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Friday, July 31, 2020

Ex-border agent: Goons sent to Oregon among 'most violent and racist in all law enforcement'



PORTLAND, OREGON - JULY 28: People gather in protest in front of the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse in downtown Portland as the city experiences another night of unrest on July 28, 2020 in Portland, Oregon. For over 57 straight nights, protesters in downtown Portland have faced off in often violent clashes with the Portland Police Bureau and, more recently, federal officers. The demonstrations began to honor the life of George Floyd and other black Americans killed by law enforcement and have intensified as the Trump administration called in the federal officers. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Brave and peaceful Portlanders protesting fed-sanctioned violence hold a sign reading, 'America will hold you accountable.'
The unidentified Customs and Border Protection (CBP) special tactical agents who’ve kidnapped at least two demonstrators right off the street in Portland, Oregon, are wholly untrained in how to properly deal with large demonstrations and a former senior Border Patrol agent turned whistleblower calls the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, among “the most violent and racist in all law enforcement”. 

“Racism has plagued the institution for decades,” The Guardian reports. “Jenn Budd recalled that when she signed up for service in 1995 her Spanish instructor blithely informed her that Latino migrants were referenced within the agency as ‘tonks’ and ‘wetbacks.’” It’s not an isolated incident at CBP, or a dated one: As recently as 2019, agents have pleaded guilty to assaulting migrants while on duty.

One agent called migrants “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling for a fire” in the weeks before he hit a Guatemalan man with his truck and then lied about it. 

“Local officials and other critics say the tactical unit, which is trained for high-risk missions and usually conducts operations along the border targeting smugglers and criminal organizations, shouldn’t be responding to a matter of civil dissent in a major city far from any national border,” BuzzFeed News reported last week.

But it’s not just that sending BORTAC to cities is inappropriate, it’s that unconfirmed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf and the Trump administration are siccing dangerous and unleashed agents on U.S. cities in an authoritarian power flex whose sole purpose is not to protect U.S. cities (from what exactly?), but to help the impeached president stay in office. Budd tells The Guardian that BORTAC is more than happy to do it, because like the impeached president, the unit’s agents view themselves as above the law—and act like it.

“That strain of extra-judicial aggression runs through everything Bortac does, Budd said,” the report continued. She told The Guardian that “[t]hey view people they encounter in the military sense as enemy combatants, meaning they have virtually no rights.” She continues: “They don’t do normal vehicle stops. They will rip drivers from their seat, throw him against the side, put him in handcuffs —the same tactics you are now seeing Bortac agents use in Portland.”

This wouldn’t be the first time this year that the Trump administration has used BORTAC as part of a political and self-serving stunt. In February, BORTAC was requested to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in sweeping up immigrants and separate families in a number of immigration raids across major cities, a move slammed by legislators including Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren. 

"The BORTAC deployment to Boston and other cities is unnecessary, unwelcome, and dangerous,” Markey and Warren said at the time. “But the specter of heavily armed, military-like personnel in our cities will accomplish one thing: provoke fear.” Of course, that’s the point—to cause fear, and to win at any cost.

Budd has written that Border Patrol in particular “has spent decades waiting quietly in the wings, stocking up on weapons and nearly tripling in size since 2001. Waiting for that moment when a president would see them for the heroes they believe themselves to be. Waiting for that moment when a president would fully activate these extraordinary powers to do his/her bidding. That moment is here.”

But so are we. It’s time to get DHS, ICE, and CBP under control now. “The federal agents who descended on the city, uninvited and unwelcome, in unmarked vehicles, disappearing people with little to no regard for civil liberties, come from the Department of Homeland Security,” Marisa Franco, director of advocacy group Mijente, said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “This agency is bloated, overfunded, and it operates with impunity. At Mijente, we've been sounding the alarm for years.

“The difference here is, this time they implemented their tactics openly and under the protection of an authoritarian president,” she continued. “If this is what they do to mostly white U.S. citizens in front of the media, imagine what they are doing to people in their custody, to people who are seeking refuge in isolated parts of the border. Trump must be defeated in November. Trumpism must be defeated as well.

That means dismantling agencies like DHS, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol."
  Trump's Goons: Coming to a city near you!

Thursday, July 30, 2020

There's a reason why Republicans are pushing hydroxychloroquine again, and it's ugly



WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 08: White House National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro is interviewed by Fox Business Network outside the White House October 08, 2019 in Washington, DC. Navarro will be taking a lead role in trade negotiations with the Chinese that are scheduled to begin this week. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Why is National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro being constantly interviewed about a public health crisis?
On Wednesday morning, Republicans are in the second day of a full-on blitz attempting to sell the idea that hydroxychloroquine is effective as a treatment against COVID-19. That effort comes in the form of not just statements from Donald Trump, but supporting tweets and emails from Republican candidates and a full-court press from Fox News.

At first, the idea that the GOP is latching onto claims from a doctor who believes medicines come from alien DNA to justify renewed support for a drug proven ineffective months ago seems baffling. Even if everyone from Ron DeSantis to Peter Navarro has joined in buying hundreds of millions of pointless doses, and they have, the billions wasted on the drug hardly seem to justify a second round of life-threatening propaganda.

But the hydroxychloroquine story isn’t about whether or not the drug is effective—and to be clear, it’s not. The reason Republicans are supporting this fresh round of out-and-out lies about a treatment that is more harmful than helpful isn’t because they’re getting rich off the pills. It’s because they really, really need to convince people that it’s safe to go back to work and send their kids back to school.

Because hydroxychloroquine, schools reopening, and the GOP “plan” for COVID-19 are all a single story. It’s the story of Republicans needing working class people to go out there and generate money—for the wealthy. 

On Monday, Republicans finally produced a draft of their take on the next round of addressing COVID-19—a round that, though a third the size of what’s needed at this point, is still much larger than the entire economic stimulus program that Barack Obama fought for and signed in 2009. The Republican plan not only cuts unemployment compensation for those unable to work because of the pandemic, it sweeps in $30 billion for critical pandemic items like more F-35 fighters and a new FBI building. It took that kind of “sweetening” to get enough Republicans to agree to having any plan at all.

But there are two things that Republicans were dead set on getting into their package. Two things that Sen.  Mitch McConnell and others made clear were absolutely a requirement before the Senate would lift a finger. The Republican plan had to:
  • Ensure that it cut unemployment benefits to workers sent home by business closures during the pandemic.
  • Protect corporations from being sued by workers who caught COVID-19 from being forced to work in unsafe conditions.
These were not a secret agenda. These were McConnell’s openly stated goals. He has been pushing for weeks the idea that, unless corporations are given a free pass to get as many workers sick as they like, America would be “swamped by personal injury lawsuits,” just because people had been personally injured. Republicans aren’t hiding this. Their entire agenda when it comes to COVID-19 is making sure that people have no choice but to get out there and put their lives on the line for minimum wage. Trump even used an executive order to put mostly immigrant workers back onto the lines at meatpacking facilities even as people at those facilities were literally dying.

And that’s exactly why Republicans are also keen on reopening schools. Those complaining about people not being eager to work for minimum wage in the midst of a pandemic and those calling for the reopening of public schools are after the same thing: Maintaining a low-cost “service class” that does the actual work while the wealthy and corporations collect the benefit of their labor. It’s not anything new. It’s actually baked into the unfettered capitalism of the American system. The COVID-19 crisis only serves to underline the utter cruelty and inhumanity intrinsic to that system. 

The public school funding system in the United States—where almost all the cost falls on property tax in local communities—is one of the best tools the wealthy have ever created to externalize costs and ensure the continued presence of a low-cost worker class. The result of the current system of school funding is that poor communities end up paying a much higher tax rate, while still getting schools that provide inadequate opportunities for their children, helping to lock in a poverty cycle. This is by no means an accident. 

Across the nation, private schools are not opening. Barron Trump’s school is not opening. But Republicans want public schools open for the same reason they want unemployment benefits ended: the working class is the engine that puts more money in wealthy pockets. Reopening public schools in the midst of a pandemic has nothing to do with educating the nation’s children. It has everything to do with removing obstacles that keep the cogs from getting back out there and turning the wheels of commerce.

Cutting unemployment and opening schools is entirely designed to give American workers absolutely no choice but to put their lives on the line without making a single demand on their employers. That’s what Republicans are saying every time they complain about the chance that someone might possibly be able to survive for another month on unemployment benefits. Other nations are absolutely providing workers with enhanced benefits during the pandemic because “paying people to stay home” is good public policy. It’s impossible to have effective social distancing if workers are being put in a position where they cannot stay home, and cannot disobey directives from their employers, even if those directives are unsafe. 

Hydroxychloroquine is just the carrot being dangled in front of workers as they’re forced back on the job, and their children are forced back into school without an option. It’s the promise that if they do get sick, there’s something that can be done about it. Unfortunately, it’s also an absolute lie.
And the walls came tumbling down...

Americans Are Suffering. Trump Offers Them a Doctor Who Warns of Sex With Demons.

Dr. Stella Immanuel. (photo: Twitter)
Dr. Stella Immanuel. (photo: Twitter)
By David Von Drehle, The Washington Post
 
ccording to the Mayo Clinic, endometriosis is “an often painful disorder in which tissue similar to the tissue that normally lines the inside of [the] uterus — the endometrium — grows outside [the] uterus.”

Not so, says Stella Immanuel, a Houston pediatrician and spiritual leader of Fire Power Ministries, a pronouncedly non-orthodox church. Endometriosis and other potentially dangerous gynecological conditions are the residue of sexual intercourse with demons, Immanuel teaches. These demons, known as “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives” (you might prefer their pet names: Incubus and Succubus) once walked the Earth in physical form. After they drowned in Noah’s flood, however, they carried on only in non-corporeal form. They visit humans in sexy dreams, which aren’t dreams after all but spirit spouses making a booty call.

The demons are responsible not only for diseases of the female reproductive system but also for male impotence, most financial troubles, marital discord and spiritual malaise.

This is not Immanuel’s only diversion from the medical mainstream. She also maintains that alien DNA is a component of some therapeutic drugs and that government scientists are developing a vaccine to prevent religious faith. You can find these and other teachings of hers on YouTube.

Or you can find Immanuel on President Trump’s Twitter feed, where she testifies to the power of hydroxychloroquine (yep! we’re back to that one) to cure covid-19 and assures the public that masks are not important to fighting the pandemic. More than 10 million Americans heard her advice, thanks in part to the president’s amplifying effect, before Facebook took down her page. In response, Immanuel threatened to have Jesus unplug Facebook’s servers.

I guess there is no point in expressing my strong view that the president of the United States should not, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, pass along medical advice that undermines public health officials without good reason to believe that it comes from a qualified authority. The president doesn’t care.

And I suppose it’s pointless to say to my Christian brothers and sisters in Trump’s dwindling camp that a man who raises the profile of a heretical preacher is not a friend of the faith. Many so-called evangelicals who stick with Trump gave up on evangelism — that is, winning people over through selfless acts of love and charity — long ago.

I’m not sure there is much use in patiently explaining that fighting the novel coronavirus while doing as little damage as possible to the economy is a very significant challenge, requiring the best efforts and maximal good faith of every American — starting at the top. No bridge is long enough to span the abyss between “best efforts” and “spreading dangerous bull hockey from a woman who believes in disease-spreading orgiastic dream demons.”

So, let me speak to those Republicans cowering in closets and hiding under stairs in Washington and the state capitals, muttering prayers that Trump might somehow calm the flames that threaten to consume them.

Run away. Close your eyes and duck your heads and sprint as fast as you can away from Trump. Claim amnesia. Say you’ve been hiking the Appalachian Trail. Blame your spirit spouse — whatever. A fury is building in Middle America that has nothing to do with Russia or impeachment or “Access Hollywood.” It’s rising among people who managed to look past all of that to find something they liked about the president. And now he’s repaying them with a stubby middle finger in their faces.

These folks don’t get daily covid-19 tests with results in 15 minutes. Their every contact is not screened and scanned. They live in the real world, a place Trump looks down on from his jets. They understand that covid-19 is not a joke.

They have children whose teachers are afraid to be in school with them. They have teenagers reeling from the mental health impacts of isolation and anxiety. They’ve lost their jobs, their businesses, their sense of safety. They’re worried about losing their homes.

They’ve lost the Final Four and the Olympic Games, and now it’s dawning on them that the NFL and college football may be next. They can’t go to a movie theater or enjoy a concert. In many places, they can’t schedule a surgery or visit an elderly relative.

And they see what the president thinks of them and their concerns. Here, you dupes and dopes, Trump says — here’s a video from a woman who believes in demon dream sex. Or here’s one from a washed-up game-show host who says covid-19 is an election ploy. Or how about this idea: Drink some bleach.

They’re worried and suffering, and their president might as well be saying: I don’t care if you live or die. And it’s coming through loud and clear. The political center is slow to anger. It’s also slow to forget.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Trump gets lots of goodies, the American people get shafted in McConnell's COVID-19 'relief' bill


US President Donald Trump leaves the Brady Briefing Room after speaking to the press during the renewed briefing of the Coronavirus Task Force, in the White House in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2020. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
TWO-FACED: The two faces of Donald Trump
While Republican senators were introducing their respective pieces of the new "coronavirus relief" bill Mitch McConnell has cooked up, called the HEALS Act (Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection, and Schools), Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer "to begin formal negotiations," which really shows where the power to pass the new bill lies. Because what McConnell offered up is beyond ridiculous and doesn't even have the support of probably half of his conference.

It has the support of absolutely no Democrats. Sen. Bernie Sanders summed up just how dead on arrival it is in a tweet detailing what's in it: $2 billion for F-35s, $1.75 billion for an FBI building, $1 billion for surveillance planes, $375 million for armored vehicles, $360 million for missile defense, $283 million for Apache helicopters, and $0 for millions facing eviction. That sounds like a whole bunch of sweeteners McConnell had to throw in to get Trump appeased for not getting his payroll tax cut. The stuff in it that's actually related to the COVID-19 crisis is really, really inadequate. It does one good, modest thing—the $1,200 direct payment is back, and here's where they did the one good thing, children over age 17 will now be eligible for the $500 dependent payment. That's pretty much the whole of the good.

In addition to the larding up of a public health bill with armaments and Trump bribes, it excludes increases in food assistance, rental assistance, student loan help, pretty much anything that helps. It does include a cut to the weekly unemployment insurance (UI) boost from $600 to $200 temporarily while states set up a system to pay people 70% of their previous income, which the Republicans want them to do in the next two months. State unemployment officials have united in opposition to that idea as completely unworkable. How bad is it? The Republican labor commissioner in Georgia, Mark Butler, calls it "the dumbest idea ever." He says “We’re not the IRS. We don’t have your taxes. We don’t know what you made last year. Our stuff is based on you getting laid off by a particular employer and them reporting to us about what the wages are.” So there's that.

That's the sum total of how they plan to help people. They also include at least $100 billion more for the problematic Paycheck Protection Program. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) There is no new money for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, just some tweaking of the restrictions on the previous $150 billion that was provided in the CARES Act so states have more flexibility. The only new money directed to states is for schools, a large portion of it restricted to go only to schools that physically reopen. It also has McConnell's obsession, five-years of liability protection for businesses, healthcare providers, and others who might expose people to coronavirus infection.

The stuff, beyond military toys to make Trump happy, include an increase in business tax deductions for meals and entertainment. Presumably at Trump properties. Because so many people are now thinking, "you know, if I could just deduct the full cost of a meal it would be worth going to a restaurant and exposing myself to a potentially fatal virus." That, it turns out, is why there's also that new FBI building money included this bill. For years, Trump has been obsessing over a new headquarters to be built in downtown D.C. The problem isn't the new building, everyone agrees the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building needs replacing. The pre-Trump plan was a suburban campus, which was nixed by Trump. That decision is still being investigated by the Justice Department's inspector general because what seems to be behind Trump's move is the fear that the feds selling off the spot where the current building is to a developer that would build a hotel on the site, one block from Trump's D.C. hotel. Because everything is always going to be about the Trump grift.

This is a bad bill. It is an unacceptable bill for Democrats, which is one point of agreement with half of McConnell's Republicans. They're just coming from different angles on how bad it is. Democrats are rejecting it because it does basically nothing to help people and Republicans because it spends some money on people. “There is significant resistance to yet another trillion dollars,” said Sen. Ted Cruz “The answer to these challenges will not simply be shoveling cash out of Washington; the answer to these challenges will be getting people back to work.”

Democrats are starting from their HEROES Act, which includes much higher UI benefits' hundreds of billions in state and local aid; hazard pay for essential workers; billions for the Postal Service; a 15% boost to food stamps; and $100 billion for renters as well as a moratorium on all evictions for the remainder of this year. For a start. This Republican bill, which has taken McConnell two and a half months to cobble together, after critical assistance deadlines have already passed, has been a phenomenal waste of time. Now the real work begins.
 Not to mention screwing the American people in his latest coronoavirus relief bill.  Thankfully, we can count on the Democrats to bring the bill into line with our needs.  Moscow Mitch must go.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Oh, no! Trump puts Kushner, Birx in charge of new coronavirus task force

Donald Trump didn't even have to be good at containing the coronavirus. All he really had to do was try, just a little, and he'd likely still be competitive in the presidential race.

“The irony is that if he’d just performed with minimal competence and just mouthed words about national unity, he actually could be in a pretty strong position right now, where the economy is reopening, where jobs are coming back,” Ben Rhodes, a top aide to former president Barack Obama, told The Washington Post. “And he just could not do it.”

Many Trump allies are reportedly still mystified by the fact that Trump hasn't been able to put forward a bare minimum effort—particularly because the obvious path to running on the economy was making sure the virus was contained enough to reopen the country and get schools back up and running.

But Trump, not surprisingly, was too busy wallowing in self-pity about the pandemic to take in any serious strategic advice. In fact, aides found themselves devoting more time to serving as Trump's therapist than actually discussing how to combat the public health emergency. Amid his victimhood, the Post also reports Trump had a "pathological unwillingness" to acknowledge he had fumbled the response.

Instead, he tuned out all that pesky negativity to drink in rosy reports from Fox News and optimistic projections from people like Dr. Deborah Birx.

But after top aides managed to convince Trump the virus was now ravaging red states—or "our people," as they put it—he finally bowed to reality. As Trump resurrected the White House coronavirus task force briefings last week, he charged, “This could have been stopped. It could have been stopped quickly and easily. But for some reason, it wasn’t, and we’ll figure out what that reason was."

Not to worry, Trump's gonna pinpoint whoever presided over this disaster and deal with them, very strongly. And he's put his top people on the case. A sub-coronavirus task force is now being led by Dr. Birx (whose sunny projections helped get us into this mess) and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner (who spearheaded the botched national testing effort that has permanently hamstrung the U.S. response). Aces.

The fact that Birx and Kushner are now heading up a new effort to bring the pandemic under control effectively means we're destined to flail, at least until January 20 of next year.

It's also an indication of why Trump was never going to be able to demonstrate even a modicum of competence. He just took two people who were key players in screwing the entire effort at the outset and put them in charge of his response reboot.

At this point, the only thing that's actually mystifying about Trump's incompetence is that anyone thinks he's capable of anything different. He doesn't like governing, he doesn't like serving, he hates the roughly two-thirds of Americans who reside in U.S. cities, he doesn't like reality, he tunes out bad news, he never takes responsibility, and he's preternaturally incapable of combatting a virus because he's demented and doesn't believe in science. 

What’s actually baffling is that anyone at all—let alone people who have been advising him—expected anything different than the unmitigated failure Trump’s delivered.

Just keep after that virus, Donald.  Maybe a packet of McDonald's ketchup will make it a little more palatable.

Monday, July 27, 2020

Portland is Not Burning. Portlanders Are Pissed

Take a closer look at the number of moms in yellow shirts who have come out to stand between the the hodgepodge of Federal agents borrowed from Federal prisons, ICE and Border Patrol and the protestors who assemble to reject their intrusion into the city and continue to call for racial justice.
 

Portland Oregon is alive and well. The city is not burning. The protests are not out of control.

Yes, there are some people bent on destruction of property. They are a minority and do not represent the vast majority of Portlanders or protestors.

The mayhem covers a small area of downtown Portland. It is not widespread. It is not out of control. It is nothing like many of the images shown in the media portray.

Portland may have no shortage of problems, but we love the city and love living here. We are a city filled with people of conscience. A city filled with ordinary Americans who are politically astute, fiercely independent and heavily community oriented.

Take a closer look at the number of moms in yellow shirts who have come out to stand between the the hodgepodge of Federal agents borrowed from Federal prisons, ICE and Border Patrol and the protestors who assemble to reject their intrusion into the city and continue to call for racial justice. There are more moms and dads in these protests than agents. Many more than the few unwelcome vandals and anarchists who distract from the BLM protests that have been taking place nightly for almost two months.

Federal agents in Portland amount to a goon squad. They are indiscriminate about who they attempt to attack or beat up. We have witnessed the same thing across the country since the murder of George Floyd. Police across the country have responded to the right to assemble and protest like berserkers or a Viking horde that has lost all sense of decency and humanity and that only by maiming and crippling people who stand in front of them will their own fears and thirst for blood be quenched. Portland has received the dregs of Federal law enforcement. 

Bashing innocent Americans, causing grievous harm physically and psychologically with their excessive violence and unwarranted beatings is out of control, but not due to Portland protestors.

These tactics are political theater—uncalled for and unnecessary. The goon squad is heavily armed, outfitted with gas masks, bullet proof vests,  and weapons of destruction. They are are stripping Americans of their right to assemble and petition their government to reign in police brutality and to stop killing blacks in America. 

This is a move out of the fascist play book and no American should stand for this indiscriminate police brutality in Portland or any other city.
 Federal agents in Portland amount to a goon squad. They are indiscriminate about who they attempt to attack or beat up.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

So a friend said, 'But the Democrats are just as bad'


WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 07: U.S. President Donald Trump meets with students, teachers and administrators about how to safely re-open schools during the novel coronavirus pandemic in the East Room at the White House July 07, 2020 in Washington, DC. As the number of COVID-19 cases surge across southern states like Florida, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina and Arizona, Trump joined with guests from across the country to discuss how to responsibly return to the classroom. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Tell me that's not the face of Jack Nicholson's Joker. Two sociopaths.
You may have seen a recent Daily Kos post from the always-on point Walter Einenkel, where a batshi*t crazy-as$ nutball—and believe me, that doesn’t come close to capturing the depths of this woman’s Trumpian ignorance—talked about how the teachers’ union is “grooming our children for sexual predators.” Oh, and did I mention that they are apparently doing this in a coalition with (I’ll give you three guesses) “the CDC, Planned Parenthood, and Black Lives Matter incorporated"—it was very important to mention the incorporated part.

I posted this on Facebook, with the following commentary: “This is what you get on Fox News. This is why people who believe what they see on Fox News are so extreme. This is a prime time show, and the host is on the same page with the guest. …This is why America is where it is today.” Most of my Facebook friends responded positively, but one friend—who, I will note, is not a member of either party and who comes down on the liberal side of issues such as reproductive rights and the separation of church and state—essentially said, well, the Democrats are just as bad, just as extreme, etc. I decided to not let that stand. 

Here’s my response:
Not even a little bit. There is no comparison and there is no “both sides are doing it.” There is only one side that has completely broken with reality. This is not the party of John McCain or Mitt Romney or Bob Dole. It is a cult in thrall to a madman who rejects science, truth, and democracy, not to mention our Constitution.

Joe Biden is a relative moderate, and he’s the one the most committed Democrats chose to represent them. In 2016, the most committed Republicans chose Trump from a field of 17, including many highly qualified conservatives. That movement is intellectually, culturally, and spiritually bankrupt.

Additionally, Biden is a normal human being, and shows humane qualities like empathy. Trump, in terms of personal qualities, is clearly one of the worst human beings in America.

Finally, let's talk performance, and be objective here. The last two Republican presidents gave us: the most disastrous foreign policy blunder in our history (Bush invading Iraq in 2003), the most incompetent response to a natural/weather disaster in our history (Bush, Katrina—although Trump and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico isn't much better), the worst economic crash since the Depression (Bush, 2008), and now, COVID—where we have, by far, the worst death rates in the developed world, to a large degree because our federal government played politics with our health (Trump).

These were all things that, unlike, say, 9/11, were completely within our control, and all followed Republican control of the White House and Congress. By comparison, Clinton's presidency had no major blunders to speak of, and he turned the largest deficits in history into surpluses—which his successor blew. Obama turned around the worst economic crash since the Depression—handing his successor a job-creating machine of an economy, oh, and expanded health care to millions of people. Both Democrats avoided getting into any new wars, for what it's worth.

There is no way I can see avoiding the conclusion that today's Democratic party produces far better results for the American people than the Republican party does.

That was just off the top of my head. How’d I do? 

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

Cartoon: Re-election strategy



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Saturday, July 25, 2020

Trump's Campaign Channeled Nearly $400,000 to His Private Business in 2 Days

The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan. (photo: Twitter)
The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan. (photo: Twitter)

By Sonam Sheth, Business Insider
 
resident Donald Trump's campaign sent nearly $400,000 to his private business in just two days, The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold reported on Friday.

Documents showed that the campaign channeled $380,000 to the president's personal business in 43 transactions, Fahrenthold said, adding that the Trump Organization told him the money was for a weeklong "donor retreat" at Mar-a-Lago in March.

Open Secrets, an arm of the Center for Responsive Politics that closely tracks money in politics, first spotted the payments in Federal Election Commission filings from the Trump Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee between Trump and the Republican National Committee.

This isn't the first time the president's personal and business interests have become entangled with his political office.

In February, The Post reported that the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service exorbitant rates to protect the president when he travels to his properties.

Citing federal records and people who had seen the receipts, The Post reported that the Trump Organization billed US taxpayers up to $650 per night at the Mar-a-Lago resort dozens of times in 2017 and $396.15 on dozens of occasions in 2018.

The Trump Organization also billed the Secret Service $17,000 a month in 2017 for agents to stay in a three-bedroom cottage at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to protect the president when he traveled there, The Post reported.

The report said the Secret Service was billed for the cottage even on days when Trump wasn't at the golf club.

Receipts and documents showed that US taxpayers shelled out more than $471,000 to; Trump's properties from January 2017 to April 2018, The Post said.

Trump also frequently hosts foreign leaders at Mar-a-Lago, where they pay the market rate. After Trump became president, several countries with embassies in Washington, DC, began hosting parties and events at Trump properties in what ethics experts described as a bid to curry favor with the president. 

The Post reported in December 2018 that shortly after the election, Saudi-funded lobbyists spent more than $270,000 to rent rooms for about 500 nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

The RNC has spent more than $2 million at Trump Organization hotels and resorts. And Trump's campaign, which is funded in part by donations from the president's supporters and big-dollar donors, has spent more than $14 million at his properties.

In September, Trump faced harsh backlash when Politico reported that members of the US Air Force had stayed at Trump's five-star Turnberry resort in Scotland as part of an unusual layover on a routine trip from the US to Kuwait to deliver supplies.

That and other incidents "raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump's Turnberry resort afloat," the report said.

Last summer, the president also sparked a firestorm when he announced that the 2020 G7 conference, which the US is set to host, would take place at the Trump National Doral golf club in Miami, Florida.

"Doral Miami, so it's a great area. We haven't found anything that could even come close to competing it," Trump said at the time. He backed off after a public backlash and allegations that he was using the conference to line his own pockets.
The King surveys his empire, recently enriched by $400,000 in campaign contributions.