9/4: Trump Insulted Fallen American Soldiers in Both in France and Graveside in Arlington National Cemetery

9/4/20

In France in 2018, Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery because he didn't want the rain to mess up his hair. The cemetery houses the American remains from the Battle of Belleau Wood in WWI.

“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” Trump reportedly said on the trip. Trump referred to Marines killed during World War I as “suckers.”

The Atlantic's editor Jeffrey Goldberg published the news on Friday. Trump called it a "fake story" and "disgraceful," but at least three other news organizations confirmed the quotes as true, including the right-leaning Fox News.

Americans' reactions were swift and furious. "Who the heck does he think he is?" said Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, whose son Beau won a Bronze Star in Iraq and died of brain cancer in 2015.

“[Beau] wasn’t a sucker,” Biden said. “The service men and women he served with, particularly those that did not come home, were not losers. If these statements are true, the president should humbly apologize to every Gold Star mother and father and every Blue Star family that he’s denigrated and insulted."

Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who lost both legs as a fighter pilot in Iraq, said “I am not shocked, but I am appalled,” in a press call arranged by the Biden campaign. "[Trump] doesn’t understand people’s bravery and courage because he’s never had any of his own.”

Howard Dean tweeted, "My brother was captured in Laos in September of 1974 and executed by the North Vietnamese on December 14, 1974. F**k you, Donald Trump." Dean is a former Vermont governor and onetime Democratic presidential candidate.

The impact of what politicians say, however, is nothing compared to the impact of Trump's comments on the military community, which is already leaning toward Biden because of Trump's misuse of the National Guard, among other reasons.

Besides, it's not Trump's first pratfall on the parade field. Trump once went to Arlington National Cemetery with then-chief of staff John Kelly. Standing beside the grave of Kelly's son, a Marine who fell in Afghanistan in 2010, Trump said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Trump's base, who tend to support both the military and the police, have shown a startling ability to ignore Trump's erratic behavior and remarks. Still, it's hard to imagine how they could sweep the latest report of Trumpian bungling under the rug. The fact that the story's sources are anonymous may be the latest way for Trump fans to focus on the smoke without seeing the fire.

Let's hope that they hear what Trump said.

Do you think they will? Will the Atlantic article cost Trump Military votes or other votes? Why do you think Trump does care about US Military servicepeople, including war dead?

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/515150-furor-grows-over-trumps-reported-remarks-on-war-dead?fbclid=IwAR0It81ea8tEayYRX-16MJVYbNH3MJHQNXN2dpXasb8OtayZIM1zRuWhweM

9/3: A Man's Death Shows What "Defund the Police" Is About

9/3/2020

"Defund the police" was an unfortunate rallying cry, not only because it misrepresented its own goals, but because its shock value made it a byword for opposition to the "radical left."

The case of Daniel Prude shows what Defund the Police really means: it means adding social workers and other crisis counselors to deal with 911 calls that aren't necessarily about crimes.

In March 2020, Daniel Prude died in police custody in Rochester, NY -- the same police department whose members knocked over an elderly activist earlier this year and then reacted to criticism by complaining that they were being demonized.

Prude, 41, was Black, was part of a family and was a father. He was wracked with psychiatric troubles. The day he died, he had been to a hospital with suicide on his mind, but the hospital released him after a medical evaluation.

By the time Prude's brother had phoned the police to get help for Daniel, he had PCP in his system and had taken off all his clothes in a light snowfall. It was 3:15 in the morning. The police who arrived handcuffed him and put a hood called a spit sock over his head. Then an officer held his face to the ground with both hands while another put a knee in Prude's back and a third held his legs. Prude spent three minutes restrained, and before he was let up, he had stopped breathing.

After a week in the hospital, Prude died. His death was from asphyxiation while under restraint, with complications from PCP and "excited delirium." The death was called a homicide.

The Rochester police chief told Mayor Lovely Warren that Prude died of an overdose.

In April, New York Attorney General Leticia James opened an investigation. In Rochester itself, the dust settled on the case. Mayor Warren says she saw the video on August 4 and relayed her disappointment to the police chief.

It's not clear how Prude's family released the body-camera footage, but once it became public in the first days of September, protests began immediately. On September 3rd, Warren suspended seven police officers pending an investigation into their conduct.

Prude's brother said, "I called to get help for my brother, not to get him lynched."

After another outrage in which officers used too much force against a Black man, another city has erupted in conflict. It's possible that a mental-health specialist could have defused the situation, but we'll never know.

We'll see what happens next.

Do you think police are at fault in Prude's death? Do you know of any incidents in which a "civilian" was able to keep police violence at bay? Do you think the police chief lied deliberately to the mayor to hold off scrutiny into the incident?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/daniel-prude-suffocation-police-officers-suspended_n_5f5159e1c5b6578026cb5b67?fbclid=IwAR1lxodVQAyMhWfOncuhYmyMvphT4SXaJRio3UvjloJDizLUhMLETWrx79A

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-prude-rochester-ny-video-seven-officers-involved-in-death-suspended/?fbclid=IwAR1NqV837LoMkoA_lWag5VCo9gnBJwSceuqWHu4P3IfKOVzm6I7fVMEImP4

9/5: Trump Unleashes His Anger on The Atlantic Magazine's Fairy Godmother

9/5/20

Laurene Powell Jobs -- Steve Job's widow -- is in the crosshairs now that Donald Trump knows that her philanthropic foundation owns a majority stake in The Atlantic Magazine.

That magazine became the president's bete noir after an article by its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, quoted Trump's remarks about fallen WWI soldiers (Losers! Suckers!) when Trump visited France in 2018. Also noted was that Trump didn't want to go to the military cemetery where they were buried because he thought that the weather that day would mess up his hair.

Trump furiously denounced the article as fake news, and his Roman candle of condemnation hasn't slowed up yet, even though other media confirmed the article's details.

Being caught in a lie or two or three didn't help Trump's mood. He went after Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, who has donated $600,000 to the Biden campaign -- and he called on his base for reinforcement. Trump tweeted,

“Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE,” Trump tweeted. “Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!”

To those of us who consider these words an invitation to trollery if not actual violence, it's yet one more reason to put Trump in the country's rear-view window come November 3rd.


https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/515296-trump-targets-laurene-powell-jobs-in-latest-attack-on-atlantic-report

9/2: Nine of Trump's Tall Tales in Ten Lines

9/2/2020

Yesterday, CNN catalogued nine conspiracy theories that Trump is currently spreading to his followers via numerous media sources.

1. A plane full of "thugs" in black uniforms flew into Washington, DC and, Tuesday, flew out -- but there's no evidence whatsoever.

2. Violent terrorists are funded by some "very stupid wealthy people" -- but aside from Trump conflating "terrorists" with BLM, there's no evidence whatsoever.

3. Only 9% of 185,000 COVID19 deaths to date were from COVID19, an idea promulgated by QAnon -- but they're not counting the 92% of the COVID19 death certificates that include co-morbidities such as hypertension, which were not the direct cause of death.

4. Trump won the popular vote in 2016 "in a true sense" because of fraud in New York and California -- except there wasn't.

5. The only way Trump could lose in 2020 is if the election is rigged -- except there's no evidence of rigging (except for efforts on Trump's side).

6. Mail-in voting (expected to come more from Democrats than Republicans) is rigged -- except it isn't, except by the Trump administration.

7. Biden is a puppet controlled by "people that are in the dark shadows"-- but there's no evidence whatsoever.

8. Biden as well as Obama spied on Trump's 2016 campaign -- but there is no evidence that anyone outside the FBI prompted the FBI's investigation into Trump's contacts with Russia during the campaign.

9. Biden takes performance-enhancing drugs, or he wouldn't have done so well against Sanders in an earlier campaign debate -- but this is "nonsense," according to CNN.

Okay, 11 lines: Anyone who falls for these conspiracy theories would probably fall for any scam, anywhere.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/02/politics/fact-check-trump-conspiracy-theories-biden-covid-thugs-plane/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1AZGWS_zv8LkADHXkiSjIzUqYQUAjFbAJ8IB3YPPV09H1NTy9NCx7goFs

9/5: Trump's Got a Strategy -- But Does it Make Sense?

9/5/2020 It's clear to all by now that one of Donald Trump's strategies to steal the 2020 elections include delegitimizing voting by mail.

Like a false prophet, Trump has determinedly claimed that fraud is rampant in mail-in voting (a notion Trump pulled out the clear blue sky), and had his friend Louis DeJoy light into the US Post Office deliberately to cripple the post offices' ability to deliver mail-in ballots on time.

The idea, apparently, is for Trump to ignore uncounted votes and declare himself victor before the count is completed.

The White House seems to be thwarting every attempt to help officials count mail-in ballots faster. Michigan, a swing state, had a bill winding through the state legislature that would have allowed election officials to at least take mail-in ballots out of their envelopes before election day to speed up counting.

In May, Trump tweeted: “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.” In response, state Republican lawmakers got tough, and the bill screeched to a halt.

In two other swing states, Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers are blocking any and all bills that might, like removing ballots from their envelopes, speed up the count of mail-in votes on Election Day.

Here's the thing, though: Polls have indicated that twice as many Democrats as Republicans will vote by mail, but polls are nothing to lean on.

Indeed, elderly voters are historically more apt to be Republicans than Democrats, and the elderly have greater reason to avoid the poll than younger voters.

Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, has been trying to get that message across to POTUS.

"I tried to show him ... you know who is most afraid of COVID? Seniors. And if they're not going to go vote, period, we're screwed," McCarthy told an Axios reporter, according to an article in the Huffington Post.

McCarthy says he spent hours warning the president that his stance on mail-in voting may hurt him and other Republicans running for office.“We could lose based on that," McCarthy told Axios.

Do you think that Democrats are going to stick with mail-in voting -- if they ever planned to? Are you going to go to the polls or use a mail-in ballot? How can the US Postal Service prevail over DeJoy's efforts and deliver the ballots to election officials on time?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-mail-in-voting-republicans-swing-states_n_5f52ba3ac5b62b3add407b24?fbclid=IwAR2GssyDiCqB-zM01QhdGCnLUj4XDnK3sRWzBRcg1YLLBqeRGqA2mNs2xvo https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/515335-mccarthy-told-trump-trashing-mail-in-voting-will-hurt-republicans-report?fbclid=IwAR2GssyDiCqB-zM01QhdGCnLUj4XDnK3sRWzBRcg1YLLBqeRGqA2mNs2xvo

9/1: Battles Against Trump Are No Place for Gentlemen

9/1/20 

I'm increasingly worried about dignified lawyers. On August 24, Cyrus Vance Jr. (NY’s state law state’s attorney) agreed NOT to enforce a grand-jury subpoena for Trump's financial records, despite more than a year's wrangling over the case. Trump claimed an absolute immunity -- he literally used those words -- from criminal investigation while he serves as president. The Supreme Court said "No sirree bob," ruling in such a way that the actual opinion had to be written by a ticked-off U.S. District judge, Victor Marrero, after Trump's lawyers filed yet another appeal against the subpoena.

Marrero wrote that the Trump lawyers showed a pattern of delay tactics in an attempt to wreck Vance's investigation. "That notion, applied as so robustly proclaimed by the President's advocates, is as unprecedented and far-reaching as it is perilous to the rule of law and other bedrock constitutional principles on which this country was founded and by which it continues to be governed," the judge thundered in his opinion. It was as if Marrero slammed a cartoon-sized gavel on the Liberty Bell to make sure everyone heard the message.

Trump's lawyers kept fighting for nondisclosure even after that. They tried another appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That required almost a week's wait for the full appeals panel, which met yesterday and said the subpoena couldn't be enforced until the panel heard arguments from both sides on September 25. Trump's lawyers now say that they'll fight the subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court AGAIN.

Vance had the legal right, technically, to exercise the subpoena while the appeals court sat waiting, because no stay had been issued. Of course, it's more complicated than that. According to MSN, Vance has a better chance of shutting down Trump's second trip to the Supreme Court because he waited (as if the Supreme Court couldn't turn it down without comment.)

The upshot is that Vance did not act boldly. Vance is a gentleman. He is a gentleman lawyer the way David Boyes, a Democrat, was during the 2000 election. You'll recall the hanging chads drama. Unlike Boyes, Republican James Baker called up reinforcements from north to south, busing in young men to create the "Brooks Brothers riot" -- that is, to intimidate election officials into giving up on counting all the votes. It worked.

We can't afford to be gentlemen and ladies when we face Donald Trump. The man is literally an unindicted criminal, and he is aggressive to the point of -- well, calling in truckloads of trigger-happy assault ("hunting") rifle aficionados to intimidate people in the streets, as they did in Portland last week. Whether those people are "Antifa," bystanders, or pudgy Biden fans in "Vote!" T-shirts, they're enemies to these Trumpers.

Similarly, the thugs who torched garbage trucks and a used-car dealership in Kenosha were not peaceful protestors. The most violent protesters could well have been in Trump's pay. You'll recall that in one city, a right-wing provocateur broke a window to an AutoZone shop, wrote "Looting Zone" on the store front, and stood back while others took his lead. In Portland, the most violent "protesters" were Trump's private army, who objected to Portlanders exercising their Constitutional right to peaceably assemble.

I'm not saying we should fight fire with firearms. I'm saying that if there is an opportunity to do something, we should do it right now, posthaste. We can't afford to let Trump refuse to return high-speed mail-sorting machines to the USPS. We can't afford to let Louis DeJoy thumb his nose at a House subpoena. Democrats have to play hardball or we could lose democracy itself.

Cyrus Vance has waited on the subpoena go-ahead for so long that he has slipped past the Justice Department deadline for legal actions (indictments or disclosures) that might harm either candidate at the polls. It's called the rule of forbearance, or the 60 or 90-day rule.

Do we have 90 days till the election? No. Do we have 60? Barely, even now. On September 25, we'll have only 45. If, as Dahlia Lithwick suggests, Bill Barr decides to break the forbearance rule, Vance must do so too. Otherwise, Trump's lawyers have successfully run out the clock.

We can't let that happen. If Vance and his fair-minded colleagues fail to act, we could face an army of deplorables. They have all the guns, and even ahead of the election, they think they have all the rights too.

What are your thoughts about the way the Trump Administration is fighting? Is there a dignified way to fight back?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-support-kyle-rittenhouse-election-violence.html

8/31: Candidate Joe Biden Speaks Truth to Pouter

8/31/20: 

Biden has turned up the volume on his microphone in the wake of recent violent protests. In Portland, for instance, a Trump fan was murdered in the street during a white-militia caravan apparently intended to intimidate the left-leaning community. The president tweeted Saturday, "Rest in Peace," but he failed to condemn the violence.

In a speech in Pittsburg Monday, Biden said, “This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can’t stop the violence — because for years he has fomented it.... He may believe mouthing the words ‘law and order’ makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows you how weak he is.”

The latter was an indirect comment about Kenosha, WI, where the police called on right-wing militia last week to help it control rioters after a police officer shot a Black father of three seven times in the back. Last week, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two protestors (allegedly) and wounded a third, all with an assault rifle that he was legally too young to carry.

On Monday, the White House said there'd be no statement forthcoming about Rittenhouse But after Biden spoke, Trump changed his mind.

Echoing Rittenhouse's lawyers, Trump claimed that the boy shot in self-defense. Thankfully, Trump stopped short of comparing the kid to Americans at Lexington Green in 1776, as the lawyers did. Trump's instinct probably told him it would invite ridicule, even though the self-defense argument has become the Right's entire message about the troubled young man.

Trump plans to go to Kenosha this week, despite being disinvited by the Democratic governor and mayor. What he'll do there is likely to whip up his gun-toting base. Huffpo speculates that Trump wants to terrify suburban voters who think Trump's law and order message will actually minimize the violence. Personally, I doubt anyone could be fooled by that tactic.

As Biden said on Monday, “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?”

What do you think? Is Trump's "law and order" likely to bring less "law and order?" Will he encourage militia members to become violent against more people than protestors? What happens if Biden wins and, as rumor has it, Trump's militia members decide they want a civil war?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-2020-trump-blake_n_5f4d1339c5b6cf66b2bb2827?fbclid=IwAR0cPmugZhBLciz0_VeozxDEZjGvRFQEST7K3egfZ4ZNd8MSfEEMvjACvpg

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-defends-kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-shooting_n_5f4d71aac5b64f17e1419ba5?fbclid=IwAR2tCCaVOksu4LBscy0LIkijIaeumk_8VCVJIi2UUounaKSalAWTiYJLlwo