Revenue Opportunity

Sometimes the slicing and dicing of market data gets more than a little ridiculous - although "kinky, submissive male Trump supporters with humiliation fetishes" might be quite a bit bigger cohort than I thought at first.

Anyway, there's always somebody looking to cash in on whatever little piece of shit floats by.

Daily Beast:

Groups such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump are organizing their fellow disaffected Republicans. Former CIA and NSA director General Michael Hayden put out a message that is likely to influence the national defense and intelligence communities toward Biden. And leftist groups such as Vote Trump Out are swaying their fellow progressives who can’t stand centrist Democrats—and who are leaning toward voting for a third party or not voting at all—to vote against Trump by voting for Biden.

When such a wildly diverse group of organizers, across the right and left, comes together for a common goal, we’re clearly in an unprecedented all-hands-on-deck moment. Everyone’s doing their part.

But up until recently, there’s one group of potential Biden voters who have not been the subject of voter outreach: kinky, submissive male Trump supporters with humiliation fetishes.

Now, thanks to a Las Vegas-based professional dominatrix named Empress Delfina, this once-overlooked voting bloc is covered—and may be voting Biden. By force.

She calls it “Trump Conversion Therapy.” Her ad for this service reaches out to these potential Biden voters as follows: “Here’s your chance to get berated for being the degenerate Trump supporter you are. I reverse the brainwash you’ve succumbed to that made you into a Simple Stupid Drone. By using lethal mind fucking language and making you repeat dumbass chants like your Bullshitter in Chief made you do to warp you into submission, I transfer your ownership to me for my personal gain and entertainment. Embrace that you need to be saved from being a Trump-bot. Call now to begin your Trump Conversion Therapy.”

At $1.99 a minute, business is booming.

The interview in the piece makes for some interesting prospects for how the rest of us can look for ways to break some of these people free from Cult45.

Sample:

So what happens in a Trump Conversion Therapy session?

"Maybe half the guys just want to argue. They’re not open to getting converted at all. They just call to start berating my liberal politics. And I’m like, “Hey, if you want to pay me $1.99 a minute to argue with me, go right ahead. You’re not getting anywhere with me, and I’m happy to profit off your stupidity—just like your leader did.”

WorstWorld

From Protest Films:

President Stoopid Out For A Ride

He got bored.

WaPo:

Current and former Secret Service agents and medical professionals were aghast Sunday night at President Trump’s trip outside the hospital where he is being treated for the coronavirus, saying the president endangered those inside his SUV for a publicity stunt.

As the backlash grew, multiple aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations also called Trump’s evening outing an unnecessary risk — but said it was not surprising. Trump had said he was bored in the hospital, advisers said. He wanted to show strength after his chief of staff offered a grimmer assessment of his health than doctors, according to campaign and White House officials.

A growing number of Secret Service agents have been concerned about the president’s seeming indifference to the health risks they face when traveling with him in public, and a few reacted with outrage to the trip, asking how Trump’s desire to be seen outside his hospital suite justified the jeopardy to agents protecting him. Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis has already brought new scrutiny to his lax approach to social distancing, as public health officials scramble to trace those he may have exposed at large in-person events.

“He’s not even pretending to care now,” one agent said after the president’s jaunt outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to wave at supportive crowds.

“Where are the adults?” said a former Secret Service member.

They spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

White House spokesman Judd Deere defended the outing, telling reporters “appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all those supporting it.” Deere said precautions included personal protective equipment, without providing further details, and added the trip “was cleared by the medical team as safe to do.”

The White House did not immediately respond to questions from The Washington Post on Sunday night.

Trump wore a mask as he waved from the back of his vehicle, after announcing he would “pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street.” But the face covering was little comfort to doctors, who took to Twitter to criticize the trip as irresponsible. Masks “help, but they are not an impenetrable force field,” tweeted Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.

Axios:

White House crises of competence and credibility grew during a botched weekend that left even White House aides dismayed and befuddled.

Many complained bitterly about the leadership of chief of staff Mark Meadows.

After days of internal and external snafus as the virus spread through all levels of the White House, President Trump left his hospital suite just before 5:30 p.m. yesterday, and took an SUV ride outside the Walter Reed gates to wave at the supporters who have lined the road ever since he arrived Friday evening.

• Trump wore a mask, but the stunt risked exposing the Secret Service agents in the Suburban.
• Two senior White House staffers said they thought the P.R. stunt was selfish, and compounded a weekend of horrible decisions.
• White House spokesman Judd Deere said: "Appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the President and all those supporting it, including PPE. The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do."

Frustration and anxiety built among White House staffers, who say they went days with no internal communication from Meadows about protocols and procedures — including whether they should show up to work — as COVID tore through the West Wing.

• By contrast, the first lady’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, emailed her staff on Saturday advising them to work from home and reminding them of CDC guidance.
• And the vice president’s chief, Marc Short, emailed his senior staff at 3 a.m. Friday with an update on the president’s situation and urged them to work from home. Short also had a conference call with his staff on Saturday to take questions and explain the protocol and situation.

A senior White House official said it was "ridiculous'" that there had been no proper internal communication from the chief or operations officials since COVID started rapidly infecting their colleagues: "A bunch of us are talking about it and just gonna make the calls on our own."

• The White House finally emailed staff with guidance at 8:18 last night — about 15 minutes after Axios contacted the press shop for a story about the lack of guidance. A senior official insisted the guidance email was "pre-scheduled."
• The impersonal email, signed "White House Management Office," mentioned nothing about the new circumstances, and was almost identical to formulaic emails that had gone out to the staff at previous intervals before POTUS and multiple other West Wing officials got sick.

Several staffers told Axios they were furious with Meadows for leaving much of the staff in the dark, at the same time the White House was sending mixed, incomplete and inaccurate messages to the public.

• West Wing staff were privately circulating an unsparing indictment by Politico’s Tim Alberta, "How Mark Meadows Became the White House’s Unreliable Source."

A senior White House official defended the chief: "Mark is extraordinarily accessible and caring for his staff. White House employees know well what to do in the event of exposure to a positive case, and best practices regarding mitigation. He has been working hard to assist the President, keep the public informed, and manage the most famous employment complex in the world."

• Another senior official added: "Peanut gallery criticism like this is absurd and unfair — guidance has long been in place for what to do in the event of a West Wing case, as it has for best practices, testing, teleworking, etc. Meadows has been at Walter Reed with the President managing a million different logistical concerns since Friday. But apologies if anyone had to wait a couple extra hours to receive their updated email on Sunday."

The White House's public communication about the virus has been a debacle of deception and contradictory information.

• The White House physician, Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley, admitted at yesterday's briefing that he had painted an overly rosy picture the day before:
• "I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness has had. I didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so, you know, it came off that we're trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true."

On Saturday, after Conley's pep talk, Meadows took reporters aside and gave (at first anonymously) a more worrisome snapshot, saying Trump's "vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning, and the next 48 hours will be critical."

• Yesterday, another briefer, Dr. Brian Garibaldi, said: "[I]f he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow."

Rule 1

Daddy State Awareness, rule 1

Every accusation is a confession.

The Trump Crime Family spends inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to smear everybody else as dopes and criminals - while being deeply involved in dopily criminal behavior themselves.

That's why they've been working to hard to get Ukraine (eg) to phony up some shit on Hunter Biden - which efforts have so far gotten President Stoopid impeached, and which, if Republicans had half the integrity of Snidely Whiplash, would have resulted in the removal from office of the sorriest excuse for a chief magistrate ever.

WaPo:

NEW YORK — A state judge on Wednesday ordered Eric Trump to be deposed no later than Oct. 7 in the New York attorney general's examination of the Trump Organization's financial practices, rejecting a protest by President Trump's son, who has said he is too busy to meet with investigators until after November's election.

The ruling was handed down by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron after nearly two hours of arguments in a lawsuit brought by state investigators conducting the civil investigation.

The president’s company is managed now by his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both of whom have taken active roles in their father’s reelection efforts. An attorney for Eric Trump said during Wednesday’s hearing that the president’s son travels nearly seven days a week to make campaign-related appearances.

Gotta love it when these privileged assholes argue they can't bother with obeying the law cuz they're just so darned busy all the time.

“This court finds that application unpersuasive,” Engoron said, referring to Eric Trump’s stated need to put off an interview until mid-November. He added that he felt Eric Trump’s attorney had cited no legal authority to support a bid to delay the deposition.

“Neither petitioner nor this court is bound by timeliness of the national election,” the judge said.

The judge also ordered that the Trump Organization and related business entities that were withholding documents and claiming attorney-client privilege proceed with producing records to the attorney general.

The lawsuit was filed in August by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), after lawyers in her office said they had hit a roadblock with attorneys for the Trump Organization and other potential witnesses in their pursuit of testimony and documents.

And The Children Shall Lead Them

I don't know enough about it to make any kind of stab at sensible commentary - except to say that I didn't know the daughter was making claims of abuse - so I guess I'll just run this and leave it be.

From Don Winslow:

Boogaloo

I love me some Hawaiian shirts. And I've always thought "boogaloo" was a pretty fun word - Boogaloo Down Broadway - "Nobody can do the boogaloo, like I do". 

Everything Trump touches dies, so of course, some assholes have to weasel in and fuck it up for everybody.

Forbes:

Boogaloo Movement Tied To Murder, Violence And Disinformation During Protests

Members of a shadowy movement known as the Boogaloo Boys have been implicated in a series of violent protests and the distribution of misinformation regarding the COVID-19 coronavirus and in violent racial protests in a number of cities in the U.S. In addition, the Boogaloo Boys have been specifically mentioned in charging documents against Steven Carrillo filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Carrillo is charged with killing a member of the Federal Protective Service and wounding another. In addition, he has been charged with killing a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz County, California.

The Boogaloo Boys, of which Carrillo is alleged to be a member, have been deeply involved with disinformation activities following the lockdowns related to COVID-19.

In a report made public on June 17, 2020, Blackbird.AI traces these activities including the armed mob that protested at the Michigan statehouse on May 1, 2020, and the subsequent flood of disinformation to the Boogaloo Boys.

“In the lead-up to these protests and others like it across many other states around the country, there was significant online inflammation of what was characterized as the government's unusual and overbearing reach into private lives in the form of closing down cities and businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the report says.

“Blackbird.AI’s system uncovered high levels of manipulation within influence campaigns aimed at building momentum and a following behind the Boogaloo movement.”

The Blackbird report, “COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Disinformation Report – Volume 3.0” describes the Boogaloo movement’s efforts using social media to drive influence campaigns to encourage white nationalist rebellions, manipulation of anti-police sentiment and white supremacy. Blackbird says that the movement is closely allied with believers in Qanon, and far right conspiracies.

According to Blackbird, traffic on one of the Boogaloo movement’s prime social network boards, 4Chan, exploded immediately after the death of a black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis.

The Blackbird report describes members of the Boogaloo movement as being middle-aged, well-off heavily-armed white men who are engaged in a number of activities such as spreading anti-mask conspiracies. They show up armed at otherwise peaceful protests typically wearing Hawaiian “Aloha” shirts. Several reports say that these groups use peaceful protests to cover their violent activities including arson and looting in an effort to start what they call a second civil war.

The federal complaint, filed by FBI Special Agent Brett Woolard, lists evidence linking Carrillo to the Boogaloo movement, including a ballistic vest with a Boogaloo patch as well as slogans written on the hood of a stolen car in his own blood. Carrillo is currently in federal custody.

Beyond Boogaloo

While the Boogaloo movement is growing in influence, they are not the only group that is pushing disinformation around the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a related group pushing anti-mask conspiracies as well as coordinating disruption around mask requirements. These groups were the origin of fake medical forms, suitable for printing, that seem to give anti-mask conspirators the right not to wear masks where they’re required.

What’s concerning, according to Blackbird.AI CEO Wasim Khaled is that there’s an effort to unite the fringe groups opposing mask requirements, shutdowns and urging a return to opening up regardless of the status of the coronavirus.

“We’re seeing Qanon as a theme in the way that ISIS did bringing Islamic groups together,” Khaled said. “We’re seeing things take root in COVID controversies and now spilling over into real life violence and real life militia.” He said that the groups involved in the misinformation are now creating new medical conspiracies, including one in which the pandemic was intentional, which they’re calling a “plandemic.”

Social media flood

Khaled said that the Qanon groups are flooding social media with accounts that push huge volumes of disinformation which has now grown to include conspiracies related to “Obamagate,” open carry and white nationalism.

In the report, Blackbird said the company used its AI systems to analyze over 74 million Tweets, nearly half of which were highly manipulative. One very successful means of manipulation was a 26-minute video, “Plandemic.” This video claimed that COVID-19 was a plan for unspecified elites to profit and gain power.

“Within a week, this highly conspiratorial video had been viewed eight million times and had tens of thousands of posts discussing it. Plandemic combined Anti-Vax, Anti-Mask, Anti-5G, Anti-WHO, Anti-Lockdown, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Censorship and Anti-NWO together into a synthetically amplified event. Plandemic was the most cohesive and highly manipulated piece of media to date during the COVID-19 pandemic. By platforming Judy Mikovitz (a discredited scientist) under the guise of ‘fighting censorship’, Pandemic created a shared discourse between conspiracy theorists, white power activists, Qanon and anti-vaxxers where their ideologies intersected.”

At this point, the efforts by Qanon related groups to create and ISIS-like coalition seem to be progressing. The social media assault continues, and current moves to open up states, even in the face of an exploding number of coronavirus cases, don’t seem to be slowing it down. Blackbird.AI is already planning a follow-on report covering the even greater changes in June 2020.

Typical - Cult45 (and by extension, the whole fucking GOP) jump right into bed with people nobody wants at the barbecue (nobody wants to admit they invited anyway) because nothing matters but the transaction. Nothing matters but what I can get someone else to do for me that keeps me in a position where I have the power necessary to put money in my pockets

This is nine kinds of fucked up.

Roll Call

At lease he didn't nominate himself - which is what I tho't might happen.

Ann Telnaes, WaPo:

Today's Ad

act.tv - They All Knew

Thought

The number of Republicans who have turned against Trump shows us how bad he is.

The number of Republicans who haven't turned against Trump shows us how bad they are.

The Week

Here's another one we can file under: Holy fuck, I just realized the Republican party is chock full of Republicans! (hat tip = Driftglass)

Op/Ed piece from Damon Linker, at The Week:

In the raging debate among Trump-critical conservatives over whether the goal in November should be merely to defeat the president or to pursue the more radical strategy of burning the Republican Party to the ground, I'm firmly on the side of scorched earth.

The case for maximalism is strong. The head of the party is a corrupt and malicious imbecile. Republicans in Congress are a mix of Trump enablers, obstructionist-demagogues out to maximize the wealth of their donors, know-nothing conspiracist loons, and a few reformers experimenting with the most politically palatable way to blend nationalism with socialism. All of them are primarily motivated by the drive toward self-promotion within the right-wing media complex. And when we move further down the Republican hierarchy to the state and local level, things only get worse.

- and -

There's just one difficulty with the plan: It does nothing to address the root of the problem, which no one — not the minimalist Trump haters, and not the fiercest maximalists out to pummel the party's establishment — has a clue how to solve.

That is, the problem of the Republican voter.

- and -

The voters who swooned for Sarah Palin in 2008; who seriously considered giving the nod to Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Ben Carson, and Rick Santorum in 2012; who four years later elevated a reality-show conman to the head of their party, cast ballots for him to win the presidency, and have rallied around him ever since — most of these voters remain undaunted in their conviction that politics is primarily about the venting of grievances and the trolling of opponents. The dumber and angrier and more shameless, the better.


I've made the point before:
Trump has not remade the GOP in his own image. He is the perfect reflection of what that party has become.

And Linker ends with:

So by all means, aim to burn down the GOP in 2020 if you can. But don't for a minute think it will solve the bigger problem that confronts us — the problem of the malignant Republican voter.

Oy

Just how far will Cult45 go to cover their asses on the COVID-19 thing?

Way fuckin' far.

Mother Jones:

This month, Stephen Miller, the extremist anti-immigrant Trump adviser who has promoted white nationalist ideas, lost a relative to the coronavirus pandemic, and his uncle tells Mother Jones that the Trump administration is partly to blame for this death.

On July 4, David Glosser, the brother of Miller’s mother, posted a Facebook note announcing the death of his mother, Ruth Glosser, who was Miller’s maternal grandmother:

This morning my mother, Ruth Glosser, died of the late effects of COVID-19 like so many thousands of other people; both young and old. She survived the acute infection but was left with lung and neurological damage that destroyed her will to eat and her ability to breathe well enough to sustain arousal and consciousness. Over an 8-week period she gradually slipped away and died peacefully this morning.

David Glosser is a retired neuropsychologist and passionate Trump critic who has publicly decried Miller for his anti-immigrant policies, and he contends that Trump’s initial “lack of a response” to the coronavirus crisis led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans who might have otherwise survived. In an interview, he says, “With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting.”

In response to a request seeking comment from Miller, a White House spokesperson sent Mother Jones this statement:

This is categorically false, and a disgusting use of so-called journalism when the family deserves privacy to mourn the loss of a loved one. His grandmother did not pass away from COVID. She was diagnosed with COVID in March and passed away in July so that timeline does not add up at all. His grandmother died peacefully in her sleep from old age. I would hope that you would choose not to go down this road.

Glosser, a former health professional, posted his mother’s death announcement on a public Facebook page. Responding to the White House statement, he writes in an email, “Keeping the tragic facts about COVID deaths of our countrymen and women, young and old, from the American public serves no purpose other than to obscure the need for a coherent national, scientifically based, public health response to save others from this disease. My mother led a long, satisfying, productive life of family and community service. She had nothing to be ashamed of, and concealing her cause of death to offer ‘privacy’ to me, our family, her hundreds of relatives and friends, does nothing to assuage our regret at her loss.”

Moreover, Ruth Glosser’s death certificate—which her son shared with Mother Jones—lists her cause of death as “respiratory arrest” resulting from “COVID-19.”

Informed that Ruth Glosser’s death certificate cited COVID-19, the White House spokesperson replied, “Again, this is categorically false. She had a mile [sic] case of COVID-19 in March. She was never hospitalized and made a full and quick recovery.”
Miller has played a role in the Trump White House’s ineffectual response to the coronavirus crisis. He was credited with helping to write the Oval Office address Trump delivered on March 11 that was widely panned. In that speech, Trump branded the coronavirus as the “foreign virus” and downplayed the damage already caused by it. He hailed his administration’s actions regarding the growing pandemic, ignoring his recent and repeated efforts to dismiss the threat posed by the virus. Trump announced in this speech that he would suspend all travel from Europe to the United States—a statement that caused panic, as Americans overseas rushed back to the United States and ended up in crammed and unsafe conditions at US airports. (The ban only applied to foreign citizens.) In the months since, Miller has attempted to exploit the pandemic to implement anti-immigration measures.

 

The Incredible Shrinking Trump

Tom Ridge has always been a "moderate". He's not crazy right and he's not the old-style liberal Republican.

Generally well right of center, but not a wingnut.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette:

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, the first homeland security secretary, criticized the deployment of federal agents in Portland, Ore., as mayors throughout the country call on the Trump administration to keep agents out of their cities.

The administration has deployed agents with tactical gear to confront protesters in downtown Portland, Ore., and plans to send agents to Democratic-led cities, such as Philadelphia. The administration revealed Monday that it plans to send 150 Homeland Security Investigations special agents to Chicago for 60 days.

"The department was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia," Ridge, a Republican, said in an interview with Sirius XM radio. He was alluding to the department's creation after the 9/11 attacks.

Ridge said he would “welcome the opportunity to work with any federal agency to reduce crime or lawlessness in the cities" if he were governor. But "it would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited, unilateral intervention into one of my cities," he added, specifically calling out how the federal authorities were unwelcome in Portland.

“And I wish the president would take a more collaborative approach toward fighting this lawlessness than the unilateral approach he’s taken,” he added.

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, more than a dozen mayors called the administration's intention to deploy federal forces against protesters an "abuse of power."

The letter -- signed by the mayors of Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Tucson, Sacramento, Phoenix and Kansas City, Missouri on Monday -- calls on the administration to withdraw federal forces from the cities where they are currently deployed and halt plans to send them elsewhere.

"The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a national uprising and reckoning," the letter said. "The majority of the protests have been peaceful and aimed at improving our communities. Where this is not the case, it still does not justify the use of federal forces. Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values."

The protests in Portland began after Floyd's death in police custody. Demonstrators have also called for justice in the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain and other Black people.

Wolf has said the crackdown in Portland, Ore. — which has included personnel from the U.S. Marshals and tactical agents from Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in addition to the Federal Protective Service, which was already stationed in Portland — was specific to the Pacific Northwest city, distancing his department from President Donald Trump’s commitment this week to send agents to other major cities, from Oakland to New York.

“Violent anarchists in Portland versus normal city criminal activity behavior by gangs and criminal element, those are two different things,” Wolf said, adding that the department had recorded 43 arrests in the protests. “What we have in Portland is very different than what we see in other cities.”

Portland, Ore.’s governor, the mayor and the protesters have all said that the homeland security agents and U.S. Marshals had only increased tensions in the city.

“We didn’t ask for these troops in our city. We don’t want these troops in our city, and the tactics they’re using are very un-American,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said, adding that the agents were forcing demonstrators into vans without probable cause. “There’s some really serious constitutional issues here.”

Wheeler added that many of those detained had not been charged, but rather released after questioning. “We have people who have come back and said, ‘I feel like I was kidnapped.’”

Federal authorities, however, said state and local officials had been unwilling to work with them to stop the vandalism and violence against federal officers and the U.S. courthouse in Portland

“We stand ready,” Wolf said. “I’m ready to pull my officers out of there if the violence stops. Portland is unique. There’s no other city like it right now where we see this violence at federal courthouses.”

But while the homeland security officials said the deployment of tactical agents who have frequently deployed tear gas and at times forced protesters into unmarked vehicles was needed to combat “violent criminals,” some of the demonstrators included mothers locked in arms outside the courthouse. While some have thrown rocks and bottles at federal officers, others in the crowd have demonstrated peacefully.

Citing a law codified by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 that allows the secretary to protect federal property, Wolf also defended agents who have been accused of placing protesters in unmarked vans without telling them where they are going.

But the law Wolf cited, 40 U.S. Code 1315, says homeland security officials have the right to “conduct investigations” away from federal property. Pressed about the level of probable cause needed to detain someone away from the courthouse in Portland, Wolf referred to Richard Cline, the deputy director of the Federal Protective Service. Cline described the detaining of one individual, whom he did not name, who was put into a van so agents could bring him to a safe place for questioning.

The officials did not address other accounts from demonstrators of being detained, put into unmarked vehicles and not being told where they were going.

President Donald Trump’s administration faces multiple lawsuits questioning its authority to use broad policing powers in cities. One filed Tuesday says federal agents are violating protesters’ 10th Amendment rights by engaging in police activities designated to local and state governments. The legal action was filed by the Portland-based Western States Center, which helps organize and promote the rights of communities of color and low-income people.

Gil Kerlikowske, a Customs and Border Protection chief in the Obama administration, said the department was not meeting a standard of probable cause with the detainments.

“They need the same probable cause that any police officer should have to stop somebody. It’s beyond a reasonable suspicion that this person has actually committed crime,” Kerlikowske said. “You’re not seeing that in Portland.”

Dots

An awful lot of talk goes on about 45* and "the base"

In Arabic,

"the base" translates to "al qaeda"

Birds of a radical feather

About That Goya Dustup

HuffPo:

The perfect example of Cult45 using its position of power and privilege to put money in their pockets.

And the internet rides in:

Today's "Shocked - Shocked!"

Rachel Maddow:

Republican ass-kissers are again having to work overtime to ignore it and cover it up, or to distract from it, or they're lining up to rationalize it. Understand, they're not trying to deny it - they're trying to make it seem like it's not another stomach-turning fucked up mess because of 45*'s self-dealing and ineptitude - exacerbated by their own failures to stand up to a blustering bullying pseudo-macho washed-up game show host.

DURING THE FUCKING PEACE TALKS

...because it's in Russia's interest to keep us bogged down - it flips the 1980s script so now it's Putin playing the good guy helping the Afghanis fight the imperialists and blah blah blah.

NYT:

The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.

While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.

Fizzle Muh-Shizzle

Cult45 loves to crow. "...expecting huge crowd for Tulsa blah blah blah".

oops

Forbes:

While President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday was pitched as an over-subscribed event, with Trump campaign staffers touting ticket registrations over a million, the final turnout came to a fraction of the venue’s overall capacity, confirming reports of low turnout that dogged what was meant to be Trump’s triumphant return to the campaign trail.

• The Trump campaign set expectations high for the rally, announcing that they had received more than a million ticket requests, despite the venue, the BOK Center, seating just 19,200.
• Anticipating high turnout that would exceed that capacity, the campaign planned a second, outdoor speech to address the crowd in the overflow section.
• But those hopes quickly evaporated on the evening of the rally, with reporters tweeting photos of the rally showing huge swaths of empty seats in the stadium.
• The campaign ended up cancelling the second speech to the overflow section, with Communications Director Tim Murtaugh blaming the low turnout on the media and protesters, who he claimed blocked access to the entrance despite reports that nobody was turned away from the rally.
• Andrew Little, the Public Information Officer for the Tulsa Fire Department, confirmed to Forbes on Sunday that a tally taken by the fire marshal clocked the turnout at just under 6,200 people, far fewer attendees than the campaign expected.

So what happened?

NYT:

President Trump’s campaign promised huge crowds at his rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday, but it failed to deliver. Hundreds of teenage TikTok users and K-pop fans say they’re at least partially responsible.

Brad Parscale, the chairman of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, posted on Twitter on Monday that the campaign had fielded more than a million ticket requests, but reporters at the event noted the attendance was lower than expected. The campaign also canceled planned events outside the rally for an anticipated overflow crowd that did not materialize.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said protesters stopped supporters from entering the rally, held at the BOK Center, which has a 19,000-seat capacity. Reporters present said there were few protests.

TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump’s campaign rally as a prank. After the Trump campaign’s official account @TeamTrump posted a tweet asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones on June 11, K-pop fan accounts began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally — and then not show.

Live by the hack. Die by the hack.

But going back to the real point - the venue was less than a third full, and that is not dependent on anybody's efforts to prank 45*. That's all about people just not showing up.

Of course, the Trump Campaign blamed it on the protesters - a repeat of the bullshit they floated in 2016 when a rally in Chicago fizzled and they blamed protesters there.

Just like "conservatives" are always playing the victim when people call them out for the shit they peddle.

Into The Weird

This one's a real head-scratcher. Berman is widely seen as a Cult45 ally. 

WaPo:

The Trump administration announced late Friday that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who has overseen a number of investigations involving the president and his political campaign, will be leaving that job, though Berman fired back that he had not resigned and intends to stay in the job to ensure the cases continue unimpeded.

But then:

The surreal standoff marks the latest battle over the administration’s management of the Justice Department. Democrats have decried what they charge has been the politicization of the agency under President Trump and his attorney general, William P. Barr.

Barr announced the personnel change in a statement, saying the president plans to nominate the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, for the job.

Berman’s office has been conducting a criminal investigation of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in a campaign finance case that has already led to charges against two of Giuliani’s associates.

The Justice Department under Bill Barr is a wide-ranging and slow-moving Saturday Night Massacre, but without the people who have some honor and decency, and who act on sound ethical principles.

And since Preet Bharara got shit-canned in a kind of shady move 3 ½ years ago, eventually to be replaced by Berman, it's just too fuckin' bizarre to think Berman is the guy to stand up and defend the integrity and the independence of the SDNY in particular, and the DOJ in general.

On Bolton's Book

First, lemma just say - FUCK JOHN BOLTON.

Now then - David Ignatius, WaPo:

“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord,” reads a famous passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. John Bolton has provided a secular version of that cosmic payback in his account of Donald Trump’s presidency, “The Room Where It Happened.”

As much as you think you know about the arrogance, vanity and sheer incompetence of Trump’s years in the White House, Bolton’s account will still astonish you. He narrates his 17 months as national security adviser in remarkable detail. He seems to have collated every Trump rant, reckless phone call, and muttered aside. No wonder the White House was so determined to block this book: It eviscerates Trump’s foreign policy record and exposes him, in Bolton’s words, as “stunningly uninformed.”

Bolton offers new tidbits about Ukraine, the issue on which Trump was impeached and where Democrats desperately sought Bolton’s testimony. He confirms an aide’s account that Bolton viewed Trump’s Ukraine machinations as a “drug deal,” provides new evidence that “Ukraine security assistance was at risk of being swallowed by the Ukraine fantasy conspiracy theories.” In sum, he says, “the whole affair was bad policy, questionable legally, and unacceptable as presidential behavior.” This account should deeply embarrass Republican senators who offered unblinking defenses of Trump’s Ukraine actions during the impeachment trial.

The litany of fuckups Bolton recounts oughta be more than enough to put 45* and every GOP enabler out of business.

But it isn't, and I fear nothing is or will be. Ever.

Falling From Grace

It's said that grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.

America's amazing military is cycling back down to the depths.

I know a retired Army 4-star, Paul Gorman, who came out of his tour in Vietnam thoroughly demoralized. He was ready to take his retirement as a colonel and get on to the next phase in his life, whatever that turned out to be.

But he was persuaded to stay, and along with many others, he helped rebuild the US military into something we could be proud of again (mostly - obviously, there're some not-so-good things too, but that's a different part of the story).

The point is that Gen Gorman is alive today, and looking even more askance on recent developments than he did when he decided to go against a lifetime of voting straight Republican in order to vote for Hillary in 2016.

NYT:

Gen. Mark A. Milley was never meant to be President Trump’s top military adviser.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had sent him to the White House in late 2018 to interview for the top American military post across the Atlantic, with its grand title: supreme allied commander Europe. Mr. Mattis wanted someone else, the quiet and cerebral Gen. David L. Goldfein of the Air Force, to be Mr. Trump’s next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

With the president souring on Mr. Mattis, his recommendation quashed General Goldfein’s chances. During the meeting, the president — who already liked General Milley’s brash demeanor as Army chief of staff — asked which job was better. And General Milley went for the top prize: by law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the nation’s top officer and the senior military adviser to the president.

But in the last several days, after accompanying the president from the White House to a church in his camouflage uniform as National Guard troops in helmets and riot gear deployed across the country, General Milley has quickly become the face of what could amount to the American military’s fall from public grace, to levels not seen since the Vietnam War.

“Milley (he’s a general !?!?) should not have walked over to the church with Trump,” Michael Hayden, the retired Air Force general who has directed both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A., said on Twitter, noting that he “was appalled to see him in his battle dress.”

General Milley’s decision to join Mr. Trump “was an egregious display of bad judgment, at best,” said Paul D. Eaton, a retired major general and veteran of the Iraq war, who now serves as a senior adviser at VoteVets.org. “At worst, Milley appears confused about the oath he took to support and defend the Constitution — not a president. I suggest the general get quickly unconfused, or resign.”

General Milley, his friends say, has agonized over the events of the past week. But he has also managed to persuade Mr. Trump not to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty troops across the country to quell protests, a line that a number of American military officials say they will not cross, even if the president orders it.

It is largely because of General Milley, administration officials say, that Mr. Trump has not ordered it yet despite his threat to do so.

The general went face to face with his boss on Monday during a heated discussion in the Oval Office over whether to send troops into the streets, according to people in the room. He argued that the scattered fires and looting in some places were dwarfed by peaceful protests, and should be handled by the states, which command local law enforcement and the National Guard.

General Milley won the immediate battle in the Oval Office meeting on Monday. But shortly after, he was right in the middle of a different war — the kind of political war where the military does not belong.

Defense Department officials say General Milley believed that he was accompanying Mr. Trump and his entourage to review National Guard troops and other law enforcement personnel outside Lafayette Park; that he did not know the park had just been cleared of peaceful protests by security forces using tear gas; that an Australian news crew had just been beaten by baton-wielding police on live TV; that frightened teenagers were sobbing two blocks away.

Milley didn't know what 45* was getting him into.

It's easy to shit on Milley for being "naive", but we have to understand that a guy like Milley has spent his entire professional life steeped in the values of Honor and Discipline and Duty. When he encounters a guy like 45*, who has no honor, Milley can almost be excused for not always stopping to consider that he'll be used and abused at 45*'s whim - almost be excused.

- snip -

Once Mr. Trump arrived at St. John’s Church, holding a Bible, and it became clear that the moment was only a photo op, General Milley disappeared from view. He is nowhere to be seen when the president motions for other officials to join him for a photograph, in which he is now flanked by his press secretary, defense secretary, national security adviser and attorney general.

But the damage had been done.

“Ridiculous. General Milley, who I respect, is embarrassing himself,” Michael McFaul, a former American ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, tweeted.

Pentagon officials say General Milley was horrified afterward, and he has not appeared before cameras since.

I guess we can only hope that Mark Milley learns from this - adapt, improvise, overcome - and maybe he is learning, because shortly after that walking cluster fuck, this came from his office:

note: "We all committed our lives to the idea that is America - we will stay true to that oath and the American people."

Hope is always justified.

Optimism not so much.

Coming To A Head

I'm reminded of the scene in Gandhi when the government of South Africa is struggling to "control" the population.

(paraphrasing):

"They can fire me from me job. They can arrest me. They can torture me. They can beat me to death. At which time they'll have my dead broken body. But they will never have my obedience."

45* is doing what that kind of dishonorable asshole always does - he's occupying Smarmspace, looking for the part where "it doesn't say specifically that I can't do it, so that's what I'm gonna do."

WaPo:

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and President Trump were engaged in an escalating contest over control of Washington streets when the email from a military planner set off new alarms in the mayor’s office.

The official was seeking guidance Wednesday afternoon for the U.S. Northern Command in determining “route restrictions” for the “movement of tactical vehicles” and “military forces” from Fort Belvoir, Va., into the city to assist in “Civil Disturbance Operations.”

To Bowser’s aides, the request smacked of an imminent escalation in the federal force Trump had marshaled to quell the large street demonstrations over police brutality near the White House — the centerpiece of his bid to project the image of a strong leader who would establish “law and order” where local leaders had failed across the nation. Days earlier, Trump had falsely accused Bowser (D) in a tweet of refusing to allow D.C. police to assist in crowd control in Lafayette Square.

“The last time they asked us about that was in preparation to move tanks to the city for the Fourth of July” celebration last summer, said one D.C. government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private request. “We don’t want it to happen.”

- and -

During a news conference Thursday, Bowser said she was alarmed by the growing presence of federal security authorities in the city and declared she wants federal “troops from out of state” kept out of the District. She also expressed concern that the Trump administration's move to extend security barriers beyond the White House perimeter to encircle Lafayette Square, closing it to the public, could become permanent.

“Keep in mind that’s the people’s house,” she said. “It’s a sad commentary that the [White] House and its inhabitants have to be walled off.”

There's a bad feeling of "crossing the Rubicon" in all of this. Caesar entering the city at the head of his army signals the collapse of the republic.