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Sunday Stuff
Category: News
In A Sad Week For America, Trump Has Fled From His Duty
PICTURE ABOVE WAS POSTED BY PAPA MIKE AND NOT BY THE SOURCE OF THIS ARTICLE
YOU CAN TELL WHEN TRUMP IS READING A PREPARED SPEACH OFF A TELEPROMPTER THAT’S MORE THAN LIKELY WRITTEN BY HIS SON-IN-LAW HIMSELF “EMPEROR” JARED KUSHNER. HIS SPEACH SOUNDS LIKE HE JUST FINISHED A DOZEN LINES OF ‘COCAIN’ FROM THE WAY HE BREATHES…… IT’S MUCH EASIER TO KNOW HE’S SPEAKING FROM HIS ‘GUT’ OR TWEETING. THERE’S NO WORDS OVER 4 LETTERS, AND HE CONDEMNS EVERY NEWS NETWORK AND JOURNALISTS FOR REPORTING “FAKE NEWS” WHEN THEY DISAGREE WITH HIM….HE’S RIGHT OUT OF THE MOVIE, “ONE WHO FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST!!……Papa Mike
EDITORS REPORT: David Gergen has been a White House adviser to four presidents and is a senior political analyst at CNN. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he founded the Center for Public Leadership
This past week has brought tragedy upon tragedy to our nation: the death toll from Covid-19 passed a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths; the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited mass protests in Minneapolis and beyond, and seven people were shot in protests demanding justice in Louisville.
Since the early days of the Republic until now, Americans have looked to our presidents to provide protection, meaning and comfort, especially in moments of crisis. After George Washington was sworn as commander in chief of the Continental Army, Ethan Allen’s younger brother, Levi, wrote to Washington in 1776 that he had become “Our political Father and head of a Great People.” Shortly thereafter, Washington was frequently referred to as “Father of Our Country.” As he steered us through war, the constitutional convention, and two terms as President, the phrase caught on. He wasn’t much of a speaker — he thought his deeds spoke for him — but he was a leader of such strong character and rock-solid integrity that he became the gold standard of the presidency.
Lincoln began his presidency during great uncertainty about his leadership. He won the election of 1860 with the smallest plurality ever (39%), and his military experience was virtually nil. But over time, he kindled a special relationship with Union soldiers, many of whom called him “Father Abraham.” Historians say his homespun ways, common manner and kindly empathy converted them. In his re-election, soldiers were his greatest supporters.
Franklin Roosevelt was known to be self-involved in his early years, but his struggles with polio transformed him into a caring, compassionate leader. Working families and many people of color thought they had a friend in the White House. So attached did his followers become that when he gave a fireside chat on a summer evening, you could walk down the streets of Baltimore and hear every word as families sat in their living room by a radio.
Twitter Had Been Drawing A Line For Months When Trump Crossed It
OAKLAND, Calif. — Jack Dorsey was up late Thursday at his home in San Francisco talking online with his executives when their conversation was interrupted: President Trump had just posted another inflammatory message on Twitter
Tensions between Twitter, where Mr. Dorsey above is chief executive, and Mr. Trump had been running high for days over the president’s aggressive tweets and the company’s decision to begin labeling some of them. In his latest message, Mr. Trump weighed in on the clashes between the police and protesters in Minneapolis, saying, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
A group of more than 10 Twitter officials, including lawyers and policymakers, quickly gathered virtually to review Mr. Trump’s post and debate over the messaging system Slack and Google Docs whether it pushed people toward violence.
They soon came to a conclusion. And after midnight, Mr. Dorsey gave his go-ahead: Twitter would hide Mr. Trump’s tweet behind a warning label that said the message violated its policy against glorifying violence. It was the first time Twitter applied that specific warning to any public figure’s tweets.
The action has prompted a broad fight over whether and how social media companies should be held responsible for what appears on their sites, and was the culmination of months of debate inside Twitter. For more than a year, the company had been building an infrastructure to limit the impact of objectionable messages from world leaders, creating rules on what would and would not be allowed and designing a plan for when Mr. Trump inevitably broke them.
But the path to that point was not smooth. Inside Twitter, dealing with Mr. Trump’s tweets — which are the equivalent of a presidential megaphone — was a fitful and uneven process. Some executives repeatedly urged Mr. Dorsey to take action on the inflammatory posts while others insisted he hold back, staying hands-off as the company had done for years.
Outside Twitter, the president’s critics urged the company to shut him down as he pushed the limits with insults and untruths, noting ordinary users were sometimes suspended for lesser transgressions. But Twitter argued that posts by Mr. Trump and other world leaders deserved special leeway because of their news value.
The efforts were complicated by Mr. Dorsey, 43, who was sometimes absent on travels and meditative retreats before the coronavirus pandemic. He often delegated policy decisions, watching the debate from the sidelines so he would not dominate with his own views. And he frequently did not weigh in until the last minute.
Now Twitter is at war with Mr. Trump over its treatment of his posts, which has implications for the future of speech on social media. In the past week, the company for the first time added fact-checking and other warning labels to three of Mr. Trump’s messages, refuting their accuracy or marking them as inappropriate.
In response, an irate Mr. Trump issued an executive order designed to limit legal protections that tech companies enjoy and posted more angry messages.
Continue reading “Twitter Had Been Drawing A Line For Months When Trump Crossed It”
In Days Of Discord, President Trump Fans The Flames
WASHINGTON — With a nation on edge, ravaged by disease, hammered by economic collapse, divided over lockdowns and even face masks and now convulsed once again by race, President Trump’s first instinct is to look for someone to fight.
Over the last week, America reeled from 100,000 pandemic deaths, 40 million people out of work and cities in flames over a brutal police killing of a subdued black man. But Mr. Trump was on the attack against China, the World Health Organization, Big Tech, former President Barack Obama, a cable television host and the mayor of a riot-torn city.
While other presidents seek to cool the situation in tinderbox moments like this, Mr. Trump plays with matches. He roars into any melee he may find, encouraging street uprisings against public health measures advanced by his own government, hurling made-up murder charges against a critic, accusing his predecessor of unspecified crimes, vowing to crack down on a social media company that angered him and then seemingly threatening to meet violence with violence in Minneapolis.
As several more cities erupted in street protests on Friday night after the killing of George Floyd, some of them resulting in clashes with the police, Mr. Trump made no appeal for calm. Instead he blamed the unrest on Democrats.
The turmoil came right to Mr. Trump’s doorstep on Friday night as hundreds of people protesting Mr. Floyd’s death and the president’s response gathered outside the White House. Some threw bricks and bottles at Secret Service and United States Park Police officers, who responded with pepper spray. The image of the White House surrounded by police in riot gear fueled the sense of a nation torn apart.
In a series of tweets on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump praised the Secret Service for being “very cool & very professional” but assailed the Democratic mayor of Washington for not providing city police officers to help. While governors and mayors have urged restraint, Mr. Trump seemed more intent on taunting the protesters, bragging about the violence that would have met them had they tried to get onto White House grounds.
“Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence,” the president wrote. “If they had they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action.”
Continue reading “In Days Of Discord, President Trump Fans The Flames”
Prosecutor And Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman Asks For Patience During George Floyd Investigation: ‘We Have To Get This Right’
U.S. attorney Erica MacDonald and Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman on Thursday asked for the public to remain calm as they investigate the death of George Floyd.
Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died on Monday in Minneapolis after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. The incident was recorded, and Floyd is heard saying, “I can’t breathe.” The four officers involved in the incident were fired on Tuesday, and Freeman told CNN all have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination.
MacDonald and Freeman held a joint press conference, which started about two hours late. MacDonald said they “thought we would have another development I could tell you about. Unfortunately, we don’t at this point.” Both her office and the FBI are conducting a “robust and meticulous investigation,” she said, adding that their “highest priority is that justice will be served.”
Freeman said his job is to prove the officer who kneeled on Floyd “violated a criminal statute. And there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge. We need to wade through all of that evidence and come to a meaningful decision and we are doing that to the best of our ability.” He called the video showing the incident “graphic, horrific, and terrible,” and asked the public to understand the need to remain calm as the investigation continues. “Sometimes that takes a little time and we ask people to be patient,” he said. “We have to get this right.” Catherine Garcia
Twitter Labeled Trump Tweets With A Fact Check For The First Time
HAD TO BE A “NEW HIRE” WHICH JACK DORSEY PROBABLY IMMEDIATELY FIRED AFTER HE READ THE TWEET!!…………PapaMike
For the first time, Twitter called tweets from Donald Trump “potentially misleading” — a decision that prompted the president to accuse the social media platform of election meddling.
On Tuesday, Twitter highlighted two of Trump’s tweets that falsely claimed mail-in ballots would lead to widespread voter fraud, appending a message the company has introduced to combat misinformation and disputed or unverified claims.
“Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” read the message beneath each tweet. It linked to a curated fact-check page the platform had created filled with further links and summaries of news articles debunking the assertion.
Twitter said the move was aimed at providing “context” around Trump’s remarks. But Twitter’s unprecedented decision is likely to raise further questions about its willingness to consistently apply the label to other Trump tweets that have been deemed misleading by third parties, particularly as the president has lobbed baseless allegations against former Rep. Joe Scarborough regarding the death of a congressional staffer years ago.
Trump’s allegations draw on a discredited conspiracy theory claiming, without evidence, that Scarborough played a role in the 2001 death of then-staffer Lori Klausutis. The reckless claims are undermined by the official autopsy, which found Klausutis had an undiagnosed heart condition. That history was painfully recounted in a letter written last week by Klausutis’s husband, Timothy, to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. In the letter, which became public on Tuesday, Timothy Klausutis pleaded with Dorsey to remove Trump’s tweets.
Trump Reiterates Conspiracy Theory About Woman’s Death, Ignoring Widower’s Plea For Peace
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and the White House on Tuesday continued to promote a baseless conspiracy theory about a woman’s 2001 death, ignoring her grieving widower’s plea for peace and putting renewed pressure on social media companies about the president’s use of their platforms.
Twitter issued a public apology to the family of Lori Klausutis, whose death Trump has repeatedly weaponized to attack MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. But the social media company rejected a request from her widower, Timothy Klausutis, to delete Trump’s conspiracy-laden tweets accusing Scarborough of a debunked murder plot, saying Lori Klausutis “deserves better.”
We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” Twitter said Tuesday. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”
Later Tuesday, Twitter for the first time added labels to two Trump tweets that included misinformation about voter fraud, directing the president’s 80 million followers to “Get the facts” about the president’s false claims. The company did not take similar action against Trump’s tweets about Klausutis’ death.
Tuesday’s events reflected the pressure on Twitter and other social media companies to take responsibility for the false and misleading content they allow users to publish – a politically dicey proposition when one of the most prominent purveyors of such material is the president of the United States. Twitter, in resisting Klausutis’ request and doing nothing about the president’s tweets about the death of Lori Klausutis, effectively signaled that it was not applying the same standards to Trump that it does to average users – even as it puts a fact-checking label on his tweets, the first time the company has done so for a world leader.
Trump lashed out about the fact checks Tuesday evening on Twitter, accusing the company of stifling free speech and interfering in the upcoming presidential election.
Quarantine Evening News With Jack Baca
Mike Pompeo Is The Number One Evangelist Of ‘Trumpism’ In The World
When it comes to foreign policy, Pompeo’s penchant for undermining America’s credibility is top-notch
Donald Trump’s disdain for the people, country and values his office is supposed to represent is unmatched in recent memory. And he has found in the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, a kindred spirit who has embraced his role as Trumpism’s number one proselytizer to the world.
Pompeo doesn’t wield nearly as much power or have the jurisdiction to inflict damage on as wide a range of issues as the president. He’s not as crass or erratic as Trump, and his Twitter feed seems dedicated more to childish mockery than outright attacks. But when it comes to foreign policy, Pompeo’s penchant for undermining America’s credibility is top-notch.
At Pompeo’s recommendation, Trump fired the state department’s inspector general, who is supposed to be an independent investigator charged with looking into potential wrongdoing inside the department. Steve Linick was just the latest in a series of inspectors general across the government that Trump had fired in an attempt to hide the misconduct of his administration – but it also shone a spotlight on how Pompeo has undermined his agency.
According to news reports, Pompeo was being investigated by the inspector general for bypassing Congress and possibly breaking the law in sending weapons to Saudi Arabia, even though his own department and the rest of the US government advised against the decision. He was also supposedly organizing fancy dinners – paid for by taxpayers – with influential businesspeople and TV personalities that seemed geared more towards supporting Pompeo’s political career than advancing US foreign policy goals. And he was reportedly being scrutinized for using department personnel to conduct personal business, such as getting dry cleaning and walking his dog.
But these revelations merely reaffirm a pattern of activities by Pompeo unbecoming of the nation’s top diplomat. When the House of Representatives was in the process of impeaching Trump over his attempt to extort Ukraine for personal political purposes – an act that Pompeo was aware of – Pompeo defended Trump while throwing under the bus career state department officials, like the ousted US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who spoke out. Pompeo has regularly ignored Congress, withholding documents from lawmakers – including during the Ukraine impeachment investigation – and refusing to appear for testimony. In 2019, the IG released a report detailing political retaliation against career state department officials being perpetrated by Trump officials. And Pompeo has spent considerable time traveling to Kansas and conducting media interviews there, fueling speculation that he has been using his position to tee up a run for the Senate, a violation of the Hatch Act.
Caronavirus Humor
‘I’m Looking For The Truth’: States Face Criticism For COVID-19 Data Cover-Ups
The public MUST be given complete and accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic, experts said.
By Allan Smith
May 25, 2020
May 25, 2020
As states ramp up their reopenings, some are coming under criticism for making public misleading statistics or concealing information related to the coronavirus outbreak.
While the U.S. has reported more cases and deaths than any other country, the method for counting COVID-19 deaths varies by state. In testimony before the Senate earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said the actual number of people who’ve died as a result of the pandemic is “almost certainly” higher than what’s been counted.
Such data has been the basis for how quickly states are beginning to open up and return to a sense of normalcy. But government officials in a number of states are facing questions about how open and honest they’re being about how the virus is impacting their state.
“Accurate, complete and timely information is the best way to understand, respond to and limit the impact of the virus on both health and the economy,” Dr. Tom Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under former President Barack Obama, told NBC News.
“This helps to set realistic expectations on how the pandemic will affect people’s lives and to inform required changes in behavior to prevent the spread of the virus,” he added.
Georgia officials have apologized and corrected what was describedas a “processing error” that wrongly showed a downward trend in the number of new daily infections in the state, making it appear as if new infections had dropped every day for two weeks. The error was at least the third in three weeks, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Georgia was among the first states to launch its reopening. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said the state on Tuesday recorded its lowest number of hospitalized patients since it began tracking such data in early April.
In the neighboring state of Florida, which has also moved expeditiously in reopening swathes of its economy, several data-related controversies also have brewed.
According to internal emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, state officials directed a top Florida Department of Health data manager earlier this month to remove data from public view that showed Florida residents had reported coronavirus-associated symptoms before cases were officially announced. The emails showed that the data manager, Rebekah Jones, had complied with the order but said it was the “wrong call.”
Jones was taken off her role maintaining the state’s coronavirus dashboard one day after that directive. She told a local CBS affiliatethat she refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen” Florida. Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said Jones was under “active criminal charges” for cyber stalking and cyber sexual harassment.
Meanwhile, Florida officials last month stopped releasing the list of coronavirus deaths being compiled by the state’s medical examiners, which had at times shown a higher death toll than the total being published by the state. State officials said that list needed to be reviewed as a result of the discrepancy.
A spokesman for the state Health Department said the medical examiners had a different method for reporting deaths and that it was untrue “that deaths have been hidden.”
“The government has one mission; academics and scholars have a very different mission,” Dr. Dean Hart, an expert on viral transmission and former Columbia University professor who has run for the New York State Assembly as a Democrat, told NBC News.
“As a scientist, I’m looking for the truth, the heck with who it hurts politically,” he added.
Social Distancing
The King Lives On From The Grave
Memorial Day Weekend Draws Crowds, Violence And Triggers Warnings
SICK FREAKING YOUNG LIBERAL MILLENNIALS😡🤯🤬 ………PapaMike
By CURT ANDERSON and BRIAN MAHONEY: AP
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The Memorial Day weekend marking the unofficial start of summer in the U.S. meant big crowds at beaches and warnings from authorities Sunday about people disregarding the coronavirus social-distancing rules and risking a resurgence of the scourge that has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.
Meanwhile, the White House broadened its travel ban against countries hard hit by the virus by saying it would deny admission to foreigners who have recently been in Brazil.
Sheriff’s deputies and beach patrols tried to make sure people kept their distance from others as they soaked up the rays on the sand and at parks and other recreation sites around the country.
In the Tampa area along Florida’s Gulf Coast, the crowds were so big that authorities took the extraordinary step of closing parking lots because they were full.
On the Sunday talk shows, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said she was “very concerned” about scenes of people crowding together over the weekend.
“We really want to be clear all the time that social distancing is absolutely critical. And if you can’t social distance and you’re outside, you must wear a mask,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”
In Missouri, people packed bars and restaurants at the Lake of the Ozarks, a vacation spot popular with Chicagoans, over the weekend. One video showed a crammed pool where vacationers lounged close together without masks, St. Louis station KMOV-TV reported.
In Daytona Beach, Florida, gunfire erupted Saturday night along a beachside road where more than 200 people had gathered and were seen partying and dancing despite the restrictions. Several people were wounded and taken to the hospital, authorities said.
“Disney is closed, Universal is closed. Everything is closed so where did everybody come with the first warm day with 50% opening? Everybody came to the beach,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said at a Sunday news conference, referring to crowds in the Daytona Beach area.
On Georgia’s Tybee Island, the beach was filled with families, bicyclists, beach chairs, games, swimmers and more. On a main drag, people lined the sidewalk at Wet Willie’s, a chain bar that sells frozen cocktails. Most stood close together — not nearly 6 feet (2 meters) apart — and none wore masks.
But at a nearby grocery store, staff members handed customers gloves and a number to keep track of how many people were inside at a time. Shoppers had their own masks.
Officials in California said most people were covering their faces and keep their distance even as they ventured to beaches and parks. Many Southern California beaches were open only for swimming, running and other activities.
At New York’s Orchard Beach in the Bronx, kids played with toys, and people sat in folding chairs. Some wore winter coats on a cool and breezy day, and many wore masks and sat apart from others.
“Good to be outside. Fresh air. Just good to enjoy the outdoors,” said Danovan Clacken, whose face was covered.
BELOW THERE’S TWO PEOPLE OUT OF 20,000 WEARING MASKS 😷🤯
GOP Lawmaker Calls On Trump To Stop Promoting Scarborough Conspiracy Theory: ‘It Will Destroy Us’
MUST SEE VIDEO HERE
BY JUSTINE COLEMAN – 05/24/20
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called on President Trump to stop promoting the “completely unfounded conspiracy” theory regarding the death of an intern for MSNBC “Morning Joe” anchor Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida.The president on Sunday morning urged his followers in a tweet to read an article from conservative website True Pundit, which claimed that evidence showed foul play in the death of Lori Klausutis, 28, in 2001.
“Just stop,” Kinzinger responded said. “Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us.”
On Saturday, the president also tweeted out a story about his calls for further investigations into Klausutis’s death, which a local medical examiner ruled accidental.
Klausutis was found dead in Scarborough’s district office in 2001. A medical examiner determined she had collapsed because of an undiagnosed heart condition and struck her head in the fall.
Trump has previously promoted the conspiracy theory that Scarborough was involved in the death, including earlier this month when he requested Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, to investigate the case.
The MSNBC host, who frequently critiques the president, responded to that tweet on his show, saying Trump was dragging Klausutis’s family through the mud.
- Trump ramps up Twitter push on unfounded Scarborough conspiracy theory
- Trump retweets personal attacks on Clinton, Pelosi, Abrams
Scarborough’s wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, tweeted last week that she was going to speak to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about getting the president banned from the platform in an apparent reaction to Trump’s tweets about her husband.
Trump often appeared on “Morning Joe” in 2015 and 2016 before he and the hosts became involved in a feud.
Kinzinger has condemned Trump’s rhetoric in interviews but had said he backs the president and has voted in line with him 93.3 percent of the time throughout his career, according to FiveThirtyEight.
California Now Offering Support To UnDocumented Illegal Immigrants, First Relief Fund Of Its Kind😡🤬😮👎🤯
PICTURE ABOVE WAS POSTED BY PAPA MIKE AND NOT BY THE SOURCE OF THIS ARTICLE
Starting today, undocumented immigrants in California can begin applying for financial assistance to support them during the coronavirus pandemic — in the first relief fund of its kind.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the $125 million coronavirus disaster relief fund last month to support undocumented immigrants who were ineligible for federal stimulus checks and unemployment benefits due to their immigration status.
It’s the first state funding effort directed at helping undocumented immigrants as the coronavirus pandemic causes financial hardships and spurs unemployment across the nation.
“Every Californian, including our undocumented neighbors and friends, should know that California is here to support them during this crisis,” Newsom said in a statement in April. “We are all in this together.”
Brentwood Couple in Critical Condition After Man Angry About COVID-19 Shutdown Attacks Them With Machete
And People Wonder Why I Carry a Gun…..
A homeless man who allegedly and repeatedly struck a married Brentwood couple with a machete Sunday said the COVID-19 shutdowns prompted him to lash out and attack the two individuals.
Officials at the Nashville Rescue Mission also infuriated the man, Kelvin D. Edwards, 35, (pictured above) when they turned him away from their facility.
This, according to a statement Nashville officials put out Monday.
Great PBR Bulls
I’ve always enjoyed watching PBR.
One of my favorite bulls to watch was Reindeer Dippin, That bull was a joy to watch – most of the time. When he was on his game which was 99% of the time, he’d come out of the chute getting some serious air time, twisting and turning not just up in the air but his body looked like a wash rag being wrung out. But there were times he just walk out of the chute, look at the crowd, maybe hop a couple of times and call it a day.
Fox News’ MacCallum Questions Kellyanne Conway on Polls Showing Trump ‘Underwater’ on Handling of Pandemic
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum pressed White House counselor Kellyanne Conway Friday about polling showing a majority disapproving of President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
MUST SEE VIDEO HERE ( And More Proof Why George T. Conway Disagrees With His Wife About Donald Trump…..PapaMike )
MacCallum brought up a new ABC News poll finding 60 percent disapproval on the president’s response to the pandemic. ABC noted that the poll showed a dip among independents from 42 percent approval to 35 percent approval in the past month.
MacCallum pointed out to Conway there are a number of polls showing the same thing. Fox News’ own poll this week shows that while 45 percent of people trust Trump more than Joe Biden on who would do a better job on the economy, Biden comes out on top on the question of who would do a better job on the coronavirus — 46 percent to 37 percent.
The System Failed The Test Of Trump The Story of Recent Years Is Of Institutions That Were Unable to Constrain The Presidency.
PICTURE ABOVE WAS POSTED BY PAPA MIKE AND NOT FROM THE SOURCE OFF THIS ARTICLE……..PapaMike
Have you ever known anyone swindled by a scam? It’s remarkable how determined they remain to defend the swindler, and for how long—and how they try to shift the blame to those who tried to warn them of the swindle. The pain of being seen as a fool hurts more than the loss of money; it’s more important to protect the ego against indignity than to visit justice upon the perpetrator. We human beings so often prefer a lie that affirms us to a truth that challenges us.
Americans are living now through the worst pandemic in a century and the severest economic crisis since the Great Depression. At every turn, President Donald Trump has made the crises worse. Had somebody else been president in December 2019—Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush—fewer Americans would have met untimely deaths; fewer Americans would now be unemployed; fewer businesses would be heading toward bankruptcy.
On the eve of the 2016 election, a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist opined in The Washington Post: “If Trump wins, he’ll be held more or less in check by the House and Senate, because that’s the way our system of government is set up. Not even Republicans are eager to follow Trump’s lead.”
I cite that column—published under the headline “Calm Down. We’ll Be Fine No Matter Who Wins”—not to single it out, but precisely because it was so un-singular. The keepers of the institutions could imagine Trump testing the system. They could not imagine the system failing the test.
And yet fail it did. The story of the Trump years is a story of institutions that failed. The Department of Justice failed. The inspectors general failed. Congressional oversight failed. The national-security establishment failed. The courts failed. Trump has done things that no previous American president would ever have dared, that no previous president sank low enough even to imagine. Sometimes he was stopped, more often not. But whether stopped or not in any particular case, he has never ceased pressing ahead to do even worse the next time.
David Frum: This is Trump’s fault
The only check remaining is that of the 2020 ballot box. Not Trump alone, but the great political party behind him, is working to ensure that election is as unfree and unfair as possible. In that effort, they have mobilized the active or tacit support of millions of Americans.
Trump is a swindler, but the Trumpocalypse of 2020 represents something a lot bigger and a lot worse than a swindle. In the fall of 2019, a nonpartisan research organization studied the distinctive attitudes of Republicans who watched Fox News as their primary source of information. Among that group, 55 percent said there was virtually nothing President Trump could do that would change their minds about supporting him. Fox News and the Facebook feed have become for many Americans friends more intimate and trusted than family or neighbors. The validation of their prejudices by television and Facebook is a validation of themselves.
And so, for the sake of flag and faith, millions of decent conservative Americans countenanced scandals, wrongs, disloyalty, and crime. Trump’s followers live in an isolated knowledge community that has developed its own situational ethics. They wanted to lock up Hillary Clinton for sending and receiving emails on a personal server, not caring even slightly when Ivanka Trump did the exact same thing or when Trump outright blabbed to the Russian foreign minister secrets much more vital than anything Clinton could possibly have risked. They plunged into the QAnon fantasy of a wise and good Trump poised to crush a global ring of child molesters, in order -to avoid the reality of a malignant Trump who by his own admission had preyed upon teenage beauty-pageant contestants.
And if Trump’s supporters are not interested in holding him to account, most of the institutions of American government haven’t proved capable of doing so either. The Trump years demonstrated the very great extent to which presidential cooperation with the law is voluntary, especially if he retains a loyal attorney general, and a sufficient blocking vote in Congress.
Yet when Vice President Pence visited Ireland in 2019, he wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars by staying not in Dublin, the site of his meetings, but at Trump’s golf course 180 miles away, on the opposite coast of the island. Pence tried to make things right by paying for his own room, but that only added a direct personal payoff to Trump to the many other ethical breaches of the trip. Any other federal employee who wasted travel expenses in order to direct money to his supervisor would find himself in serious trouble: facing at least a firing, possibly prison time if the behavior was egregious enough. But not Pence. Not the Trump staffers who meet every Tuesday evening with lobbyists at the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. In the George W. Bush White House, where I once worked, you showed you belonged by wearing cowboy boots; in the Trump White House, by repaying some of your salary back into the boss’s pockets.
Read: The president is winning his war on American institutions
It is illegal for government employees to use their positions to engage in certain political activities. They are especially forbidden to engage directly in election campaigns while on the government payroll. The presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared to violate this law—the Hatch Act—so persistently and flagrantly that she triggered an internal investigation. In June 2019, the investigation reported that indeed she had broken the law repeatedly and intentionally.
If Conway had been a career government employee, she would have been dismissed from her position immediately. By courtesy, however, the enforcement of the Hatch Act upon political appointees is left to the president directly. The investigation, therefore, concluded with a recommendation to the president, rather than a direct order, that Conway be subject to “appropriate disciplinary action”: in other words, that she be fired.
Trump disregarded the recommendation. Conway mocked the finding to reporters. As one journalist read the recommendation to her, she replied: “Blah, blah, blah. If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work. Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”
At some point in the 2020 campaign, some federal worker will get excited about the election and post something intemperate on Facebook or do something else to infringe the 1939 law. She will be disciplined—fired if the offense is egregious or visible enough—and she will know that this law that applies to her was ignored in the much worse case of a higher-ranked person. Or perhaps in 2020, the law will be extra-scrupulously obeyed by federal workers, precisely because they already know that there is one law for Trump cronies and a different law for everybody else.
No other major democracy operates so political a system of law enforcement as the United States. The 93 U.S. attorneys are all political appointees. They report to an assistant attorney general for the criminal division, also a political appointee. The AAG reports to a deputy attorney general and finally the attorney general—all political. Ideally, while people are appointed to those posts for political reasons, they do not do their jobs in a political way. Americans can be proud that this ideal is so often voluntarily met. But when not voluntarily met, the ideal is difficult to enforce.
To read the conclusion of these FACTS please click the link below.
Good Morning
You Have No Right To Not Be Vaccinated…. – Alan Dershowitz
Trump ‘WILL’ Lose In a Landslide Because Of The Economy, New Election Model Predicts
PICTURE ABOVE WAS POSTED BY PAPA MIKE AND NOT BY THE SOURCE OF THIS ARTICLE ……Papa Mike
The economy has gone from President Donald Trump’s greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness.
Unemployment is spiking at an unprecedented rate. Consumer spending is vanishing. And GDP is collapsing. History shows that dreadful economic trends like these spell doom for sitting presidents seeking reelection.
The coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a “historic defeat” in November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics predicted.
“It would take nothing short of an economic miracle for pocketbooks to favor Trump,” Oxford Economics wrote in the report, adding that the economy will be a “nearly insurmountable obstacle for Trump come November.”
The model has correctly predicted the popular vote in every election since 1948 other than 1968 and 1976 (although two candidates lost the popular vote but won the presidency in that span, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016).
Ohio, Missouri could flip to Democrats
The national election model assumes that the economy is still in bad shape this fall, with unemployment above 13%, real per capita incomes down nearly 6% from a year ago and brief period of falling prices, or deflation.
“The economy would still be in a worse state than at the depth of the Great Depression,” the Oxford Economics report said.
A separate state-based election model run by Oxford Economics that incorporates local economic trends and gasoline prices predicts Trump will badly lose the electoral college by a margin of 328 to 210. That model forecasts that seven battleground states will flip to Democrats: Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina.
“We would expect these states to experience significant economic contractions and traumatic job losses that would likely swing pocketbook vote,” the report said.
Oxford Economics developed the state-based model last year. It would have correctly predicted Trump’s upset electoral college victory as well as seven of the nine prior elections since 1980.
Is it too early to predict the election?
Still, models based on economic trends are not political crystal balls. And they have no track record of predicting elections during pandemics.
“Traditional models work in normal times. But we’re not in normal times right now,” said Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist at AGF Investments.
The election is still six months away. And the past six months show how much the world can change in that period of time. No one was predicting a 20% unemployment or a 40% collapse in GDP six months ago. Now, those are the consensus projections.
Trump Says He’s Been Taking Hydroxychloroquine For A ‘Few Weeks’
Donald Trump has revealed he is taking hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug he has pushed for weeks as a treatment for coronavirus – even though he has tested negative, and federal health agencies have warned of serious negative side effects for its use.
“I take it,” he told reporters. “All I can tell you is, so far, I feel okay.”
The president said on Monday he had taken only an initial dose. “It seems to have an impact,” he said. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t…..You’re not going to get sick and die.”
Mr Trump said he has taken the drug for “about a week and a half now”, adding: “I take a pill every day” and has had “zero symptoms”.
The president said he was taking the drug because “I’ve gotten a lot of calls” from medical professionals praising it. His revelation comes several weeks after the New York Times reported the Trump family has a financial tie to the parent company of one of the the firms that makes hydroxychloroquine.
Doctors who have prescribed hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus patients have done so to treat positive cases; Mr Trump alluded to taking it as a preventative measure.
Had Enough Yet
It seems the beatings will continue until morale improves.
I swiped this and can’t find the original source, the one I got it from was an anonymous poster but it needs to be looked at by a lots of eyeballs.
Here are some common sense questions you should be asking about the response to this Coronavirus.
These are the important questions folks need to be asking themselves!
Why can you go to Walmart but not Kohl’s?
Why the Dollar store and not a mom-and-pop shop?
Why can’t you have an elective surgery, but you can have an abortion which is elective?
Why should you stay inside but yet heat and sunlight kill the virus?
Why can’t kids (who are not at risk) play on an outdoor playground, where sun kills this virus?
Why don’t people know that these are “recommendations” not laws because they have not gone through due process?
Why is it okay for government officials to get a haircut, but not common citizens?
Why the fear, when this virus has a less than 1% death rate?
Why have coroners questioned death certificates listed as CV-19?
Why are areas like Chicago and NY gearing up for mass vaccination?
What makes one person essential and another not?
Why are they dividing us?
How do people not know that we are a Republic, not a Democracy?
Where has the flu gone?
Why do the homeless consistently demonstrate the lowest infection rates?
Why are they telling us to mask up after 2 months of lockdown?
Why is the CDC saying kids need to be masked when they return to school or attend church, when they know cloth masks restrict oxygen?
What is this oppression and loss of liberty doing to the mental health of our kids…to us?
Why have most other death rates dropped since the virus?
Why did world leaders meet in China in October 2019?
Why are the common people being controlled by the government and no one is controlling the government?
Why are hospitals paid more for Covid 19 deaths?
Why are some doctors speaking out and then getting silenced?
Why did Obama give the Wuhan lab $334 million dollars?
What does a computer geek have to do with a pandemic and why does he want 7 billion corona virus vaccines?
Why did the CDC have a job posting for pandemic relief workers in November 2019?
Why did Dr. Fauci say in 2017 that the Trump administration would be faced with a ” SURPRISE PANDEMIC ” and then runs the pandemic team?
Why are they infringing on Christian religious freedoms?
Why can people shop at Menards or Home Depot, but we are not allowed to go into a church building?
Why are they insisting on a vaccine when there’s a cheaper alternative that is proven effective and safe solution: Hydroxychloroquine?
And here is a contribution from Irish that begs a little introspection,
I certainly can’t speak for anyone else but I know that I can say I haven’t been beaten into submission by any stretch of the imagination by these Tin Pot Dictators and their Commie Fucking Tactics.
BFYTW is very much alive and well in my little corner of the world and it’s going to stay that way.
Maybe some people just need to be reminded who they are and where they came from?
Texas Reports Largest Single-Day Jump In Coronavirus Cases
Texas reported 1,801 new coronavirus cases Saturday, reportedly marking the state’s largest single-day jump since the start of the coronavirus crisis.
The Texas Department of State Health Services said 734 of the new cases are from Potter and Randall counties.
“These counties’ new cases are largely from targeted testing of employees at meat plants in the area. More test results from plants are expected,” it tweeted.
How Sad
Trump Eggs On Coronavirus Protesters Who Stalked and Abused Reporter, Calls Them ‘Great People!’
THE “TITLE” SAYS IT ALL, ‘HE CALLED THESE “PUNK” PROTESTERS’’ ‘GREAT PEOPLE’🤬🤬🤬???????
PICTURE ABOVE WAS POSTED BY PAPA MIKE AND NOT BY THE SOURCE OF THIS ARTICLE………PapaMike
Trump explicitly encouraged protesters who berated and stalked a reporter on video, saying people “can’t get enough” of the hostile actions, and calling the aggressors “Great people!”
On Saturday morning, Trump retweeted video of his supporters verbally attacking and stalking reporter Kevin Vesey as he tried to file a story on their protest. Vesey captioned his video by writing “The level of anger directed at the media from these protestors was alarming. As always, I will tell a fair and unbiased story today.”
Trump wrote “People can’t get enough of this,” and added “Great people!”
The tweet comes hours after Trump first posted the video along with the message “FAKE NEWS IS NOT ESSENTIAL!”
Vesey is a reporter for News 12 Long Island who posted the footage to his Twitter feed Thursday evening after covering the protest in Long Island.
This incident is just the latest in a string of confrontations between reporters and aggressive anti-social distancing demonstrators who invade journalists’ space, and in one case spat in a reporter’s face.
Trump has also expressed support for anti-lockdown protesters who have been carrying firearms to legislative buildings to oppose restrictions meant to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
Trump Visits Another Mask Facility Without Wearing a Mask — This Time In Pennsylvania
‘PICTURE BELOW WAS POSTED BY PAPA MIKE AND NOT BY THE SOURCE OF THIS ARTICLE……PapaMike
“DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO”…..
President Donald Trump visited a mask distribution center in Pennsylvania without wearing a mask on Thursday, media outlets reported.
Trump toured Owen & Minor Inc. in Allentown and also spoke about the administration’s work in distributing personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, The Hill reported. Owen & Minor Inc. has sent millions of surgical gowns, N95 respirator masks, and gloves to hospitals, according to NBC.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and supply chain leader Rear Adm. John Polowczyk both wore face masks and employees who listened to Trump speak also wore face coverings, photos of the visit showed, according to The Hill.
In his first visit outside of Washington D.C. since the pandemic started, on May 5 Trump traveled to a Honeywell mask plant in Arizona without wearing a mask, CNN reported.
“I had a mask on for a period of time,” Trump said at the time, according to CNN. “I had it on back — backstage. But they said you didn’t need it, so, I didn’t need it. And by the way, if you noticed, nobody else had it on that was in the group.”
In early April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a guidance recommending people wear face masks “in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” The suggestion is aimed at reducing the possibility of spreading the virus, especially from asymptomatic people who may not know they are infected.
Trump said he wouldn’t be wearing a mask himself, media outlets reported in April after the CDC issued its recommendations.
“I just don’t want to wear one myself,” Trump told reporters, according to Newsweek. “It’s a recommendation, they recommend it. I’m feeling good. Somehow, sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t.”
“Maybe I’ll change my mind,” Trump continued. “But this will pass and hopefully it will pass very quickly.”
Vice President Mike Pence didn’t wear a mask during a visit to the Mayo Clinic in April, Business Insider reported. He said he didn’t wear one because he had tested negative for the coronavirus and wanted to “look [the health care personnel] in the eye and say thank you,” according to Business Insider.
Pence’s press secretary and Trump’s military valet tested positive for the coronavirus last week, according to NPR. Trump said after those diagnoses that testing at the White House would now be conducted daily instead of weekly for Trump and those around him, the outlet reported.
Read more here: https://www.centredaily.com/news/coronavirus/article242742021.html#storylink=cpy
Bret Baier: Bright Testimony ‘Potentially Politically Damaging’ For Trump
Fox News’s “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier said Thursday that former Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority head Rick Bright’s testimony about the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic could be “potentially politically damaging” for President Trump.
Baier also asserted that the public health official was someone who could not be easily discredited.
On Thursday, Bright testified to the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee that his warnings about medical supply shortages were allegedly “met with indifference” by his superiors in January before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the country.
Bright contended that “they didn’t have a plan, they didn’t know who was responsible for procuring those.”
“This is significant testimony today. Obviously, he has a long history in the job that he was in. The president calls him a disgruntled employee but whether he’s that or not, he does have a lot of experience and he’s telling the story about not being prepared for this pandemic,” explained Baier, the network’s chief political anchor, on the show “Outnumbered.”
“This is potentially politically damaging for the president as he’s talking about trying to get a handle on the health crisis and open up around the country,” he added.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar pointedly rebuked Bright’s testimony about the administration’s coronavirus response when speaking to reporters on the White House lawn Thursday afternoon.
“Everything he is complaining about was achieved. Everything he talked about was done,” Azar said while flanked by Trump before departing on a trip to Pennsylvania.
“He says he talked about the need for respirators. We procured respirators under the president’s direction. He said we need a Manhattan project for vaccines. This president initiates a vaccine Manhattan project, diagnostic Manhattan project, therapeutic Manhattan project,” Azar added.