9/18: Another Alice-in-Wonderland Moment from Rudy Giuliani & Co.

We'd say that Rudy Giuliani's campaign peccadillos get “curiouser and curiouser”.... but they only get uglier and uglier.

In two grand jury indictments issued on Thursday, Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were charged with “soliciting a foreign national to make donations and contributions in connection with federal and state elections,” and for “aiding and abetting the making of donations and contributions by a foreign national in connection with federal and state elections.”

These are in addition to prior charges for making election contributions in others' names and lying to the FEC.

These charmers are also charged in connection with two other crimes. One was an apparently bogus insurance company called "Fraud Guarantee." The name is not satire; the company, which drew more than $2 million in investments, was supposed to guard consumers against fraud, but instead defrauded them.

They are also charged in regard to their efforts to find dirt on Joe Biden's son, Hunter, that could be used to discredit Joe Biden; and to find dirt on then-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who later testified in Trump's impeachment hearings.

The trial will take place on February 1 after being delayed once before because of the pandemic.

9/17: The "Heat Ray" Weapon was Designed for Crowd Control

How d'ya like this? DC protesters back in June almost got the "heat ray" treatment that Kirsten Nielsen refused to use on would-be immigrants at the border. That's according to a whistleblower.

It's a microwave beam that makes people feel as if their skin is burning. It's diabolical. A Pentagon official offered it to the DC National Guard in June!

Called the Active Defense System (can you imagine?!), it was devised 20 years ago to be used on protestors, but it's so dubious, ethically, that it wasn't even used in Iraq! The Pentagon wanted it used on American citizens!

Seeing as the Pentagon is offering it to the National Guard, I think we can expect it to be used on Americans if Trump is re-elected.

SLATE.COM

9/15: After Losing, Trump Will Fight to Return in Triumph as Dictator

Sorry, folks, but voting Trump out isn't the same as getting rid of him. Trump is not going to stop his campaign to become America's Mussolini.

Even if we locked him up tight in the Prez Med Minimum Security Penitentiary -- the best we can hope for, given that he IS an ex-president -- he will still have a cell phone, which he'll use to rattle the cages of his gun-toting deplorables, arguing that he should be at the head of a government coup.

If we take away his cell phone for seditious messaging, we have Steve Bannon, who'll be more than happy to stand in for him. If Bannon is stuck in jail, there's a whole endless line of wanna-be Trump surrogates. How'd you like to see Ivanka or Jared Kushner as Trump's mouthpiece?

Worse yet, he may flee the country, vanishing like a Ghosn or an WWII movie prisoner, hiding in a metaphorical hay cart on his way to a country without an extradition treaty.

In other words, Trump may flee to Russia, where he'll do his tweeting and talking and messaging with the assistance of Putin's Internet Research Agency. He could try to create a civil war! His supporters would probably follow him even if he were living next door to Edward Snowden.

Dave Barry wrote up the flight-to-Moscow prospect as humor back in 2018. Problem is, it could actually happen. Trump would then try to spark a civil war from afar in hopes of a triumphant return.

It's going to be less than a comedy, though, if the Secret Service has to capture Trump and drag him into custody on the eve of Biden's inauguration. Better than letting him escape, no?

Is it reasonable to think that one of these scenarios could come true? What legal step would it take to keep Trump from leaving the country once Biden is sworn in? How could the U.S. stop Trump from destabilizing the country by energizing his base from outside the country?

https://www.newyorker.com/.../trump-family-flees-to-moscow

9/17/20: COVID Mortality Disproportionally Stalks Young People of Color -- and College Students

For every ten American kids and adolescents who die of COVID, eight are people of color, the Centers for Disease Control said in a study released on September 15.

Of more than 390,000 cases the CDC analyzed, 45% were Hispanic, 29% were Black, and 4% were American Indian or Native Alaskan. The data were from mid-February through the end of July.

The reasons for the disparities are the usual suspects -- pre-existing medical conditions, medical discrimination and wealth gaps that pervade low-income areas.

It seems that with many colleges and universities open again, we can add one more: College students' tendency toward risky behavior.

The CDC flags one major worry about its findings. Disproportionately, those who died were in the 18-20 year-old range, which is troubling because so many students have now returned to college, where they're almost certain to encounter sloppy testing as well as to be involved in large gatherings, such as off-campus parties.

Overall, in the population 65 and under, the death rate of people of color is double that of whites, even though 55% of COVID cases are among Whites. **** Different news stories have slightly different interpretations of the research. It's one of those convoluted academic studies. If you want to see it, go here:  
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914e4.htm

Have you heard of superspreader events caused by college-student gatherings? Would you send your own kid back to college in person? Will colleges that opened have to shut down soon? Will colleges that are currently doing virtual-only have to stay shut for months longer to keep students safe?

CBSNEWS.COM

9/13: Two Trump Bullies Talk Martial Law

Some people just don't have the grace to notice they've been disgraced. That would be Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist, and Roger Stone, a seven-time felon who got off scot-free when Donald Trump commuted his sentence of 40 years in prison. Neither has the personal restraint to stay under their respective rocks.

On Saturday, the two got together in front of microphones and started swapping outrages. They acted as if they were star quarterbacks and Trump was their high-school principal.

Stone's recurrent topic was how Trump should impose martial law if he lost the election. No one knows if he was asked to float the idea, but he said it good and loud.

As quoted in the Huffington Post, Stone said that under martial law and the Insurrection Act, Trump will have “the authority” to arrest Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook), Tim Cook (of Apple), “the Clintons” and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity.” He also called for the immediate arrest of former defense secretary James Mattis, who resigned his position as Secretary of Defense in disapproval of Trump, for “sedition.”

Stone also threatened journalists, specifically at The DailyBeast. “[If] They want to play war," he added, "This is war.”

Meanwhile, Jones, a longtime scoundrel, cooed that Stone was "almost a political prisoner."

Jones' resilience would be impressive if his content weren't so vile. He has invented conspiracy theories so far-fetched that they would make almost any sane person avoid him. Jones and his InfoWars show have been banned by almost every social media company under the sun for repeated violations of rules against bullying, hate speech, and harassment.

Jones' list of lost platforms includes Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Spotify, and Vimeo. Add to that Pinterest, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Periscope, and Instagram. In 2019, Apple removed the InfoWars app for "objectionable content." In 2020, Google Play removed Jones's show for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Even Paypal banned him.

The take-home is simple. Like the bullies that we all remember from our formative years, these people will keep stretching their limits until someone stops them cold.


What kind of response will this conversation draw from listeners in right-wing militias? How can we deal with these provocateurs if we have to do something other than ignore them? Is it possible that they will encourage Trump to try to take over the government, as he seems to want to do?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/roger-stone-martial-law-donald-trump-election_n_5f5d3e28c5b62874bc1dd6d2

9/12: Cheesehead Supreme Court's Conservatives Drop Principle to Help Trump's Campaign

The conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are literally trying to stop democracy in the cheesehead state. They're threatening to force election officials to re-do some 2.3 million absentee ballots that are literally in the process of being mailed.

The putative reason is that the court is reconsidering whether the Green Party candidates deserve a place on the ballot. The party's ballot petition had administrative problems that left them short of the requisite 2,000 signatures.

The Green Party sat on this disappointment for two full weeks -- the weeks when the ballot was being printed -- before they asked the state's supreme court to consider putting their names on the ballot anyway. The court's vote, by 4 to 3 along party lines, was Yes, we'll consider it.

Then the court ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission to reveal "who has requested absentee ballots, who has been mailed a ballot already, and when these ballots were mailed," Slate.com reports. The court gave the commission only FOUR HOURS to pull that information together.

If the court decides that the Green Party deserves a place on the ballot, ALL the absentee ballots will have to be re-created and printed from scratch. The commission would have no hope of complying with state OR federal deadlines for mailing them out.

With this breathtakingly, obscenely, corrupt move, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's conservatives are showing that they're working hand in glove to help an unstable president's unscrupulous campaign. Have they no principles at all?

https://slate.com/.../wisconsin-supreme-court-absentee...

9/10/20: DHS Official Blows the Whistle on Wolf and Cuccinelli

In December 2018, when Brian Murphy was the top intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security, then-secretary Kirstjen Nielson pressured him and a colleague to falsify a report by puffing up literal fake news about the prospect of terrorist threats at the US border with Mexico.

Murphy complained twice to the DHS's Inspector General, but got no response. Murphy resisted faking the threat, and studiously corrected errors in in-house documents.

One year later, DHS anti-immigration honcho Ken Cuccinelli took a dislike to intelligence reports for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. He wanted more about corruption, violence and poverty to support Trump policies. Cuccinelli even demanded the names of the "deep state" analysts who, Cuccinelli said, were trying to undermine POTUS' goals. Cuccinelli wanted the analysts demoted or reassigned.

Recently, things got worse. Murphy's department produced a draft of an intelligence report, a Homeland Threat Assessment, in March 2020. It was missing two sections: the threat of white supremacists, and the threat of Russian interference. Murphy wasn't expecting that.

It turned out that Acting Secretary Chad Wolf and Cuccinelli had gone to one of Murphy's colleagues and told him not to circulate that draft because of how the two sections "would reflect upon President Trump.” Surprise!

Cuccinelli then told Murphy to modify the white-supremacy section to make the threat look less severe and to include violent left-wing groups. Presumably he could then reinstate that section. Murphy refused. The report has not been finalized.

In May 2020, Wolf told Murphy to "cease providing intelligence assessments" about Russian interference and instead to focus on interference from China and Iran. The instructions, Murphy wrote, came from the White House, specifically National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien.

A former Marine and FBI agent, Murphy continued to resist demands to misrepresent intelligence reports. Sometime this year, he was demoted.

Murphy blew the whistle. It's not clear where Murphy filed his 24-page complaint, but on Wednesday, September 9, House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) released the document and asked Murphy to testify privately on September 21st.

Going up against Trump's administration is a dangerous bet. We'll see if Murphy is lionized like Alexander Vindman -- and, like him, forced to retire, or whether he's nimble enough to escape further retaliation.

What do you think about this situation? Will this new set of outrages make a difference in the election? Do you think it will be covered in right-wing media, so that it reaches Trump supporters?

ROLLINGSTONE.COM

Whistleblower: Trump Officials Endangered the Nation to Protect Trump's Fragile Ego