The 188th Week of Trump's Torment!

[JackLuis]

‘I know a predator when I see one’: Kamala Harris calls out Trump — and didn’t even have to say his name

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) took the fight to President Donald Trump in her first speech as the official Democratic nominee.

Speaking Wednesday at the convention, Harris took down the president without even having to say his name. Everyone knew who she was talking about and why.

“I’ve fought for children, and survivors of sexual assault. I’ve fought against transnational gangs. I took on the biggest banks and helped take down one of the biggest for-profit colleges. I know a predator when I see one,” said Harris.

 

[JackLuis]

President Obama celebrated as ‘My President’ during DNC speech as ‘like Zeus coming down to fix things’

Former President Barack Obama took down President Donald Trump like he’s never done before.

Addressing the Democratic Convention on Wednesday, Obama took the fight straight to Trump for being a failed leader, calling the Trump presidency “one more reality show to use to get the attention he craves.”

The case against Trump and the endorsement of Biden earned a lot of responses from people who called him “My President,” and celebrated the honor and dignity of a beloved former leader.

‘It scared me’: Maddow unnerved by Obama warning about potential ‘end of American democracy’

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow confessed that there were parts of President Barack Obama’s speech that genuinely “scared her.”

“President Obama’s speech tonight slayed me,” said Maddow. “I’m sure people will have different opinions about it because it’s a different kind of thing. His warnings that we could potentially be at the end of American democracy scared me, and I found upsetting and hard to watch. But it’s powerful. Powerful stuff.”

 

[JackLuis]

Here’s a deep dive on 40 years of right-wing attempts to destroy the US Postal Service

Well worth the read to see the USPS attack is from the forces of fascism.

 

[JackLuis]

8-20-20 AM
Box Scores

United States
Coronavirus Cases: 5,703,617

Deaths: 176,407

Recovered: 3,063,410

The death toll mounts and Trump worries about his popularity.

He'd be more popular if the death toll were only 70,000!

 

[JackLuis]

‘Straightforward fraud and embezzlement’: Ex-prosecutor breaks down Bannon’s criminal liability for border wall scam

On CNN Thursday, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig walked through the federal fraud charges against former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

“So this is essentially a massive embezzlement that is being alleged here, and a fraud,” said Honig. “First of all, is in the way that the defendants, including Steve Bannon, who is one of the four charged defendants, marketed this Build the Wall operation. They essentially marketed it as an operation where, if you donated this money, is going to be used to build the border wall, but instead — this is the embezzlement part — Bannon and the others essentially pocketed the money, they used it to fund their own lavish lifestyle.”

Another Trumpinista busted!

DOJ ‘firewall’ may have prevented Bill Barr from knowing of Bannon indictment: legal analyst

 

[JackLuis]

Steve Bannon arrested and charged with fraud

Former Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon was charged on Thursday with fraud by federal prosecutors in New York and taken into custody.

The state of play: Bannon, along with three others, allegedly defrauded donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for their own profit with a crowdfunding campaign called "We Build the Wall" that raked in over $25 million.

The indictment says that Bannon, via a non-profit, took in over $1 million from the scheme "and at least some of it was used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in [his] personal expenses."
Bannon's co-conspirators are Brian Kolfage, who served as the organization's founder and president, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea.
Kolfage deleted the organization's GoFundMe page on Wednesday, alleging that the platform was engaged in "censorship" after it shut down another of his campaigns centered on suing Black Lives Matter.

Why it matters: Bannon's indictment makes him the sixth person linked to the senior leadership of the 2016 Trump campaign to be hit with federal charges.

 

[JackLuis]

‘It doesn’t look good for him’: Fox News analyst explains why Steve Bannon is ‘facing 20 years’ in jail

20 years in the hole and no parole!

Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said on Thursday that former Trump campaign adviser Steve Bannon could spend up to 20 years in jail if the government’s case against him holds up.

Following Bannon’s arrest, Napolitano spoke about the allegations that Bannon defrauded donors through a charity that raised $25 million to build a border wall.

“This entity — We Build the Wall — promised its donors that not a penny — quote — not a penny would go into their pockets,” Napolitano explained. “So rather than putting the money directly into their pockets, they funneled it to third-party charities and those charities paid the money, according to the indictment, to Steve Bannon and to the others.”

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Thursday that Bannon and other members of the “We Build the Wall” crowdfunding campaign were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

 

[JackLuis]

Ex-Trump official warns president will spark ‘a winter of civil unrest like we’ve never seen’ if he loses

Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump, warned on Thursday that the president will not go quietly in November even if he is soundly defeated at the ballot box.

During an interview on CNN, Taylor said that he expected the president to continue fighting to remain in power even if the final vote tallies showed that he lost the election decisively.

“Donald Trump will fight viciously and vigorously to make sure that he doesn’t lose this election,” Taylor said. “But I don’t just mean up and until November 3rd, I mean after November 3rd. My worry is that Bush v. Gore… will look like child’s play compared to what this president might do if he feels like he’s got a shot at delegitimizing the election.”

With that I'll leave the thread to await Joe's denouncement of Trump this evening. Trumpy is having a bad day and his minions are being thumped, as they should be. Friday should be epic!

 

[JackLuis]

USPS employees got an email today telling them not to talk to the press under any circumstances

While the U.S. Postal Service is under attack, everyone from letter carriers to union chairs and those working behind the doors in processing facilities has sounded the alarm about what they’re seeing from the top as part of the intentional mail slow down.

VICE News reported Thursday that USPS staff were sent a letter telling them that they can’t talk to the press under any circumstances.

The memo, dated Aug. 14, explains what staff should do if contacted, but it also says that if customers are asking questions, then employees should be “suspicious.”

Understandably, some employees have taken issue with the moves by the Trump administration to intentionally obstruct the passage of the mail, and quickly handed over to the media the memo saying not to talk to the press.

Despite DeJoy's commitment to not fuck up the USPS any more:

It was reported earlier Thursday that the USPS processing staff was sent an email saying that regardless of what people read in the media, they are not to restart the sorting machines that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took offline.

Tomorrow DeJoy will tee up his lies to the Senate, before lying to the House.

 

[bodysong]

August 20, 2020

Trump’s campaign is “suing Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar
and each of the state’s county election boards to prevent election administrators from
providing secure drop boxes for mail-in ballot returns.

Alternet

Portland, Oregon lost mailboxes and mail sorting machines to Trump's Postmaster General

https://www.portlandmercury.com/blo...essing-machines-and-slowing-down-mail-service

 

[JackLuis]

8-20-20 PM
Box Scores

United States
Coronavirus Cases: 5,746,272

Deaths: 177,424

Recovered: 3,095,484


How to Put 170,000 COVID Deaths in Perspective

What does it mean that 170,000 Americans have died—so far—from COVID-19?

You may recall that early on in the pandemic, there was a great deal of crowing from the pro-Trump pandemic-skeptical right. They would say things like, “Only 12 people died today in the entire country! Why are we getting so worked up over this media hoax!”

At some point those voices grew silent.

Today we have the opposite problem: The number of deaths is so large that it has become an abstract statistic. It’s hard to get your mind around what 170,000 dead Americans really means.

How are we supposed to understand the scale?

Consider breast cancer. We all have a mother, a wife, a sister, who has battled breast cancer. The country wears pink every October because of it. In recent years, a little more than 40,000 women have died of breast cancer every year.

COVID-19 killed that many people in about six weeks.

 

[JackLuis]

WATCH: Trump threatens to send law enforcement to polling places during Fox News interview

President Donald Trump phoned into Fox News on Thursday as he attempted counterprogramming during the Democratic National Convention that other networks were covering.

Fox personality Sean Hannity asked if Trump would have poll watchers.

“We’re going to have everything,” Trump replied.

“We’re going to sheriffs and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to have hopefully U.S. Attorneys and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals (sic),” Trump argued.

“After more than three decades, Republicans are free of a federal court consent decree that sharply limited the Republican National Committee’s ability to challenge voters’ qualifications and target the kind of fraud President Donald Trump has alleged affected the 2016 presidential race,” Politico reported in 2018.

“The decree, which dated to 1982, arose from a Democratic National Committee lawsuit charging the RNC with seeking to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws and by posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at the polls in minority neighborhoods,” Politico explained.

More Trump Fuckery!

 

[JackLuis]

A judge asked Trump to prove claims about mail-in votes and fraud — it didn’t go well

President Donald Trump has been obsessed with the idea that mail-in voting encourages voter fraud, and his campaign has filed lawsuits against Pennsylvania and other states because of their plans to encourage voters to use mail-in ballots in November’s election. Journalist Richard Salame, in The Intercept, reports that in response to the Pennsylvania lawsuit, Trump’s campaign was asked to show proof that voting by mail encourages voter fraud — and it was unable to.

Another group opposing Trump’s campaign in the lawsuit is Common Cause PA. Salame quotes Suzanne Almeida, the group’s interim director, as saying, “Not only did the campaign fail to provide evidence that voter fraud was a widespread problem in Pennsylvania — they failed to provide any evidence that any misconduct occurred in the primary election or that so-called voter fraud is any sort of regular problem in Pennsylvania.”

Trumpinistas Strike Out again!

 

[JackLuis]

‘Complete bombshell’: Former top USPS official reveals ‘disturbing’ new details of DeJoy selection and Mnuchin sabotage of mail service

In his first public remarks since resigning from the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors in protest at the end of April, David Williams on Thursday offered a number of alarming new details surrounding the selection of Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy as postmaster general and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s efforts to exert influence over mail operations and finances.

Williams, the former vice chairman of the USPS Board of Governors with decades of federal government experience, testified to the Congressional Progressive Caucus that what he witnessed in his final months at the Postal Service was unprecedented, detailing how Mnuchin required members of the supposedly independent board to “come to his office to kiss the ring and receive his blessing before confirmation” and made “illegal” demands of officials.Defend democracy. Click

“Corruption, plain and simple. Not only is Louis DeJoy a Trump crony and clearly unqualified to be Postmaster General but he also has significant financial conflicts of interest that make him eager to destroy the USPS altogether. We won’t let him.”
—Rep. Pramila Jayapal

More conspirators identified in USPS conspiracy!

 

[JackLuis]

‘They’re not needed’: Postmaster General tells Senate he has no intention of returning mail sorting machines

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Friday, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told lawmakers that he has “no intention” of returning or replacing mail-sorting machines that have been removed from post offices across the nation.

Questioned on the machine removals by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), DeJoy—a Trump megadonor who has no prior experience working for the U.S. Postal Service—said, “They’re not needed, sir.”

I suppose this is based on his months of USPS experience?



‘Had no idea’: Postmaster DeJoy claims in Senate testimony he ‘was unaware’ mailboxes and sorting machines were being removed

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy claims he “had no idea” that mailboxes and mail sorting machines were being removed. “I was made aware when everybody else was made aware,” DeJoy says, while claiming they are “not needed.”

DeJoy is a top Trump and GOP mega-donor who was installed over the objections of the vice chairman of the USPS Board of Governors. Right now he is testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

So he was just a figure head rather than a hard nosed administrator?

 

[phrodeau]

Trump’s plan: 1. Force voters out of their homes to gather at poll stations. 2. Send in the cops.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...ing-to-send-cops-to-the-polls-he-cant-do-that

 

[JackLuis]

Trump loses yet another bid to block Manhattan DA’s subpoena of his taxes

President Donald Trump on Friday lost yet another bid to block a ruling on whether Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office can subpoena his financial records, CNBC is reporting.

Judge Victor Marrero, who wrote the decision, concluded that Trump and his legal team had failed to demonstrate that he would suffer the “irreparable harm” that would be needed to justify a temporary block of the subpoena.

Vance’s office has confirmed that they need to examine the president’s tax records because he is under investigation for potential fraud.

Losing loser loses again!

 

[JackLuis]

‘Like Armageddon’: Rotting food, dead animals and chaos at postal facilities amid cutbacks

Six weeks ago, U.S. Postal Service workers in the high desert town of Tehachapi, Calif., began to notice crates of mail sitting in the post office in the early morning that should have been shipped out for delivery the night before.

At a mail processing facility in Santa Clarita in July, workers discovered that their automated sorting machines had been disabled and padlocked.

And inside a massive mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles, workers fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes.

Accounts of conditions from employees at California mail facilities provide a glimpse of what some say are the consequences of widespread cutbacks in staffing and equipment recently imposed by the postal service.

While Senator Johnson strokes DeJoy's back, California suffers from his fuckery!

 

[JackLuis]

Internet stunned after ‘lunatic’ Trump boasts he’s saving America from ‘total anarchy and madness’

In a speech before the Council for National Policy on Friday, Donald Trump admitted that he “embarrassed himself” at the Republican National Convention in 2016 where he claimed “I alone” can fix America’s problems, saying it made him sound “egotistical.”

That didn’t stop him from also claiming, “I am the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness and chaos.”

Yes and you are the anarchy, madness, and chaos!

 

[JackLuis]

‘I thought I was a Republican’: Cuban-American voters tell MSNBC Trump has scared them into voting Biden

A group of Cuban-American voters, who have traditionally been a key constituency for the Republican Party in the key swing state of Florida, told MSNBC on Friday that President Donald Trump has scared them into supporting Democratic rival Joe Biden.

In interviews with MSNBC’s Ellison Barber, the three Cuban Americans said that they believed Trump had done real damage to the GOP’s brand among their friends and relatives.

“If we get four more years of Trump, good luck, good luck with the future attracting younger voters,” said Peter Gonzalez, a Republican voter backing Biden.

“I initially thought I was a Republican because my parents were Republicans,” said Janet Hernandez, who is also backing Biden. “But my first exposure to the Republican Party was in the 2016 election and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, what is this?'”

Florida is 50-50 now and getting more Democratic by the day!

 

[JackLuis]

Fox’s Lou Dobbs served as the ‘shadow chief of staff of the Trump administration’: ex-DHS official

Former senior Trump administration official Miles Taylor said that President Donald Trump would regularly berate staffers for not following the advice of Fox News host Lou Dobbs.

“This is really disheartening but there was a period of time where, at first jokingly, we would say that Fox late night host Lou Dobbs was the sort of shadow chief of staff of the Trump administration,” Miles told CNN host Anderson Cooper on Friday.

“Why did we say that? Because the president would call us and he would say, and pardon my language, why the hell didn’t you watch Lou Dobb last night? You need to listen to Lou. What Lou says is what I want to do,” he explained.

“So if Lou Dobbs peddled a conspiracy theory on late night television or made an erroneous claim about what should be done at the border or with some law enforcement operation, the president wanted us to be tuning in every night,” Miles said.

Trump is an unthreaded wing nut!

 

[JackLuis]

Trump’s campaign has spent a record $1 billion — and he’s still way behind Joe Biden in the polls

Oops!

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has spent record sums so far — but none of it seems to have helped him improve his poll numbers against Democratic rival Joe Biden.

The Washington Post reports that “President Trump’s campaign, the Republican Party and two affiliated committees, have spent more than $1 billion since 2017, a record-breaking sum spent toward a reelection effort at this point in the presidential campaign.”

According to Real Clear Politics’ polling average, Biden currently enjoys a national lead of 7.6 points, while FiveThirtyEight’s polling average has currently gives Biden a lead of 8.6 points.

Trump strategy seems to not be working.

 

[KeithD]

Just leave Trump out on the stage, talking. That'll do it. Yeah, that will help.

 

[JackLuis]

Trump directed Homeland Security to give $400 million to firm tied to Bannon’s We Build the Wall scheme: report

President Donald Trump was caught in a precarious position when one of his top former aides and former campaign CEO was indicted for fraud after running a fake effort to build the wall on the southern American border.

Over a year ago, the Pentagon inspector general began looking into a suspicious $400 million contract given from the Department of Homeland Security to the construction company linked to Bannon’s group. The funds came at Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Trump’s urging

“On Dec. 2, the Pentagon announced a contract worth up to $400 million to Fisher Sand and Gravel for the construction of 31 miles of new border barriers along the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona,” said the Washington Post.

Humm, $400 million/31 miles = $12.9 Million per mile

 

[JackLuis]

Critics say Trump push to sell fighter jets and armed drones to Emirates confirms US-Israel-UAE deal ‘was never about peace’

“Peace is not an arms deal to be made between anti-democratic regimes. It must be made between peoples.”

Middle East experts voiced fresh skepticism Wednesday about the supposed peace agreement the U.S. brokered between Israel and the United Arab Emirates after reports emerged that the Trump administration is ramping up an effort to sell advanced weaponry—including armed drones and F-35 stealth fighter jets—to the UAE.

According to the Times, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is spearheading the effort to sell American weaponry to the UAE, which is part of the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing Yemen for years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called reports that the U.S. is planning to sell F-35s to the UAE “fake news,” but Trump acknowledged the potential weapons sale during a press briefing that same day, telling reporters that the Emirates “would like to order quite a few F-35s.” Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East that possesses F-35s.

“They have the money,” Trump said of the UAE. “It’s the greatest fighter jet in the world, as you know, by far. Stealth. Totally stealth. You can’t see it. Makes it very difficult.”