A Sense of Doubt blog post #2027 - It's Time for a More Perfect Union - Hodge Podge Weekly for 2009.05

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2027 - It's Time for a More Perfect Union - Hodge Podge Weekly for 2009.05

Despite saying I was "taking a break," the WEEKLY HODGE PODGE is popular and this one has tons of good stuff from FAKE NEWS to Dinosaur deniers to a Joni Mitchel biography to more GOP nonsense and hateful shit nation wide.

Same as it ever was.

Theme for this week is taken from Obama's famous speech from 2008, "A More Perfect Union," and a line from a song by the late great (RIP) Nipsey Hussle.

AND HEY!! Sections!!!

I organized the content for once into BLACK LIVES MATTER AND RELATED MATERIAL, The Pandemic, and the Election, and RANDOM.

Do I need to curate this content for you? Doesn't it speak for itself?

LET'S GET AFTER IT!!

"Like [Nipsey] Hussle said, never let a hard time humble us," Harden, referring to the late rapper, said.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29799293/rockets-james-harden-makes-series-saving-stop-night-hit-shot













MORE PERFECT UNION SPEECH TRANSCRIPT

FREE MINDS

Doubts about democracy. A new Pew Research Center poll of Americans finds that "among the public overall, 68% say it is very important for the country that people are free to peacefully protest, down from 74% two years ago. In this case, the decline has come entirely among Republicans," Pew notes.

The poll was conducted from July 27 through August 2 and consisted of 11,001 U.S. adults.

A majority of those surveyed (62 percent) agreed "that significant changes are needed in the fundamental design and structure of American government to make it work for current times." Pew points out that "while views among the public overall have changed little since 2018, Democrats and Republicans have moved further apart in their opinions. Currently, 79% of Democrats say significant changes in the structure of government are needed, compared with 41% of Republicans.

BLACK LIVES MATTER, PROTESTS, RIOTS, AND POLICE KILLING PEOPLE

Prosecutors say you can clearly hear #Rittenhouse call someone on the phone and say, "I just killed somebody," after shooting and killing one man. Minutes later, still armed and now in a different location-- not by police just down the street-- prosecutors say he shot two others. https://t.co/Y25sazZdtz

— Jason Fechner (@jasonfechner) September 1, 2020

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/08/30/0541228/facebook-ignored-455-complaints-about-militia-page-urging-weapons-at-kenosha-protest

Facebook Ignored 455 Complaints About Militia Page Urging Weapons at Kenosha Protest (buzzfeednews.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday August 30, 2020 @10:34AM from the social-unrest-media dept.

BuzzFeed News reports:In a companywide meeting on Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that a militia page advocating for followers to bring weapons to an upcoming protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, remained on the platform because of "an operational mistake." The page and an associated event inspired widespread criticism of the company after a 17-year-old suspect allegedly shot and killed two protesters Tuesday night.

The event associated with the Kenosha Guard page, however, was flagged to Facebook at least 455 times after its creation, according to an internal report viewed by BuzzFeed News, and had been cleared by four moderators, all of whom deemed it "non-violating." The page and event were eventually removed from the platform on Wednesday — several hours after the shooting.

"To put that number into perspective, it made up 66% of all event reports that day," one Facebook worker wrote in the internal "Violence and Incitement Working Group" to illustrate the number of complaints the company had received about the event... The internal report seen by BuzzFeed News reveals the extent to which concerned Facebook users went to warn the company of a group calling for public violence, and how the company failed to act.
After BuzzFeed news published its story about Facebook's internal report, Mark Zuckerberg made the same comments in a public forum, reports CNN:The page clearly violated Facebook's rules against violent militias, Zuckerberg acknowledged in a video posted Friday to his Facebook profile, and that "a bunch of people" had even reported the page prior to the killing of two protesters, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber.

Just last week, Facebook announced it would crack down on militia organizations that advocated for violence or spoke about the potential for violence. But in its first week of implementation, the policy's lack of enforcement led to the spread of violent messages on the platform directly linked to the events in Kenosha, where protests erupted after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

US news

·

Yesterday

Mississippi's Attorney General drops murder charges against Curtis Flowers after he spent over 23 years in prison

Curtis Flowers is now a free man after Mississippi's AG decided to drop all charges related to a quadruple homicide. Flowers had spent nearly 23 years in prison and had been tried six times for the same crime. He always maintained his innocence, and the charges were dropped on Friday after the prosecutor was found to have excluded Black jurors. Flowers gained recent fame in large part due to a popular podcast series that highlighted his case.

Photo via @TheRoot

Murder charges against Curtis Flowers have been dropped. He has already been tried six times for the same killings.

In 2019, the Black man was released from prison after SCOTUS tossed his murder conviction, ruling the white prosecutor kept Black people from serving on the jury. pic.twitter.com/lbXSpdBAPH

— AJ+ (@ajplus) September 4, 2020

BREAKING NEWS: The Mississippi Attorney General has just dropped the case against Curtis Flowers. After six trials and 23 years, the case against Curtis Flowers is finally over. We’ll have a special episode of @InTheDarkAPM out later today. #CurtisFlowers https://t.co/g3oAHS2gQt

— Madeleine Baran (@madeleinebaran) September 4, 2020

https://www.wonkette.com/conservatives-gonna-keep-idolizing-kyle-rittenhouse-until-were-averaging-a-new-one-each-week 

Conservatives Gonna Keep Idolizing Kyle Rittenhouse Until There's A New One Each Week

Stephen Robinson

September 02, 2020 09:08 AM

Most of you reading this probably aren't crazy about armed vigilantes patrolling our streets, especially when they're clumsy 17-year-olds with an itchy trigger finger. But we're all coastal elites who've spent so much time burning flags in our liberal bubbles we've forgotten that some average, salt-of-the-earth American Joe or Jane Sixpacks are out of their fucking minds.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen charged with double homicide and assorted felonies, has inexplicably become the hero conservatives need as the country descends into a lawless dystopia where AR-15-toting minors roam the streets.

Local Wisconsin crackpot Vicki McKenna was among the first conservatives to suggest Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense when he crossed state lines with an illegally obtained firearm, killed two people and maimed a third. The teen's defenders, including the president, assume the people he shot were defacing private property, but unlike Rittenhouse, they won't have the benefit of an actual trial, because he killed them.
The shouty radio host asked her listeners last week if they were prepared to follow Rittenhouse's example, considering how well that situation turned out for everyone involved.

MCKENNA: Have you cleaned your guns lately? Do you have enough ammo?

You should assume any potential insurrectionist worth a damn cleans their guns regularly. That's basic gun maintenance for dummies. It's like asking a doctor whether they've washed their hands recently.

MCKENNA: Are you going to be ready to defend your property, your people, against the imminent violence being unleashed by people whose endgame is total destruction of our way of life?

The way of life she's endorsing is the Wild West where every hour on the clock is High Noon.

McKenna claimed “Rittenhouse's instincts in reacting to the threat were pretty textbook." She's talking about human beings. She wishes she "could have been able to do the same thing," which was brutal, dumbass murder, but she doesn't think she would've been as “composed." She just needs more time with that psychopath's textbook she referenced.
David Clarke, former Milwaukee sheriff and Gap Band cosplayer, is a frequent guest on McKenna's show. He graciously performs the service of making her seem rational. Clarke has demanded a more “forceful" response to the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, because he's "tired of seeing these subhumans be allowed to destroy property." All lives matter unless they commit a Class I felony. (Murder, by the way, is Class A.)

A day after Rittenhouse's spree killing, Clarke defended vigilantism while guest hosting "The Mark Belling Show."

CLARKE: You know what happens with inaction? People take the law into their own hands. Government is leaving them no choice.

Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back on August 23. The unrest that developed since then is apparently so dire, Clarke's ready to abandon due process and our entire constitutional democracy.

CLARKE: No choice. I don't advocate for some of the stuff that's starting to happen, but I am certainly done — I am through with condemning it. I'm done with that.

Oh no! We've lost David Clarke's moral center and usual pragmatic response to social unrest.

Clarke spends a lot of time vilifying Black Lives Matter protesters, but he isn't actively condemning rightwing violence. Although, that would prove uncomfortable considering when he was sheriff, he allegedly allowed several people, including a baby, to die in his jail.

CLARKE: I am just telling people, "Hey, you're on your own." Think about it, have a plan.

Yeah, so, a "plan" sounds a lot like premeditated murder.

CLARKE: Act reasonably. You have to act reasonably. Then you are going to have to articulate what you did afterwards.

Murder is rarely reasonable. That's the challenge Kyle Rittenhouse will have when trying to convince a jury he's not guilty. But it's not the Kyle Rittenhouse in custody who should concern us. It's the copycats listening to McKenna, Clarke, Tucker Carlson, and the repulsive rest. They might want to become “heroes," too.

[Media Matters]
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We're not big on primarying Democrats usually, but this is correct. Richie Neal, who stopped legislation to ban surprise billing (where you go to a hospital in network, and they give you a doctor who takes no insurance), has to go. Oh wait, the election was yestertoday, well maybe we know by now if you did it! — Jordan Weissmann at Slate

Former Los Angeles sheriff's deputy, now in hiding, testifies: "There are parties after shootings. They call them '998 parties.' Some people say it's to celebrate the deputy is alive. Others say it's to celebrate that they're going to be 'inking' somebody." (Spectrum News 1)

Mmmm, good questions?

Deep breath. Former Milwaukee sheriff David Clark tells listeners how to shoot a protester and get away with it. — Media Matters

And deep breath again: "Patriot Prayer has been linked to murders and other violent attacks. The New York Times described it as promoting 'Christianity and smaller government.'" (Media Matters)

So who's the DOJ investigating? Black Lives Matter. — USA Today

Wow.

Daniel Prude died March 30, seven days after Rochester, New York police put a hood over his head and pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes.

The world only found out about it today, when his family released video and records of the incident.https://t.co/DwNi7Ki3Wz

— Mike Sisak (@mikesisak) September 3, 2020

NEWS: In March, Joe Prude called the police for help. His brother, Daniel, was acting strangely. Instead, video shows Rochester police handcuffing him, mocking him, and kneeling on his back while pushing his face into the ground until he stops breathing. https://t.co/VHerJ27Di7

— The Appeal (@theappeal) September 2, 2020

I watched the video.

Daniel Prude Is naked in the street, in the snow, clearly having a mental break down. He immediately complies with officers and is laying face down on the asphalt, handcuffed, as officers put a spit sack over his head and press his face into the ground https://t.co/mWWgzzvGHH

— Marcel Louis-Jacques (@Marcel_LJ) September 2, 2020

This is Joe Prude, the brother of Daniel Prude. He says he called 911 for help with his brother. @news10nbc “I called for my brother to get help.” pic.twitter.com/PgjqaDh71b

— Berkeley Brean (@whec_bbrean) September 2, 2020

https://www.wonkette.com/suspect-in-portland-shooting-shot-and-killed-by-the-officers-sent-to-arrest-him

Suspect In Portland Shooting Shot And Killed By The Officers Sent To Arrest Him

Robyn Pennacchia

September 04, 2020 11:38 AM

Michael Forest Reinoehl

Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, a suspect in the shooting of rightwing extremist Aaron "Jay" Danielson at a Portland protest, was shot and killed outside his home last night by members of a fugitive task force as they went to arrest him. According to initial reports from the US Marshals service, the "suspect produced a firearm, threatening the lives of law enforcement officers" and "[t]ask force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene."

This occurred not long after Vice News aired an interview with Reinoehl, in which he confessed to shooting his gun at the protest.

Via Vice:

"You know, lots of lawyers suggest that I shouldn't even be saying anything, but I feel it's important that the world at least gets a little bit of what's really going on," Reinoehl said. "I had no choice. I mean, I, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn't going to do that."

Media reports have portrayed members of Patriot Prayer and the rest of the "pro-Trump" contingent as simply driving through the protest spraying people with paintballs and pepper spray, but Reinoehl said they also had more serious weapons, and that he had seen them earlier when he was downtown.

"I'm seeing all these vehicles with hatred, people in the backs of the trucks yelling and screaming and swinging bats and sticks at protesters that are just standing there yelling at them," he said.

At 8:45 p.m., Reinoehl said he went to the aid of a friend surrounded by trucks laden with armed pro-Trump protesters. "I saw someone that is a dear and close friend of mine in the movement by himself basically confronting all these vehicles," Reinoehl told Farley. "And so I let him know that I'm here, parked my vehicle and joined up with him, found myself in the intersection in front of the food trucks surrounded by trucks and cars that had weapons."

It was then that he found himself in a confrontation with Danielson, who Reinoehl says was threatening him and his friend with a knife. "Had I stepped forward, he would have maced or stabbed me," Reinoehl said.

According to video, Danielson did indeed spray some mace.

Via The New York Times:

A man, who [Chandler] Pappas, [Danielson's associate who was with him at the time] later contends is the gunman, shouts: "Hey, we got some right here. We got a couple right here."

Another man says, "He's macing you, he's pulling it out."

The sound of spraying is audible, followed immediately by two gunshots. [Independent journalist Justin] Dunlap captures the shooting on his livestream.

Mr. Danielson can be seen raising his arm and beginning to spray a pepper spray-like substance, followed almost immediately by the gunshots. The man in white backs away with his arm raised and then runs, along with the man dressed in black.

Reinoehl also told Vice that he hadn't turned himself in because he believed the police were in cahoots with Patriot Prayer.

He had not turned himself in, he said, because he believed right-wing protesters were collaborating with police, who will not protect him or his family.

He said at the time of the confrontation and the shooting, there were no police present to help. "There was definitely nobody in sight, no police officer, nobody at all that could intervene. It was a free-for-all. And the police were letting it happen," he said.

And he maintained he acted in self-defense:

Two weeks later, he said, he had no regrets about his actions. "If the life of anybody I care about is in danger, and there's something I can do to prevent it … I think that any good human being would do the same thing," he said.

Reinoehl said he's spoken to attorneys who say "I've got a viable case for self defense and protection because there's a definite threat to my life."

The victim, Aaron "Jay" Danielson, was there with Patriot Prayer, a notoriously violent rightwing group founded by Joey Gibson, a close friend of his. Their primary purpose, supposedly, is securing "free speech" for conservatives in liberal areas of the country, which they already have. They fight for this by trawling the Pacific Northwest attempting to pick fights with antifa activists. One associate of the group is currently serving a life sentence for fatally stabbing two people and injuring a third on a Portland train after those people asked him to stop screaming racial slurs at two black teenage girls. He remains convinced he did nothing wrong, as he believes those people were attempting to infringe on his "free speech rights." Ian Kramer, a member of the group, beat a woman so badly that he broke her vertebrae after the group decided to go to a bar where antifa activists hung out in order to harass them.

They are, however, beloved by the police in Portland. As reported by the Daily Beast in February of 2019, Gibson maintained a close relationship with police Lt. Jeff Niiya, who kept him apprised of what antifa activists were doing and gave him advice on avoiding arrest.
There are certainly a lot of parallels to this shooting and the one in Kenosha, in which aspiring cop and Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people and injured one during a protest. The difference, of course, is that Kyle Rittenhouse is a conservative and is also still alive. Another difference is that the Right is arguing that his shooting was self-defense because someone threw a plastic bag towards him and another person hit him with his skateboard after he, Rittenhouse, shot the man with the plastic bag in the head. They do not believe that Reinoehl was acting in self-defense in shooting Danielson after being maced by him.

Prior to the fugitive task force shooting Reinoehl, Donald Trump sent out a tweet demanding his arrest.

Conversely, when asked to weigh in on the situation with Kyle Rittenhouse, Trump stated:

"You saw the same tape as I saw," Trump said. "And he was trying to get away from them, I guess; it looks like. And he fell, and then they very violently attacked him. And it was something that we're looking at right now and it's under investigation."

He went on to say of Rittenhouse: "I guess he was in very big trouble. He would have been — I — he probably would have been killed."

That, of course, did not actually happen.

Given Patriot Prayer's history of violently attacking leftist protesters, I can understand why someone might think they need "security." But deadly force is not an appropriate response to the threat of pepper spray. It's odd that President Trump and all of Fox News believe deadly force is an appropriate response to someone throwing a plastic bag, or someone attempting to disarm you after you've shot and killed a person armed with a plastic bag.
They just think it's okay for their side to kill us. I take it back. They think it's an absolute good.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.

https://www.wonkette.com/joe-biden-just-ended-donald-trumps-campaign

Joe Biden Helpfully Reminds Donald Trump Who's President, What Day It Is, Which One Is 'Camel'

Stephen Robinson

August 31, 2020 04:31 PM

Donald Trump and the GOP have dared Joe Biden to denounce the rioting, looting, and violence in occurring in cities across the country. This is a remarkably simple thing to do, so maybe they really believed Biden was in Antifa's pocket. It's as if they learned nothing from the 2008 campaign, when Barack Obama was called on to denounce controversial statements from his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Obama did not in fact admit on live television that he was a radical, not-so-secret Muslim terrorist who hated whitey, America, and puppies. No, instead he delivered one his best speeches up to that point, “A More Perfect Union."

Biden stepped up today and denounced violence of all kinds and from all corners during an address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He even asked the question, the one that Trump's reelection campaign hoped no one would ask.

"Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?"

Obama in 2008 and, regrettably, even Hillary Clinton in 2016 couldn't have done this. Too many (white) people might've said, “Well, yeah." But Biden knows that all the fearmongering that was on sickening display at the Republican National Convention is simply aspirational. Joe Biden took the Trump campaign's entire argument against him and turned it into a punchline. He even transformed his greatest weakness from the primaries — he's a little too safe, he's been in politics forever, he's not promising a revolution — into his greatest strength in the general election.

BIDEN: I want to be very clear about all of this: Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It's wrong in every way. It divides instead of unites, destroys businesses, only hurts the working families that serve the community. It makes things worse across the board, not better. It's not what Dr. King or John Lewis taught and it must end. Fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames rather than fighting the flames. But we must not burn, we have to build. This president, long ago, forfeited any moral leadership in this country.

Trump and Republicans want to cling to social unrest as a political life raft. They want to point to the riots and looting and say, “Well, Biden hasn't fixed it." That gives Biden the opportunity to remind voters that Donald Trump is the president right now and he sucks.
The closest Trump comes to “presidential" is when, as David Frum noted, he reads a “boring speech badly." (It doesn't help that his head speech writer is a white supremacist.) You couldn't give Don Rickles the script to Notorious and make him Cary Grant, and Trump will never successfully cosplay Ronald Reagan. He can't do this job. He's in over his head.

BIDEN: The violence we're seeing in Donald Trump's America. These are not images of some imagined Joe Biden America in the future. These are images of Donald Trump's America today. He keeps telling you if only he was president, it wouldn't happen. If he was president. He keeps telling us that he was president you'd feel safe. Well he is president. Whether he knows it or not, and it is happening, it's getting worse.

This is just a wonderful spin on Michael Douglas's epic declaration at the end of The American President: “I'm Andrew Shepherd. And I am the president." The inconvenient truth is that Trump's the commander-in-chief, not just of red states but of the entire United States. Trump can't lead a nation in crisis because the only rusty tool in his arsenal is division. He can't heal the country because he defines “unity" and “peace" strictly as submission to his will.

Biden asked another question in his speech, one equally fatal to Trump's reelection prospects (Fox News will probably claim it's a threat).

BIDEN: Does anyone think they'll be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?

Trump ran his 2016 campaign like so many men I've worked with who believed everything at the office sucked but they could turn it around so easily if they were in charge. Those who got the chance almost always failed. Trump is about to face his four-year performance review and his self-assessment is "US cities are on fire but don't worry, they are all Democrat."

BIDEN: We are facing multiple crises — crises that, under Donald Trump, keep multiplying. COVID, economic devastation, unwarranted police violence, emboldened white nationalists, a reckoning on race, declining faith in a bright American future. The common thread? An incumbent president who makes things worse, not better. An incumbent president who sows chaos rather than providing order.

Biden said that Trump "can't stop the violence because for years he has fomented it." The very smart people on the Biden campaign or the Lincoln Project can bolster this point with ads featuring his former Republican rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, among others, saying just this during the 2016 GOP primary.

BIDEN: Donald Trump 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.

Trump isn't just failing to maintain law and order. He lacks the credibility to even claim he's a “law and order" president. He can't even throw a reunion party for his 2016 campaign staff without people violating the terms of their parole. Equating Trump with the rule of law is as laughable as linking Biden with Antifa.

BIDEN: I want a safe America, safe from COVID, safe from crime and looting. Safer from racial violence, safe from bad cops. Let me be crystal clear. Safe from four more years of Donald Trump.

So say we all.

BIDEN: Trump has sought to remake this nation in his image. Selfish, angry, dark, and divisive. This is not who we are. At her best, America's always been, and if I have anything to do it, it will be again, generous, confident, an optimistic nation full of hope and resolve. Donald Trump is determined to instill fear in America. That's what his entire campaign for the president has come down to, fear. But I believe Americans are stronger than that. I believe we'll be guided by the words of Pope John Paul II, words drawn from the scriptures. Be not afraid, be not afraid. Fear never builds the future, but hope does.

Yes, bring it home with a little nod to Obama. There was just so much good in this speech that we're gonna stop now and just let you watch it in full. Sixty-four days to go. Are you ready?

WATCH: Biden delivers remarks in Pittsburghwww.youtube.com

OPEN THREAD!
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President Donald Trump alleged unnamed people in “dark shadows” are controlling Democratic nominee Joe Biden https://t.co/2Yb3eSpNns

— POLITICO (@politico) September 1, 2020

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-the-kenosha-cop-who-shot-jacob-blake-just-choked-like-a-golfer-missing-a-putt

Trump: Cop Who Shot Jacob Blake Just ‘Choked’ Like a Golfer Missing a Putt

DISGUSTING

Jamie Ross

Updated Sep. 01, 2020 6:57AM ET / Published Sep. 01, 2020 6:41AM ET 

Read it at The Hill

President Donald Trump has said the police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times last month was just having a bad day, like a golfer who misses a simple putt. The president’s astonishing analogy came in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, who, apparently realizing how offensive Trump’s stream of consciousness was, stepped in to stop him from finishing it. “Shooting the guy in the back many times, I mean, couldn’t you have done something different? Couldn’t you have wrestled him?” Trump said of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, incident. “But they choke. Just like in a golf tournament. They miss a three-foot putt.” Ingraham interjected: “You’re not comparing it to golf, because that’s what the media will say.” Trump responded: “I’m saying people choke... People choke.” Trump is due to visit Kenosha, where Blake’s shooting took place, later on Tuesday—despite city and state officials urging him to stay away. Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said Monday the timing of the president’s visit “is not good.”

Trump compares killing an unarmed black civilian to missing a three foot putt in a golf tournament, Ingraham jumps in to make him stop. pic.twitter.com/NeHqVn4Uvf

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 1, 2020

https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/03/injured-protest-medic-had-to-wait-for-medical-treatment-after-being-tackled-punched-by-portland-police/

Injured protest medic waited for medical treatment after being tackled, punched by Portland police

By Sergio Olmos (OPB)

Sept. 2, 2020 5:16 p.m. Updated: Sept. 2, 2020 8:22 p.m.

Person punched repeatedly by police at Portland protest was taken to OHSU, where he works as an ICU nurse, for a head injury

In an incident filmed late Monday, a Portland police officer is seen tackling and repeatedly punching a volunteer medic named Tyler Cox.

Cox was arrested on a charge of assaulting a police officer and taken away in a riot van, despite having what he described Wednesday as significant injuries.

A Portland police officer punches a protester after throwing them to the ground while dispersing a demonstration Monday, Aug. 31, 2020, in Portland, Ore. The incident is under investigation.

Sergio Olmos / OPB

Cox says he went more than two hours without medical attention before paramedics evaluated him.

“They noted that I was lethargic. And they noted that I was having trouble walking straight. They told the police officers that they couldn’t clear me to be arrested, or to be taken to jail without a head CT, or taken to the hospital at the least,” Cox said Wednesday. “The police actually got angry with them about that.”

Police ended up taking Cox to the emergency room at OHSU, the same place he works as an intensive care unit nurse.

He said he was appalled by the way police and the hospital treated his injuries. He said police and hospital officials downplayed the severity at first and Cox suspects it was because he was at a protest.

“They just kind of were treating me like they didn’t respect people who were the part of the protest,” he said. “They were dismissive. They didn’t ask me if I needed anything. I was never offered water [or] offered anything for pain.”

more at
https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/03/injured-protest-medic-had-to-wait-for-medical-treatment-after-being-tackled-punched-by-portland-police/



AND TO REPEAT IT FORE EMPHASIS

Trump: Cop Who Shot Jacob Blake Just ‘Choked’ Like a Golfer Missing a Putt

DISGUSTING

Jamie Ross

Reporter

Updated Sep. 01, 2020 6:57AM ET / Published Sep. 01, 2020 6:41AM ET 

President Donald Trump has said the police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times last month was just having a bad day, like a golfer who misses a simple putt. The president’s astonishing analogy came in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, who, apparently realizing how offensive Trump’s stream of consciousness was, stepped in to stop him from finishing it. “Shooting the guy in the back many times, I mean, couldn’t you have done something different? Couldn’t you have wrestled him?” Trump said of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, incident. “But they choke. Just like in a golf tournament. They miss a three-foot putt.” Ingraham interjected: “You’re not comparing it to golf, because that’s what the media will say.” Trump responded: “I’m saying people choke... People choke.” Trump is due to visit Kenosha, where Blake’s shooting took place, later on Tuesday—despite city and state officials urging him to stay away. Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said Monday the timing of the president’s visit “is not good.”

Trump compares killing an unarmed black civilian to missing a three foot putt in a golf tournament, Ingraham jumps in to make him stop. pic.twitter.com/NeHqVn4Uvf

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 1, 2020

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-memo-justice-department-barr-democratic-cities-anarchist-jurisdictions-to-help-him-win-reelection.html

President Donald Trump, on Wednesday, signed a memo threatening to withhold federal funding from Democratic-run cities the White House deems “anarchist jurisdictions” because of their handling of ongoing civil unrest that continues to ripple around the country. The five-page presidential memo, officially titled, “Reviewing Funding to State and Local Government Recipients That Are Permitting Anarchy, Violence, and Destruction in American Cities” is more of a political document than a policy one. The real point of the memo is for Trump to sow division between his decidedly non-urban, white political base and the other two-thirds of the country. To do that, the Trump memo aims to “defund” cities that “defund” their police departments. Since American cities haven’t really defunded anything other than in an extraordinary case or two—and even in those cases overhaul would be a better descriptor than defund—the memo also targets “cities” that do not meet some vague bar of law and order (read: hyper-aggressive policing tactics) that the Trump administration will set.


“Unfortunately, anarchy has recently beset some of our States and cities,” the memo reads. “For the past few months, several State and local governments have contributed to the violence and destruction in their jurisdictions by failing to enforce the law, disempowering and significantly defunding their police departments, and refusing to accept offers of Federal law enforcement assistance.  As a result of these State and local government policies, persistent and outrageous acts of violence and destruction have continued unabated in many of America’s cities, such as Portland, Seattle, and New York.”

This memo is more about the appearance of action than actual action, more about snagging a coded headline or two than finding a solution to a summer of civil unrest. To help impress upon his supporters and potential supporters that protests in distant cities are a threat to them, even if really aren’t, the memo instructs the Department of Justice to publish a list of “anarchist jurisdictions” in 14 days. What jurisdictions would those be? “State and local jurisdictions that have permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract these criminal activities,” the memo states. Basically, anywhere that the Trump administration deems not aggressive enough, not violent enough, in its handling of local communities grappling with anger and grief.

“My Administration will do everything in its power to prevent weak mayors and lawless cities from taking Federal dollars while they let anarchists harm people, burn buildings, and ruin lives and businesses,” Trump tweeted Wednesday night. “We’re putting them on notice today.” Since the White House does not technically control much of the federal funding that goes to state and local jurisdictions, and any attempt to block funding would surely get tied up in court, it’s the performative part of “putting them on notice” that is the point.

https://www.wonkette.com/rep-clay-higgins-loves-gun-rights-so-much-hell-gladly-murder-black-militia-dudes-for-lookin-scary

Rep. Clay Higgins Loves Gun Rights So Much He'll Gladly Murder Black Militia Dudes

Doktor Zoom

September 04, 2020 09:29 AM

Clay Higgins Facebook, video screenshot

Rep Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana) is a guy who just loves him some Second Amendment. He's appeared in promotional videos for the NRA, he advocates for open carry, which is legal in Louisiana, and when he's in the state, he generally goes around with a holstered handgun as a fashion/fascist accessory. His Facebook page is sprinkled with inspirational photos of the Constitution and a flintlock, or of his favorite Colt 1911 pistol and a Bible.

You know, we're not sure that particular Bible verse is about wielding firearms. The point is, Clay Higgins is very big on Americans' freedom to arm themselves, which he says in that very Facebook post is the very foundation of liberty, along with Christianity of course. If you have guns, you're one of the Good Guys. Unless maybe you're somehow different from the average gun humpers Higgins hangs out with. A well-regulated militia is one thing, you see, but when Higgins heard rumors that a group of armed Black guys might show up for protests in Lafayette, Louisiana, he got on Facebook to let those monsters know he would happily kill them to protect his fair city. The post was deleted by Facebook, but the internet is forever:

You shall know our muzzle velocity.



Vice explains that the photo is from a July demonstration in Louisville to protest the police killing of Breonna Taylor, and depicts members of a militia with the best possible militia name, the Not Fucking Around Coalition, or NFAC for family newspapers. Higgins doesn't mention the holy Second Amendment at all, because clearly these men walking around in military gear and carrying long guns are a deadly threat, and Higgins knows what to do about a Clear And Present Danger: You go on Facebook and say We The People a lot.
Also, note that pronoun: These guys aren't people, they're a thing, a "this," not even a "they."

Look, fair warning.

If this shows up, we'll consider the armed presence a real threat. We being, We, the People, of Louisiana.

One way ticket fellas.

Have your affairs in order.

Me?... I wouldn't even spill my beer. I'd drop any 10 of you where you stand. Because some of We, like me... We, are SWAT. Nothing personal. We just eliminate the threat. We don't care what color you are. We don't care if you're left or right. If you show up like this, if We recognize threat... you won't walk away.

That's not a challenge, fellas. It's a promise. We don't want to see your worthless ass nor do we want to make your Mothers cry. You're the ones threatening, if you show yourselves, aggressively natured and armed in my presence. In my neighborhood.

Where I work.

Anywhere close enough to put my family or my fellow citizens in danger.

That is where your journey will end.

Fast.

How fast? 1,450 FPS fast.

Now hold on a second, Mr. Congressman. Whar respect for an armed citizenry protecting itself from tyranny? The state-sanctioned killing of an unarmed woman in her own home sure sounds like the sort of thing gun-humpers would usually say is worth arming up for. If a bunch of armed idiots bringing their guns to protest public health measures isn't a threat, then why are these fellows?

Lafayette has been the site of protests after the police shooting of Trayford Pellerin, 31; no members of the NFAC showed up at those protests Tuesday. But around the time Higgins posted his brave promise to eliminate any Black militia guys, the Acadiana Advocate reports,

40 to 50 heavily armed members of a right-wing militia group — the Louisiana Cajun Militia, which formed four years ago to oppose the removal of Confederate monuments — showed up at a Tuesday night Black Lives Matter demonstration outside Lafayette City Hall.

Members of the militia insisted they'd shown up to help keep the peace, you see, although as the Advocate noted, they were kitted out in military-style gear very similar to the NFAC guys whose very presence Higgins considered so threatening that it would merit deadly force. The Advocate adds that Higgins "made no mention of the Louisiana Cajun Militia group and didn't respond to questions about their presence."

After Facebook pulled Higgins's message promising swift eradication of armed Black people, Higgins posted a very patriotic whine about his rights being threatened, and urging full E Plebnista preparations for civil war, just wait for him to give the signal:

No, I did not remove my post.

America is being manipulated into a new era of government control. Your liberty is threatened from within.

Welcome to the front lines, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I suggest you get your mind right.

I'll advise when it's time gear up, mount up, and roll out.

For some reason, Facebook pulled that one, too. A company spokesperson explained both very patriotic messages were yanked "for violating our policies against inciting violence."
Rep. Cedric Richmond, the only Democrat in Louisiana's congressional delegation, was also the lone member of the delegation to speak out publicly about the super-patriotic call for civil war, saying Higgins's "dumb and reckless Facebook post requires serious condemnation."

Richmond added that Higgins, elected to Congress in 2016, could be calling for a full investigation into the killing of Trayford Pellerin, since Higgins represents the district where Pellerin lived, but instead had simply posted "a clear adolescent ploy designed to stoke fear, incite violence, garner social media clicks and raise money for his campaign."

Well yes, this America. Higgins simply wants to protect his community, which clearly doesn't include armed troublemakers from hundreds of miles away.

Mind you, it may depend on the complexion of the armed troublemakers. On December 31, 2019, as Virginia gun-humpers feared all guns would be seized, Higgins offered this Walk Tall image on Facebook, calling on sheriffs in Virginia to "deputize all patriots," because guns = America.

Truly, America is a land of contrasts, the end.

[Vice / Christian Mader on Twitter / NOLA.com / Acadiana Advocate]

Yr Wonkette is entirely supported by reader donations. Please help us keep you informed of all the latest developments in the world of news and politics, plus dick jokes.

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LET'S REMEMBER THE WORDS OF THE GREAT NIPSEY HUSSLE...





https://thehilltoponline.com/2019/05/02/essay-failure-never-let-a-hard-time-humble-us/

“Never let a hard time humble us. Cause the game is gonna test you. Its up’s and down’s. You gotta be who you are at all times. It’s a principle to live by.”

Whatever your current struggle is, whether it be failing to land your dream internship or failing to graduate on time, failing is only a temporary state. Those with the greatest amount of success are those ever willing to fail. Ever willing to pivot. Ever willing to be wrong.  Ever willing to learn. Those who swallow their pride, ego and expectations and allow themselves to be rejected because those moments are where the greatest explorations and discoveries lie.

Resilience is all that matters. Pushing past the hurt and continuing to find that inspiration. That Spark. To drop your expectations and keep changing your approach until something sticks.

"DOUBLE UP"

Double up, three or four times I ain't tellin' no lies
I just run it up, never let a hard time humble us
Double up, I ain't tellin' no lies, I just
I ain't tellin' no lies, I just
5, 4, 3-2 let's talk, I got
To you, that money
My dreams, come true
My life, in diamonds
Who knew
Who knew
Who knew

Turn 7 to a 14
14 to a whole thing
Lord knows it's a cold game
Switched up on you hoes mayne
Big body take both lanes
Backseat blowin' propane
All black, five gold chains
Young rich nigga bossed up on his own mayne
My new shit sound like it's Soul Train
Tookie Williams over Coltrane
Eric B by the rope chain
RSC we fosho bang
Tiny locs and they go crazy
What you know about the dope game
Was you born in the 80s
Did your mama smoke cocaine
Have you ever seen a whole thang
What you drove through to the streets
'Cause you grew up on short change
Fucked up when the dope age
It remind me when these rappers drop duds and they clothes change
Had the part wit the low fade
I would stand in front of Nick's wit my sack for the whole day
Drive by's that was road rage
Then we park and hop out
Learn levels to this whole thang
Old skool play the O'Jays
Tryna make a slow change
Mama still slavin' for a low wage

Tryna double up, three or four times, I ain't tellin' no lies
I just run it up, never let a hard time humble us
Double up, I ain't tellin' no lies, I just
I ain't tellin' no lies, I just
5, 4, 3-2, let's talk, I got
To you, that money
My dreams, come true
My life, in diamonds
Who knew
Who knew
Who knew
I leave it behind if you let me
I run and got drown just to hold you down
I jump off the ledge if you with me
I break you up, you just let me down
Let me down
This my All Money In, take two
Let me down

It's hard to catch what you can't see
I grew up to be who I wanna be
So, the more niggas talk I'ma shine
Might of been way before its time
Posted wit my back against the wall
Life is a bitch but she mine
The rag six deuce yeah it's mine
The westside too, yeah it's mine
What you know about
Your poster on the wall at the dealership
Leave her in the bed, legs tremblin'
Gettin' banged on for your Pendleton's
What you know about
Your response be the reason you exist
Lucky I ain't get caught up in the twist
Young nigga blue pager on my hip so
As the champagne spill
And the car accelerate
And the beat gon' cry
I be goin' to the bank at least three, four times
Get handshakes from the branch managers
We keep doin' fly shit when the camera's cut

Double up, three or four times, I ain't tellin' no lies
I just run it up, never let a hard time humble us
Double up, I ain't tellin' no lies, I just
I ain't tellin no lies, I just
5, 4, 3-2, let's talk, I got
To you, that money
My dreams, come true
My life, in diamonds
Who knew
Who knew
Who knew
I leave it behind if you let me
I run and got drown just to hold you down
I jump off the ledge if you with me
I break you up, you just let me down
Let me down
Let me down

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Ahmad Balshe / Alexander Chigbue / Axel Morgan / Dominic Hunn / Ermias Asghedom / Teddy Walton

Double Up lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing, Peermusic Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Guys. We desperately need to talk about our collective and vicarious grief and how traumatic it has been. Thank you @jesmimi for penning yours ❤️

Do not read this if you are feeling overwhelming trauma in your body. https://t.co/h7VWceQctP

— Lalita Abhyankar MD, MHS (@L_Abhyankar) September 2, 2020

THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT




I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.

ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.

WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT - JOHNS HOPKINS

Anyway, as usual, here's the weekly links to the data about cases (lower than reality) and deaths (lower than reality, also) due to COVID-19.

Data can be found here, as always:

COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

This is also a good data site:

Worldometer - Coronavirus info

Last updated: September 05, 2020, 19:56 GMT

 United States

Coronavirus Cases:

6,416,821

Deaths:

192,522

Recovered:

3,685,940

Projections

About Worldometer

Worldometer manually analyzes, validates, and aggregates data from thousands of sources in real time and provides global COVID-19 live statistics for a wide audience of caring people around the world.

Our data is also trusted and used by the UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Vietnam, the Government of Pakistan, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others.

Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.

Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles and was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/spanish-flu-the-virus-that-changed-the-world/

Some Scientists 'Uneasy' About the Race For a Covid-19 Vaccine (theguardian.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday August 30, 2020 @07:49PM from the science-says dept.

The Guardian ran an article by the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World looking at problems with our own race for a vaccine in 2020:On 2 August, Steven Salzberg, a computational biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, suggested in Forbes magazine that a promising vaccine be rolled out to a wider pool of volunteers before clinical trials had been completed, triggering an outcry (and some sympathy) that prompted him to recant the next day. Meanwhile, a research group with links to Harvard University continues to defend its publication in July of a recipe for a do-it-yourself Covid-19 vaccine — one that only the group's 20-odd members had previously tested...

The accumulation of such incidents has left many scientists feeling deeply uneasy. "I'm more and more concerned that things are getting done in a rush," says Beate Kampmann, who directs the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (and whose work email account was subject to a failed hack in July). On 13 August, the editor-in-chief of the journal Science issued a call to order. "Short cuts in testing for vaccine safety and efficacy endanger millions of lives in the short term and will damage public confidence in vaccines and in science for a long time to come," wrote H Holden Thorp.

He went on to point out that the stakes are higher than with unproven therapies such as hydroxychloroquine, because a vaccine is given to healthy people. "Approval of a vaccine that is harmful or isn't effective could be leveraged by political forces that already propagate vaccine fears," he warned... Kampmann, meanwhile, feels it's important not to let the recent shenanigans in the vaccine community overshadow its huge achievements. If current forecasts are correct, a Covid-19 vaccine will be available in 2021 — smashing all records for vaccine development — and there will be many more reasons to trust it than not to. Still, those with their eye on that glittering prize should remember what is at stake. "We have to be careful," she says, "because what we do with Covid-19 could have repercussions for trust in all vaccine programs."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/01/2148205/us-says-it-wont-join-who-linked-effort-to-develop-distribute-coronavirus-vaccine

US Says It Won't Join WHO-Linked Effort To Develop, Distribute Coronavirus Vaccine (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @10:10PM from the go-it-alone dept.

The Trump administration said it will not join a global effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine, in part because the World Health Organization is involved, a decision that could shape the course of the pandemic and the country's role in health diplomacy. The Washington Post reports:More than 170 countries are in talks to participate in the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility, which aims to speed vaccine development and secure doses for all countries and distribute them to the most high-risk segment of each population. The plan, which is co-led by the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the vaccine alliance, was of interest to some members of the Trump administration and is backed by traditional U.S. allies, including Japan, Germany and the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

But the United States will not participate, in part because the White House does not want to work with the WHO, which President Trump has criticized over what he characterized as its "China-centric" response to the pandemic. "The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China," said Judd Deere, a spokesman for the White House. The Covax decision, which has not been previously reported, is effectively a doubling down by the administration on its bet that the United States will win the vaccine race. It eliminates the chance to secure doses from a pool of promising vaccine candidates -- a potentially risky strategy.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/04/2059240/results-of-russias-covid-19-vaccine-produced-antibody-response

Results of Russia's COVID-19 Vaccine Produced Antibody Response (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Friday September 04, 2020 @10:02PM from the vaccine-race dept.

Russia's "Sputnik-V" COVID-19 vaccine produced an antibody response in all participants in early-stage trials, according to results published on Friday by The Lancet medical journal that were hailed by Moscow as an answer to its critics. Reuters reports:The results of the two trials, conducted in June-July this year and involving 76 participants, showed 100% of participants developing antibodies to the new coronavirus and no serious side effects, The Lancet said. Russia licensed the two-shot jab for domestic use in August, the first country to do so and before any data had been published or a large-scale trial begun. "The two 42-day trials -- including 38 healthy adults each -- did not find any serious adverse effects among participants, and confirmed that the vaccine candidates elicit an antibody response," The Lancet said. "Large, long-term trials including a placebo comparison, and further monitoring are needed to establish the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for preventing COVID-19 infection," it said.

The vaccine is named Sputnik-V in homage to the world's first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union. Some Western experts have warned against its use until all internationally approved testing and regulatory steps have been taken. But with the results now published for the first time in an international peer-reviewed journal, and with a 40,000-strong later-stage trial launched last week, a senior Russian official said Moscow had faced down its critics abroad. "With this (publication) we answer all of the questions of the West that were diligently asked over the past three weeks, frankly with the clear goal of tarnishing the Russian vaccine," said Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia's sovereign wealth fund, which has backed the vaccine. "All of the boxes are checked," he told Reuters. "Now... we will start asking questions of some of the Western vaccines."

https://www.wonkette.com/trump-retweets-covidiots-bizarre-claim-that-only-6-of-covid-19-deaths-are-real

Trump Retweets Covidiot's Bizarre Claim That 'Only 6%' Of COVID-19 Deaths Are Real

Robyn Pennacchia

August 30, 2020 02:45 PM

Experts have been clear from the beginning — people over 70 or with underlying health conditions are at most risk of dying from COVID-19. That is why many of us who were able to do so went and stayed with our parents so that we could go grocery shopping for them and limit their exposure. It's why grocery stores implemented special hours for seniors to do their grocery shopping. Lists of conditions that might make one less likely to survive COVID-19 were widely disseminated.

All of this has been known since the beginning.

But now we've got a bunch of Covidiots going around spreading a lie that the CDC "quietly updated" their site to show that we've actually only had around 9,000 deaths from COVID-19, rather than the 186,000 being reported.

This one was retweeted by Donald Trump. And by 48,000 other people.

The screenshot that "Mel Q" shared read:

This week the CDC quietly updated the Covid number to admit that only 6 percent of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from Covid,
That's 9,210 deaths.
The other 94% had 2 to 3 other serious illnesses and the overwhelming majority were of very advanced age, 90% in nursing homes.
That is a pretty big BOOM.
This is not to say it's not real. I'm not debating that. I'm just showing updated numbers. Not here to fight. Will delete messages wanting to fight.
Peace, love & good health to all.

What she is referring to is this:

Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.

It's true. People with certain underlying conditions are more likely to die of COVID-19. That doesn't mean that they didn't die of COVID-19.

A quick perusal of Mel Q's Twitter reveals that she also thinks that Barack Obama and Joe Biden imported "overseas terrorists" to start Antifa and believes in QAnon and pizzagate. Not terrifically shocking.

But back to these "facts."

The "quietly updated their numbers" thing? That's not really quite as "sneaky" as this person is making it out to be. One would assume that if this were something they were trying to hide from the public, it wouldn't be on their website to begin with. Were they supposed to do it loudly? Were they supposed to put out a press release?

It probably didn't even occur to the CDC that anyone would jump to this conclusion upon seeing those statistics. Largely because, again, they were very clear, from the beginning, that the people most at risk of dying from COVID-19 were people with underlying conditions.

They even made a video about it back in May!

COVID-19: Are You at Higher Risk for Severe Illness?youtu.be

The narrative these people are trying to push is that these people died of other things and just happened to have COVID-19 in their system at the time. That's not what a comorbidity means. If you have diabetes or heart disease and you die of COVID-19, you are still dying of COVID-19. Thirty-seven percent of the country either has "underlying conditions" that could make COVID-19 more severe or is over the age of 65.

And hell, those are just the people who know they have underlying conditions. We're not counting all of the people who may have underlying conditions but don't know because they can't afford to go see a doctor.

They want to frame it like "Oh well, all of those people were going to die anyway!" but that is literally true of everyone. We are all going to die someday. And all of those people very likely died a whole lot sooner than they would have had they not gotten COVID-19. It's not that they don't understand this, but that they actually just really don't care about other people and want to be able to get back to their normal lives and for the rest of us to not think they are jerks for doing so.

It's getting to the point where it's real hard to tell what the Right sincerely believes and what they pretend to believe in order to get the results they want.
Anyway! This is now your open thread! So talk amongst yourselves and have a nice day!
Wonkette is independent and fully funded by readers like you. Click below to tip us!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.

In which Dr. Fauci must explain for the president that no, in fact, coronavirus has NOT killed only 9,000 people. — Crooks and Liars

It can also wreck your heart even if you haven't had any symptoms. (Scientific American)

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/02/0538229/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-hypothesis-has-emerged

A Supercomputer Analyzed COVID-19, and an Interesting New Hypothesis Has Emerged (medium.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @09:00AM from the closer-look dept.

Thelasko shares a report from Medium:Earlier this summer, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee set about crunching data on more than 40,000 genes from 17,000 genetic samples in an effort to better understand Covid-19. Summit is the second-fastest computer in the world, but the process -- which involved analyzing 2.5 billion genetic combinations -- still took more than a week. When Summit was done, researchers analyzed the results. It was, in the words of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, lead researcher and chief scientist for computational systems biology at Oak Ridge, a 'eureka moment.' The computer had revealed a new theory about how Covid-19 impacts the body: the bradykinin hypothesis. The hypothesis provides a model that explains many aspects of Covid-19, including some of its most bizarre symptoms. It also suggests 10-plus potential treatments, many of which are already FDA approved. Jacobson's group published their results in a paper in the journal eLife in early July.

According to the team's findings, a Covid-19 infection generally begins when the virus enters the body through ACE2 receptors in the nose, (The receptors, which the virus is known to target, are abundant there.) The virus then proceeds through the body, entering cells in other places where ACE2 is also present: the intestines, kidneys, and heart. This likely accounts for at least some of the disease's cardiac and GI symptoms. But once Covid-19 has established itself in the body, things start to get really interesting. According to Jacobson's group, the data Summit analyzed shows that Covid-19 isn't content to simply infect cells that already express lots of ACE2 receptors. Instead, it actively hijacks the body's own systems, tricking it into upregulating ACE2 receptors in places where they're usually expressed at low or medium levels, including the lungs.

The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) controls many aspects of the circulatory system, including the body's levels of a chemical called bradykinin, which normally helps to regulate blood pressure. According to the team's analysis, when the virus tweaks the RAS, it causes the body's mechanisms for regulating bradykinin to go haywire. Bradykinin receptors are resensitized, and the body also stops effectively breaking down bradykinin. (ACE normally degrades bradykinin, but when the virus downregulates it, it can't do this as effectively.) The end result, the researchers say, is to release a bradykinin storm -- a massive, runaway buildup of bradykinin in the body. According to the bradykinin hypothesis, it's this storm that is ultimately responsible for many of Covid-19's deadly effects.Several drugs target aspects of the RAS and are already FDA approved, including danazol, stanozolol, and ecallantide, which reduce bradykinin production and could potentially stop a deadly bradykinin storm.

Interestingly, the researchers suggest vitamin D as a potentially useful Covid-19 drug. "The vitamin is involved in the RAS system and could prove helpful by reducing levels of another compound, known as REN," the report says. "Again, this could stop potentially deadly bradykinin storms from forming." Other compounds could treat symptoms associated with bradykinin storms, such as Hymecromone and timbetasin.

ELECTION 2020

Bendik Kaltenborn for The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/03/trump-stay-in-office/?arc404=true

What’s the worst that could happen?

The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis

 By Rosa Brooks

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

We wanted to know: What’s the worst thing that could happen to our country during the presidential election? President Trump has broken countless norms and ignored countless laws during his time in office, and while my colleagues and I at the Transition Integrity Project didn’t want to lie awake at night contemplating the ways the American experiment could fail, we realized that identifying the most serious risks to our democracy might be the best way to avert a November disaster. So we built a series of war games, sought out some of the most accomplished Republicans, Democrats, civil servants, media experts, pollsters and strategists around, and asked them to imagine what they’d do in a range of election and transition scenarios.

A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis.

Picture this: On the morning of Election Day, false stories appear online claiming that Biden has been hospitalized with a life-threatening heart attack and the election has been delayed. Every mainstream news organization reports that the rumors are unfounded, but many Biden supporters, confused by the bogus claims, stay home.

Still, by late that night, most major networks have called the election for Biden: The former vice president has won key states and has a slender lead in the national popular vote, and polling experts predict that his lead will grow substantially as Western states count an unusually high number of mail-in ballots. The electoral college looks secure for Biden, too.

But Trump refuses to concede, alleging on Twitter that “MILLIONS of illegal ALIENS and DEAD PEOPLE” have voted in large numbers and that the uncounted ballots are all “FAKE VOTES!!!” Social media fills with posts from Trump supporters alleging that the election has been “stolen” in a “Deep State coup,” and Trump-friendly pundits on Fox News and OAN echo the message.

Soon, Attorney General William P. Barr opens an investigation into unsubstantiated allegations of massive vote-by-mail fraud and ties between Democratic officials and antifa. In Michigan and Wisconsin, where Biden has won the official vote and Democratic governors have certified slates of pro-Biden electors, the Trump campaign persuades Republican-controlled legislatures to send rival pro-Trump slates to Congress for the electoral college vote.

The next week is chaotic: A list of Michigan and Wisconsin electors for Biden circulates on right-wing social media, including photos, home addresses and false claims that scores of them are in the pay of billionaire George Soros or have been linked to child sex-trafficking rings.

Massive pro-Biden street protests begin, demanding that Trump concede. The president tweets that “REAL PATRIOTS MUST SHOW THESE ANTIFA TERRORISTS THAT CITIZENS WHO LOVE THE 2ND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER LET THEM STEAL THIS ELECTION!!!” Around the nation, violent clashes erupt. Several people are injured and killed in multiple incidents, though reports conflict about their identities and who started the violence.

Meanwhile, Trump declares that “UNLESS THIS CARNAGE ENDS NOW,” he will invoke the Insurrection Act and send “Our INCREDIBLY POWERFUL MILITARY and their OMINOUS WEAPONS” into the streets to “Teach these ANTI-AMERICAN TERRORISTS A LESSON.” At the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff convene a hurried meeting to discuss the crisis.

And it’s not even Thanksgiving yet.

Supporters of President Trump await his Republican National Convention speech at a watch party near Dripping Springs, Tex., on Aug. 27. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post)

That dystopia is based on how events played out in one of the Transition Integrity Project’s exercises. We explored the four scenarios experts consider most likely: a narrow Biden win; a big Biden win, with a decisive lead in both the electoral college and the popular vote; a Trump win with an electoral college lead but a large popular-vote loss, as in 2016; and finally, a period of extended uncertainty as we saw in the 2000 election.

[The loser of November’s election may not concede. Their voters won’t, either.]

With the exception of the “big Biden win” scenario, each of our exercises reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse. In two scenarios (“Trump win” and “extended uncertainty”) there was still no agreement on the winner by Inauguration Day, and no consensus on which candidate should be assumed to have the ability to issue binding commands to the military or receive the nuclear codes. In the “narrow Biden win” scenario, Trump refused to leave office and was ultimately escorted out by the Secret Service — but only after pardoning himself and his family and burning incriminating documents.

For obvious reasons, we couldn’t ask Trump or Biden — or their campaign aides — to play themselves in these exercises, so we did the next best thing: We recruited participants with similar backgrounds. On the GOP side, our “players” included former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, conservative commentator Bill Kristol and former Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson. On the Democratic side, participants included John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and a top White House adviser to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Donna Brazile, the campaign chair for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential run; and Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan. Other participants included political strategists, journalists, polling experts, tech and social media experts, and former career officials from the intelligence community, the Justice Department, the military and the Department of Homeland Security.

In each scenario, Team Trump — the players assigned to simulate the Trump campaign and its elected and appointed allies — was ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate, and Team Biden struggled to get out of reaction mode. In one exercise, for instance, Team Trump’s repeated allegations of fraudulent mail-in ballots led National Guard troop to destroy thousands of ballots in Democratic-leaning ZIP codes, to applause on social media from Trump supporters. Over and over, Team Biden urged calm, national unity and a fair vote count, while Team Trump issued barely disguised calls for violence and intimidation against ballot-counting officials and Biden electors.

[I was on Trump’s voter fraud commission. I sued it to find out what it was doing.]

In every exercise, both teams sought to mobilize their supporters to take to the streets. Team Biden repeatedly called for peaceful protests, while Team Trump encouraged provocateurs to incite violence, then used the resulting chaos to justify sending federalized Guard units or active-duty military personnel into American cities to “restore order,” leading to still more violence. (The exercises underscored the tremendous power enjoyed by an incumbent president: Biden can call a news conference, but Trump can call in the 82nd Airborne.)

Similarly, Team Trump repeatedly attempted to exploit ambiguities and gaps in the legal framework. (There are more than you might think.) Team Trump repeatedly sought, for instance, to persuade state GOP allies to send rival slates of electors to Congress when the popular vote didn’t go its way. With competing slates heading to Washington for the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that formally counts the electoral votes, Trump supporters argued that Vice President Pence, in his capacity as president of the Senate, had the power to decide which electors to recognize. In contrast, Democrats argued that the House of Representatives had the constitutional authority to choose which electors should be accepted in the event of a deadlock — or, alternatively, the ability to prevent the joint session from taking place at all. (We didn’t resolve this kind of standoff in our exercises; it’s not clear how such a stalemate would be settled in real life.)

[Trump is wrong. Concession speeches aren’t binding at all.]

In the “Trump win” scenario, desperate Democrats — stunned by yet another election won by the candidate with fewer votes after credible claims of foreign interference and voter suppression — also sought to send rival slates of electors to Congress. They even floated the idea of encouraging secessionist movements in California and the Pacific Northwest unless GOP congressional leaders agreed to a series of reforms, including the division of California into five smaller states to ensure better Senate representation of its vast population, and statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico.

While both parties appealed to the courts as well as to public opinion, the legal experts in our exercises pointed out that the judicial system might well avoid rendering decisions on the central issues, since courts might see them as fundamentally political, rather than judicial, in nature. Other players noted that there was, in any case, no guarantee that the losing side would accept a ruling from a highly politicized Supreme Court.

National Guard troops line up outside the White House on June 2. President Trump has at times threatened to use the military to quell unrest in American cities. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)

But there’s some good news: This kind of exercise doesn’t predict the future. In fact, war-gaming seeks to forecast all the things that could go wrong — precisely to prevent them from happening in real life. And if the Transition Integrity Project’s exercises highlighted various bleak possibilities, they also suggested some ways we might, as a nation, avoid democratic collapse.

First and foremost, congressional and state leaders, including legislators, governors, state secretaries of state and state attorneys general from both parties, can commit to protecting the integrity of the electoral process against partisan meddling. State officials can ensure that voters have detailed, accurate and timely information about where, when and how to vote, and make sure they understand that nobody can cancel or postpone the election. State officials can also eliminate administrative hurdles that may prevent voters from meeting mail-in ballot deadlines through no fault of their own, and recruit enough poll workers to ensure that all voters can vote and all ballots can be counted. Finally, they can take steps to protect the election officials who manage vote counting from harassment and intimidation attempts, and establish — in advance and on a bipartisan basis — standards for adjudicating any competing claims about how to allocate a state’s electoral votes.

[Trump’s bogus attacks on mail-in voting could hurt his supporters, too]

Meanwhile, military and law enforcement leaders can prepare for the possibility that politicians will seek to manipulate or misuse their coercive powers. Partisans, including Trump, may try to deploy law enforcement, National Guard troops and, potentially, active-duty military personnel to “restore order” in a manner that primarily benefits one party, or involve troops and law enforcement in efforts to interrupt the ballot-counting process. The federal response to this summer’s protests in D.C.’s Lafayette Square and Portland, Ore., suggests that this is not purely speculative. To avoid becoming unwitting pawns in a partisan battle, military and law enforcement leaders can issue clear advance statements about what they will and won’t do. They can train troops and police officers on de-escalation techniques and on the vital need to remain nonpartisan and respectful of civil liberties.

A woman shows her support for Joe Biden in front of the White House on Aug. 29. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The media also has an important role. Responsible outlets can help educate the public about the possibility — indeed, the likelihood — that there won’t be a clear winner on election night because an accurate count may take weeks, given the large number of mail-in ballots expected in this unprecedented mid-pandemic election. Journalists can also help people understand that voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, and, in particular, that there’s nothing nefarious about voting by mail. Social media platforms can commit to protecting the democratic process, by rapidly removing or correcting false statements spread by foreign or domestic disinformation campaigns and by ensuring that their platforms aren’t used to incite or plan violence.

Finally, ordinary citizens can help, too — perhaps most of all. As the jurist Learned Hand said in 1944, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it . . . while it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.” This is as true now as it was then: When people unite to demand democracy and the rule of law, even repressive regimes can be stopped in their tracks. Mass mobilization is no guarantee that our democracy will survive — but if things go as badly as our exercises suggest they might, a sustained, nonviolent protest movement may be America’s best and final hope.

The president with members of his family on the final night of the Republican convention last month. Some fear that Trump may not concede if he loses the election in November. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/04/white-house-racial-sensitivity-training/

Politics

White House directs federal agencies to cancel race-related training sessions it calls ‘un-American propaganda’

Administration seeks list of contracts for those that refer to ‘white privilege,’ according to memo

 President Trump is moving to revamp federal agencies’ racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them as “divisive” and “un-American,” according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

By

Josh Dawsey and 

Jeff Stein

September 5, 2020 at 7:52 a.m. PDT

In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought says Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on these training sessions. Vought says OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to training sessions involving “white privilege” or “critical race theory,” and do everything possible within the law to cancel those contracts, the memo states.

The memo, released on Friday, also tells all federal agencies to identify and if possible cancel contracts that involve teaching that America is an “inherently racist or evil country.”

Trump’s push to amplify racism unnerves Republicans who have long enabled him

“The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,” the memo states.

STATEMENT: A Message from State Board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell to NC Voters#ncpol #YourVoteCountsNC pic.twitter.com/eDdXBuAhxV

— NCSBE (@NCSBE) September 3, 2020

Today, President Trump outrageously encouraged NCians to break the law in order to help him sow chaos in our election. Make sure you vote, but do NOT vote twice! I will do everything in my power to make sure the will of the people is upheld in November.

— Josh Stein (@JoshStein_) September 2, 2020

Trump suggests that people in North Carolina stress-test the security of their elections systems by voting twice — an act that constitutes the kind of voter fraud the president has railed against. ⁦@maggieNYT⁩ ⁦⁦@stefsaul⁩ https://t.co/F0wg0fjHPN

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) September 3, 2020

https://www.wonkette.com/more-us-troops-are-riding-with-biden-than-saluting-president-bone-spurs

More US Troops Riding With Biden Than Saluting President Bone Spurs

Stephen Robinson

August 31, 2020 01:36 PM

Active-duty service members aren't crazy about the current commander-in-chief. According to a recent poll from the Military Times, almost half of troops (49.9 percent) have an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump, and a significant 42 percent “strongly disapprove" of Trump's presidency. Forty-three percent of service members are riding with Joe Biden, giving him a six-point lead over Trump.

Another 13 percent said they plan to vote for a third-party candidate, and nearly 9 percent said they plan on skipping the election altogether. About 40 percent of troops surveyed identified as Republican or Libertarian, 16 percent Democrats, and 44 percent independent or another party.

"It's fair to say that Trump is not as popular as Republican nominees have been in the past among this group," said Peter Feaver, a White House adviser to former President George W. Bush who now works as a political science professor at Duke University. "The bottom line is that in 2020, Trump can't be claiming to have overwhelming support in the military."

This is a big blow for Trump. In October 2016, Trump had a 20-point advantage over Hillary Clinton among service members, and in 2012, active and reserve troops overwhelmingly supported Mitt Romney (66 percent) over Barack Obama (26 percent). This is usually a conservative demo, and it's not like Trump is making up ground elsewhere, despite his tweeting nonsense predictions about carrying 15 percent of the Black vote.

Maybe some of them are weirded out by how Trump doesn't seem to care that Vladimir Putin has been paying Taliban fighters bounties for the heads of American troops. Maybe they don't like how Trump continually abandons our allies and puts our own troops in danger.

Maybe troops don't appreciate Trump's scuzzy treatment of actual heroes such as Purple Heart recipient Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who testified in the impeachment of Trump. The president fired Vindman from his post at the National Security Council, and while he was playing tinpot dictator, he fired his twin brother, Yevgeny Vindman, as well. Alexander Vindman was escorted out of the White House like a common criminal because he dared testify truthfully against common criminal Trump.
CNN reported at the time of the purge:

An adviser to Trump said the firings of the major impeachment witnesses was meant to send a message that siding against the President will not be tolerated.

"Flushing out the pipes," the adviser told CNN. "It was necessary."

Jesus, they're all a bunch of scumbags.

Respected military leaders such as retired Marine general and former Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have denounced Trump in searing public statements. Michael Schmidt's upcoming book says former White House chief of staff John Kelly, also a retired Marine general, was continually surprised that Trump demanded absolute loyalty to himself personally instead of "the Constitution and the rule of law." Kelly apparently never saw a single mobster movie.

Active duty service members' disapproval of the president has risen 12 points in the past four years. This is a stark contrast from Trump's relationship with law enforcement, which has remained strong during his reign of terror. They arguably share the same reductive view of the world: “Us" vs. “Them." They also don't like “squealers."

Trump presents himself as a “champion" of the armed forces. He's claimed he “completely rebuilt the military" (an absurd lie) and that he gave troops their first pay raise in a decade (a more restrained lie but still bullshit). However, earlier this year, he dismissed the possible traumatic brain injuries troops suffered during an airstrike as “headaches." He's overruled military commanders and reversed punishments on MAGA war criminals.

Biden's standing in this poll probably isn't entirely about Trump. He has more to offer than just bluster, and troops generally appreciate the value of maintaining our alliances. They don't actually want to fight never-ending wars, whereas the police believe “public safety" is only achieved through unyielding force.

The former vice president's late son, Beau, joined the military in 2003 and served in Iraq from 2008 to 2009, which is far more than Trump's twin Fredos ever contributed to the nation's defense.

Here's an awesome clip of Biden smacking around former Attorney General John Ashcroft and explaining how torture's not just gross but also endangers the lives of US soldiers, including his son.

WRAP Attorney General testifies on Iraq tortureyoutu.be

[Military Times / CNN ]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.

1/ President Trump, who never served in the military, canceled a 2018 visit to a cemetery where American troops are buried, saying: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” https://t.co/25GkwyjjJM

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) September 3, 2020

https://www.wonkette.com/dear-us-military-this-is-what-your-commander-in-chief-really-thinks-of-you

Dear US Military: This Is What Your Commander-In-Chief Really Thinks Of You

Evan Hurst

September 04, 2020 08:48 AM

Hey, remember that time in 2018 when Trump was supposed to go to the WWII veterans cemetery in France, but he whined on Twitter that he couldn't go because the Secret Service refused to take him by helicopter or by car? Remember how everybody knew it was because he was a fucking baby who didn't want to get his ugly hair wet? Remember how he also usually can't be bothered to visit the Arlington National Cemetery, five seconds from his house, to lay a fucking wreath on Veterans Day?

Boy oh boy, does Jeffrey Goldberg have a story for you in The Atlantic. If you've ever sworn an oath to protect America in its military, or if your son or daughter swore that oath, you're going to need to read this:

Trump rejected the idea of the visit [to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Paris in 2018] because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers." In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed.

It's not just John McCain, you guys. It's not just Khizr and Ghazala Khan, who lost their son Army Capt. Humayun S.M. Khan in Iraq and who spoke at the 2016 (and 2020) Democratic National Convention. It's all troops.

Makes us wonder if he thinks American troops who get murdered in Afghanistan because Vladimir Putin bought their heads from Taliban fighters are also "losers" and "suckers." Oh wait, did we say makes us wonder? We meant makes us assume. (He also reportedly thinks people who are merely wounded in war are "suckers.")

Goldberg tells the story of Belleau Wood in 1918 during World War I, where the US Marines stopped the Germans in their tracks on the way to Paris — if you are a Marine, Belleau Wood is legendary — and reports further:

Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, "Who were the good guys in this war?" He also said that he didn't understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.

Different war, but we are pretty sure we know which side Trump would have been on in 1939, too.

Y'all, we are two fuckin' paragraphs into Goldberg's piece.

Back to John McCain, though, here's more of what Trump says about McCain, and specifically about McCain's military service, behind closed doors, when he thinks nobody can hear him:

When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, "We're not going to support that loser's funeral," and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. "What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser," the president told aides.

Is it OK if we just keep copy/pasting? Because we don't know how to spell the pit in our stomach right now.

Trump's understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president's views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a "loser" for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II.

It's not just John McCain and Humayun Khan and the troops Putin pays to murder. It's also George H.W. Bush. And all the rest of the troops, it seems.

Goldberg discusses how, on top of just being a fucking monster in general, Trump literally doesn't understand why people would volunteer to join the military, which jibes with something in Mary Trump's book about Trump threatening to disown Don Jr. if he joined the military.

He also tells the story of Trump going to Arlington National Cemetery with then-Department of Homeland Security secretary John Kelly on Memorial Day 2017. There, Kelly's son Robert, who was killed in Afghanistan, is buried. Trump, at Robert Kelly's grave, said, to Robert Kelly's father, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?" Goldberg reports that at first Kelly thought Trump was just awkwardly expressing a nice sentiment about how those guys gave up everything, including their lives. That is not what Trump was expressing.

"He can't fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself," one of Kelly's friends, a retired four-star general, told me. "He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there's no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There's no money in serving the nation." Kelly's friend went on to say, "Trump can't imagine anyone else's pain. That's why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he's buried."

Donald Trump is unrecognizable to us as a human being. He's something ... different.

Goldberg has sources who think Trump is like this because he doesn't understand that the military's allegiance is to the Constitution and not him personally. (Fascist.) Some think it's that greedy selfish worldview that doesn't get why anybody would do anything for anyone else. (Sociopath.) He also appears to think that people in the military are stupid. (Who the fuck is this asshole to call somebody else stupid?)

Here is a thing Trump said about the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, "That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?"

Another possibility Goldberg's military sources cites is that President Bone Spurs is such a sniveling crying chickenshit, and that's why he's like this:

"He has a lot of fear," one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump's views said. "He doesn't see the heroism in fighting." Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered.

Hey, US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and all their parents — you voting for Joe Biden yet? Because Biden's late son Beau was an Iraq War veteran. He understands. Unlike this sad excuse for a human.

Maybe this will help. Because you all know how Trump loves a military parade. According to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's new book, for his inauguration parade, he wanted them to "make it look like North Korea." But there's one thing Trump did not want at his military parade. Something he thinks is gross.

In a 2018 White House planning meeting for [a military parade], Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. "Nobody wants to see that," he said.

Well then.

The Trump campaign and White House spent pretty much the entire night freaking out about this story and issuing panicked denials, and they're on the internet if you want to read them. Hint: Two of their very credible people refuting the story are Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Stephen Miller. The others aren't any more believable. They also say some emails from the Navy about the weather PROVE that Trump couldn't possibly have been freaking out about his dumbass hair or shitting on WWI dead that day in France. We are sure we'll have a whole post later about how hilariously bad their denials were, and just how many bricks they shit. That is also on the internet, assuming you were to give a fuck about denials from the Trump administration.

However, if anybody is skeptical about any of this, first of all this is Jeffrey Goldberg and this is The Atlantic. These are not lazy reporters. But AP military reporter James LaPorta confirmed the story within an hour. So there's that. The Washington Post also got its own reporting on it, with some stories Goldberg didn't get:

A former senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, confirmed to The Washington Post that the president frequently made disparaging comments about veterans and soldiers missing in action, referring to them at times as "losers."

In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn't understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Trump believed people who served in the Vietnam War must be "losers" because they hadn't gotten out of it, according to a person familiar with the comments.

We're sure by the time this story appears in the print edition of Wonkette, there will be more confirmations.

This is who Donald Trump is. Can we go vote now?

[The Atlantic / Washington Post]

PLAN YOUR FUCKING VOTE.

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!

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Last night

Trump denies report by The Atlantic he made disparaging remarks about fallen World War I troops and John McCain in 2018

According to an article published by The Atlantic on Thursday, President Trump referred to fallen Marines who fought in World War I as "losers" and "suckers" while deciding not to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris during a visit to France in 2018. The article also says the President made similar comments about veteran and former Arizona senator John McCain after he died in 2018. A White House representative called the article “offensive and patently false,” saying the president “holds the military in the highest regard.” President Trump responded saying, “I never called John a loser and swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on, that I never called our great fallen soldiers anything other than heroes.”

Trump rarely speaks to press upon returning to DC. Can't recall when he ever has. But he did tonight in the dark to vigorously deny the Atlantic story. "I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes...What animal would say such a thing?” pic.twitter.com/SMP7NdSo1Q

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 4, 2020

"GIIIIIIIINA" = CHINA


https://www.wonkette.com/for-sadly-not-the-last-time-giiiiiiina-isnt-doing-sh-t-to-help-joe-biden

For (Sadly Not) The Last Time, 'GIIIIIIINA Isn't Doing Sh*t To Help Joe Biden

Evan Hurst

September 03, 2020 09:15 AM

That is who is helping.

Clearly, the message has gone out! Donald Trump and his merry band of racist shit-fascists have decided that one of their most potent weapons to help Russia help them attack the 2020 election is to muddy the waters by baselessly saying 'GIIIIIIINA is attacking the election to help Joe Biden win. After all, if two of our adversaries are doing it, they cancel each other out, obviously!

Verified absolute moron DNI John Ratcliffe said it on Fox News this weekend, claiming that threats from 'GIIIIIIINA are much greater than they are from Russia, which might be true, except for how it's Russia attacking this election, not 'GIIIIIIINA. The entire Republican National Convention was 'GIIIIINA 'GIIIIINA 'GIIIIIINA. Donald Trump himself is saying it. 'GIIIIIIIIIINA.

But wait, is 'GIIIIIIINA doing anything to the election? Because we know, from the statement from William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), that Russia is literally right now actively engaged in an attack on the 2020 election for Trump's benefit. And 'GIIIIIIIINA? "We assess that China prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing sees as unpredictable – does not win reelection."
Oh, they PREFER that? Has Xi Jinping put a Biden sign in his yard or something? Is he sharing Kamala .gifs on his MySpace?

China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China's interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China. Although China will continue to weigh the risks and benefits of aggressive action, its public rhetoric over the past few months has grown increasingly critical of the current Administration's COVID-19 response, closure of China's Houston Consulate, and actions on other issues. For example, it has harshly criticized the Administration's statements and actions on Hong Kong ...

Gotcha. China has said things publicly that are mean to Donald Trump, and they certainly have policy preferences for what they would like America to do, and that is somehow the same, in traitorous Republicans' eyes. Just like a few Ukrainian politicians posted "FUK TRUMP" memes on their Facebooks in 2016, and they act like that is the same as Russia's actual covert attack on the election.

Natasha Bertrand has a piece this week in Politico on this coordinated GOP strategy, with quotes from actual people inside the intelligence apparatus about how full of shit they are.

"China is the bigger and longer term threat to U.S. national security," said an official who has seen the underlying intelligence. "But it does not pose the most acute threat to this election. Russia does."

See how that is the same thing as what John Ratcliffe says, except for how Ratcliffe left out that last part, just like actual fascist GOP Senator Tom Cotton left it out in an op-ed for Fox News? Let's call it lying by omission, since that is the common expression for that. Let's also call it doing Russia's bidding, because it just fucking is. (And he's not the only Trump Cabinet-level official doing it, either, OH HEY CHAD WOLF.)

We didn't watch the whole Ratcliffe Fox interview, just the parts about how Ratcliffe is ending in-person briefings on current election threats for members of Congress (see: doing Russia's bidding), but Bertrand shares a quote that falls more into the category of outright lying, as opposed to just a sin of omission:

Ratcliffe [said] that "in an unclassified setting, I can't get into a whole lot of details, other than to say that China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is doing."

Right. Except not right, and runs directly counter to Evanina's statement above. (Evanina and the NCSC are part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, by the way. This is all coming from the same office.)

"Does Beijing have the capability to wake up tomorrow and say, 'we really want to mess with the election' and interfere on a huge scale? Yes," the official said. "But do they want to do that? And have they been doing that? That's not borne out by the intelligence."

In other words China could do this, if China wanted to. But the actual intelligence, which Ratcliffe is apparently willing to lie through his teeth about on Fox News, says nope.
More from Bertrand's sources, who are automatically more trustworthy than John Ratcliffe, whose first nomination for DNI was tanked because of how he'd lied about his resume:

Beijing's traditional malign influence operations [...] have not been deployed to boost Biden or sabotage Trump or otherwise wade into the presidential election specifically, officials said, citing the intelligence they'd reviewed. [...]

"The bottom line is they are a significant threat," [a] national security official said. "But they are highly unlikely to act on their capabilities to move the needle."

Golly, can two things be true at once? Can China be a long-term threat to the US but simultaneously not have an interest in fucking around in our election like Russia does? Donald Trump and his ass-sucking buddies would like you to believe those two things cannot be true, because they're trying to cover up the fact that Trump and Russia both are revisiting the scene of the crime and trying to do to the election what they did in 2016. Don't let them get away with it.

One more quote from an actual non-liar who's seen the intelligence? Have one more!

"I have been briefed in person on the threats to our elections, and I've reviewed underlying documents to support judgments by the intelligence community," [another person] familiar with the intelligence said. "The evidence reveals Russia as the only country actively trying to help the president and hurt Biden. Sure, other countries have vast intelligence resources. But Russia is aiming and firing theirs at our election."

It's Russia. It's only Russia. If another country decides to try to "help," we'll let you know. But it's Russia. Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia.

Fucking Russia. And their little troll baby in the White House, Donald Trump.

Sixty-one days until the election. Vote like your fucking life depends on it, because it literally does.

[Politico]
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https://reason.com/2020/09/03/fosta-is-unconstitutional-argue-sexual-freedom-advocates-and-first-amendment-lawyers-in-new-motion/

The Woodhull Freedom Foundation is suing (again) to get FOSTA ruled unconstitutional. FOSTA—the 2018 "human trafficking" law making it a federal crime to host digital content that promotes prostitution—violates the First and Fifth Amendments, says Woodhull's motion for summary judgment, filed in federal court on August 31. It also takes aim at the law's retroactive scope—FOSTA says you can be punished for violating it even before the law went into effect.

The suit comes after a federal district court dismissed an earlier filing against FOSTA, brought by Woodhull—a nonprofit dedicated "to affirm[ing] and protect[ing] sexual freedom as a fundamental human right"—and fellow plaintiffs The Internet Archive, Human Rights Watch, Eric Koszyk, and Alex Andrews. In January, a federal appeals court reversed the decision and sent the case back to the district court.

You can find their full motion for summary judgment here (and find previous court filings here). "Plaintiffs request a declaratory ruling that FOSTA is unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against its enforcement and application," the motion states. They claim that "FOSTA is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, is a content-based statute that cannot satisfy strict scrutiny, and lacks the necessary scienter requirements to be constitutional" (scienter refers to a person's intent when doing something that the government claims is criminal). "And it explicitly is meant to have retroactive reach in both its criminal and civil applications."

Meanwhile, the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to pave the way for FOSTA's dismantling, has gone nowhere since its introduction last December. Several civil lawsuits—two against Craigslist and one against Mailchimp—are invoking FOSTA in order to accuse these tech companies of being legally liable for "sex trafficking."








https://www.wonkette.com/trump-administration-releases-still-more-census-f-ckery-worst-anthology-ever

Trump Admin Releases 'Still More Census F*ckery,' Worst Anthology Ever

Doktor Zoom

September 02, 2020 02:29 PM

Census worker, 1940. US Census Bureau photo.

In what looks like yet another attempt to rig the Census to build in an advantage for Republicans, the US Census Bureau will be cutting short the "door knocking" portion of this year's Census in some parts of the country. (Guess which parts.) The door knocking portion is the part of the Census where workers go to addresses of people who haven't yet responded to the Census by phone, mail, or online, to make sure the government has the most accurate possible count of the US population. That's after the Census Bureau already cut this year's decennial count short by a full month so it could get the results to Donald Trump before he leaves office.

This isn't just statistics babble. Cutting the count short is likely to result in a lot of poor and minority Americans not being counted, which could skew Congress and government spending in favor of Republican states for the next decade. Yes, even if Trump and Republicans across the board lose in the November election. Hell of a fiendish plan.
NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reported yesterday that the Census Bureau acknowledged door-knocking will wrap up by September 18 or earlier in the San Diego area, where door-knocking is only about a third complete. A Census Bureau spokesperson wouldn't say exactly where else the already-shortened Census will end its in-person count early. But don't worry, the Bureau did at least offer some meaningless bafflegab about not quitting until the job is done, as long as you don't ask too many questions about what counts as "done."

In a statement to NPR after this story was first published, Tim Olson, the bureau's associate director for field operations, said the bureau is "constantly analyzing their workload and projecting how long it might take to complete the workload."

"When the percentage of households reaches a certain threshold, we actually assign the remaining cases to individual census takers who do everything they can to get a result with all the time they have left," Olson said. "We do not give up, even on the hardest of the hard to reach."

But the bureau's public information office has yet to respond to NPR's questions about what criteria the bureau is using to determine when its door knockers, also known as enumerators, are to be assigned the remaining uncounted households and when they have "finished" their work in an area.

Isn't that sweet of them?

Because Census numbers directly affect how many representatives states have in the House, and how federal spending will be apportioned, the Constitution is very specific that a full count of all persons in the US be done every 10 years. Because the COVID-19 pandemic made completing the count more difficult, the Trump administration initially backed the Census Bureau's request for more time to tabulate the results, moving the deadline to deliver results from December 31 of this year to April 31, 2021. House and Senate Democrats had a bill all ready to make the changes, but Mitch McConnell blocked it because he knows all about rigging systems.

Then last month, the Bureau abruptly announced that instead, door-knocking would end on September 30 instead of October 31, cutting off a full month of in-person data collection. Why the change? As Wonkette's own Liz Dye 'splained,

The GOP whispered in Trump's ear that actually they would very much prefer if we didn't count everyone, because acknowledging the reality that most of the population lives in urban areas that vote blue is distinctly unhelpful for Republicans. That's why the only takers on Trump's request to delay the reporting requirement were Democrats. But President Slow Learner has finally grasped the plot and is now working furiously to turn that ship around before he has to hand the captain's chair over to Joe Biden.

That change also followed another Trumpian intervention in the Census, an order telling the Census Bureau not to count undocumented migrants for purposes of congressional apportionment — which is almost certainly illegal as fuck and has spawned more than a half-dozen lawsuits to overturn the order.

That bullshit was a follow-up to the administration's effort to add a citizenship question to the Census, which was so lazy and clumsy that the Supreme Court said fuck no, you idiots, you need to at least pretend there's a reason other than fucking over the browns.
In one of the lawsuits currently making its way through the courts, lawyers for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Asian Americans Advancing Justice argue not just for overturning Trump's order, but also that the Census Bureau revert to its original plan to end the count October 31, and to extend the date for delivering the results to the president to April 2021. If Trump wants to reapportion, he can damn well wait to win the election.

At this point, we won't be surprised if Trump announces the final results of the Census even before the actual count is in, and proclaims he had to go with his best guess, possibly inflating the population of Alabama by ten million, to prevent Antifa from rigging the count.
And if you or anyone you know hasn't yet completed the Census, you can still self-respond online or over the phone through the end of freaking September; please make sure people know that!

[NPR / AP / Photo: US Census Bureau, public domain]

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https://www.wonkette.com/bill-bar-just-a-big-ol-liar-about-absentee-voter-fraud-who-knew

Bill Barr Just A Big Ol' Liar About Absentee Voter Fraud, Who Knew?

Doktor Zoom

September 04, 2020 03:21 PM

During his big interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN Wednesday, Attorney General William P. Barr offered a terrifying example of a real true incident of voter fraud that would really have helped support his claim that voting by mail is dangerously subject to fraud. If it had been true. But it wasn't. Not that reality matters all that much anymore, because he said it on TV, and that makes it a fact that will be repeated by rightwing idiots forever. And if you point them to the thorough debunking the Washington Post published yesterday (here's an un-paywalled Texas Tribune link), they'll just sneer, roll their eyes, and say, "I bet you think Russia's a real country, don't you?"

For all you old stick-in-the-mud fans of "reality," let's break down the lie anyway. First off, just to be clear, this William Barr thing we're about to quote is not true, so remember, this is the fake part, OK?

Barr asserted (falsely!) that absentee ballots are prone to massive fraud (they are not) because

For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected, he — from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?

Except there has never been any such federal indictment. As WaPo explains, Barr badly mangled the details of a Texas investigation into election fraud in a city council election in Texas, which yielded a guilty plea to one (1) misdemeanor charge involving a single (one, 1) improperly marked ballot. Not 1,700. Which you have to admit does have the numeral "1" in it.

Although a Justice Department spokesperson said Barr had merely been working from an "inaccurate" summary of the case he'd looked at before the interview, the former assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case said the reality was nothing at all like what Barr described:

"That's not what happened at all," said Andy Chatham, who is now in private practice.

"Unfortunately, it speaks volumes to the credibility of Attorney General Barr when he submits half-truths and alternative facts as clear evidence of voter fraud without having so much as even contacted me or the district attorney's office for an understanding of the events that actually occurred," [Chatham] added later.

Chatham did work on an investigation into suspected absentee ballot fraud in Dallas County, but he told the Post that the guy who took the guilty plea may well have been part of a bigger ratfucking scheme that was never actually consummated. Another prosecutor who worked on the case, Mike Snipes,

said investigators initially suspected there were "potentially 1,700 fraudulent ballots, but we did not uncover that, at all."

"We actually thought there was voter fraud initially, and we couldn't find it except that little tiny case," he said. Snipes said he could not address Barr's comments specifically.

There certainly seemed to be something weird going on. A bunch of voters, many of them elderly, got notices in the mail telling them the absentee ballots they'd requested would soon be mailed to them, but they hadn't actually requested a ballot. About 700 ballot applications had the name "Jose Rodriguez" listed as the person who helped fill out the form, which sure looked fishy. (The Post incorrectly says they were "ballots," but that sounded wrong to us; a Dallas Observer story is the source of the error. The photo in the story is clearly a ballot application, and other Dallas Observer stories got it right.)
Thing is, Chatham tells the Post, despite the weirdness with those applications, the mail-in ballots that were actually voted didn't seem to favor any one candidate, though that's what you'd expect with a fraud scheme.

[The] ballots were divided among candidates, and some were blank. When investigators approached the voters who were said to have cast them, Chatham said, the voters generally said the ballots were legitimate and cast for the candidate of their choosing.

"We didn't find any evidence of widespread voter fraud, and instead the ballots that were returned were consistent with the voter's choice," Chatham said.

A 28-year-old dude named Miguel Hernandez pleaded guilty to filling in and forging the signature on one ballot that he subsequently collected from a voter, accepting a misdemeanor charge for "improperly returning a marked ballot," down from the initial third-degree felony charge of illegal voting; he was sentenced to 180 days in jail. His defense attorney, Bruce Anton, told the Post that

as best he could remember, Hernandez was hired by others to canvass neighborhoods for mail-in ballots, which he would then turn over to those who hired him for possible alteration. He said that, on a good day, Hernandez might collect 12 ballots. "1,700? Not a prayer in the world," Anton said.

There's your massive ballot fraud: It looked like a scheme was concocted, but it fell apart, because ballot fraud schemes have to somehow get around security measures and that's really hard to do. The applications may have been requested illegally, but as far as we can tell, "Jose Rodriguez" was never found and convicted (there were rumors, but only Hernandez was convicted). Ultimately, a bunch of people got ballots they hadn't expected, then voted. Pulling off election fraud is hard, it turns out.

Even the 2018 scheme in North Carolina that briefly resulted in a "win" for a Republican congressional candidate unraveled as soon as some smart cookies noticed the absentee ballot results in two counties were lopsidedly in favor of the "winner," as compared to the in-person votes. That led to a new election, and of course to Republicans screaming about how Democrats do voter fraud all the time.

So Bill Barr was wrong, and we're sure he'll now go out of his way, when talking about voting by mail, to point out he was mistaken.

[WaPo (Texas Tribune no-paywall version) / Dallas Morning News / Dallas Observer]
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RANDOM



https://www.damemagazine.com/2020/08/31/why-people-believe-in-genuinely-fake-news/ 

In July, The Washington Post estimated that, as president, Donald J. Trump has told about 20,000 lies. In a press conference on August 8, Trump betrayed the truth yet again, and he got called on it. He gloated about his administration having passed the Veterans Choice Act, a piece of legislation that made it possible for veterans to use their government health benefits at providers other than VA hospitals. In reality, it was signed into law by former President Barack Obama. 

Trump’s August 8 press conference was held at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The Real Deal estimates that it costs $350,000 to join.

“I’ve just signed two bills that are great for our vets,” Trump announced to the crowd, which included members of the golf club. “Our vets are very special. We passed Choice, as you know, Veterans Choice, and Veterans Accountability. They’ve been trying to get that passed for decades and decades and decades, and no president has ever been able to do it. And we got it done.”

“Why do you keep saying you passed Veterans Choice?” called out CBS News correspondent Paula Reid. 

When Trump ignored her and tried to call on another reporter, members of the golf club cheered loudly. 

Reid tried again: “You said that you passed Veterans Choice. It was passed in 2014.” [Inaudible because of more cheers] ” … It was a false statement, sir.”

The new round of cronies’ cheers had nearly drowned her out. Trump seemed to recognize the commotion as an opportunity for him to escape a tough moment to buoyant sounds. As he walked off the stage, his band joyfully played the opening notes of the bubbly disco hit “YMCA”—which the co-founder of the Village People has asked him not to play. 

Reid gets plenty of points for her insistence. According to CNN, she may be the first reporter to challenge Trump’s alternate fact about that particular Act. That alone is remarkable, considering CNN estimates Trump has claimed credit for the Veterans Choice Act 150 times. 

Why haven’t reporters routinely challenged Trump on this claim? Why didn’t his loyalists take issue with his declaration a few days later that former Vice-President Joe Biden will “hurt the Bible, hurt God”? Why does any American believe Trump about anything, given that his lies rain like a plague of frogs from heaven?

One answer may be that it is part of human nature to embrace as possible ideas that are clearly improbable. How else to explain children’s belief that a big, round man can slip down their chimneys on Christmas Eve? Or Catholics’ belief that, more than 2,000 years ago, a virgin gave birth to a boy whom, all these years after his death, people “eat” in ritual gatherings?  What about the Mormon idea that the as-yet-undiscovered planet Kolob is the single planet geographically closest to God’s throne? What about the smokers who discount the odds that tobacco can kill them? What about the people who believe that, even though face masks stop the spread of the droplets that carry SARS-CoV-2, masks won’t stop the spread of the disease the virus causes? 

How and Why We Believe the Unbelievable

Psychologists credit common, unconscious, cognitive tricks for people’s ability to perform the psychological jujutsu necessary to temporarily misplace their reason. 

• Cognitive dissonance describes the psychological distress caused by trying to consider as true two very inconsistent statements. For example, “Trump always tells it like it is” is psychologically inconsistent with “Trump has repeatedly lied about signing the Veterans Choice Act.” To rid themselves of the discomfort caused by the dissonance, people either toss out one of the pieces of information or interpret one or both in a new way. “Trump has repeatedly lied” might get tossed, in which case “Trump always tells it like it is” can stay.

• Confirmation bias (a.k.a. “my side bias”) describes people’s reluctance even to take into consideration information that is discordant with their beliefs. When they are cognitively biased, people welcome only intelligence that tells them they’ve been right all along. 

These two by no means constitute an exhaustive list of the ways people fool themselves. By and large, they can be grouped under the rubric motivated reasoning, which means constructing and evaluating arguments in ways that bring about a preferred conclusion. Motivated reasoning assures people that they are fundamentally in command of important facts. That in and of itself comes with such a huge, energy-saving upside that it may be coded into human DNA. Early humans who relied on motivated reasoning wouldn’t have needed to hide every single time they saw a swaying blade of savanna grass. They might instead have assured themselves, for example, that “Nah, lions don’t hunt at noon” and gone about gathering roots, which they needed to do lest they starve. 

As useful as motivated reasoning may always have been to humans, in the modern world it can easily lead voters far afield of the truth. This can happen to the great satisfaction of politicians who lie. 

Which, of course, many do. 

The Good Old Days of the Good Old Lies

As Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers revealed, former President Richard Nixon lied to conceal the late-1960s “secret war” in Cambodia and Laos. Nixon also lied when claiming he had nothing to do with the cover-up of the Watergate break-in. And former President George H. W. Bush’s lie that he deployed troops to the Gulf in 1990 to “assist Saudi Arabia in the defense of its homeland” was revealed when a St. Petersburg Times reporter obtained a satellite photo showing only an empty desert where the White House claimed 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks were swarming.

Those lies cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Even so, they represent a time when lies seemed, well, more reliable than they do now. 

Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. According to Stanley, the fascist political playbook calls for lies of a different sort than American politicians typically use. Where Bush and Nixon lied to conceal what they’d done and why, fascist politicians also use lies to convince a susceptible population they are exceptional and other nations, religions, or races are holding them back from glorious destinies. 

Fascist politicians then create an entirely new reality that matches the lie. 

For example, Adolf Hitler bathed his Christian followers in Poland in tales of how superior they were to the Jews, who he said were filthy and homeless and conspiring to keep Christians from the future they deserved. Then, he took away the homes of Warsaw’s Jews and crowded them into a ghetto, where he starved them. As they died dirty and homeless in the streets, he sent documentary crews. The images of emaciated Jews in tattered clothing expiring here and there made them as a group look scary to Hitler’s Christian followers in precisely the way Hitler wanted. 

In a conversation regarding the current Trump presidential campaign, Stanley pointed out ways in which our president leans on some of Hitler’s rhetorical tricks. Trump pits ethnicities and racial groups against each other. He implies that people of his own heritage (white) deserve more than they’re currently getting, and that certain villains (immigrants) are standing in their way. And if he’s not directly abetting QAnon’s “deep state” stories of conspiracies by shadowy figures, elites, Jews, and even the Elders of Zion against Trump and his supporters, he’s not adequately discounting them. 

Trump also lies in a particularly unusual way, according to Stanley.

“When he says truly preposterous things, Trump isn’t trying to deceive us. He’s not offering reasonable beliefs like George W. Bush’s ‘there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq’ that he hopes we’ll latch onto. He’s just showing off how ludicrous he dares to be,” Stanley said. “His supporters love it when he says ridiculously untrue things that he assumes they won’t believe. Really, the more outlandish Trump can be with some of his lies, the more fun his followers have listening to him. He seems like a winner, and they want to be on the winning side.”

Mexico will pay for the wall. Windmills cause cancer. The coronavirus is a Democratic hoax. They all make sense, if not as truths, then as political feints.

We May Actually Be Sick of Winning

On May 26, 2016, Trump told a crowd in Billings, Montana, “We’re going to win. We’re going to win so much. We’re going to win at trade, we’re going to win at the border. We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning, you’re going to come to me and go, ‘Please, please, we can’t win anymore.’ You’ve heard this one. You’ll say, ‘Please, Mr. President, we beg you sir, we don’t want to win anymore. It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.’” 

Now, almost four years later, the Pew Research Center has announced evidence that Americans may indeed be getting sick, if not of winning, at least of Trump. On March 5, 2020, Pew released the results of a survey conducted in early February, well before the coronavirus emergency had descended on the country and the emptiness of Trump’s showboating had become fatally apparent. In those pre-pandemic weeks, only about one-third of Republicans and 15 percent of Americans responding to the Pew survey said they approved of Trump’s “conduct.” 

Then, in a Quinnipiac poll published on July 15 (well into the pandemic), two-thirds of survey participants said they didn’t trust information Trump gave about the coronavirus, though they did trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

What happened to turn the volume down on joy born of buffoonery? 

It probably wasn’t the strength of Democrats’ rational arguments. First of all, Trump hadn’t really been telling plausible lies with which to argue. But even if he had, hundreds of university studies have shown the cognitive tricks people use to help them defend their beliefs are often strong enough to withstand even the most artful lines of reasoning. For example, in a 2017 study about the effectiveness of logical arguments, researchers at the Slovak Academy of Sciences didn’t try to change minds about the highly emotional topic of abortion. They merely showed study participants several series of three-sentence syllogisms; two propositions were always followed by a logical conclusion. One was: “All dogs are mammals. Some carnivores are dogs. Some carnivores are mammals.” Another: “All human beings should be protected. Some foetuses should be protected. Some foetuses are human beings.” That final statement about foetuses is not an argument for or against abortion. Even so, the researchers encountered so much resistance from people emotionally invested in the issue that they couldn’t get a statistically significant number of them to acknowledge the neutral logic that the foetus sequence builds. 

Another example: In a 1979 Stanford University study, researchers exposed participants who supported the idea of capital punishment to rational arguments against it, and they exposed participants who were against the idea of capital punishment to arguments in favor of it. Rather than change their minds, by and large, participants became more entrenched in their original attitudes about capital punishment. This digging-in-of-heels has happened in so many studies that researchers call it the “backfire effect.”

With the election approaching, many people who see a fascist tint in Trump’s eyes are beginning to scramble for ways to counter whatever appeal he has left. When asked by phone about potential practical approaches they might use, Stanley offered “local journalism” as one possible answer. “When people see on their local news that their neighbors’ crops are dying, they may object to Trump’s climate policies,” he said. “When they see in the local paper that the police budget dwarfs the school budget and the rest of the town’s budget… Well, local news matters.”

Meanwhile, some activists are employing a get-out-the-vote method called “deep canvassing.” Resigned to the fact that rhetoric isn’t going to sway Trump supporters away from firmly held positions, deep canvassers approach infrequent and swing voters to talk not about issues but about friends, family, and core values. The canvassers divulge personal stories revealing the motivations behind their own political preferences and encourage voters to share their stories. In the conversations that ensue, canvassers respond to voters’ expressions of appreciation for decency and kindness by observing that such vital qualities are not apparent in Trump’s lies and divisiveness. The fundamental message that deep canvassers convey is that a vote for Trump works against what the voter has said they cherish most.

Does deep canvassing work? A small 2016 study published in Science Magazine found that 56 canvassers helped Miami voters shift their attitudes about transgender people in a way that held true for three months. And from the field of research into conspiracy theories, there is some indication that just talking to people about their ideals may direct them away from endorsing extreme views.  

In a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in January 2020, social psychologist Kai-Tak Poon of the University of Hong Kong investigated why some people endorse conspiracy theories and why some people do not.  First, in a series of three experiments, Poon and his team demonstrated that people who feel socially ostracized are more likely than others to endorse conspiracy theories. Then, the team engaged 174 people in a fourth experiment. They asked participants to immerse themselves in feelings of social rejection, after which some of them were invited to describe their core values and to talk about why those values were important to them. The researchers found that participants who’d been given a chance to verbally affirm matters about which they deeply cared were less likely than others to fall prey to ideas about dark actors working secretly behind the scenes to create mayhem.

Given these early signs that open-hearted conversation may have a politically moderating effect, should Americans take to the streets, not in protest but to chat with their neighbors about what’s important to them? Would that be a valuable contribution to the democratic process? What if knocks on the door or phone calls frighten people? What if almost everyone is by now too afraid to speak openly?

Maybe gently starting those conversations anyway would be the kind of “good trouble” civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis wrote about on the last day of his life. “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble,” he wrote. “Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”

We can’t argue people away from their convictions. But if we can talk to them, maybe they can think a little more mildly, and then vote.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-solve-a-rubiks-cube-in-5-seconds-or-less/

Solve rates are pretty straightforward: In competition, elite cubers like Zemdegs average just shy of 10 turns per second. (It’s mesmerizing to watch, and makes fidget spinners seem quaint.) As for the fewest number of turns required to solve the puzzle, that’s trickier to pin down.

For one thing, it depends on the complexity of a cube’s scramble. At one end of the spectrum are configurations that require almost no effort to solve. There exist 18 starting positions, for instance, that require a single turn of a single face to resolve. Such simple scrambles would probably never be permitted in a tournament. Then again, the odds of them ever cropping up at random during a competition are, shall we say, small.

“There are more than 43 quintillion ways to scramble a Rubik’s cube,” says computer scientist Tom Rokicki. “That’s more positions than there are grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches.”

Forty-three quintillion—43,252,003,274,489,856,000 to be exact—is the kind of number that defies analysis. Which is why, for many years, no one knew for certain how many moves were required to solve the cube's most Gordian scrambles. But in 2010, Rokicki and a small team of computer scientists convinced Google to let them brute-force the problem by using the company’s computers to find the most efficient solution to all 43 billion billion starting configurations. Their proof by exhaustion would have taken a normal computer decades to perform, but Google’s machines cut the compute time to a few weeks. In the end, Rokicki’s team proved that every Rubik’s Cube scramble can be solved in 20 moves, and that the vast majority of them can be solved in even fewer.

https://www.wired.com/story/even-huge-molecules-follow-the-quantum-worlds-bizarre-rules/

MAGNIFY A SPECK of dirt a thousand times, and suddenly it no longer seems to play by the same rules. Its outline, for example, won’t look well-defined most of the time and will resemble a diffuse, sprawling cloud. That’s the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics. “In some books, you’ll find they say a particle is in various places at once,” says physicist Markus Arndt of the University of Vienna in Austria. “Whether that really happens is a matter of interpretation.”

Another way of putting it: Quantum particles sometimes act like waves, spread out in space. They can slosh into each other and even back onto themselves. But if you poke at this wave-like object with certain instruments, or if the object interacts in specific ways with nearby particles, it loses its wavelike properties and starts acting like a discrete point—a particle. Physicists have observed atoms, electrons, and other minutiae transitioning between wave-like and particle-like states for decades.

But at what size do quantum effects no longer apply? How big can something be and still behave like both a particle and a wave? Physicists have struggled to answer that question because the experiments have been nearly impossible to design.

Now, Arndt and his team have circumvented those challenges and observed quantum wave-like properties in the largest objects to date—molecules composed of 2,000 atoms, the size of some proteins. The size of these molecules beats the previous record by two and a half times. To see this, they injected the molecules into a 5-meter-long tube. When the particles hit a target at the end, they didn’t just land as randomly scattered points. Instead, they formed an interference pattern, a striped pattern of dark and light stripes that suggests waves colliding and combining with each other. They published the work today in Nature Physics.

'Divinity Consultants' are Now Designing Sacred Rituals for Some Corporations (nytimes.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Monday August 31, 2020 @03:34AM from the funerals-for-projects dept.

"They go by different names: ritual consultants, sacred designers, soul-centered advertisers," reports the New York Times, describing "a new corporate clergy" working as "divinity consultants" and "designing sacred rituals for corporations."

They have degrees from divinity schools. Their business is borrowing from religious tradition to bring spiritual richness to corporate America. In simpler times, divinity schools sent their graduates out to lead congregations or conduct academic research. Now there is a more office-bound calling: the spiritual consultant. Those who have chosen this path have founded agencies — some for-profit, some not — with similar-sounding names: Sacred Design Lab, Ritual Design Lab, Ritualist.

They blend the obscure language of the sacred with the also obscure language of management consulting to provide clients with a range of spiritually inflected services, from architecture to employee training to ritual design. Their larger goal is to soften cruel capitalism, making space for the soul, and to encourage employees to ask if what they are doing is good in a higher sense. Having watched social justice get readily absorbed into corporate culture, they want to see if more American businesses are ready for faith. "We've seen brands enter the political space," said Casper ter Kuile, a co-founder of Sacred Design Lab. Citing a Vice report, he added: "The next white space in advertising and brands is spirituality...."

Ezra Bookman founded Ritualist, which describes itself as "a boutique consultancy transforming companies and communities through the art of ritual," last year in Brooklyn. He has come up with rituals for small firms for events like the successful completion of a project — or, if one fails, a funeral. "How do we help people process the grief when a project fails and help them to move on from it?" Mr. Bookman said. Messages on the start-up's Instagram feed read like a kind of menu for companies who want to buy operational rites a la carte: "A ritual for purchasing your domain name (aka your little plot of virtual land up in the clouds)." "A ritual for when you get the email from LegalZoom that you've been officially registered as an LLC."
The articles notes there are problems when combining the corporate with the religious.

For one thing, "It's hard to exhort workers to give their professional activities transcendental meaning when, at the same time, those workers can be terminated."

https://www.wonkette.com/christians-against-dinosaurs-group-fails-to-force-arizona-t-rex-into-extinction

'Christians Against Dinosaurs' Group Fails To Force Arizona T. Rex Into Extinction

Robyn Pennacchia

August 31, 2020 12:43 PM

There is a giant fiberglass Tyrannosaurus Rex outside of a Tucson, Arizona, McDonald's franchise, at the corner of Tanque Verde and Grant, and it will remain there for the foreseeable future, despite the complaints of a group calling themselves "Christians Against Dinosaurs."

The group, which primarily exists on Facebook, started a campaign to get the franchise owners to take the dinosaur down, on account of how they believe statues of dinosaurs are a violation of their Christian beliefs. The owners, who were alerted to the campaign by customers who saw the Facebook post, have made it clear that the T. rex, which does not seem to have a name, is not going anywhere.

Christians Against Dinosaurs is primarily a Facebook-based group that rails against "Big Paleo" and "dinolies," as well as anything dinosaur-related geared to children, such as costumes and statues outside of fast food joints. It's full of anti-dinosaur memes and also "proof" that dinosaurs never could have existed.

There is something of a Poe's Law situation going on. It is honestly very difficult to tell if the "Christians Against Dinosaurs" group is just satire or if it's for real. It is not that much more batshit than the theories one might find on the ridiculous conservative Christian creationist website "Answers in Genesis":

Dinosaurs were created by God on Day 6 of creation, approximately 6,000 years ago, and were originally vegetarian. During the global Flood, many were buried and fossilized but two of each kind survived on Noah's Ark. They eventually died out, due to human activity, climate changes, or other factors.

Or creationist homeschool mommy Megan Fox's legendary tour of Chicago's Field Museum:

Megan Fox audits the Field Museum's "Evolving Earth" exhibitwww.youtube.com

It's also not that far off from this extremely sincere "Space is Fake" song from Flat Earth Man that I have had stuck in my head all week (which you will be pleased to know does not show up in regular search results anymore).

Space is Fake! - Flat Earth Man Exposes Space Fraud!youtu.be

For their part, the Christians Against Dinosaurs gang insists they are for real.

CAD poster Josh Brown [who wrote the initial post] insists he isn't joking around. Reached through his Facebook page Tuesday night, he said he lives and works in Tucson, and he doesn't see anything funny about "lying to our children."

"It seems to me that every dinosaur story and display or dinosaur themed event is furthering the myth that the Earth is much older than the Bible says it is," Brown said via Facebook Messenger. "Yes, the dinosaur should go unless they're willing to compromise with a plaque of some kind stating that it's a fictional character."

As does their Facebook FAQ:

* Q: This must be a joke page right? Is this satire?
A: No it isn't. The CADmins and the ones that genuinely follow this group all believe dinosaurs never existed. If that's too hard to understand for you maybe this group isn't the right group for you.

* Q: Do you guys actually believe the earth is only 6000 years old?
A: Most of us do not believe this. We aren't YECs [young-earth creationists -- Ed.]. If you don't know what a YEC is than maybe this group isn't the right group for you [Wonkette knows what it is, but yet still questions whether this is the group for us -- Ed.]

* Q: We have so much evidence dinosaurs are real, why don't you show me some Jesus bones?
A: No you don't. You'd know that if you looked into it. And Jesus died upon the cross, was buried and resurrected. On Ascension Day he went to heaven. So there are no Jesus bones to show you. If you refuse to accept this than [sic] maybe this group isn't the right group for you.

hey also have a website — though it does not appear to have been updated since 2016 — and a YouTube channel.

Dinosaur Hoax: Fossilsyoutu.be

Honestly, I want to say it's satire, or atheists LARPing as Christians as a troll, but at this point I really cannot be too sure. A 2015 Daily Dot investigation of the group was similarly unable to draw a bead on whether it was real or not. However, two of the members featured in that article, including the girl in this video, do not appear to be right-wing fundamentalist Christians anymore.

But, you never know. Real or not, the T. rex is staying right where it is.
[Tucson.com]

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Sure, #DefundNPR for reporting simple facts. At this point, REALITY is biased against the right.

For fun, here’s another simple fact: Taxpayer dollars constitute barely a drop in the bucket of @NPR’s budget. Good luck with that defunding. pic.twitter.com/QZDItVUfQk

— Brooks Sherman (@byobrooks) September 1, 2020

All of the people screaming #DefundNPR crack me up. Just because it's called "National Public Radio," that doesn't mean it's federally funded. Why we're at it, why don't we defund the National Football League, National Geographic, and National Treasure 3? https://t.co/WUmXEXtVzG pic.twitter.com/hmIiRIQumM

— Doug (@adhdoug) September 1, 2020

So this tweet is why #DefundNPR is trending. Lucky for us the Republican base are morons. NPR isn’t federally funded. Barely 2% of their budget comes from government. It is listener funded through donations.

So use this as your reason to donate today!https://t.co/RXztFkAUbO https://t.co/HrPOqyZwaO

— Gregg Housh (@GreggHoush) September 1, 2020

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/20/09/01/2218212/microsoft-releases-deepfake-detection-tool-ahead-of-election

Microsoft Releases Deepfake Detection Tool Ahead of Election (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @11:30PM from the perfect-timing dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg:Microsoft is releasing new technology to fight "deepfakes" that can be used to spread false information ahead of the U.S. election. "Microsoft Video Authenticator" analyzes videos and photos and provides a score indicating the chance that they're manipulated, the company said. Deepfakes use artificial intelligence to alter videos or audio to make someone appear to do or say something they didn't. Microsoft's tool aims to identify videos that have been altered using AI, according to a Tuesday blog post by the company.

The digital tool works by detecting features that are unique to deepfakes but that are not necessarily evident to people looking at them. These features -- "which might not be detectable to the human eye" -- include subtle fading and the way boundaries between the fake and real materials blend together in altered footage. The tool will initially be available to political and media organizations "involved in the democratic process," according to the company. A second new Microsoft tool, also announced Tuesday, will allow video creators to certify that their content is authentic and then communicate to online viewers that deepfake technology hasn't been used, based on a Microsoft certification that has "a high degree of accuracy," the post said. Viewers can access this feature through a browser extension.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/20/09/01/2229238/ufo-sightings-are-up-51-amid-coronavirus-data-shows

UFO Sightings Are Up 51% Amid Coronavirus, Data Shows (nypost.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @03:00AM from the cause-and-effect dept.

Data from the nonprofit National UFO Reporting Center, which records UFO-related events, shows that sightings are up 51 percent so far this year compared to the same period in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The New York Post reports:Among the 5,000 sightings recorded this year, 20 percent of them occurred in April -- the height of the COVID-19 crisis and lockdown, according to the news outlet. Peter Davenport, 72, who has directed the organization since 1994, says his phone has been ringing off the hook with reports of extraterrestrial accounts. Davenport of the city of Harrington in Washington state, collects firsthand accounts through his website and by phone and has been answering 25 to 50 calls a day.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/09/01/2238222/silicon-sandwiches-make-for-lightweight-high-capacity-batteries

Silicon 'Sandwiches' Make For Lightweight, High-Capacity Batteries (newatlas.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @06:00AM from the new-and-improved dept.

A team at Clemson University has come up with a new design that overcomes some of the problems with incorporating silicon into lithium-ion batteries, "enabling them to demonstrate a lightweight and multipurpose device that could be used to power satellites and spacesuits," reports New Atlas. From the report:Scientists have been investigating the potential of silicon in lithium-ion batteries for a long time, and with good reason. Using the material for the anode component instead of the graphite used today could increase the storage capacity of these devices by as much as 10 times, but there are a few kinks to iron out first. Silicon doesn't exhibit the same durability as graphite in these scenarios, tending to expand, contract and break apart into small pieces as the battery is charged and discharged. This causes the deterioration of the anode and failure of the battery, but we have seen a number of potential solutions to this over the years, including fashioning the silicon into sponge-like nanofibers or tiny nanospheres before integrating them into the device.

The new research out of Clemson University looks to shore up the dependability of silicon with the help of carbon nanotube sheets called Buckypaper, which we've also seen used in the development of next-generation heat shields for aircraft. These sheets were paired with tiny, nanosized silicon particles in what the team says is an arrangement much like a deck of cards, with the silicon particles sandwiched in between each layer. "The freestanding sheets of carbon nanotubes keep the silicon nanoparticles electrically connected with each other," says Shailendra Chiluwal, first author on the study. "These nanotubes form a quasi-three-dimensional structure, hold silicon nanoparticles together even after 500 cycles, and mitigate electrical resistance arising from the breaking of nanoparticles." The beauty of this approach, according to the team, is that even if the charging and discharging of the battery causes the silicon particles to break apart, they remain locked inside the sandwich and able to perform their function. This means that, theoretically, this functioning but experimental battery has a much higher capacity, which means the energy can be stored in much lighter cells, reducing the overall weight of the device. As a bonus, the use of the nanotubes creates a buffer mechanism that enables the batteries to be charged at four times the speed of current iterations, according to the scientists.The research was published in the journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.

NEW THINGS TO READ

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/books/review/reckless-daughter-david-yaffe-biography-joni-mitchell.html



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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2009.05 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1891 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.