, “Trump is claiming the authority to defund Social Security with no action from Congress whatsoever.”



The GOP convention, into day three, has been claiming that the nasty guy’s response to the coronavirus has been absolutely the best ever (they’re of course saying it was Democrats who caused the five million cases and the 175,000 dead). That brought Mark Sumner of Kos to write:

Trump’s handling of COVID-19 hasn’t been bungled or mishandled or poor. It’s been murder. It’s been deliberate. It’s been death-as-a-political-strategy. And now the Trump convention is running film clips from Thailand as part of a propaganda piece claiming it was Trump who took the virus seriously, Trump who took action, and Trump who whatever.

This level of propaganda might not quite match that of the Nazis … but it’s getting damn close. Not only should Trump’s actions in canceling a national testing strategy be the subject of a second impeachment, they are crimes against humanity deserving of a trial before the world. That the media is sitting quietly by as Trump claims to be the hero of the crisis he created, should be the focus of outrage.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos listed five of the top lies being told at the convention. Since nearly all of it is lies, these are definitely the standouts of the bunch.

* Ronna McDaniel said: “Raising taxes on 82% of Americans is not nice.” Yeah, raising corporate taxes may indirectly increase expenses for poor people. But, that’s not “taxes.” Also, Biden’s tax plan includes tax reductions for poor people while raising taxes on the rich.

* Nikki Haley said, “President Trump brought our economy back before, and he will bring it back again.” No, Obama was the president after Bush II who brought the economy back.

* Don Jr. said, “After eight years of Obama and Biden's slow growth, Trump's policies have been like rocket fuel to the economy and especially the middle class.” No, since the nasty guy took over and even before the pandemic the economy, especially the economy of the middle class, has been slowing.

* The nasty guy said, “We're taking good care of our postal workers.” Now that overtime has been cut their work hours are about to be hit too.

* The nasty guy also said, “I didn't back down from my promises, and I've kept every single one.” Such as the promise to get Mexico to pay for the wall that hasn’t been built yet.

Umairh tweeted:

The point of this lampoonish spectacle of cultish authoritarianism isn’t you. It’s to harden and commit the mere 30% or so of committed fanatics it takes to destroy a society. That you treat it as a joke is just a really major side benefit.

The convention’s message is to reinforce the GOP claim that the Democrats are lying to them, that the Democrats are going to destroy the country, that the base had better be ready for battle after election day.

A few days ago some show on NPR had a sound clip of the nasty guy who said it is impossible for the Democrats to win without cheating. And yeah, that’s another bit of projection – the GOP can’t win without gerrymandering, voter ID laws that suppress the vote in black areas, consistently not having enough voting machines in black precincts, using voting machines that have been compromised, destroying the USPS, inviting Russia to interfere, and sending thugs to polling places in black areas to intimidate voters.

Of course, those lapping up what the GOP is saying this week rather like the idea of poor people not being able to vote and may consider it cheating on behalf of Democrats if they did.



A smile for today: A panda caretaker is trying to rake leaves. The pandas help. It’s a two minute video.

Make his lonely soul feel affirmed

Some more commentary has now been written about Postmaster General Louis DeJoy (I think I need a nickname for him – that’s a long title) and his appearance at a House hearing yesterday.

Walter Einenkel Daily Kos reported on the questions he got from Rep. Brenda Lawrence of Detroit. She reminded DeJoy of the oath he took when he got the job. She then told him about the life of a letter carrier because she has been one and he hasn’t. She finished up by saying:

I have complaints in my office and people getting delivered one day a week now, sir. That is not according to your oath.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported on a bit more. DeJoy was grilled for not delivering requested documents to the House (the House got them anyway through a whistleblower and the documents showed DeJoy lied). The story DeJoy tried to tell was essentially this: There weren’t any changes. I’m not responsible for the changes (that didn’t happen). I don’t know who was responsible for those changes. But I’m not going to reverse the changes that didn’t happen.

Einenkel reported on Rep Katie Porter’s questions. She asked DeJoy the prices of various USPS products – postcard stamps, priority mail – and he didn’t know. If one is claiming one’s actions are cost saving initiatives, it’s amazing one doesn’t know what the prices and costs are. He also didn’t know how many people voted by mail in 2016. How can one take “decisive action” when one doesn’t know anything about the organization?



Jen Sorensen of the Kos community drew a cartoon of three front pages of what would be honest headlines and a fourth with the kinds of headlines we actually get.



On to the week long GOP infomercial. Or is it a screamfest? As I said I won’t watch it. I’d be spending my whole time grinding my teeth and throwing rubber bricks at the screen. So to keep my dental bills manageable and my computer screen undamaged I’ll keep the convention off. So I’ll go with a few summaries of the first day.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote:

If there was any real uniting theme for the convention of what the GOP is it was this: Lying our ass off for Trump.

Georgia Logothetis, in her pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Eric Lach of The New Yorker describing the speech by Kimberly Guilfoyle. This bit of her describing what Biden and the Democrats plan to do caught my attention:

They want to destroy this country, and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think, and believe, so that they can control how you live! They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal, victim ideology, to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.

Project much? Replace the word “liberal” with “conservative” and it pretty well describes what authoritarians – of which the nasty guy wants to be – intend to do once reinstalled in office.

AKALib of the Kos community gathered together tweets of people commenting on the GOP convention. A few of them:

I feel well prepared for this Republican National Convention, having covered personality cults in China and North Korea.
– Nicholas Kristof

This convention is targeted to one voter: Donald Trump. The whole convention is to make his lonely soul feel affirmed.
– David Brooks

Fox News can't be happy with this boring RNC Convention with accused felons as the featured speakers, because Hannity is liberally editing it by bringing his OWN guests, lunatics like failed NRA tv host Dan Bongino and Leningrad Lindsey Graham.
– Democratic Coalition

Dartagnan of the Kos community included a tweet from Joe Biden that seems about right:

Just stay focused, folks.

180,000 deaths is acceptable

Hunter of Daily Kos reported on a CBS poll about voter sentiments and how GOP and non GOP sentiments differ.

Republicans believe COVID-19 deaths are being exaggerated; a plurality of all voters believe it is being undercounted. And, most troubling at all, Republicans are split from the country in whether the now 180,000 United States COVID-19 deaths and rising are "acceptable."
...
Even a sociopath would know to at least lie, when asked whether the death of 180,000 people was a reasonable and acceptable outcome. For these voters, however, protecting conservatism, even crooked and incompetent conservatism, from the consequences of its failures is all-consuming.
...
The cult's extent can be gleaned from the 82% of Republicans who, when asked why they believe America is better off than four years ago, cite their own "confidence in Donald Trump."

That's it. America is doing "better" because Donald Trump is in charge, and he says so.

Because the nasty guy is in charge, because knowing the nasty guy will be there to enforce racism for them, because their racism and their place in the social hierarchy is most important to them, 180,000 deaths is acceptable.



Laura Clawson of Kos reported on the GOP platform passed by the GOP convention that started today. No, I’m not watching, though I may read a few news reports. Clawson wrote:

Instead of a platform outlining the party’s policy agenda, Republicans are just signing on for blanket support of Trump. This is it: “be it RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”

No, convention platforms are never directly translated into law, but that is nonetheless a stunning abdication of any attempt by the broader Republican Party to assert an agenda beyond Donald Trump’s passing whims.

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director, and NBC national security contributor, tweeted:

This is no longer about politics is it? This is about fealty to and adulation of a single person. No ideas or beliefs other than his. No accountability other than to him: Republicans to forego party platform in favor of full support for Trump’s agenda.

MegaYanni clarified:

The GOP HAS a platform; it's the same one they agreed to in 2016. Not having a platform committee this year means that the 2016 platform will not be amended or altered and will remain. They did Not vote to abolish their platform.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy went before the House Oversight and Reform Committee today. I haven’t seen a full report of the session. I did see a post by Joan McCarter of Kos reporting that Rep. Steven Lynch had to ask several times, “Will you put the high-speed machines back?” before DeJoy answered, “No, I will not.”

Before this hearing DeJoy told a Senate committee the mail hasn’t been slowed down and if it is slower, it’s due to the coronavirus. But a report released by the USPS shows DeJoy lied. The ontime delivery score is down about 10%. Also it happened in July after DeJoy was appointed, not March, so it isn’t due to the virus.

Elizabeth Warren accused DeJoy of perjury. Which would be grounds for removal if anyone in the GOP cared about such things.

A couple days ago I wrote that postal employees in a Seattle-Tacoma area reinstalled some of the fast sorting machines. Laura Clawson reports USPS workers in Maine and other places are pushing back in other ways.

Though the House held a hearing today they voted on a USPS package on Friday. It contains relief money and orders to restore the destruction DeJoy has done. Jessica Sutherland of Kos reported what is significant about this bill is that 26 GOP representatives voted for it. So maybe it might get a vote in the Senate?

That post by Sutherland also includes several photos of the protests from last Saturday. There are also more photos here.



Leah McElrath tweeted:

I just want people to be okay.
To have clean water.
To have enough food.
To have someplace to call home.
To have medical care when we’re unwell.
To have the resources to care for our children and elderly.
These are not radical desires.
These are fundamentals for a moral society.

I want a teacher as cool as these two. Ms. Williams and Ms. Evans of Monroe Comprehensive High School in Albany, Georgia star in a rap video about doing virtual school. They even had a few students as backup dancers – definitely masked. Of course the video went viral.

Republicans knew before impeachment hearings

I wrote yesterday that Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa reacted to Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia report with “Holy mother of duh.” Even so, I thought it would be good to see what Daily Kos and other sources say about what was learned about what happened in the 2016 election.

A few things from a post by Kerry Eleveld:

* The nasty guy campaign worked in close coordination with Russian operatives. Or the campaign became a front for a Russian influence operation. Maybe both.

* Paul Manafort’s central role in the campaign created opportunities for Russian operatives to get info from and exert influence on the campaign.

* Manafort’s repeated lies to the Mueller investigation undermined that work.

* We knew emails were stolen from John Podesta who was working with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Those emails were routed to WikiLeaks, who was collaborating with Russia. Roger Stone played a part in causing those emails to be dumped within an hour of the Access Hollywood tape being released, to get the tapes out of the news.

* Don Jr., the pandemic prince, and Paul Manafort did meet with a Russian spy in a June 2016 meeting in Trump Town with the intention of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t look like they got any dirt at that time.

* Ukraine:

Ukrainian interference in the 2016 was a total fabrication. … So Trump was impeached for trying to strong arm Ukraine into conducting an investigation into Ukrainian election interference that was the sole creation of a Russian Intelligence operation.

And from Mark Sumner:

The Senate report, in fact, proves everything that had been said since before the election—Trump’s campaign directly collaborated with Russia, on multiple occasions and in various ways, to alter the outcome of a U.S. election. It also shows that multiple members of Trump’s campaign lied to investigators about these connections, and that Republican senators have been aware of these facts even as they have scorned the Mueller investigation and defended Trump and his campaign. So what are Republican senators doing about it now? Lying, of course.
...
The report isn’t just damning, it’s damning to helling. It could not be more conclusive and more authoritative in showing that there was genuine coordination between the Trump campaign and Putin’s plans. Trump took everything Putin would give him, and begged for more.
...
So what are Republican senators going to do about a report—their own report—that lays bare Putin’s tawdry leverage over Trump, the openness of Trump’s campaign to foreign influence, and the lies that campaigns staffers told to investigators every step of the way? As Lawfare points out, Republicans have a very simple solution: lying. Over and over, Republican senators have issued statements repeating the idea that the report shows “no collusion,” in direct contradiction of the actual contents.

Republicans in the Senate deserve credit for allowing the investigation to run its course rather than doing a Devin Nunes and popping out a Trump-praising nonsense piece while claiming that everything is good. But they deserve zero credit for running away from their own report or for making claims that the report doesn’t show what it clearly shows.

The nasty guy clearly stole the 2016 election with the help of Russia. That’s illegal. Is anything going to be done about it? Alas, no. Certainly not by the GOP in the Senate. And it doesn’t look like Speaker Pelosi would open fresh impeachment hearings – yeah, I know getting an actual trial and removal before the election won’t happen, but the House could change the story from a the title of a report close to a thousand pages long that few are going to read into a daily explainer of why this is wrong and bad.

Next question: Is anything going to be done to stop it from happening in this year’s election. Heh. This is a sign of how many GOP in the House and Senate and probably a good number of Dems are in Putin’s pocket.

Rick Smith tweeted a thread quoting Olga Lautman. She researches Russia and Ukraine. Here’s a part of that thread.

It's infuriating that the Senate drops a report that verifies everything that's been reported over the last 4 years in the middle of the Democratic National Convention. It verifies that Trump worked w/ the Kremlin to win the election in 2016.
...
Two things worry me about the report: Repubs knew this before impeachment hearings & they refused to have witnesses; also, this time, one of the attacks is going through Ukraine to attack our elections. They're working with Barr & Giuliani to harm Biden.

I know the capabilities of the Kremlin & what they can do but I never thought the GOP would work with them to maintain power.

Putin is actually worse; he seeks ultimate humiliation & destruction of the US b/c he blames us for the break-up of the USSR. He wants to reinstate the USSR & weaken the west.

Holy mother of duh

I read through another transcript of the podcast Gaslit Nation by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is titled Inherent Contempt.

Senator Bernie Sanders said in his Democratic National Convention speech:

Under this administration, authoritarianism has taken root in our country. I and my family, and many of yours, know the insidious way authoritarianism destroys democracy, decency and humanity. … the future of our democracy is at stake.

Chalupa said good to see the “white male translator” finally say what Kendzior and Chalupa have been saying for four years. Hopefully Sanders supporters will stop brushing off Kendzior and Chalupa as hysterical. Maybe others will start to listen too. Lives would have been saved if they started listening sooner.

Kendzior said this year we are voting for a system of government, autocracy or democracy. Vote for a ticket you might not be thrilled with, then push them to pass progressive policies and hold the criminals accountable.

Kendzior and Chalupa discuss Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. They call that report “Holy mother of duh” because all of the information is public, the two have been discussing it since before the 2016 election and in 2020 Kendzior published a book Hiding in Plain Sight, using public sources, discussing what is in the report. And she wasn’t the only one.

Chalupa said the first people to take Kendzior and herself seriously were communities of color. They understand police states. The people who dismissed them were white people who filled newsrooms. If those newsrooms had been filled with people of color they would have seen this coming. The mostly white males from whom we receive news are in a luxurious position where the could withstand actual authoritarianism. Communities of color can’t (as we’ve seen with COVID) because they’re explicitly targeted.

Kendzior said that over the last few years many newsrooms cut back on reporters. Then COVID happened and more were laid off. The result is many newsrooms are even more an elite white male environment. So support independent media (like theirs). They are aware that if the nasty guy gets a second term they might get shut down.

They talked about Kamala Harris nominated for Vice President. Chalupa says she was an early endorser of Harris – as in January 2019 early. Her reasons: She’s from Northern California, “which is the Rebel Alliance like in Star Wars.” They’re so progressive they push the rest of the country. She was Attorney General and Senator from California which, because its economy is bigger than Britain’s, means it’s like being a leader of an influential country. She’s good at slicing into people at Senate hearings. It’s “women of color who are a major part of the dam that are keeping fascism from flooding America right now.” She’s more experienced than Obama was when he ran for president. And she’s more liberal than Bernie Sanders.

Andrea reviewed Harris’ foreign policy positions, starting with rejoining the Paris climate change agreement and talking to China about human rights abuses. This is important because with an international crime syndicate in the White House foreign policy and domestic policy are the same thing.

Kendzior said she had learned over the last four years if one doesn’t investigate and prosecute the GOP administrations – Watergate, Iran-Contra, the illegal wars of Bush II, the Wall Street crash – the perpetrators of those scandals come back in office, back destroying the country. Kendzior fears that Biden and Harris …

will do the thing that Democratic administrations have always done, which is turn the other way and try to befriend people who are acting as hostile, murderous enemies. They can't do that. And I hope they realize, they have the support of the majority of the American public behind them if they go after these criminal elites.

Kendzior said that Joe Biden seems prepared that the nasty guy won’t concede the election. Biden had already said the nasty guy would destroy the Postal Service before it happened – a fact checking group mocked him for it, then issued a correction.

But Congress isn’t ready. Rep. Ted Lieu has been trying to use inherent contempt of Congress to force people who have been subpoenaed to show up and to force handing over documents. But he’s been prevented by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The House came back from recess to deal with the Postal Service because enough members demanded that hearing be held. And they still merely “invited” Louis DeJoy to attend. They didn’t subpoena. They didn’t arrest – which they would have grounds to do. Tampering with the mail is a federal crime. The members demanded because their constituents, the ones not getting medication or food, demanded. So keep demanding of your representatives.

Kendzior said about Pelosi saying about impeachment “He’s not worth it.”:

The Mueller Report, emoluments, children in cages, being a Kremlin asset in the White House, abusing the pardon power, none of that is worth impeaching. And when she said, “he's not worth it”, what she meant is, you're not worth it. Americans, this country, is not worth it. This Constitution is not worth it. Your rights, your safety, your freedom is not worth it. It means nothing to her and she has made that abundantly clear over the last 18 months.

Comments like that prompted me to think perhaps Pelosi has been corrupted, perhaps by Russia. I’ve long reported that the nasty guy is a Russian asset and many in the GOP have been corrupted by Russian money. So maybe Pelosi too? Kendzior again:

Whether it's the DCC taking an unparalleled donation from Len Blavatnik, a Russian oligarch partner, a partner of sanctioned oligarchs who pumped money foremost into the GOP and into Trump's partners but also into the Democrats in 2019 and suddenly, those hearings and those investigations stopped.

So, yeah, she’s been corrupted. As have many Democrats. She’s very good at performative protest, like tearing up the nasty guy’s State of the Union speech, which gives the illusion she’s on our side, but not actually doing anything to help us. Unless there is a massive public outcry. It’s time for the Democratic Party to retire her.

Chalupa said:

So here in the US, when they're trying to terrorize us, it's a deliberate strategy. So you've got to fight back by understanding your power comes not from fear, but from hope. And you have to keep hope alive.
…
And so, what you need to do, is hold onto your hope, unleash your creativity and build, build, build, build. All of us right now have to be in a mindset of creativity and a mindset of building. Go out and create something. Whether it's a poem, it's a song, it's a letter to an old friend, do something to get in that mindset of hope and creativity.

Then apply that creativity to your community.

In defiance

I went to another protest today. This one was to protest the slowdowns at the Postal Service. I heard there were 500 protests across the country. I went to one in Detroit, which was the closest I knew about.

Here’s the poster I made.

I hadn’t bought new posterboard lately, so this was improvised by taking apart a campaign yard sign from a couple years ago and turning it inside out.

When I got to the protest site I realized it wouldn’t work well. It had too many words. The audience for our protests was passing cars, many of them tooting in support. And they wouldn’t be able to read that many words as they went past. Even so, fellow protesters thought it was appropriate and clever.

There were about 25 of us in front of this particular post office. The organizers wanted to keep the number of people at each site to about 50. I heard the protest in Royal Oak – about eight miles north and safely in the suburbs – had 80 people sign up.

This parked car was also a part of our protest. Because of the glare of the sun some letters may not be discernible. The signs say, “Community Support, Post Office & Workers.”

Though the sun was bright it was thankfully not blazing hot. There were no speakers, just us and our signs. I stayed for about 75 minutes.


Don Winslow tweeted:

Dear @SpeakerPelosi

We're less than 80 days from the election.

DeJoy is not going to quit and Trump won't fire him.

When he refuses to put the machines back and approve overtime now...

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO?

Because the Hearings are not enough.

Passing a bill that’s going to sit in Moscow Mitch’s inbox (or wastebasket), and for which the nasty guy has threatened a veto, isn’t going to accomplish anything either.

And what can she do? Easy stuff: hold hearings daily showcasing people harmed by slower mail and postal workers who can contradict the official line. Harder stuff: Impeaching Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, issuing subpoenas for documents and actually using contempt of Congress to throw people in jail.



Daniel Cassady of Forbes reports that Postal Service workers in the Seattle-Tacoma facility and in Dallas have reinstalled some of the high speed sorting machines that had been disconnected. In the Seattle-Tacoma facility eight of eighteen sorting machines had been disconnected, some even dismantled. I’m not sure how many were put back in service. And, yes, this is in defiance of orders from DeJoy.



Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted an opinion piece for the Boston Globe that proposed international election monitors be brought to the US.

In its report assessing whether the 2020 US election needed international observers, the OSCE wrote, “Elements of the electoral process that... merit specific attention include voter rights, registration and identification, security of election technologies, legal framework for and implementation of alternative voting methods, campaign finance, and the conduct of the electoral campaign, particularly online and in the media.” That’s a long list of processes that require attention, and the organization should do its best to monitor our election despite the obstacles to observing polling places imposed by some state laws.

My weekly check of Michigan coronavirus data shows since the middle of July the new cases per day has averaged about 630 with a steady trend line. The number of deaths per day has been low with a steady trend line since mid June (when the number of cases started climbing again) with an upper limit of 13 deaths a day. It is good to see deaths remain that low.



Dan Price, a small business owner whose bio says he cut his CEO pay by a million to make sure his workers are paid well, tweeted:

Amazon: profit up 100%
Walmart: profit up 80%
Target: profit up 80%
Lowe's: profit up 74%
Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google: stock at record high

Small businesses: 21% closed; revenue for rest down 30%

We're seeing a monumental wealth transfer from mom & pops to conglomerates.

My company processes small business payments. In 2008 - the worst recession in 80 years - small biz revenues fell 20%. Now they're down 30%.

Meanwhile, the stock market is at a record high.

So the biggest corporations are in a record boom and small biz are in a record free fall

Peter Daou responded:

#COVID19 proved to be the perfect opportunity for a massive upward redistribution of wealth (i.e theft by the oligarchy). And both parties facilitated it.

A Nixon rule was proposed:

Presidents who walk away (resigning for high crimes or losing an election) get to keep their pardons & not face prison.

Sarah Kendzior responded with how dumb and damaging that is:

Or we could be a country where no one is above the law and any president who is proven to have committed high crimes faces prison.

Without that, there is an incentive for elite criminals to run for POTUS in order to remain immune from prosecution.

An incentive structure to cheat as big as possible

Back in 2015 the newspapers in Michigan were full of the story of he Flint water crisis. The city switched water sources, didn’t properly treat it, and many residents got all kinds of illnesses, including a lot of kids with lead poisoning. It was the coutry’s worst public health disaster (until COVID came along).

Aysha Qamar of Daily Kos discussed the settlement Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced. The state will pay $600 million. That sounds like a huge amount (especially for a struggling state budget).

But, that is a mere $6,000 per resident. For the number of years this has dragged on and the severity of damage to human health, this is not nearly enough.



Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the nasty guy ignored the tradition of staying quiet while the other party holds their convention. He held a rally in front of the home in Scranton, PA where Biden grew up. The nasty guy tossed out a few nonsensical attacks on Biden. Then he ranted about mail and voting. Wrote Sumner:

In the midst of a pandemic, Donald Trump has done everything he can to sabotage the safest means for Americans to cast their votes. He’s put a man in charge of the Post Office who is determinedly tearing down that institution, slowing mail delivery, and flat-out telling states that their ballots won’t arrive on time. Trump has also waged a concerted, evidence-free, campaign on the reliability of mail-in ballots, making hundreds of false claims about fraud. His efforts have definitely succeeded among his supporters, with a majority of Republican voters not just saying they’ll vote in person, but telling pollsters that they won’t accept an election decided by mail-in ballots.

Big scary red flag right there!

All of that is disturbing and infuriating, but what if it’s not enough? What if Democratic voters decide to follow the advice given by Michelle Obama—to put on their masks, pack a lunch, and stay in line as long as it takes to cast a vote? Even as Joe Biden was delivering a fantastic speech to accept the Democratic nomination, Trump was signaling to Fox News that he had that base covered, as well, by making sure that polling places were flooded with “law enforcement.”

That law enforcement probably isn’t local police. More likely the kinds of people we saw in Portland. Or just citizens with an attitude wanting to take it out on someone. And they certainly won’t be at white majority polling places.

Trump’s threats are intended to have the same effect as his lies about mail-in ballots: intimidation. Trump wants to create a situation where Republican voters, and only Republican voters, get to vote. It’s up to everyone to see he is disappointed.

As one does when browsing on the web I followed link to link and ended up on a page for NDN, a “leading liberal think tank,” with an article by Simon Rosenberg titled Taking Trump’s Ongoing Assault On Our Democracy Seriously. He discusses the nasty guy’s ongoing crime spree. This bit caught my attention:

As [Glenn] Kirschner [of MSNBC] predicted, there is no reason once you start cheating to do it at the margins of an election – you just have to go for it. For if you cheat and lose, you and your team can be indicted. Immunity only comes from winning or staying in power illicitly.

In another article by Rosenberg on NDN he wrote:

It’s our hope that in the coming days there is a national uprising against the President’s purposeful sabotaging of one of America’s most important institutions, one created by the Constitution itself, the United States Postal Service.

NDN is encouraging every government jurisdiction in the nation to begin a formal process to challenge what the President is doing – hold hearings, demand/subpoena Postmaster General DeJoy to testify, investigate and sue/prosecute if necessary. This has to be an all-out, universal push back from every corner of the country.

Why? Because by holding back monies and taking other steps to undermine the USPS, the President is harming people in every town, city, and state in the country. He’s making it harder for businesses of every size to operate, thus slowing the economic recovery; he’s making it harder for people to receive their life saving medicines, and people will surely die in every state from unnecessary delays; every election in the country for every single office, not just the Presidency, will be degraded, and potentially millions of Americans could see their votes invalidated.

In a time of social distancing and a raging pandemic, we are all relying more on the mail and package delivery to keep us safe. Frankly, there is something depraved and even sadistic about the furious disabling of the postal service we are seeing right now.

Rosenberg adds we can use the nasty guy’s statements from the last few weeks against him.

Rosenberg tweeted a thread on all the illegal campaign stuff the nasty guy is doing – this year, not 2016.

* He has erased the line between what is a government action and what is a campaign event. The government is paying for things his campaign should pay for.

* The campaign has laundered perhaps $170 million.

* His attacks on the Postal Service are to benefit his campaign. Again, this is using the government to benefit his campaign.

* He has said he sent troops to Portland to benefit his campaign.

* He is meddling in the census to benefit the Republican Party.

* He has encouraged foreigners to intervene in our election and has blocked legislation that would make it harder.

* He is abusing power by using government money to cook up October Surprise scandals.

Reviewing all this it's clear that cheating is central to Trump's re-election strategy. It is how he won in 2016, how he's run his professional career. It's what he knows, who he is. But it is wrong, and an extraordinary, ongoing historic betrayal of our democracy, of America.
...
The President is in the midst of a massive crime spree. He's not even trying to conduct his re-election campaign legally. He's just going for it, and knows w/Barr there he can't be prosecuted. His lawless campaign represents a total break down of rule of law in America.
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In a very prescient @NBCNews piece, the great @glennkirschner2 predicted that if our system cannot prosecute candidates for cheating IF THEY WIN, then we are creating an incentive structure to cheat and cheat as big as possible. What we are seeing now.

From Bill in Portland, Maine’s collection of late night commentary:

Just remember: Joe Biden goes to church so regularly that he doesn’t even need tear gas and a bunch of federalized troops to get there.
—Night 4 Emcee Julia Louis-Dreyfuss

We know Kamala Harris will make a great VP because she believes there will be a 2021. That’s the kind of optimism we need in this country.
—Samantha Bee

A protracted fight beyond the ballot box

CBS News posted an article a few days ago discussing presidential powers, in particular powers a president has in an emergency. A president does need emergency powers because Congress is simply too slow to act when the threat is immediate and dire. But …

Eisenhower created the first presidential emergency action documents. He was facing the threat of Soviet nuclear bombs being dropped on America and needed to be able to respond. Every president since then has updated them depending on the sorts of crises he anticipates might occur. However, they do not consult with Congress and they pretend such documents don’t exist.

The nasty guy, who can’t keep his mouth shut (for good and bad) said this back in March, “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don't even know about.” And this in April, “When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that's the way it's got to be – it's total.” He’s declared Muslims coming into the country to be an emergency. He’s declared the need for a border wall to be an emergency.

The idea that the nasty guy has these emergency powers is quite scary, simply because he as a distinct view of what an emergency is – not something that threatens us, but something that threatens him.

Presidents have kept the documents secret because they don’t want to scare the public. Former Senator Gary Hart responded with a solution for these documents:

I want them public, because they affect the freedom and liberty and rights of every American citizen. I can't say it any better. This is a blueprint for dictatorship. Now, I think the more attention it gets, the less likely those in power are going to use them.
...
This goes to the core of our country and our founding. And if there is what amounts to the capability to suspend our Constitution, that's not just another issue. That's serious. Keep in mind, the current, incumbent president has declared seven national emergencies. And he has stated repeatedly that he has more power than most people know about.

I add: This might be why the nasty guy believes he can cancel the election.



Here’s more signs of how much the nasty guy hates immigrants, especially those of color. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported he has decimated the staffing of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) so there aren’t enough people to process paperwork. He has nearly doubled the fee for the application to citizenship from $640 to $1170. And he has lowered the income requirements and other rules for fee reductions and waivers. Which means there is a wealth test on citizenship and people of color will have a harder time affording it.



Andrew Airlie tweeted:

America, Nov. 3 it really is as simple - and important - as this

Then he quoted Sarah Kendzior:

We are not voting for a ticket. We are not voting for a party. We are voting for a system of government: democracy over autocracy. If you vote for the Democrats, we have a chance at retaining our democracy.

Mark Sumner of Kos speculates that the current Republican Party, and likely the entire conservative movement is a series of scams from top to bottom. One example is the NRA which was sued to disband because its head Wayne LaPierre and the top leadership was spending the money on themselves. Sumner lists many more. He wrote:

Across all these scams, the M.O. is the same. They start with a pitch that seems to break down into one of two categories:

* You’re missing out on secrets that can quickly give you an advantage over other people
* Your way of life is being threatened by people who are not like you

These are, of course, the classic basis of scams for centuries. The solution to either of these issues is the same—send money.

With money, you can defend the right to bear arms! Or … give millions to Wayne LaPierre while hitting members with frantic messages about a critical need for cash.
…
Maybe there was a time when the Republican Party stood for something. If so, it’s hard to locate that time. What’s absolutely clear is at the moment the Republican Party exists only as a marketing organization—a platform for launching scams. The reason that Republicans never get concerned about upholding real knowledge or expertise isn’t secret at all—those things make it more difficult to part fools from their money.

I add: A scammer is a supremacist. He believes he deserves your money more than you do.



A few days ago I heard a report on NPR (and I’m not going to hunt down the link) about Wall Street giving Joe Biden more money than they gave to the nasty guy. They did not go to the conclusion – this makes Biden beholden to Wall Street. And Wall Street was the reason for the previous economic collapse and is a champion of the huge income inequality that cripples our nation.

Bree Newsome Bass tweeted a thread:

There remains a deep level of denialism around both the magnitude of the crises confronting this country, incl. racism, & the reality that the bipartisan political establishment opposes the very policies we need to actually address these crises & to relieve human suffering.

The bipartisan, corporatist establishment has succeeded again in forcing us into a position of having no choice but to pick between the fascism they continually enable or the status quo that has been killing us since before they normalized & enabled Trump’s rise to power.
...
Stating the obvious, that the only alternative to Biden is 4 more yrs of Trump, is not a counter-argument but rather proves the point— that the system ultimately operates to crush any effort made toward racial & economic justice by paralyzing us & offering us no real choices.

It is ultimately *the policies* of the government that are killing us & that is where the bipartisan establishment remains most intractable & unresponsive to the needs of average people & especially to the needs of working class Black, brown & Indigenous communities.

The #1 priority of the bipartisan establishment is to maintain the status quo of racial capitalism b/c it is profitable to them personally. They were willing to enable Trump as long as he wasn’t too disruptive to that status quo b/c they view leftism as more disruptive.

Shifting demographics in USA have made it such that “diversity & inclusion” is now essential to preserving the status quo. The establishment refuses to budge much on policy but embraces the idea of PoC legislators enacting the same deadly policies of their white predecessors.
...
The mayor being Black does not save anyone’s life when that mayor still gives more funding to the murderous police force than to the housing fund. We can appoint Black people to every political office in the land & we’ll still be dying unless the policies drastically change.
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My hope is folks understand why it’s strategically wise to vote Trump & Repubs out of office

AND ALSO

that November will only mark the beginning of a more turbulent era in this country b/c white supremacy is not going down w/o a protracted fight beyond the ballot box.

Have you been diligent about wearing your mask in public and getting annoyed with those who refuse? Hunter of Kos has a video from Allen Pan of a new invention that will shoot a mask onto a person’s face.



A fun bit to end this post came from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Back in 1996 Kevin Costner starred in the movie The Postman. It bombed in theaters. I had read and enjoyed the original novella in one of my science fiction magazines on which the movie is based, but when I heard the movie wasn’t very good I didn’t see it.

Colbert’s team think we owe Costner an apology. Yes, he was wrong in 1996, but he was so right in 2020.